Human Nature and the Death of Hope

Self-styled realists remind us constantly that human nature has its ineradicable dark side. I can attest to that.

Most people who know me now think that I'm a good person and a nice guy. I indulge a house full of cats. I try to control my judgmental nature. I even thought of myself as a good person and a nice guy for almost the first three decades of my life.

Only gradually did I notice the cracks in my facade through which the darkness showed. They would have been obvious to any person or animal I harmed, but not to me. At one time or another I have done nearly everything that I despise. I fear that only lack of opportunity prevented me from being worse, before I realized how bad I was to begin with.

Feeling good about yourself is a privilege, not a right. It is a privilege we are all born with, but it can be squandered before you even realize you've lost it. Doting parents mean well, but they give you the benefit of the doubt. Through that loving loophole you can slip forward, onward, downward, on a path of self indulgence, because you are not that bad.

 Once I learned to recognize self esteem as a warning sign instead of a reward, I had a much better detection system to prevent outbreaks of cruel and destructive behavior.

The improvement is gradual. And much of the insult and deprecation that people think I've leveled at them is really aimed at forces that have misled them. As for the physical cruelty, that pretty well ended before I was 40. I had control issues. Figuring out how little I can actually control has gone a long way to promote a peaceful resignation.

If I can get better, anyone can get better. So why is hope dead?

Time.

Time is short, probably too short.

As much of an asshole as I was from preadolescence through the onset of middle age, at least I had a glimmer, then a gleam, then a full-blown dawning awareness that I needed to get on my case. I am one among billions, many of whom need to get on their own case and straighten their shit out. There is no pill. There is no switch to throw. First you have to admit that you have a problem. Then you have to figure out how to address it in the way that works best for you.

For every problem, there is a program. But no program works until the individual agrees to follow it. And the program itself may have an agenda other than simply helping each individual to live with more awareness of others.

That's it right there: live with more awareness of others. Care what you do to them.

Do I get angry? Yes. Do I contemplate violence? Yes. I see people continuing to act with either no awareness of others or with malicious intent, and my primitive hostility rises immediately. And the warning buzzer tells me that I need to think. Force will not bring the change I want to see in the world.

Unfortunately many people seem unable to learn from the mere story of bad events. And the genuine power of darkness in some of them compels them to create bad events. They have no desire to play nicely with others. Neo-Nazis want to correct the strategic errors of their role models. Would-be tyrants and their eager minions of all types welcome any opportunity to inflict pain on the targets they choose.

The problem gets worse because there have been too many of us since the grateful survivors of World War II fucked us into the Baby Boom. The Boom has gone on to spawn further waves of incoming souls, each equipped with instinct, intellect, and reproductive systems.

There were probably too many of us long before that. After all, Europe overflowed into the Americas from the 15th Century onward, but they had to eradicate existing indigenous populations to do it.

Eradicating each other is a longstanding human tradition.

In the 1960s, I grew up in a culture where a lot of people seemed to be questioning the practice of eradicating each other. That seemed good to me. Eradicate not, lest ye be eradicated. Let's all be cool and have a good time together. We can learn a lot from each other.

Tradition will not be denied. The eradicators want to do their thing. The swarm of humanity thickens on the moldy surface of the globe that brought us forth so long ago.

I miss hope. The realist in me kept me childless, but the hopeful dope inside thought that maybe I would turn out to be wrong. Being right brings no satisfaction except the grim one that I have not personally sentenced anyone to the future that my species collectively seems to have chosen. What remains of that hopeful dope still wants the things that I valued to be valued and carried forward by the people who come after me. An idea has a life of its own. We did not all have to spring from the loins of the framers of our founding documents to embrace their ideas and try to carry them forward, distributed more widely.

Most of human life is in the mind. Instinct and intellect are expressed through technology, from the first stone tools to the latest sophisticated marvel. We imagine, then we do. So what we imagine is the most important influence on our individual acts. One plus one plus one plus one, billions of times over, imaginations combine their actions. We can't really plan. But if, by chance, each person imagines the world with more care for each other, the result will be what I would call better. It would be downright hopeful.