Am I Loved E-Book

John D. Bieber

• Herausgeber: Umbria Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 254

Beschreibung

Am I Loved? is a thought-provoking, beautifully written book which explores the human condition from an entirely original perspective. It continues where Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker left off presenting a carefully evidenced understanding of life which is ground breaking in its implications. The blend of philosophy and psychology theory takes the reader on a unique journey. It provides a new understating of a universal experience which was previously hardly understood at all.

Leseprobe

The very things that make us human are those that cause us to feel ill at ease in our humanity.

Can we discover how to understand our emotions? Yes we can.

Far from being “red in tooth and claw” Nature has elegantly engineered us both to preserve and to pass on the life we bear.

Protecting that life is revealed to be the sole purpose of our existence. For Nature protects the life within us by endowing us with a full repertory of emotions and the capacity to love to a degree not given to the rest of Creation.

What Nature’s Protections comprise and how they determine how we function is explained through a Riddle (what are our emotions for?) a Trick (that Nature plays on us to encourage us to procreate) and a Mystery (of how we process our emotions ).

Along the way we encounter the Speechless Real (the reason for our ignorance of how we function) our Supreme Sense (supreme above all our senses, enabling us to gauge how we are surviving and, crucially, the source of our self-awareness and consciousness) and Nature’s Morality (enabling us to live better more loving lives), introducing fascinating concepts such as the ineffable link between our emotions and our need to be loved, the fundamental role genes play in our existence, what is heredity, what is love, why we love, how we love, how being loved is the greatest of all our human needs; why “Am I loved ? ” is the most asked question of all time and why the vast majority of people ask the wrong question; why so many people seek love from an invisible god and why would god have emotions?

This book holds out the beguiling prospect of our being able to resolve the majority of our emotional problems with far greater facility. It enables us to take charge of our lives, providing us with the chance to feel truly comfortable in ourselves and at ease in our nature for the very first time.

We did not come into this world with a manual. This is the next best thing.

“Anyone wishing to explore a uniquely interesting, highly relevant approach to problems common to us all, will find much to stimulate their senses in this unusual and fascinating book. Many techniques are original and engaging. This book is an intensely personal, philosophical construct which should be of huge interest to a wide audience.”

Dr Herb Etkin, fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, formerly Medical Director Ticehurst House Hospital and Counsellor to Eton College

“A wonderful intensive read very interestingly presented and a fascinating take on the meaning of life. The book takes a simple premise and develops it into a deep, meaningful and thought-provoking ideal.”

Stephanie Saunders, Lecturer and Fellow of the Society of Orthopaedic Medicine

“Mr Bieber has tackled the most ‘tricky’ subject on earth in an imaginative and thought provoking way, embracing original concepts such as the Supreme Sense and the Speechless Real in an original and engaging manner.

Most importantly he has grasped the nettle of the primitive, instinctual and reflex pattern of human emotions, their consequences (in particular the potentially destructive consequences of fear) and their protective genetic purpose. His review of the playground arena could not be more apt or topical.”

Bruce Mauleverer QC, Patron, International Law Association

“Am i loved? examines, explains, and empowers the reader by answering The Big Question in a serious and thoughtful way.”

Don Luciano, TV producer and magazine editor, including Vanity Fair

Endorsements from anonymous readers selected at random in New York

‘This book really shakes the tree in that you don’t only feel like you’ve been enlightened, you feel educated. You feel like whether you believe some of it, all of it, or none of it – this is the truth as the writer sees it. This is a rare book.’

Male, 30’s

‘I made a point to look at the world through the lens of his words for a week and you know what? He has a point of view that should be heard and shared.’

Female, 20’s

‘Am i loved? shares a valid and interesting point of view. I would say argument but the book is written so beautifully there is no desire to convince people. A significant book.’

Male, 50’s

‘Even though I wasn’t looking for a new philosophy, am not at all religious, or give life’s meaning any thought, this book opened my eyes to things I didn’t think I cared about.’

