People--or homo sapiens sapiens, which means wise wise human--have developed some control issues because of our "Taker" culture. I guess this is a good time to further explain the "Taker" term I have been using. In the book Ishmael, Daniel Quinn explains that we (civilized societies) are "Takers" and tribal peoples like the Alawa or the bushmen are "Leavers". What this means is that we have "Taken" the responsibility of our survival out of the hands of the gods and taken that task up for ourselves. We grow our own food in abundance, we eliminate any competition that stands in the way of our way of life and we believe that we have THE one right way to live. "Leavers" have left the responsibility of the care of Earthly beings in the gods' hands.
Back to my main idea... We as people have control issues! (Think about it) Our need to completely control our environment leads to all of the drug use, crime, mental illness (in some cases), suicide, physical abuse and other so-called dispicable behavior. This will be a hard habit to break in the future. Obviously a weaning process could be devised and begin with the next generation.
I, myself, have my own control issues. I constantly work out to control my physique, I have an affinity for planning into the future (the future is not promised, live in the moment), which as most of you know, cannot be predicted with any absolute certainty. There are other less desirable habits (to some) that I will neglect to mention in the interest of length. The point is that WE ALL DO IT! We plan that lunch with a friend for next week, or setup a movie date with our honey-bunny for the weekend. You may think this is normal. As far as we know, we are the only animal that plans out our lives from day to day. I mean, there are animals that store food for the winter or store fat to hibernate. That's not really a predictive behavior as much as it is a cycle of life for them, annually.
I am led to believe that this constant overdrive of our neural mass causes these behavioral side effect (drug use, etc). Have you ever heard the saying, "It's all in your head"? Its usually true. We make our problems (if they truly are a problem) out to be so much more they are in reality, in our heads. We need to learn to relax and enjoy the day. Seriously... stop to smell the flowers or watch a butterfly flutter. The natural wonders can bring you so much more pleasure than artificial wonders (TV, video games) ever could.
Side note: This delusion that people will become better over time is misguided. People, as in any other community, will always annoy you, want what you have, or take things they want without compensation. Trying to enforce laws that we know will be broken is backwards and contrary to the evolution of a better society. That doesn't mean the new society will be perfect. It just means that it will work AND be evolutionarily stable. If you don't believe in evolution (adaptation), say so, and I will gladly debate that point here.
Peace!
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From my sister, Jessica:
ReplyDeletefor some reason i couldn't post this on your blog:
'honey-bunny' hilarious. i find it entertaining that you consider working out, planning a date night, hanging with friends something other than 'life-cycle behaviors'. looking at this from a(somewhat) biological perspective, we are animals, right? working out, while you may identify with vanity, i think is actually rooted in the fact that the 'strong' have better success at defending themselves (and those they care about); think about it - why do you control your physique? as far as the planned socialization piece - again biologically speaking, the nature of humans is that we are social beings; additionally, the need for us to socialize runs parallel to our need to reproduce. so at the most fundamental level, i think this can be considered a major life-cycle behavior crucial for our perpetuation as a species.
i don't disagree with your stance on, broadly speaking, humans killing themselves and the world around them. but i wonder if it isn't so much that we have control issues, then the fact that humans have created a world (through civilization) that has taken them completely out of the natural context (perhaps) for which we were initially intended. idk, maybe the bigger issue is when and why we started to make this departure.
am i still on your wavelength, or have i graduated to one all my own? :)
You're still on my wavelength for sure!
ReplyDeleteI guess I went the wrong direction on the predictive behavior. I think you're right, that the examples I provided are part of being social, and that IS key to our survival. Some better examples: planning your work day as you go to sleep at night, planning out a to do list for your house for a Saturday, or planning trips that are not vacation.
We are definitely "killing ourselves and the world around us". I was speaking with a friend about our lack of interaction with the world around us and the subject of autism came up. My friend works with autistic children. She brought to my attention a video blog, made by a woman who has autism. In the episode she explain, the woman is running her hand in and out of a container of water. The text explains that she only doing this to interact with the water, in order to see how it reacts.
I thought that, if this is what autism makes people tend to do, then it may be some kind of biological cue to get back to our more natural roots. People with autism interact which a much wider percentage of the natural world than most. Most people deal in social capital and thus trade it most of the time, rather than experiencing the natural world outside of human interaction. maybe we should take a page out of the Autism playbook.