The first animal we humans ever domesticated was ourselves. We have been seeking solace in lofty ideas and spiritual experiences ever since, as a way of compensation. Visions of spiritual possibilities are the projection of the order and harmony we lost when we forsook nature. The reason we experience nature as a potential evil is because we have become detached and estranged from it--to the point we perceive it as our enemy rather than as the ground on which we stand. 

Civilization is like a game we play. How high can we build it before nature tears it down once again? Also, when civilization is leveled, what parts of it will remain intact, demonstrating that they were built in a way not simply at odds with nature? What parts were built and remained sufficiently close to the ground? Finally, when it is leveled, will we remember and retain anything of what we have learned about the potential improvements to nature brought about through the idea of humanity, or will we simply return to nature with a vengeance, which is barbarism?

At some point in our evolution, the human species became impressed with an idea: it did not need to define itself merely in relation to nature. It could create an order of its own--a second nature. It could be a nature unto itself, and to that it would refer for meaning. The realm of spirit is the projection of this ideal. The apex of this idea is the dictum that mankind is made in the image of God. Our possession by this idea is what Genesis alludes to when it speaks of God breathing a soul into our bodies of clay. It corresponds also with the development of language. 

When you see humanity in its highly domesticated forms (someone polished, seemingly living above nature’s brutish demands), we rightly may imagine that nature, in its wild state, remains underneath, and is paying some price for all this civilization. We have not entirely bred that out of ourselves, after all. Unless some conscious rapprochement with it has been made, it lives underground as shadow, and is subject to all the mechanisms that attend repressed material, including projection. 

Buildings, indoors, electric lights, and social protocol and decorum--all of these can be occasions of suffering for the underlying human animal, in whom wildness continues to live. ”My life fits me like a straitjacket," we might say. Similarly, we could describe society as a consensually agreed upon (mostly) straitjacket. Religious forms, as a projection of the spiritual ideal, console us in the tension we experience in this situation. In addition to this function though, which could be construed as a negative one, they could also be seen as inviting a retrograde movement, a return to more primitive forms of experience, that are nonetheless in service of forward motion. This would be to recognize a uniquely positive function of religion, and not merely to rest with a negative conclusion about what it accomplishes.

Some people are better at being human than others. We frame this as a moral achievement. We need to recognize, though, that our criterion of “moral” is self-referential. Failure is defined from the standpoint of those who have succeeded. There are numerous biases and presuppositions at work in this, which contribute to the suffering of those who, for whatever reason, may not be able to achieve the same integration into society. We need to recognize much of our judgment upon failure for what it actually is: the suspicion that our construct of society is not as secure as we put it forth to be, and the fear that it may not hold. Failures remind us of the fact that civilization is not guaranteed, or even the deepest truth of our own experience. Little children are like little animals. More to the point, they are like animals who have only just begun to experience training towards domestication. We tolerate instinctive behavior from them that we are less willing to tolerate in adults, by which time training should have had its proper effect.

A condition that commonly attends the above-described situation is shame. Shame is basically fear that one’s underlying animal nature will be discovered. Since that underlying animal substrate is perceived as threatening to the construct of society, we are eager to keep it entirely out of sight. In the case of the most extreme scenarios—and undoubtedly as has actually happened at points in history—the public outing of one’s animal nature has been punished even by death. In addition to fearing such punishment from others, though, we have largely internalized the attitude of suspicion, fear, and hostility towards this nature as it exists in ourselves, putting us at war with ourselves. There is hardly a hair-shirt rough enough to satisfy our animosity towards it. Most remedies for healing of shame do not touch upon this deeper layer from which it originates. Instead, they involve constructing a relatively deep image of self about which one can feel positive—yet that image is still one that must meet the criteria of civilization. The underlying animal resides beneath that, completely unassured of its all-rightness, and its safety.