Female, 30’s

‘It’s extremely well written, to the point if you want to put it down you are grateful to be reading something written so well you keep on going. I don’t feel duped by this author. There are so many “gurus” who intend to make a living off what they spew. This author seems to have no agenda other than to share what he believes.’

Male, 40’s

‘This book made me feel good – like life really has a purpose.’

Female, 40’s

Copyright © John D. Bieber 2021

John D. Bieber has asserted his right

under the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act 1988 to be identified

as the author of this book.

[email protected]

Umbria Press

London SW15 5DP

[email protected]

Printed and bound in Poland by Totem

www.totem.com

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 910074 25 1

Ebook ISBN: 978 1 910074 40 4

You are

The me of me

The thee of me

The we of me

The be of me

You are

To Joey my wife,

the greatest love of my life

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter One – The Human Story

Chapter Two – An Inheritance of Love

Chapter Three – Who Am I?

Chapter Four – A Little Magic

Chapter Five – The Unborn Child

Chapter Six – Genes, the Riddle and the Wheel of Life

Chapter Seven – Emotions

Chapter Eight – Loving Love

Chapter Nine – Love and the Trick

Chapter Ten – The Supreme Sense

Chapter Eleven – ‘Am I Loved?’ or ‘Am I Surviving?’, and Nature’s Morality

Chapter Twelve – Oh My God

Chapter Thirteen – For God’s Sake

Chapter Fourteen – Humankind

Epilogue

Appendix – A Selection of Thoughts

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Index

Preface

‘Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.’

CHARLES DICKENS (1812–70)

Nicholas Nickleby (1839)

Love is passion. Love is life, joy, fulfilment. But I’ve seen love dying. I’ve seen love dead.

Love: the magic thread in the human tapestry, the sliver of warmth and light in a dark, cold world. Love: the single thing that every human being longs for, that everyone alive on this planet absolutely needs. Yes, love: the glue that binds two people, the bond uniting families and friends, the single force that fuels all human coupling, affording grace to individual existence. I’ve witnessed love, experienced love and been deeply blessed with love in my personal life, but as a lawyer handling divorce I’ve seen what happens when it’s gone, lost forever like a dream that flies away.

With love extinguished, perfectly good and reasonable people fall victim to feelings they’ve never had or imagined before. Things become ugly, tragic and distressing, rendering them incapable of navigating procedures based on rights and entitlements. They are simply too in thrall to their emotions to see the wood for the trees.

This is what prompted me to write this book explaining the human condition. Because I wanted to bring understanding to things we plainly do not understand. I wanted to offer the chance to enhance the quality of our lives. My conclusions shed new light on all aspects of human experience. Suddenly our lives make sense and our previous understandings seem wrong, for we can see now how we have been engineered and why, how we are intended to function and how we have previously got everything wrong.

In my professional life I saw so many clients in a state of abject unhappiness, all of them vulnerable, sad and insecure, as were, probably, their spouses. Apart from the misery, all of them had one thing in common: they were in no emotional state to make life-changing decisions.

Emotions are feelings that come to us fully formed, that drive all human intercourse and influence all thoughts, but, and this is a huge but, they are things which we can neither comprehend nor control. To understand how complex the problem is, consider this. Dealing with divorce I discovered two paradoxes. The first is that when people are called upon to take important decisions, they are in no emotional state to do so. The second is that when people are unhappily married they become emotionally divorced, whereas when they are divorced a surprisingly large number feel emotionally married.

Such is the effect of emotions. And this fascinated me: at the very moment when people need their cool and sufficient detachment to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives, they succumb to their emotions. Their common sense and judgement desert them.

And so follows a bad divorce after a bad marriage. The marital knot is cut when, in wisdom, it could so easily have been untied.

