I have gotten to a point in reading Freud’s book where I am now clear where what he says and what I know to be effective in facilitating happiness in humans.
Here is what is going on… psychologically, socially, and maybe even genetically, though that is too deep for my current understanding.
Humans are animals, with the same drives any animal has: the drive to procreate and the drive to aggression to everyone who seems to stand in their way.
Sounds simplistic, but it’s that simple.
Now, with the evolution of humans a new element, self-management, self-awareness, self-punishment, self-regulation, consciousness and conscience were born.
Ethics and morality enter.
And with the birth of civilization, the forcing people to live with people they have no genes in common, and live in close proximity, the living out the drives becomes a problem, so they need to be controlled and suppressed and punished.
Both in the upbringing of an individual, you, and the integrating into civilization, the goal is to suppress what makes you happy, what causes pleasure, the instinctual drives.
The role of conscience is to replace the outside punishing system and punish you internally, when you even think outside of the line allowed by the impossible and unnatural to abide by rules of ethics and morality.
- It is not natural and not even wise to love your neighbor as yourself.
- It is not natural and not even wise to not feel anger, hatred, when someone hurts you, crosses you, or stands in your way.
And it is only possible to allow the feelings to be the feelings and not act on them when
- you allow to consciously experience the effects of the aggression drive
- you have capacities, intangible capacities to innovate yourself out of the ‘kill or get killed’ dichotomy, a zero sum game.
It sounds simplistic, but actually it might be this simple.
But simple doesn’t mean easy.
After all we have seen what happens when you get the necessary capacities turned on, but you are still ruled by the anxiety and the learned helplessness, for example. It was simple… and it was very difficult.
The capacities turn off for many of you.
- I can also see, that as long as the majority of humanity is dominated by the zero sum game genes, there will be massacres, and pogroms, and maffias, and exploitation of the masses.
- As long as the majority of humanity is dominated by the zero sum game, nice guys finish last.
- And all my efforts to create a shift are doomed to fail, as long as I am working with unrelated people living in countries all over the planet.
Is there a solution?
Two issues that need a solution.
- The issue of creating an isolated community of people where nice people finish first through turning on the necessary intangible capacities… and
- An immediate issue: you are plagued with anxiety, guilt and shame.
Unless you and I manage to ease the punishment conscience metes out on you for feeling in a particular way, or having thoughts it is now punishing, you’ll be unhappy, with your wings clipped: underachiever.
I don’t know if the way I did is relevant for you or not, but it’s worth sharing nevertheless:
I eased up on myself and the requirements of morality and ethics
- My first step was to accept that I am stupid.
- My second step was to expand the frame through which I look at life to include intangibles, like generosity, and humility, and authenticity, and service… there are hundreds.When I embraced stupid, I became free to play the field. I became empowered to be a beginner, to be good or bad at something, to make mistakes, wrong steps, to experiment, to get out of the requirement to be right, smart, successful, blameless, flawless and other b.s. that limited me.
- And through practicing the intangibles I activated them.
Now, I must admit, I didn’t start where most of you are: my IQ may be above yours, and the number of capacities I was able to use was already 30 when I started.
But,
I believe that my path is a path that takes you to a lot more freedom, a lot more joy, a lot more accomplishment.
In order to do what you need to do, you need to be able to do a little bit of book-keeping or accounting.
You need to be able to do the things that benefit you more than other things.
Here are a few examples:
Which is worth more:
- your sick pleasure of getting of the hook… or achieving a life of satisfaction and accomplishment?
- your glee at punishing your parent… or being able to love and be loved, and be free, healthy, and unencumbered?
- your fancying yourself superior and spiritual and be depressed… or getting down and dirty and learning something worth doing, day in and day out
- I can bring as many examples as many people I know.
I didn’t say, but I managed to give up punishing myself to punish my parents.
I considered that from their point of view they did the best they could with what they had. And punishing them wasn’t in my best interest, given that the only thing socially acceptable I could do is to be miserable.
The aggressive desire was to kill them, by the way. And a lot of other people who stifled my desire to be all I could be.
But it wasn’t a wise move. I could achieve the same result by saying: they did the best they could.
And then, later, I could even say: whatever they did had nothing to do with me. I could have been someone else and they would have done the same thing… so personal vendetta was meaningless.
If you are squeamish, this work is not for you. This work is for tough people who can face the tiger… like I did, and still do every day.
Are you with me on that?
