Reasons for Fluctuations in Life...(#41)
Humans throughout history have always had some idea on how to make life better and more perfect. It seems to me that this thought is only created through the human mind because it needs direction and reason; the human tries to justify its existence, and this is one way.
Human perfection is imperfection; real perfection is not human. Humans are complex beings that generally have very specific and obvious needs at first, then these obvious needs get mixed up with feelings and emotions that drive humans more often than the simple and obvious things that we know we should do, or accept, but cant accept. Besides all of our basic needs like food, shelter, sleep and other basic needs we will want more.
We humans have a serious social connection, like many other things. Humans have a big desire with 'Belonging'; we want love, we want to love someone else, we want friends, we want respect, and we want someone to be there for us as well, like an authority figure to help us out in the "worst-case-scenarios". Sometimes this social desire is so strong, especially now-a-days, that people can, and DO, go at great lengths to be able to achieve the sense of belonging in the world. More often times than not, you have to sacrifice serious parts of yourself in order to be in synch with society, you have to sacrifice some parts of your individual self in order to have that sense of belonging. Thus if we have to destroy parts of ourselves to be part of society, we then are not ourselves anymore, we're just another cell in a body; that is not the perfection that humans feel they want. So then, what is the perfection humans want?
Humans dont want an obvious life, they dont want to be bored, and they dont want to be controlled, they want a "good" and "happy" life, and humans especially dont want to feel that everything they've done is worthless. Emotions like good, happy, ecstatic and pumped up (not being bored), interest, the desire to be free, and self-worth are emotions and drives. Emotions are often what drive us humans to do our actions, rather than pure and obvious thoughts about the simple and obvious truths about life; we'd much rather do things because they feel right, rather than because of what logically makes sense.
If I were to say life is essentially meaningless, it disturbes many people. Many people will immediatly deny the statement that life is essentially meaningless, and try and find some way to prove the statement wrong. People usually can't find any proof, as they really search for the meaning to try to prove that statement wrong, so usually one of two things happen: the person accepts the meaninglessness and tries to create smaller individual meanings that are essentially meaningless, this is reffered to as Existentialism. In the other circumstance the individual turns to religion (or religious type dogmatism), using religion, the idea of heaven, and the idea of a god-like being that knows everything and that this being has meaning for us, as a way to justify, without solid proof, the meaing and worth of our actions, thoughts and life itself.
Humans are constantly trying to justify all of its desires, making it a completely selfish being. However, it is because of a society that allows us to be able to justify many of our actions and worth, it is becuase of a society that helps the individual survive and have an "interesting life", by allowing the individual to easily access food from a giant grocery store, to allowing it to have fun by having groups of people getting together in an organization to play a game of football. It is because of society that allows us to be able to satisfy our desires.
And this brings me back to my original point, human perfection is imperfection and heres why. As I said earlier, humans are social creatures like many other things, and we HAVE to sacrifice or give back to the society in order to be a part of it. If we arent a part of society than we cannot get our human wants and desires.
This simple contradiction is what causes many, and quite probably most problems in life, from simple ones to very complex ones. From relationship problems to world problems, it is this constant human contradiction that causes us our problems. We want to satisfy all of our desires as an individual, but then we have to sacrifice our desires in order to get them..that is the constant human contradiction; individual vs society.
Human perfection is imperfection; real perfection is not human. Humans are complex beings that generally have very specific and obvious needs at first, then these obvious needs get mixed up with feelings and emotions that drive humans more often than the simple and obvious things that we know we should do, or accept, but cant accept. Besides all of our basic needs like food, shelter, sleep and other basic needs we will want more.
We humans have a serious social connection, like many other things. Humans have a big desire with 'Belonging'; we want love, we want to love someone else, we want friends, we want respect, and we want someone to be there for us as well, like an authority figure to help us out in the "worst-case-scenarios". Sometimes this social desire is so strong, especially now-a-days, that people can, and DO, go at great lengths to be able to achieve the sense of belonging in the world. More often times than not, you have to sacrifice serious parts of yourself in order to be in synch with society, you have to sacrifice some parts of your individual self in order to have that sense of belonging. Thus if we have to destroy parts of ourselves to be part of society, we then are not ourselves anymore, we're just another cell in a body; that is not the perfection that humans feel they want. So then, what is the perfection humans want?
Humans dont want an obvious life, they dont want to be bored, and they dont want to be controlled, they want a "good" and "happy" life, and humans especially dont want to feel that everything they've done is worthless. Emotions like good, happy, ecstatic and pumped up (not being bored), interest, the desire to be free, and self-worth are emotions and drives. Emotions are often what drive us humans to do our actions, rather than pure and obvious thoughts about the simple and obvious truths about life; we'd much rather do things because they feel right, rather than because of what logically makes sense.
If I were to say life is essentially meaningless, it disturbes many people. Many people will immediatly deny the statement that life is essentially meaningless, and try and find some way to prove the statement wrong. People usually can't find any proof, as they really search for the meaning to try to prove that statement wrong, so usually one of two things happen: the person accepts the meaninglessness and tries to create smaller individual meanings that are essentially meaningless, this is reffered to as Existentialism. In the other circumstance the individual turns to religion (or religious type dogmatism), using religion, the idea of heaven, and the idea of a god-like being that knows everything and that this being has meaning for us, as a way to justify, without solid proof, the meaing and worth of our actions, thoughts and life itself.
Humans are constantly trying to justify all of its desires, making it a completely selfish being. However, it is because of a society that allows us to be able to justify many of our actions and worth, it is becuase of a society that helps the individual survive and have an "interesting life", by allowing the individual to easily access food from a giant grocery store, to allowing it to have fun by having groups of people getting together in an organization to play a game of football. It is because of society that allows us to be able to satisfy our desires.
And this brings me back to my original point, human perfection is imperfection and heres why. As I said earlier, humans are social creatures like many other things, and we HAVE to sacrifice or give back to the society in order to be a part of it. If we arent a part of society than we cannot get our human wants and desires.
This simple contradiction is what causes many, and quite probably most problems in life, from simple ones to very complex ones. From relationship problems to world problems, it is this constant human contradiction that causes us our problems. We want to satisfy all of our desires as an individual, but then we have to sacrifice our desires in order to get them..that is the constant human contradiction; individual vs society.
Labels: Philosophy
posted by RXslair at 11:59 AM
2 Comments:
dear james,
you always arouse my thoughts , there's lot in this post which you have only glanced upon...
there's some on which i disagree...or may be i dont get it perfectly...
i'll come to this,
a mind tickling article, again.
bye,
hershal.
a friend writes ....."we want love, we want to love someone else, we want friends," ; "to help us out in the 'worst-case-scenarios' "
i dont agree! love is something very subtle which has profound depth that makes ppl say it connects souls.... love is something not that you would wish from everyone else.... and mind you! loving someone and admiring someone is completely different... i admire john nash, i admire the personality of Shabana Azmi and her dressing style... but i love someone who vivifies a dead day! not anyone can do that... how good a motivator that person be!
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