These considerations prompted me to write a book on the emotional side of divorce. Entitled If Divorce Is the Only Way (1997, Penguin), it explains the advantages of pursuing a good divorce. Based on positive thinking with a reach target of moving on with minimum damage to the children and future relations between the parties, it has helped a lot of people.

To achieve this, my advice was to be aware of negative emotions and to get rid of them as quickly as possible, but I had no more understanding at that time of the nature of our emotions or how to handle them than anyone else. I pondered on this long and hard and began reading quite widely about emotions. I was particularly interested as my eldest child, Hugo, was about to become a teenager, something which as a young child he’d thought one had to take an exam to become! And this, and the desire to remain a few steps ahead of my son, brought me to a collaboration with a distinguished psychiatrist friend to write a book on adolescence. Every few weeks my friend would discuss a topic with me which I would then include in our next chapter.

Looking at Hugo, and indeed at his younger sisters and brother, childhood seemed such a carefree, happy time, yet everything was slated to change with the onset of adolescence. Suspended between childhood and adulthood, teenagers often become secretive, introverted, withdrawn and full of private fears. Previously ready smiles give way to sulky faces, relationships that had been trouble free become charged and confrontational, as the former loving and well-balanced child loses herself in a state of anguish and confusion.

Of course it’s only a matter of time before things sort themselves out and balance is restored, but the few years of raging hormones and wild emotions when the adolescent is neither child nor adult certainly take their toll not just on the child but on her entire family. But again, the problem is emotions and when these are not understood by either child or parent a great deal of suffering can result.

And this is where I had my Eureka moment, for half way through the book I raised my sights to the adult world and realised there was a positive vacuum of understanding about the role that both emotions and love play in our lives. And this in turn led me to put aside the book on adolescence in favour of a far larger study of the human condition.

Such was the genesis of this book, which is about far more than emotions or, indeed, love, although you will see that everything ultimately revolves around their interaction.

All of us are human. Just as we all require sleep, we all share the same wants, needs and desires. But, sadly, we also all share the same ignorance of our true condition. It follows that to live life without understanding how we function must be the ultimate of follies.

But we no longer need to live like this, meekly accepting our ignorance as part of how life is meant to be. Because emphatically it is not.

Introduction

‘Humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it’s there and sitting down on it’

E.E. CUMMINGS (1894–1962)

XLI poems (1925)

How can we function as sophisticated emotional beings when we can neither understand nor control our emotions?

That is the question.

This book is about nothing if not about being human. It is about love and human needs, about misunderstandings, tragedy, faith and despair, but mostly about love.

It is not another novel or self-help book, just a book that is truly stranger than fiction.

It is a book about us. It is a book of secrets, it is a book about life, about how life is protected and how it has been lived by a parade of humanity sixty five billion names long.

This book defines the human condition and the fundamental roles played in our existence by the greatest of all human needs, the need to be loved. It translates the language and reveals the purpose of our emotions so that, at last, we can understand and take charge of them.

It discovers the secret of how life is protected, perpetuated and passed on. It introduces us to our all-important and previously unknown Supreme Sense, which will enable us to gauge how we are surviving at any one time and which is, crucially, the source of our self-awareness and consciousness.

It also introduces us to the concept of Nature’s Morality and the promise of being able to enjoy all that we may have imagined for ourselves in the next world, in this one.

It holds out the beguiling prospect of our being able to resolve the majority of our emotional problems, in the future, with far greater facility.

Furthermore, in explaining the human condition, the book enables us to take charge of our emotions and our lives, providing us with the chance to feel, for the very first time, truly comfortable in ourselves and at ease in our nature.

I am a lawyer, not a scientist. However (a lawyer’s word), this may have been an advantage in the long run as it enabled me to question things that experts appear to have accepted or, at least, never probed. I became intrigued by the notion that as the first and so far the only emotional beings we were, nevertheless, unable either to understand or to control our emotions.

