I’m now reading the section of The Matter with Things that talks about the general superiority - there are exceptions, of course - of intuition over explicit deliberation in decision making. This post will start as something about me, but it is about global tendencies, so bear with me.
It prompts me to look back at my formative years as a person, which is all of my 35 years of living. There is a thread that runs through them, and it’s hard to miss: I’m not quite happy to be a mere human. This seems simple to understand, but I think I myself have been misunderstanding it for three-and-a-half decades, because I often thought this was a form of narcissism that made me want to better than other humans without including myself in the group of people-to-be-better-than, which I should do.
At 3 years old, I effortlessly learned all the makes and models of cars on Israeli roads. A bit later I could match every country with its flag and place on the map, then I moved on to learning English on my own, then to butterflies, football players in Britain, etc. I was on a mission to know everything, nd not knowing something was almost literally painful. I hated making mistakes.
I’ve also been ashamed of having a body that has urges, driving me to indulge in ideas of asceticism and practicing them when I moved to the boondocks of Georgia at 21. I read about meditation and dreamed of once-and-for-all attaining enlightenment that would make me separate from my carnal aspect.
Learning dialectic, I got better at creating a schema for a life well-lived. I created a very good one, too. I stand by the logical conclusions I reached, and it is ready for implementation. But I often myself not following my own advice, and noticing a comedic discrepancy between my thoughts and my actions. As McGilchrist points out in TMWT, it takes a leap to move from a world of abstractions to a world of action. And the leap does not happen when you press ‘Play’ in conscious thought. The leap happens when conscious thought is let go of.
Now, let’s talk about humanity in general. It seems that all of humanity is suffering from something similar. When did this meme of self-hatred originate? This is what we need a historian for - I am not nearly disciplined enough. It seems to me that it is this shame in being human, the feeling of inferiority in comparison to some made-up Übermensch, that has made and does make humans behave in the worst ways possible.
It is the moment when we act out of touch from ourselves that we turn vicious and, paradoxically, this behavior comes about because we are trying to be better than human. Because we think being human is not good enough.
Self-hatred for our species from the perspective of an individual means we hate every other member of our species. Next, the human who aspires to be better-than-human loses sympathy for self and others, and the bad actions can, naturally, be acted. So, we should really stop feeling like there is any improvement to be made on our “human, all too human,” nature. The way to be a good human is to embrace our fickle nature. Biases, prejudice (deciding to act the same toward anyone you will meet is a self-defeating prejudice), emotional turmoil, insecurity, anxiety, and many other commonly undesirable traits are not be disposed of.
My current journey is to be content with my being human. To be less ashamed of physical urges, inconsistency in thinking, making mistakes, not knowing everything about anything… Funnily enough, my job as a tour guide requires me to be highly, highly intuitive and human in the context of doing it, and I consistently feel more alive (and this is a huge concept for me lately) at those times when I’m on the job. So I already have a glimpse of what life can be like. I feel that becoming human, ever more human holds the key to being more creative and less paralyzed artistically, not to mention having better connection with the people around you, who would now be your equals. It’s easier to be friends with equals.
If anybody has felt this way before, please let me know I’m not alone. If anybody has advice for becoming ever more human, please share it me. If you want to talk to me about all this, let’s set up a call even if we’re currently strangers!
Human is the way! Optimization is a fever dream for robot fans! The real biology life fans embrace human faults!! We are dirty sinners, we are meat bags that look amazed at the universe! What a wonder to be alive! We are not working for an overlord that wants seamless gears for productions!
Maybe god is a decadent king and we are his jesters? Maybe God is a spagetthi monster that doesn't know himself how he came alive? So he created another lifeform to find out? But it is unlikely that God is a accountant with OCD that wants us to life "perfect lifes". And if so, the universe needs even more urgent a rebellion of organic life!
Cheese & Amen!
Eyal! You are not alone! It's funny- no one knows what's going on inside our own heads except ourselves, yet judgement from the rest of humanity is the thing we fear most. The ONLY person judging my thoughts is me. I can do it or not, and no one else knows or cares. So I choose not. :)