Ouroboros: Humanity’s Self-Destruction and Self-Remolding”

Aion Ziming Dong

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—Introduction

“In ancient Greek mythology, in the vast and profound dark deep space, there is a magnificent creature quietly wandering within the void. It bites its own tail, devouring itself within an endless cycle. And using itself as nourishment, it is reborn, growing harder scales, sharper fangs.”

It is eternity, it is Ouroboros.

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-Preface. Father and Mother.

In the family life of Homo sapiens, the father is strength, guidance, and protection, the mother is love, integration, and healing.

Carl Jung was the first to point out,

from early childhood, the inner world of the Homo sapiens individual will construct various images to understand the world. Jung called these inner intentions “archetypes,” the original models that shape our emotional experience. Even before we can speak.

One of the most central among them is the archetype of the father. Symbolically, the father is not merely an ordinary man, he symbolizes psychological power, helping the individual break free from emotional entanglement with the mother. Opening the process of individuation, moving toward the true self. It is precisely this invisible force that cuts off invisible emotional bonds, allowing the individual to carry courage in facing life.

Alongside the father archetype, equally profound, is the mother archetype. Symbolically, the mother is not merely an ordinary woman, she symbolizes empathy deep within the structure of personality. The mother archetype represents acceptance, containment, and healing. The psychological power she gives the individual is the source of the unconscious, the earliest form of all emotional experience. This power is not weak tenderness, but a deep spiritual gravity. It pulls the individual back to the origin of emotion, allowing the individual, within a fractured world, to still remember belonging.

Homo sapiens is a species that self-edits through observation, and an individual’s behavioral patterns depend on the harmony of their family life. This directly determines whether the individual will adopt a “self-destruction (self-harm) behavioral template” or a “self-redemption (self-love) behavioral template” in their future life.

Then if, in an individual’s life, father and mother did not take on the responsibilities and obligations they should have to install conventional Homo sapiens behavioral patterns onto the individual, but instead installed different behavioral patterns, what would happen?

Freud proposed,

the absence of the father is not simply an influence on experience. It touches the deepest interior of humanity. The father represents a pivot of authority in a child’s life, that is, the动力 of the individual’s connection with the world, and even more, the root of the individual’s source of recognition. The absence of the father manifests as foundational fragmentation. When the individual loses balance through the father’s absence and abandonment, the individual’s inner world will shatter. Collapse of security, lack of self-worth.

The absence of the mother will directly affect the individual’s future emotional reactions. The absence of the mother often manifests as emotional hunger.

If the individual cannot reach reconciliation with the mother archetype within, they often fall into two extremes: either unable to truly trust others, or overly dependent on others.

In summary, if the individual has not installed conventional Homo sapiens behavioral patterns, “the individual is highly likely to adopt a self-destruction behavioral template.” Because the lack of conventional behavioral patterns will lead to conflict between the individual and the group. Leading to more trauma occurring, leading to more psychological behavioral disorders, ultimately leading to the individual’s physiological death and psychological annihilation.

But, the nature of all living organisms is selfish. Humans are intelligent beings on Earth, so the human unconscious is disgusted by death and destruction. Everyone will subconsciously attempt to change and avoid behaviors that will cause their own death, but the actual effect is often unsatisfactory. Many people swear again and again never to repeat it, yet again and again fall into the same trap. Such behavioral patterns are like a circle, endlessly cycling, day after day, year after year. In the Buddhist context, this behavioral pattern is explained as “suffering” (dukkha) and “rebirth” (samsara).

Why exactly are most Homo sapiens individuals unable to rely on their own unconscious to change their erroneous behavioral patterns?

Many scholars from different fields are attempting to answer this question.

For example, in neuroscience, Paul MacLean proposed in the 1960s the Triune Brain Theory. MacLean believed the human brain evolved consisting of three parts, each representing an evolutionary stage of an “old brain” structure =

In psychology, Freud proposed the unconscious is “a reservoir of repressed desires.” Jung proposed “humans have a personal unconscious, a collective unconscious.”

In philosophy, Nietzsche proposed “the instinctual structure of the will” — instinct is the foundation of consciousness, not its opposite.

