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
Carmen
Dobbs
and Helen
Morris
like this.
((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.
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!
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.
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
"You Are What You Eat"
which makes everyone food, and cannibalism okay.... See More
YA YA YA
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