I want to talk about something which for me is one of the ultimate practical questions to ask in this life:
Why hasn’t man done all he can to reduce and prevent suffering? Just take a moment to think about that. Why is it when there’s plenty of food, we allow some people to starve, even destroy food resources to keep prices up? Why isn’t it that when a child is born into this world, we don’t give her the best chance at health and happiness? Why isn’t it just so organized that as soon as your born there’s a plan and contingency plans laid out for you to support you growing up and going to work and to help you support others, in other words, why haven’t we all gotten together and figured out how to reduce suffering and increase happiness?
I’ll tell you three of the main reasons, then I’ll tell you how it relates to you and your happiness. Three of the main reasons are 1. Hate, 2. Division. 3. Incompetence. It’s really the same thing, hate and division. In scientific terms it’s called tribalism. My tribe against your tribe. And humans will do anything to divide into tribes even to the point of dividing according to sports teams and performing acts of violence in the name of your team. If you get a chance, look up hooliganism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_hooliganism
But let’s take it deeper than that. Why has man not done all he can to ensure the health and happiness of all who enter this world? Maybe your life has been such a series of struggles that you can hardly comprehend what’s the use. Maybe you suffer from depression, anxiety, and a host of other mood disorders. Why is it when you go for treatment you’re treated like a pariah, like you’re the only one they’ve seen with this issue? It’s a problem all over the world. And it’s everyone’s problem. Why hasn’t the science of drug and therapy treatment advanced far further than it has. The answer is profit motive put simply but we’ll get to that. If the answer to why we haven’t wiped this out is hate, how is it this hate is allowed operate?
The root cause of this hate and tribalism is our animal instincts. Many types of animals will divide into groups and attack each other. There’s status and hierarchy, rich and poor among lower animals. Gorilla groups have been known to carry out full scale war against other groups and to cannibalize the enemy even though they are mostly vegetarian. So it’s a mentality passed down from animals but which mentalities exactly.
1. Number one is the mentality that I have to belong to a group opposed to other groups for protection and acceptance, aka tribalism. Why cannot human beings move beyond this? We can see that the only thing we need protection from is other groups of humans who have banded together in opposition to us. If we would all stop forming groups opposed to each other and based on some petty philosophy that is little different from one another, then we can stop attacking each other. Why do we need countries, religious identity, and political philosophies to divide us just so we can protect ourselves from each other? Why do we need this violence, think about that.
2. The second mentality is another passed down from the animal, it’s basically called jealousy, if someone else has something, then I can’t have it. For early man in times of scarcity, if someone else was eating the food you needed to survive, you may very well hate and attack that person or group because otherwise you’re dead. But in todays world, is there really not enough food to go around? Surely there is, especially if we work together. So let’s do away with those mentalities, that we have to belong to a group for protection because what it causes is the opposite of protection, violence. Look at street gangs. Youth most often say they joined a gang for protection, but if they would stop joining gangs, they wouldn’t need protection. And the idea that if someone else has something, then there’s none for me. In the US
The same thing believe it or not happens with pain relief. People are actually jealous to see other people getting effective pain relief and heaven forbid people actually get a boost in happiness from a drug or treatment. When did it become evil to feel good? We’re not talking about drug addiction here, it’s a myth that drug addiction and getting a good feeling from a drug are the same thing and I’ll explain later how that came about, but simply put, it’s profit motive.
3. The third mentality I want to talk about is the idea that you and I have no responsibility for what’s going on in the world. If you drive a car, don’t be surprised if we end up in the Middle East fighting for oil. It’s as simple as that. We make up the world, the human society. We are the world. Without us, it’s just animals and plants, we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about human society. Our consciousness and the things we care about and focus on, that’s what the world is. It’s up to us to use our genius and our ingenuity to decrease suffering and promote happiness for everyone who comes into this world. One of the hardest things to understand growing up is that not everything is organized and orderly for human flourishing, in fact, most things are not. And it’s because we haven’t provided order in the world because we’re too busy trying to smite each other or waiting for some supernatural being to come and make everything right by wiping out our enemies. That shows incompetence. We are incompetent individually and as a group.
Individually, even though we know some things we can do to make the world better like reducing our gas and energy consumption, reducing our consumption of meat, not buying the products of suffering, we are unable to stop. We simply don’t quite know how to, it’s become our habit. That flows directly into making us incompetent as a group. We can’t act competently as a group because the individual parts of that group can’t act competently. We look to government to help us and that’s just as well because we are part of the government, but we have to realize the government is us, it’s not something outside of us so for real change, we can’t just think we can tell other people to do it. We have to become involved ourselves in living what we know to be a moral life.
Here’s how that relates to you and your personal happiness. First, when you divide yourself from others, you must spend all of your energy rejecting others and will find yourself quite drained and may even find yourself imprisoned in your home unable to venture out into the company of others. What if you stopped dividing yourself from others, by class, by religion, by nationality and considered yourself part of the whole of human experience. Take a bird’s eye view, look down on your little neighborhood or city, and look at the tiny dot that is you surrounded by all the other tiny dots that are everyone else. That little single ant that is you is gonna have one heck of a time rejecting all those other ants. If you suffer from severe anxiety or social anxiety, it may require meds and therapy to learn to embrace others, but be able to see into this process.
Secondly, you want to have purpose and meaning in life, aka you want to live a moral life. How you do that is according to your circumstances in life. But when you are able to identify areas where you can help to reduce suffering and promote happiness, you become part of the whole of humanity because you’re now helping and everyone can use some help sometime. You are no longer separating. And you are able to see how your suffering and happiness is intimately related to that of others.
So to sum up, Why have humans not produced the order to ensure the best chance of health and happiness for all, simple answer, hate, division, and incompetence.
What can you do? Stop dividing yourself from others by race, religions, and politics. Don’t give into animal instincts of jealousy and tribalism.
And most of all figure out where you can help reduce suffering and promote happiness, even if that means starting with yourself. Find out what you can do individually and as part of the group.
Thanks for reading, my name is Daryl Seldon, you can check me out at dysautobotdiary.blogspot.com or bpainfreetherapy.hubpages.com
Have a nice day and Get Better Sooner.
