Monday,
November 2, 2009 at 7:16am |
Thank
you Carmen for prompting me to explore our discussion further :).
There probably isn't a best way to start this so I'll just
jump off of something I remembering saying and the initial reaction I
got. "Everybody is stupid, and that makes us the same." It
was a little more drawn out that that, but it gets the gist and still
holds the glaring flaw I'm going to explore. I can only guess that it
was me ignoring or failing to work in properly the amount of things
surrounding that statement that bolstered a negative reaction.
I'll
begin by breaking down and rewording the statement. By "everybody"
I generally mean (and usually say) "the majority of people."
"Stupid" is the too easy way of putting in the words
ignorant, lazy, afraid, confused, etc. When it comes to making us the
same, I believe that we are in fact the same to certain extents of
personality and environment and in the context of various common life
scenarios. Further, those that do all they can to not be the same,
still manage to find some flow created and worked within by many
before them anyway. This I do not believe is necessarily a bad thing
at all times. So, a more coherent way for me to word my statement
would be, "The majority of people, in many similar situations,
behave in predictable, usually unwarranted or unnecessary but still
understandable ways, and insofar as we can continue to discern the
recurring problems and repercussions of said actions, we are the
same." I think it's important to explore just when and where
being the same is expected and okay, and when it becomes the bane of
our existence.
Starting simply an obviously, we are natural
hypocrites. It is almost too easy to become enamored with some quote
or ideal and hold it up to be the highest standard, and even pressure
ourselves to follow it for a struggling week, but usually we just
manage to excuse away any and all behavior that runs off the track or
standard we'd like to believe we're holding ourselves to. On this
point, I believe to avoid this you merely have to assert a
hypercritical and scientific mindset and evolve the mental paradigm
you use to understand and feel comfortable with the world. For me,
and easy example to use would be how my views have evolved with
alcohol. I didn't like the reasons for doing so I saw in people who
drank, what I'd tasted previously was horrible, don't forget the
cost, there being no sober person in the room if the cops showed up,
etc. So, I can point to the instance I decided to drink and either
call it hypocritical or I can apply all the thoughts I had about it
to form a cogent reason and test that can help to better enforce my
biased naive view or serve to shift how I understand the subject.
Personal reasons for doing so don't need to be gone into here, but a
simple way to confirm one testable idea my dad has told me most of my
life, as with most things, in moderation.
Continuing on, we
are more the "victims" of circumstance than we'd like to
admit or realize. Technically, we always have a choice, but when that
choice is compelled to one way over another for good reason, you're
simply flowing down a river that makes the most sense, not utilizing
every opportunity to adopt a new behavior expressed in the overall
nature of "yourself." I'd be willing to bet that the reason
most people have the lives they do is merely their birth date or the
people who they knew. Another way to say that, it isn't through
endless self reflection and direct effort that people carve out their
individual lives, it's through both direct and passive pressures and
opportunities they subject themselves to. Does the Asian kid really
want to be a doctor when he graduates med school, or did his parents
constant insistence that it was important to him and there would be
negative consequences if he didn't influence anything? Do the poor
kids who enter gang life contemplate effective business plans and
rise and fall with new ideas, or do they merely understand that drugs
and violence equals money? To me, every terrible "leader"
or "manager" or "authority" does not get away
with being called a "victim" of circumstance, but certainly
got where they are through connections and the setting those around
them sought to create.
This transitions well into the question
of who those setting creator people are and how and why they operate.
I'll go with a thought experiment. Imagine 5% of the world can be
considered what I dignify as a thinking then doing individual. They
are hesitant to accept norms, impossibly skeptical (at least as
perceived by those around them), and habitually digesting and working
with information that will help to make them better understand
themselves and how to influence their world. Now, of that 5% you will
still find tendencies for converging actions, but the well of
reasons, naive or informed, never runs dry. I think I have run into,
I'm not comfortable with the word many, but enough thinkers to
maintain ever fleeting, but still present hope there could be some
revolution where they rise up and take over leadership roles. One
thing that punctuates many of their personalities is the same kind of
practical hopelessness I have. They are disenfranchised and
demoralized because they seemingly understand too much, or at least
enough to reasonably assume they don't know how to change or fix it.
