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Old 05-11-2008, 08:25 AM   #5 (permalink)
elfinchilde
a white iris
 
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Join Date: Jan 2008
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innate. from latin, "innatus'---meaning inborn.

So basic emotions hardwired into biology and instinct:

lust, fear, avarice, envy. (purified, you get their counterthesis, which arguably, is learnt behaviour:

love, courage, selflessness, compassion.)

As well, the ideal of beauty: it's been found that newborn babies instinctively reach for symmetrical faces; and that symmetry is the ideal of beauty across cultures. The Golden Ratio in art exemplifies this.

Anything to do with sex and survival, essentially. which are the same things. sex for survival of the species; self survival for continuation of the individual.

The God instinct is a tricky one. Arguable that only those who have desires, have need of God. (what do most people pray for, after all. "world peace"?)

i.e., the inability to centre oneself by oneself leads to seeking for external 'spiritual'
help. Which is self affirmation by external means, really. Which is a survival instinct, since if you cannot feel good about yourself, it leads to the thanatos instinct taking over physis.
__________________
You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl.
Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

--T.S Eliot, The Wasteland
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