Primal Urges: The Voice of the Lizard Brain

What if the part of you you are most ashamed of is the part that kept your ancestors alive? What if the gnawing lust, the hunger that aches, the blood that boils with anger or ambition, what if ...

We would not need impulse control if we did not have impulses that needed to be controlled.

What if the part of you you are most ashamed of is the part that kept your ancestors alive? What if the gnawing lust, the hunger that aches, the blood that boils with anger or ambition, what if none of it was sin?

What if it was the key to a joyful life and our survival?

The Primal Foundation of Survival

Beneath every noble act of humanity is a primal root.

Our species endured because certain instincts refused to die:

• Sex, to multiply our line

• Hunger, to drive us to feed and hunt

• Violence, to protect our kin and dominate danger

• Comfort, to build shelter, clothe the body, and keep the cold at bay

• Sleep, to repair the body and soften the soul

• Validation, to earn place and purpose within the tribe

• Fear, to sharpen our awareness, spark caution, and trigger protective action

These urges are not flaws in the human design. These are the foundations that drive us to create and thrive.

Any creature without these instincts dies. It dies alone. Or it dies before it ever lives.

And yet...

Why Suppression Fails

Modern people speak of overcoming the body. Of silencing the flesh. Of becoming pure, ascetic, untouchable.

This is not new. It is an ancient fantasy, religious in origin, now reborn as secular dogma.

Transhumanism is its modern mask. A vision of the future where all primal urges are eliminated through chemical, digital, or genetic manipulation. Where sex, hunger, pain, and death are seen as flaws to be edited out of the code. Where the flesh is obsolete and the self is uploaded, disembodied, sanitized, and sterilized.

But this vision is not evolution to a higher place. It is alienation from life.

It is the same old lie dressed in silicon robes: that the human body is a curse to transcend, not a vessel to command.

Groups of humans have been trying to escape or purify their body from all these messy natural urges for most of human history.

And yet every time we try to kill the animal in us, we only succeed in killing our vitality. We silence the powerful instincts that once made us sovereign "gods" to the wilderness.

The holy war against the flesh is not just waged in labs. It is waged in hearts, when a man feels shame for desiring his wife, or a woman hides her longing to be touched and held. When a child is taught that hunger or fear is weakness. When when discipline becomes a deadening of emotions, we lose our humanity.

You do not become more than human by cutting yourself off from the primal. You do not ascend by amputating the instincts that carried your lineage through famine, war, and storm. You elevate to a higher form of humanity not by erasing the primal, but by integrating it with discipline, with conscience, with purpose. True mastery is not found in a rejection of your urges, but in the union of your parts: when your instincts serve your vision, and your vision does not shame your instincts.

Transhuman, whether in its new technological disguise or its traditional pseudo-spiritual form, promises godlike control of the human experience. But it delivers death to the parts of us most worth living for. Whether it is the ascetic priest who tries to kill desire in the name of heaven, or the technocrat who seeks to edit hunger, lust, and fear out of the genome, the result is the same: sterilized humanity. A life without fire. A body without spirit. A soul without senses.

Here I offer a better way: not denial of reality, but dominion and integration. Not the illusion of purity, but real presence, conscience, and command. Not the promise of an escape from the laws of nature, but the embodiment of the highest human potential, a humanity refined, not erased. A humanity that rises not by cutting off what is base, but by leading that energy upward toward what is sacred.

At the heart of the transhumanist lie is this: that if we deny the urge long enough, it will die. But the truth is more dangerous and more important. Urges do not disappear. They burrow. They mutate.

There are three primary consequences of long-term suppression:

1. Explosion — Suppress the urge long enough and it will rupture. The man who fasts from intimacy out of shame will one day lose himself in pornography. The woman who starves herself to feel righteous will binge alone in secret.

2. Mutation — Urges denied too long become twisted. Sexual shame can become perversion. Hunger turned neurotic can become anorexia or gluttony. Violence denied can become passive-aggression or emotional sadism.

3. Deadening — When the inner voice is ignored too long, it goes silent. You become numb to your needs. You do not feel hunger. Or lust. Or anger. You become manageable. And half-dead.

I have seen this in real men and women.

One client, devout and ashamed of his own arousal, could not make love to his wife without guilt. Not because he did not love her. Not because he was not attracted. But because every part of his body said yes, and every part of his programming said no.

She felt rejected. He felt broken. Their marriage withered not from lack of love, but from a war between his body and a misled conscience.

You Are Not Supposed To Be Dead Inside

Some people believe they should be indifferent.

They see a beautiful woman and scold themselves for noticing. They feel hunger after a long day and shame themselves for “lack of discipline.” They taste anger and call themselves emotionally dysregulated.

Some women do this too.