This results in a good portion of that 5% "conforming" in
their own way to social norms, if only to save their sanity. Another
portion of that percentage manages to only fuck up the world around
them, essentially corrupting themselves after realizing the power of
understanding their world. And finally, there's the handful of those
that can find it in them to enjoy struggling in a sort of constant
limbo because they are always creating a new opportunity, philosophy,
or perspective no matter how foggy or despotic they denote their
world to be. Of course, it would be reasonable to assume that of this
group of thinkers, they can waver or show tendencies to behave in any
and all of these ways at some instance.
Ultimately, the
current prevailing reason "people are stupid and the same"
is the pervasive tendency to be lazy and fearful in and of thought. I
think the problem goes even further, and I'd be comfortable saying
people practice ways to not think and deny and convince themselves
they aren't thinking when they start. These are the literal
hypocrites, drones, and pawns of the people who do think. They martyr
themselves in spite of themselves. I don't have to really elaborate
on a convincing leader and the host of things he can get his subjects
to engage in. From the playground to the battleground, it's obvious.
Anyway, it's through some sick surrogate relationship that the people
who don't think try to live vicariously through the ones that do. A
recurring world of ridiculousness can follow from a handful of
thinkers who go rogue when the people treat themselves as cattle.
Even the bulls who perceive some sort of leadership or power are
still livestock to the farmer. I'll even apply this metaphor to
school. Teachers are bulls. You get relative independence and leeway
as a teacher compared to most jobs, and you may even like what you
do, but the reason I see you standing there is because whoever sits
on the board of directors for IU is in the business of putting bulls
in front of sheep.
So then, what truly makes us an
individual? The givens like genetic makeup, sorry twins, and
histories, by virtue of them being inevitable as history, mean
nothing unless there was a rational actor in your memories. You are
an individual when you choose to be. Emulating ideas you believe in
not because "they are good" but because you actually
believe them. Behaving in a way that manifests happiness without
desperation, excuses, or insecurity. It's not being "just
funny," "just an asshole," or "just smart."
It's in weaving a web of consciousness that prompts you to behave in
appropriate and effective ways that have been learned, reasoned
through, then adopted, not conditioned. The most important thing
about me is that when I refer to my personality, I truly do claim it
as mine. I don't make excuses for it if there is a good reason to
change, and I believe it is possible if not necessary to have a
personality that can be exceedingly profane and angry, but laid back
and polite as well. We are the same in that we have the capacity to
be any and all types of personalities, feel all the same emotions,
and engage in the same behaviors, but it is in how and when we choose
to engage in them that makes us different. The real problem is waking
people up to how little they are in fact choosing when they will
always feel like an individual regardless.
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Written
about 4 months ago · Comment · LikeUnlike
((I
will reply to this.....after I fully wake up, lol.)
November
2, 2009 at 8:26am ·
The
question of individuality strikes deep with me. Over the course of my
life I have struggled to be different from "the crowd" or
to find my own individuality. When I was little, I found that acting
extravagantly weird, dressing wierd and laughing at myself was a
pretty good way to get around being made fun of. Because if I want to
be made fun of, I win!
However it doesn't really matter what
I do or how I present myself as to how individual or different I am.
Because when you come down to it, I am human, I fall under a number
of normal "groups", I am female, I am a teenager, I take
classes, I hang out with friends, I drive a car, I eat breakfast.
Basically, I participate in society in a normal way. I am emotional
and allow myself to be controlled by my emotions to the point that I
am very much the same as any other human.
How do I
differentiate myself from other humans then? What specifically makes
me Helen and not Carmen? And why is it that I look at some people and
they seem so indivual and like their own person, whereas other people
seem like clones of the person next to them? I think this comes down
to awareness and choice. ... See More
Firstly, I find that my
choicess make me different. I will never be so far beyond the human
condition that I am truly different. But I don't want to be. I
wouldn't choose to be. I allow myself to indulge in normal things. I
get excited about stupid things, I have crushes, I sink into the
everyday dramas of my friends, I have friends. But notice that I said
I "allow" myself to indulge in these things. I belive that
I have made conscious choices for all of the above. And I could have
made choices for the opposite. But I do what makes me happy, and I
like those things...so wahlah!