For me, that single fact explained all human frailty. How could we be made so imperfectly? How could we be expected to control our lives if we could not control, let alone understand, our emotions?

Of course, we were not made so imperfectly and neither were we intended to live as victims of our emotions. It’s just that no-one ever explained to us the human condition.

I started to read around the subject and three short statements stood out from all my reading. Put them together and you have the genesis of this book. I paraphrase them here:

We are not at ease in our nature as are other creatures in theirs.

(KAREN ARMSTRONG)

We are unable to explain what it feels like to be alive

(JACQUES BARZUN)

Our emotions exist to save us from harm.

(PETER WHYBROW)

These concepts are woven into the fabric, the DNA, of this book, one feeding off the other as conclusions begin to emerge. The result is here for you to read.

As human beings we have two special gifts from Nature not given so generously to the rest of Creation: our emotions and our capacity to love. To say that, between them, these two faculties explain everything is a gross over-simplification, but we will see that they stand at the very core of our survival. This makes our study all the more worthwhile, indeed almost tender, because whatever aspect of the human condition we consider, we are dealing with fallible, loveable, needy and vulnerable human beings, just like you and just like me. If we have been lost, we have all been lost together, as we are all irrevocably the same.

But then, as human beings, not only have we all gone wrong, historically we have never got it right. The following short anecdote makes the point well.

This is what happened one day in spring, when a Cro-Magnon caveman first invented the wheel.

It is one of those marvellous crisp days. Birdsong, blue skies, swelling buds, soon time to go elk hunting again.

The caveman has spent the long winter months chiselling and honing a slim rounded boulder until it is polished and smooth, perfectly formed and delightful to touch. With the coming of spring he pushes it home, surprised at how easily he manages to get it back to the cave.

He halts at the glowing embers of last night’s fire, his excited voice rising to fill the cave entrance with sound. ‘Come and see, you’ll never guess what I’ve brought you!’

His wife emerges, an infant in her arms. Her pretty, vacant eyes stare at the stone now gloriously luminescent in the bright sun.

‘Well, what d’you think?’ the caveman asks proudly.

The wife moves the infant from one arm to the other, absent-mindedly shaking her head to flick a strand of hair from her eyes.

‘What is it?’

The man is beaming now, chuckling to himself. ‘Can’t you see?’ His large, callused hands stroke the wheel lovingly, then very gently he lowers it onto its side. ‘It’s a table!’

Our study is about the unique, unchallenged communion of humankind that turns out to be nothing more than a gross and terrible ignorance of the human condition, of how we function, of why we act and behave as we do and of how life would be better, far better, for everyone and all those yet to come, if only we could understand how things are meant to be.

It is as simple and as complicated as that. Going back through all the generations, through our parents and grandparents, and their parents and so on, right back to the first people to be recognisably the same as ourselves, everybody has got it wrong. In fact what was wrong was that when faced with a choice between two questions, everyone asked the wrong one. But that is the simple bit that comes at the end. The fact that our ignorance of the human condition is responsible for the vast majority of human problems, and much human misery besides, means that potentially nearly all such problems are solvable, enabling life to be immeasurably better, calmer, more rewarding and fulfilling.

The extraordinary thing that makes this book different from others is that all this is true. Can it be that complicated, can it be that simple?

In the Book of Ecclesiastes it is written: ‘There is no new thing under the sun.’ But there is. For we shall discover the key to all human understanding, not in the form of a belief or a concept or a theory, but in the form of a sense, our Supreme Sense, whose function and existence has passed humanity by, a sense that makes full sense of life. A sense, moreover, that makes full sense of love.

As in the opera which makes up our Prologue, God, Nature, Life, Humankind and Love, as the Five Pillars of Human Creation, influence and determine practically every aspect of our human existence, providing our architecture and infrastructure, defining us in every way, with the sole purpose of securing life’s survival.

