2. The horse and rider

Thinkers across cultures and centuries have recognised our inner conflict, and reached for the same metaphor to describe the split:

• Plato likened the mind to a charioteer steering two horses: a disciplined white horse and a chaotic dark one. Life, for him, was the art of harmonising these forces.
• Independently, the Katha Upanishad from India describes the body as a chariot, the intellect as the charioteer, and the mind as the reins. Without understanding, the senses and our desires become wild horses.
• Buddhism compared the untrained mind to an untamed elephant — powerful, reactive, wandering wherever desire led it. Training it required patience, attention, and discipline.
• Freud revived the metaphor for the modern age: the ego as the rider, the id as the animal force beneath it. "One might compare the relation of the ego to the id," he wrote, "with that between a rider and his horse."

These metaphors endure because they capture a fundamental experience: the careful planner, the rational self, clashing with the instinctive, animal self — the part that seeks comfort, pleasure, and immediate safety.

But why does this battle persist?

After millions of years of evolution, shouldn't our minds be unified by now, free from inner turmoil?

"Our civilisation is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason"

It's tempting to imagine we're halfway through an upgrade, that reason will eventually conquer impulse. But the split isn't a flaw. It's required.

55 million years ago, early primates had already evolved fast, reactive intelligence — an inbuilt model of the world, instant evaluations of what's desired or feared, and the ability to learn from experience. This is the horse: quick, decisive, deeply attuned to danger and opportunity.

Around 2.5 million years ago our ancestors' brains began expanding. Generation by generation they developed denser networks of neurons, increasing their capacity to plan ahead, imagine alternatives, and reach a little further into the future.

About 300,000 years ago, with the rise of our own species and the start of language and symbolic culture, this planning brain developed a new kind of inner voice — the rider.

But the rider didn't replace the horse.
It couldn't.

Keeping you alive can't wait for deliberation. Heart rate, blood pressure, threat responses, pulling your hand from heat, evading the predator — these run on instinct. Abstract thought lets us predict and shape the future, but it takes time, energy, and context. The horse keeps us alive when there's no time to think — and handles the routine when thinking would add nothing.

Evolution's brilliant solution was not to merge the two systems but to keep them separate and loosely coupled. The best of both worlds: the speed of instinctive response, and the reach of thought for when there's time and energy.

Your inner conflict is what that hybrid solution feels like from the inside.

Neither system is superior; each excels in different situations. And because they sometimes disagree, awareness is where the conflict plays out — the rider sometimes overriding the horse, the horse sometimes overruling the rider.

But override is suppression, not transformation. The rider experiences sensations, feelings, and behaviours without seeing what drives them. It can force a different outcome — but not without cost, not in a way that lasts, and not with any real understanding of what it's overriding.

So the internal clashes you feel day to day aren't signs that you're broken. They're signs that you're running one of evolution's most remarkable creations: a hybrid mind pairing ancient survival systems with advanced prediction and planning.

Understanding this architecture won't eliminate conflict. But it might help explain why rational arguments rarely dissolve deep fears, why our triggered feelings remain opaque even to ourselves, and why intentions so often lose to urges.

Recognising the split as a necessity, not a curse, lets you meet it with far less self-blame — and begins to hint at what real change requires.