That is the question, more than "to be or not to be". And unlike the Hamletian question, the answer is not binary.
We have both these impulses within us, in common with all living things. So many of our motivations and actions can be at least partially reduced to control or communion, sometimes a mixture of both. Many originators of religious movements have urged us to let go of control in order to achieve communion with each other, with nature, or with a deity. Buddha wanted us to commune with the source of being, by letting go the controlling nature of our egos and minds. Jesus wanted us to let go of the instruments of control (monetary savings, material possessions, religious rules) in order to commune with each other and with God. And yet, control has proven hard to eradicate.
Control is needed to avoid being predated by opportunistic freeloaders from within our family, village, company or nation. The early Christians had to learn that "he who does not work does not eat". A loving church that focuses only on communion is a good breeding ground for freeloading behavior.
Control is also needed to avoid being over-run by competing groups or individuals from outside. The early Christians had to learn to convince the Romans to join them and then to mount a military response (not always defensive) to the muslims.
And control is needed for scientific and technical mastery of nature. Here we see that absolute control of nature is not possible or desirable, because we are part of nature. We must also commune with it in order to survive and thrive.
From hunter-gatherers who learned how to control wood, bone and rock in order to fashion simple tools that increased their efficiency in hunting, gathering, staying warm and safe, to scientists and engineers who learned to control genomes and nuclei to accomplish amazing feats that go beyond survival and comfort, we have an increase in control, but not so much in communion. Hunter gatherers had to learn to commune with animals in order to not drive them to extinction, and also because there were benefits to communing with them. Some of the benefits were spiritual, for example learning to embody strength, loyalty, freedom, determination and courage that we can learn from some species of animals. Other benefits were more mundane, such as having dogs for protection, cats for rodent control an so on with all domesticated animals. Note the difference between hunter gatherers spiritual relationship to animals (and plants) and modern farmers, who see the animals (and plants) as tools to be controlled. Things have evolved towards less communion, more control. And this has metastasized into the human realm, where now most people treat each other as tools to be controlled rather than holy beings to be communed with. This we can call the instrumental mentality. Fear and social anxiety are the result.
Of course there are exceptions: Einstein valued imagination over knowledge, and awe over logic. Schrodinger thought there was only one mind that could be accessed by all individuals. But in general, people today see each other as tools for career advancement, money and safety acquisition, sex, social status, and as potential rapists, suers, zombies, terrorists, or other various enemies and incarnations of evil that can be used to project unto one's anger, hatred and unprocessed traumas.
Men yearn to commune with a feminine archetype of pleasure, inspiration, abundance, mirth, justice, nurturing and ecstasy. Women yearn to commune with a masculine archetype of strength, confidence, big picture vision, courage and persistence. But the instrumental mentality ruins it. The desire for sex, especially, because of its overwhelming nature, especially in young men, can ruin the potential for communion, when the desire or its intensity is not reciprocated. And conversely, when women see men as mostly instruments for money, status, comfort and security, and also see them as disposable when they are not good enough instruments, there can be no hope of communion between the sexes, or even in gay relationships where people see each other in these ways. On the other hand, when the masculine and feminine want to commune with each other, sex can be a great instrument for such a communion.
Not only are couple relationships trampled by the instrumental mentality, but higher levels of human organization are destroyed or made extremely unpleasant, such as villages, workplace communities, intentional communities, nations.
Even if we are able to restore a mentality of communion, it may be equally important to create activities that encourage communion because humans do not live by stories alone. Can we start valuing the kinds of games, dances and rituals that encourage communion? We already have group sing-alongs, music jams, bands and choirs. We need more of them and have them be more common instead of being relegated to specialists. We can add discussion groups (of books, movies and suggested topics), storytelling and dancing and music around campfires, hot tubs, sweat lodges, and ecstatic, ego-transcending, entheogen-assisted bacchanalian rituals. Ah, my heart hurts when I think of the gap between how we could commune with each other vs how we are. At least we have dogs and gods, rivers, oceans, prairies, deserts and lakes to commune with. But nothing beats our own species for communion.
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