Life’s survival, not our own. Paradoxical as it may seem, in the end life’s entire purpose boils down to its own preservation. We, as human beings and bearers of life, are engineered to facilitate that. That is our sole function. But it has come at a very high price. How it affects us all is what we shall seek to explain.

For affect us it does. Every one of us, and indeed all those billions of individuals who have come before, have lived their lives with a comprehension of themselves and the way in which they function that is fundamentally wrong.

From that single mistaken belief has flowed the entire course of human dealings, from family and marital relationships, to love, religion and war, directly affecting the happiness and wellbeing of every person who has ever lived. Life could have been different, catastrophes and mistakes of history might have been avoided, things we would prefer not to have happened might not have done so, if only people had correctly grasped their own make-up.

This truth affects every single living human being. All of us are human and respond to what it means and feels to be human in exactly the same way, and, deep down, all of us know that we have yet to find the answers required to give meaning to life, to bring understanding to our existence, to find a better way of living.

Our opera is not just an amusement. Many of our problems are comprised in the tale that it tells, from our inability, as emotional beings, to control or understand our emotions, to our feeling ill at ease in our nature, to our failure to benefit from the virtues of love, all of which disable us from leading balanced lives. If this were not so, then ask yourself: why do a majority of people believe in an afterlife characterised by the absence of problems, which are the problems that they encounter in this life?

We shall carefully consider the Five Pillars of Human Creation, examining each of Life, Nature, Love, God and Humankind, and their inter-connection with each other. In this way we shall look at almost every aspect of what it means to be human, explaining the why and how of our make-up, dispelling our ignorance of the human condition and providing, through what I shall term, and later explain, Nature’s Morality, a way of living a happier, more fulfilling life in a manner that provides in this world all the benefits expected in the next, with or without God.

As we proceed we shall encounter a riddle and a trick (yes, we have certainly been tricked) and a mystery, combining in true Churchillian fashion to present us with a ‘mystery, inside a trick, wrapped in a riddle’. Any similarity to a ‘riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma’ is inevitable, but Churchill employed his terms to describe his bafflement as to Soviet intentions before the Second World War, whereas we shall use ours to reveal the truth we are seeking, enabling us to explain emotions and love and to introduce the Supreme Sense and Nature’s Morality.

Before we proceed a certain element is in need of clarification. If you are about to put away this book protesting that, although we shall never know the truth, God and Nature do not exist, or perhaps, as Spinoza believed, are one and the same, please consider this.

Strictly speaking, it is acknowledged, there is no such thing as Nature. Nature does not actually exist, but is merely the process of evolution, a process that, after its debut in Darwin’s ‘warm little pond’ in the form of a single-celled organism, so tiny as to be invisible to the naked eye, took three and a half billion years to bring life to us. However, as everyone understands and uses the term and as the notion of Nature advances us on our journey by simplifying and humanising points to be developed, we shall continue to refer to Nature.

As for God, to some he too does not exist, because his existence is a matter of faith. But God will appear many times in these pages, for so absolutely is he enshrined in humankind that unthinking him is beyond our capacity to imagine. Having said that, however, you may regard him differently once you have read the two chapters devoted to him in this book.

Now, before we take a closer look at Life, let us consider what appears to be a simple, straightforward, and indeed, an essential question, which we alluded to a few pages ago: What does it feel like to be alive? All of us experience the feeling of being alive, every moment of every day, but, astonishing as it may seem, the likelihood of your getting the correct answer is very slim.

Think about it as you read on. You may consider it odd if we, who are alive, are unable to say what being alive feels like, but then, you will discover there is a very great deal about being human that we do not understand.

At some time or other, we have all seen the wheel and called it a table. And this is my point. We wouldn’t drive a car, extract someone’s appendix or fly a plane without knowing how, yet we live our lives in complete ignorance of how we are meant to function.

We were not provided with a manual when we came into this world but it is hoped that this book will be the next best thing. For this book explains the human condition. This is how it is.

