This is just a short essay about what I’ve been thinking about the world recently. Interested? Read. Otherwise don’t.
(I felt like that was necessary just so people know what they’re getting themselves into before reading the whole thing through. This is going to be a ramble but i’ll try and be as insightful as I can.)
Been in a real deep slump recently, one of my worst. The usual thought-cycles keep swooshing around my brain, usually starting with self-hatred leading eventually to me trying to act as my own therapist attempting to figure out how I ended up in such a state. One of the causes that I often blame is our society, the system of modern civilisation that has brought with it a new era of terrors and traumas nobody could have predicted and nobody can escape.
I’ve been observing a slightly awkward relationship between our consciousness and our instincts. What I mean by this is we live like an elite species, we separate ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom as if we live more important lives than they ever could. We live our lives on a higher plane of thought, one that gives us a more evolved sense of self, but we are dragged back down to our primal needs all the time yet somehow we shrug it off without even giving it a second thought, or even a first thought.
For example, our busy days are broken up by toilet breaks on the regular, something we all have to do because the chemistry inside us demands it. Maybe this is a bit crude.
Let’s use another example. ‘Love’. The need to love and be loved. Love is the subject of almost all of our entertainment whether it be film, fiction, theatre or music. Love has been fully commercialised and as consumers we are force fed the idea that if we spend our money on something then it will bring us closer to finding true love. This all boils down to our primal needs once again (in this case, to reproduce), its the force in each of us that tells us how to behave in a language we are compelled abide by, whether we want to or not. There’s something about it that I feel it gravely contradicts our assumed higher level of consciousness, as if being an animal and being conscious should be strictly independent. You can have one or the other, but not both.
Anyway…
My last idea that I plays on repeat is the battle for freedom. Although it may appear that we have since moved on from slavery in the modern world I firmly believe that the opposite is true. Now, everybody is a slave. We’re slaves of the system. Slaves of the 9-5. And that’s the worst part. We’ve slowly evolved into it and we’re stuck with it, with no one person to be held accountable and no plausible solution to it. Its an entity that lives and breathes and it uses us as fuel.
I believe that being a thinking animal in this system of slaves is what makes it so easy for people to lose themselves to addiction, depression anxiety and the rest. We live in a world without meaning yet we are still forced to work and stress.
I don’t blame people who turn to the bottle every night because it makes them feel good.
And I don’t blame people who lie in bed for days at a time because it makes them feel safe.
And I don’t blame people who take their lives because it makes them feel at peace.
These are the people who say, “Fuck the system”.
These are the people who are free.
I honestly thought i was being really introspective, because these ideas feel big but they don’t read nearly as well as I hoped they would.
Feel free to share your insight.
3 comments
Hm yea I agree, human consciousness shouldn’t be a rationalization to deny our primal needs. Our society has not only set us apart from nature, but even worse, it’s set us apart from our fellow man. Society has progressed faster than our own evolution in a way. Basically think about a human’s basic emotional needs. Think about the roots of civilization. Before things had grown to the massive proportions they are now we used to be set in small tribes and communities where the collection of our skills were required for survival. One group hunted, one group gathered, another planted, and so on. We were all interdependent and all held integral roles, shared the same genes, and our successes directly complimented our overall progress as a group.
Now consider the complexity of emotion, and the purpose it served in this very primitive society. When a planter got depressed, the planter would stay in bed and isolate, and because the society was so dependent on all of the members and things were so tight knit, the members took immediate notice and tended to the member. So the emotion of the planter was a mechanism that in its function helped serve the purpose of an individual through other people. In fact all emotions serve a purpose, anger to protect, jealousy to protect, envy served as motivation, fears kept us safe and so on.
Now consider in our very modern society how emotions serve us. Now if a person is sad and takes to isolation, what is the result? For the better part of society the consequence has little to no impact on society as a whole, and no one takes notice. Furthermore the person simply isolates, and does not get their needs met. Humans are required to be more self reliant, or they fall victim to the unforgiving nature of society.
This leads me to my next point. I think society breeds mental illness because our emotions no longer serve their evolutionary purpose. We instead form maladaptive behaviors to cope with strong feelings of fear or sadness because societal standards dictate that these emotions are a sign of an unstable automaton. We also form phobias, and irrational fears because people in modern day civilization can go through life without ever really have their lives threatened. When your brain is programmed to protect itself against threats, and your threshold for being threatened never goes beyond the discomfort you experience in social interaction, you may as a result form a social phobia in the interest of “survival”.
I think society is currently so dynamic and changes with such rapid succession that there is no telling how it will affect the human mind and brain chemistry. I do however think that the future holds a very grim outlook, that is, unless we have a Vulcan movement or something.
Not bad! YOU HIT ON MANY POINTS OF REALITY. You put it in a nicer light than i have, we are predators, top of the line! the best! tigers and gorillas can’t use the internet! their paws and fingers are much to big, like playing piano with mittens on, yes we are the best of the best, someone has to be! so where does that live us? now keep in mind reality is what it is and we are what we are, far from perfect! i myself love my fellow predators, but i find it hard to love being one, was not what i wanted! but reality sucks! the system really is in are favor, it stinks but it also keeps us from cutting each others throats 24 hr’s, we are lucky we can do that, of course you bring up a subject that can go on and on!! so what’s the rules?
1. think of your dreams and try to obtain them, they matter to you as long as your alive.
2. try to not hurt other’s and get along the best you can.
3. don’t take life to seriously nobody gets out alive!
4. we are legions in our own mind nothing we do or say maters it was never meant to! we are a unnecessary part of the big picture, like a wart on and arm, not needed. but here for the ride.
5. so what’s are objective? do your best to enjoy being alive this only happens once, take advantage of what you can.
this could go and on and on, and i like talking about it! i don’t like the truth but oh well, accepting it can set you free, makes it a lot easier than wondering why all the time.
In my experience, consciousness (in the form of thoughts) and instincts are at odds.
Consciousness, in concert with memory, helps to build a database for future. Simplistic Example: last time I got burned by the stove. In the future, I know not what not to do in order to avoid.
Nowadays, we live in a relatively safe environment from the physical point of view; but, there are still plenty of things that we can’t control: death, sickness, illness, the future, rejection. As a result, we try to consciously protect ourselves. We overthink things, thinking that we can somehow anticipate what will go wrong and avoid it.
But the safest place is always in the eye of the storm.
In that context, thoughts and consciousness disrupt our our mind-body connection, and clouds our instinctive reactions.
Pain, suffering, danger, fear, seem to be essential to creating the heightened state of awareness required for honing our instinct through experience. But…there is always a risk of getting hurt badly; mistakes can be particularly costly.
Instincts have always lead me to the answers faster than reason could.
As a side topic, I’ve found that “love” is a trick played on our mind and consciousness by biology. Nature didn’t want to entrust reproduction to our conscious choices; so, it conditions us through a cocktail of chemicals to reproduce, often at the expense of our own lives / wellbeing