Mastery of Behaviour

The first and longest of the three great workings

Since humanity emerged from the natural world, it has been working on one of its most fundamental tasks: progressively mastering the behaviour inherited from its primate origins. Predation, domination, aggression, clan violence — these are not human inventions. They are biological legacies of millions of years of natural evolution.

The natural primate does not choose to dominate or attack — it obeys its instincts. The human being still carries these instincts, but can now name them, recognise them, feel ashamed of them or proud — and work on them. This passage from instinct to conscious impulse, and from impulse to choice, is the very heart of human evolution.

A civilisation built on prohibitions

The invention of prohibitions — the taboo, the law, the moral interdict — is perhaps the most decisive act in human history. Before cathedrals, before science, before philosophy, there was the decision to declare certain acts illegitimate. This first oral prohibition, whatever form it took, was the beginning of everything that followed: morality, law, justice, democracy.

From this founding act, humanity built a progressive system of constraints on its transgressing drives. Religions added moral values. Philosophy deepened the understanding of the self. Psychology revealed the unconscious mechanisms of violence. Law refined the protection of the weak. Each step tightening the grip of consciousness over raw impulse.

Cruelty, decline and the long road to peace

This chapter does not avoid the darkest chapters of human behaviour. Cruelty, perversion, the outlaw, the illusion of decline — all are examined here not as proofs of human failure, but as necessary stages in a long transformation. Evil is the dark force without which good would not evolve. The contravener is a necessary actor in the evolution of justice and law.

According to Universal Mechanics, the accomplished human will have his impulses not merely controlled or attenuated — but abolished. This is not a utopia. It is the direction of evolution itself, slow but undeniable, from the primate conditioned to assert itself at the expense of others, towards a being totally respectful of its fellow men.