Prologue

GÉRONTE: It seems to me you are locating them wrongly, the heart is on the left and the liver is on the right.

SGANARELLE: Yes, in the old days that was so, but we have changed all that and now we practise medicine by a completely new method.

MOLIÈRE (1622–73)

The Doctor in Spite of Himself (1925) Act 2, Scene 4

We are in an opera house packed to the rafters with an audience of the world’s greatest and best, the richest and most famous, the most powerful and celebrated. Very few of them, despite their great distinction, are exempt from the general disappointments and emotional problems affecting most of humankind.

The lights have dimmed, so that before the curtain rises the golden tiers have relinquished their gleam, and the keen, intelligent faces glued to the stage have merged into a blank and characterless mass. All is still, anticipation palpable, when, taking everyone by surprise, a strange, powerful, quite unworldly sound, forlorn, plaintive and haunting, violently pierces the silence. It is too late for second thoughts now: the shrill sequence of discordant notes, blown with increasing volume through an ancient Hebrew shofar, a ram’s horn, and solemnly repeated nine times, is summoning the people into the very presence of Almighty God.

Not even a first night for Mozart or Verdi, not even a first night for Mozart and Verdi, could have been like this. For this, the very grandest of grand operas, stars the greatest, most omniscient, sublime and powerful forces in all Creation, against which even a pope appears no more than a grasshopper.

Tonight, for one night only, the Five Pillars of Human Creation, without whom there would be no human existence, or existence of any kind, are about to perform.

Never before has there been such a production. But then, never before have God, Nature, Life, Humankind and Love condescended to appear together before humanity.

Based on the story of Life, Humankind and Love, the opera is a tale of misunderstanding, missed opportunity and dysfunction. You may even recognise it as our own tragic tale. Here is a brief synopsis.

Act 1

We see two impossibly beautiful women, a mother and daughter, Nature and Life. Life is her mother’s adored child, the greatest, by far, of all her many treasures.

But there is a problem. Nature sings of her devotion to Life, lamenting that she created Life by accident, not knowing quite how she did it and not believing that she will ever be able to do it again.

Despite her exquisite beauty and sweetness, Life feels incomplete because she cannot exist alone. At once the source of all Creation, Life has still to depend upon Creation for her own existence. For she cannot survive without Creation, just as Creation cannot survive without Life.

Having to rely upon Creation to protect Life has therefore become Nature’s abiding concern, causing her to engineer Creation especially to ensure that Life is effectively taken care of and protected whatever the cost. In this she succeeds, until Humankind evolves. The most advanced and adroit of all species, handsome and intelligent, yet, as Nature soon discovers, deeply flawed, Humankind becomes involved with Life, at first beguiling, then seducing and finally marrying her.

Nature comes to realise that the protections she has put in place for Life with the rest of Creation are not enough for Humankind. Humankind has a mind of his own and can, more or less, do as he likes. As he fails to care sufficiently for Life or to fulfil her needs Nature rapidly becomes anxious.

Act 2

The scene is thus set. As a mother, Nature is passionately all-caring, but as a mother-in-law she is cynical and suspicious and deeply mistrustful of Humankind’s attitude to Life.

Fearful for her beloved Life, Nature secretly alters Humankind’s make-up, equipping him with emotions she is confident will help him to look after her daughter.

But this only makes matters worse. Humankind’s emotions absolutely overwhelm him. Unable either to understand or control his emotions, Humankind becomes confused, unhappy and uncomfortable. Indeed, he is no longer at ease in his own nature, as the rest of Creation are in theirs, and he remains no better disposed to the needs of Life.

Now desperate about what else she can do to induce Humankind to become more sensitive to Life’s needs, Nature introduces him to Love, a benign and transient spirit well known for bringing people together. But this, too, has unforeseen consequences. Looking for comfort and support in his misery, Humankind readily turns to Love but instead of leading him back to Life, as Nature had planned, Love takes him to his long-estranged father.