They suppress their desire to be touched. To be admired. To be ravished by a man they trust. They shame their need for rest. For warmth. For sensuality. And then they wonder why they feel brittle, unfeminine, or unalive.

But none of these desires are wrong.

It is normal to have strong desires. It is normal to want to eat, to fight, to dominate, to collapse into your lover's arms.

You are not broken when you have these urges. You are human.

And we were never meant to treat our humanity like a disease to be cured with sterile indifference.

Urges Must Be Interpreted Through the Human Brain

You are not an animal. You are not a machine. You are not a floating spirit.

You are a sovereign integration of body, soul, and mind.

The body speaks first. The soul interprets. The mind directs.

This is the purpose of the neo-cortex, to lead. Not to kill the body's desires or play the tyrant over it, but to guide it.

Impulse control is not denial of urges. It is command over them. Guidance in their fulfillment.

A man without restraint is dangerous. But a man without instinct is useless. He cannot hunt. He cannot lead. He cannot love. He can not protect.

Integration Is the Goal: Expression, Not Repression

The goal is not to “overcome” our desires. The goal is to give them a healthy form.

• Rightly directed, the urge to conquer becomes the urge to build.

• Rightly expressed, the sexual urge brings forth children in marriage.

• Rightly cultivated, ambition becomes drive, the edge that pushes us to act, to work, to make and move and finish.

• Rightly shaped, aggression becomes a defense of our people.

What you repress rots. It metastasizes into something sick. What you express righteously becomes your source of power.

Let me show you:

• A man channels sexual energy into art, paintings that pulse with life

• A wife waits for he husband to return from a trip, and the reunion is intense

• A warrior restrains his attack when taunted, and avoids the ambush

• A mother pours her desire for comfort into creating a loving home for her husband and children

Every urge has its rightful place. If you do not give it one, it will find one and you may not like where it looks.

The Pleasure of a Restrained Urge

Before we speak of indulgence, we must remember, restraint exists for a reason. Not to starve us of joy, but to make joy fuller. Not to punish appetite, but to give it meaning. This is why there is a paradox: restraint heightens satisfaction.

• Sex is better after a period of absence from our spouse

• Food tastes better when we are hungry

• A glass of water is most refreshing when we are thirsty

• Rest is sweeter when the body has earned it

• The warmth of fire is a great joy when you are chilled to the bone

Almost all joy in life comes from the building of tension (energy) and its rightful release. The greater the tension, the stronger the release the higher the joy.

The ache of hunger before a meal. The building up of sexual energy before reunion. The stoking of thumos before the fight. The thirst before the drink.

These cycles of building and release are not inconveniences. They are the essence of a joyful life.

Our urges are felt in the body, deeply, viscerally, intensely. And we must become comfortable with that feeling. We must learn to hold the ache without numbing it, to feel the desire without indulging it immediately.

Because when we can live with that tension, when we can lead it, harness it, hold it until the right moment, then the release is not just pleasure. It is fulfillment.

This is what separates us from beasts.

Beasts consume because the urge appears. Humans wait, choose, and aim that urge toward what is good.

That is joy. That is mastery. That is what it means to be fully alive.

Self-Control Changes the Brain

Some people say, "I just struggle with self-control. It is not how I am wired. Some people are naturally better at it."

And in a way, they are right. Just as some are born stronger, faster, or with sharper vision, so too are some born with a greater baseline for impulse control.

But that is not the end of the story.

Because every act of self-control physically alters the brain:

• Dopamine sensitivity i — the same impulses may still arise, but they lose their grip,and you gain the power to act on them in healthier, more constructive ways

• Prefrontal cortex strengthens — your ability to predict the consequences of your actions improves, giving you foresight and clarity in the moment of choice

• Neural pathways rewire — the same impulses may still arise, but they lose their grip, and you gain the power to act on them in healthier, more constructive ways

Each time you delay a primal urge and reroute it into something higher, you do not lose the urge.

You gain dominion over it.

And that dominion becomes a permanent part of who you are.

From a societal view, this matters more than ever.

A culture with no impulse control becomes feral, gluttonous, violent, sexually chaotic, self-destructive.

A culture that shames every urge becomes sterile, disconnected, bitter, suicidal, joyless.

Only integration creates a sustainable civilization:

Urge + Restraint + Purpose = A Joyful Human

The Final Reframe

The way you were made is wonderful.

The urges you were given are not a mistake.

You were designed to want, to hunger, to desire.

But you were also designed to lead what you want.

To transform it into a joyful life.

If you are ashamed of your desire, come. We will untangle it.

If you are enslaved by your desire, come. We will take back the reins.

You are not supposed to be dead inside.

You are supposed to feel the fire of a good life.

You are supposed to hear the voice of the lizard brain.

And then speak back:

I hear you. Now follow me.