These studies across different fields all point to a “reality” hidden beneath language and disciplines.

“The unconscious is the primitive non-logical intelligent structure within the human brain.”

“Humans cannot rely solely on their unconscious to accurately analyze and observe their own erroneous behavioral patterns.”

The development of genetic engineering has helped people accurately understand evolution theory and the composition of intelligence. One core idea in genetic engineering is:

“Biological evolution is based on natural laws.”

And thus the following conclusion about evolution is derived:

“Destroying erroneous genes in this way to raise gene quality,”

its efficiency is far greater than

“Changing the current individual’s erroneous behavioral pattern to increase survival rate and improve offspring gene quality.”

Using evolution theory, we can accurately answer the earlier question:

“Why are most Homo sapiens individuals unable to rely on the unconscious to change their erroneous behavioral patterns?”

Because the unconscious is the animal nature within the human body. Over billions of years, biological evolution has stored enormous information and data inside the human body. In the book Life 3.0, it is mentioned that crocodiles, lizards, and other primitive reptiles, at the moment they break out of the egg shell, their intelligence has basically reached a saturated state. Their intelligence largely depends on genetic inheritance from the parent generation. While mammals, such as mice or chimpanzees, rely more on the individual’s interaction with the environment to learn and improve survival quality and advantage.

We can use the development history of calculators to understand the evolution of intelligence.

For example, if we compare fish to an “abacus” (humanity’s earliest counting tool, around 2700 BC),

then Tiktaalik (a “transitional form” between fish and amphibians) is an Antikythera mechanism (praised as an “ancient analog computer,” around 100 BC).

Crocodiles and lizards and other reptiles are like the Babbage difference engine (the world’s first “programmable mechanical computer,” 1822).

Then a mouse is an Atanasoff computer (the world’s first electronic computer, 1942),

a chimpanzee is an Apple II (the first color personal computer, 1977),

and we Homo sapiens are an Apple 17 Pro Max smartphone (2025).

From the perspective of cognitive science, the mental architecture of humans is not a single system, but multiple layers of logic running simultaneously.

If understood through a modern metaphor:

“Genes are the underlying code, the triune brain is the hardware structure, the unconscious is the background process, consciousness is only the desktop interface.”

The reaction speed of the unconscious far exceeds rational thinking. It is responsible for survival, not for explanation; it can drive behavior, but cannot perform metacognition for itself. It is ancient software left inside us by evolution, but it does not care who you are, it only cares that you stay alive.

So symbolically speaking, the unconscious “self-destruction mode” can be understood as a metaphor of evolutionary logic on the spiritual level of humanity. It is not directly equal to narrow genetic natural selection.

So ultimately, within the intelligence composition of mice, chimpanzees, or Homo sapiens as mammals, without exception, there exists this unconscious crocodile in the brain. This primitive evolutionary wisdom. Broadly, it can be called biological intelligence produced under Earth’s environment.

Homo sapiens, as the only intelligent being on Earth, compared to most mammals possesses multiple additional forms of intelligence:

“abstract intelligence,” “self-awareness,” “imagination,” “empathic intelligence,”

“aesthetic intelligence,” and so on,

and the highest-level Homo sapiens intelligence currently mainstream believed, “metacognition (Metacognition).”

“thinking about thinking.”

It refers to the human ability to perceive, monitor, and regulate one’s own cognitive process.

Currently neuroscience generally believes:

metacognition mainly relies on the prefrontal cortex, and its interactive networks with other brain regions.

Metacognition is, in the narrow sense, the core difference between Homo sapiens and animals.

Homo sapiens has already been essentially different from other living beings on Earth. Homo sapiens possesses something far beyond genetic control.

“Divinity”

In one subjective sentence, it can be summarized as:

“We are alive. I am alive. The hundreds and thousands of generations behind me have nothing to do with me at all.

I do not want to obey the arrangement of fate, the driving of instinct, I can be my own creator.”

“Transhumanism is not the negation of humanity, but the extension of human nature.”

“If we can extend life, expand consciousness, and do not do so, that is what is immoral.” — William James.