There are bigger choices in my
life that make my life very different from the person next to me.
Where I go to college, how much I care about it when I get there. My
career, the way I treat people around me. And everyone makes these
choices. (notice, (everyone)...i.e...choices are normal, we are all
the same in that everyone makes them), BUT what I notice really makes
the difference between the individual and the zombie-clone is awareness.
How many times have you seen some random girl caked
in makeup, wearing the exact style of that day, drunk off her ass,
clinging on to some guy? And how many times have you seen the same
stupid girls the next day whining about how soandso guy from soandso
party isn't actually in love with her. (I don't know about you, but I
ran out of fingers.)
I know many of the above girl and I have
noticed what many of the above girl has in common with many of the
above girl is that she is not aware of herself. She sees herself as
"many of the above girl". Actually, she does not see
herself at all. she is not aware that she is making choices. she is
not aware that her choices are the same (or different) from the next
"many of the above girl".
This is how I see myself
as an indivual. Yes, I might wear the exact same thing, go to the
same party, get drunk as hell, and whine about it the next day. BUT I
know I'm doing it! I am completely aware that I choose to put myself
in that position, I choose to stay up all night, I choose to have one
hell of a sunday, I choose to go to my job with a massive headache. I
choose to write this really long comment instead of studing for the
test I'm taking in an hour. What I do, have done and will do, may be
exactly the same, or completely different from the person next to me,
or from anyone else in the world. But I know that I am an individual
because I am aware of the choices I make, big or small, from one day
to the next. I am aware that billions of other people may make the
exact same decision. But I made it knowing that I could not make it,
or make a different one. And that it is all up to me. :)
I
guess I could make the simple example of food. all humans eat. If a
human does not eat, it dies. (not human now, just a corpse). I choose
to eat. I know that this makes me human and normal and a slave to the
human condition. But I damn well wanna be! I could choose not to
eat...But then I'd have this whole new problem of being a corpse and
trying to be different from other corpses sounds a lot harder.
haha, I think I'm done now.
November
2, 2009 at 10:51am ·
You
say it more simply than I managed when you said awareness as a
component for individuality, but I completely agree. I don't think
it's a coincidence that I like you as a person because I know you
know what you're doing and why. I'm interested in the part where you
say you allow yourself to be controlled by your emotions, given that
the rest of your response seems to speak against that sort of
tendency. Is it perhaps that you feel things with super intensity, or
do they really control you?
November
2, 2009 at 1:16pm ·
I
tend to feel things pretty intensely. I think I mentioned at some
point that I have a kind of bi-polar tendency, that is. One day (Or a
couple days) I will be incredibly high. Like super happy, loving
everything, like everything is perfect in the world. And then the
next day (or few days), I'll be depressed.
I have kind of
experimented with myself, and found that I can maintain a
much more even emotional level..I can stop myself from getting so
high and then the lows don't really happen. But I don't want to! I'll
take the lows, thankyouverymuch!
Same sort of thing with
other kinds of emotions. I'm really good at controlling myself....but
sometimes I'm just like HELL WITH IT!
November
2, 2009 at 2:32pm ·
kk
coolio, as long as you can handle the lows then ya, enjoy the hell
out of the highs.
November
2, 2009 at 2:39pm ·
"Anyway,
it's through some sick surrogate relationship that the people who
don't think try to live vicariously through the ones that do."
I
really really like this. : )
And honestly Nick, your new and
improved statement really does make sense. I agree with it (mark the
calender). I also think that everything that has been mentioned, to
me, is a complete given. Meaning, I'm like both of you; knowing that
I could go through my life without truly understanding or caring
about what I'm doing and/or the consequences of any and all actions
makes me want to vomit. That's why I make conscious decisions.
Sure,
I like to have fun and get caught up in... life, but I could never
begin to imagine how shitty my life would be without being aware of
who I am and what I'm really doing.
... See More
To express my
opinion more would be to reword what you both have already stated
multiple times.
November
2, 2009 at 6:16pm ·
the
moral of this story.
"You Are What You Eat"
which
makes everyone food, and cannibalism okay.... See More
YA YA YA
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