Do Human Beings Inherently Hate Themselves?? (Guest Starring Jeffy As The Video Game Addicted Dumbass)

Aaaaaaaaaaah, BACK WITH THE BLOG!!

Planning to get a little bit intense on you today. Is that alright??

GOOD.

So I was thinking about all the different "models" or "ways" that we can understand the human tendency to be so lazy and self-destructive.

That's not to say all people act this way -- and I count myself lucky to be surrounded by 99% of people who are driven to live a happy life.

But this is definitely a common phenomenon, and it is in many ways the "default state" when you lack the proper education about why it's so vastly important.

Anyway one of the ways of looking at laziness (and the resulting self-destruction) would be to just to say that you are hardwired by genetics to conserve on time and energy, and that your caveman brain doesn't always have the perspective to move beyond a paradigm of instant gratification.

Another explanation would be that our day-to-day habits are so deeply ingrained that to change them requires more strength than the average person can summon up.

Then there's the more practical ways of seeing it, like that most folks are so flat-lined with uninspiring employment that they simply lack the physical and emotional momentum to get anything done.

Or more fancy and esoteric viewpoints, like that modern society has got us on a diet of simple sugars and saturated fats which makes our brains too jittery to be fully engaged, and that television and advertisement has us addicted to a state of endless stimulation.

Probably if this is the first time you've ever considered the compounding effects that this stuff is having on your life you might be freaking out.

(And we haven't even gotten into the *really* trippy stuff like how a culture that's based on enhancing the identity of the individual distances us from the natural state of stillness and clarity and creativity -- because that's a topic big enough to require an article of it's own).


Alright, so all of these are great ways of understanding laziness and self-destruction but today I want to focus on an entirely different way of looking at it.

This is a theory that I've conjured up recently, and maybe it's a bit deluded or controversial, but for whatever reason it's been brewing in my mind.

For me a major reason for people's lazy and self-destructive tendencies is an insidious, underlying psychological foundation of self hate.

I've been thinking lately about how there's a crazy paradox to being a human being -- because unlike other animals who can just act selfishly on unconscious autopilot, YOU typically have a consciously held value system.

(You might have been spoon-fed your values unconsciously, or integrated them on your own, but you have this value system and you know it's there).

Now in this value-system you might have qualities like integrity, working hard, offering value, or doing the right thing.

Whatever it is for *you*.

And what's cool is that when you LIVE by your own value system you gain what might be called "personal power" -- like confidence, clear thinking, passion, and self esteem -- so you get a big reward.

But then see, the crazy paradox is that it's also in your genetically inherited DNA to do things that get you gain over other people that you did not earn, or to sell out your values in order to save yourself time and energy.

That's why when you go into a public bathroom you'll enjoy the glorious sight of piss all over the toilet seat from the last 10 guys who've used it before you.

Most folks, when not being monitored, really can't be bothered so much as to aim at the center of the bowl or to swipe a piece of toilet paper and wipe off the "miss fire".... :)


It's crazy what this simple phenomenon says about overall human psychology.

Then of course, there's also the aspect where the person thinks "Even if I clean up all this mis-aimed piss for the next person, I bet THEY won't be bothered to keep this toilet clean so I'd might as well just leave it."

So on some level I think people probably know unconsciously that they can't always trust themselves to live by their values, and beyond that, they assume the same of other people as well.

This is really coming through right now with the trend of climate change and global warming.

There's a lot of ways of explaining people's indifference towards their own planet, but I think one of them is an unconscious belief that "We're going to screw up the whole deal sooner or later anyway, and on a level we deserve it. So I'd might as well just not think about it and enjoy the ride."

Personally I have a belief that when somebody does something that they know is inherently wrong, they will unconsciously do things to punish themselves and bring their circumstances into alignment with what they feel they deserve internally.

Maybe they'll get sloppy in their work and lose a bunch of money.

Or maybe they'll be lazy and sabotage their personal relationships.

Oftentimes it's also in the form of creating chains of rationalizations upon rationalizations, where they can no longer think clearly and wind up screwing up their lives.

So in a lot of ways it comes down to "self respect" and how when you live in alignment to your values you'll tend to respect yourself enough to create the external conditions that make for a happy life.

(Incidentally this is also why when people have deliberately done things to try to make my own life difficult I've rarely invested myself into worrying about "justice" or anything like that. I've always figured that people's circumstances will eventually catch up to their level of self-respect).


Anyway I think it's interesting because when you love yourself it's natural that you'll want to do things to make your life better.

It's like how you see RSD instructors who in the past few years have all gotten into pretty good physical shape.

There's been a rash of people asking "Yeah but you guys are all in good shape, so obviously it means that you ADMIT IT that LOOKS MATTER with women right??!!"

What they don't realize is that most the guys I work with in RSD used to be in pretty crummy shape back when they started to get a level of success with girls.

That means that, YES, they would go out and meet girls and bring them back to make love to their ghastly out of shape bodies.

Shocking I know...

Then later as they built a sense of self worth it was only natural that they wanted to start eating healthy and going to the gym -- or in Jeffy's case decreasing his consumption of alcohol and drugs.

The inclination to take good care of your physical body is a SYMPTOM and not the CAUSE of having gotten success with girls.

Is that because you need to get laid a bunch of times to feel good about yourself??

Definitely not.

It's just that when you're TAKING ACTION TO HANDLE YOUR LIFE it's natural that you feel like you're "worth" the investment of time and energy that being in good shape will demand.

To me this is really a natural type of thing.

Self esteem is in many ways a wheel that's always spinning -- whether that's towards a life of happiness or a petty existence of laziness and self-hate.

If you live in accordance with your values and offer a lot of good, it's natural that you want to keep doing more and more of those positive things, and then your circumstances begin to improve and your lifestyle hits a level that's off the chains.

On the other hand if you sit around violating yourself by being complacent, then it's natural that you lose respect for yourself and your life slowly unravels and decays.


Funny enough there was an incident with Jeffy this year that really illustrated this point for me...

As Jeffy tells it, after getting back from the first leg of the Jeffy Tour last winter he received for Christmas a shiny new Nintendo Wii.

He started playing it and figured "Well I've been working so hard this year, I really deserve a break and need to unplug."

Then, to the best of my recollection, after he continued playing it from morning 'til night for a week straight he felt like "I'm such a piece of shit...I'd might as well just keep playing this."

So ultimately his motivation to keep creating better conditions for himself was flushed down the toilet -- because he no longer had a self image as somebody who was deserving of all the gifts that he had to offer himself and the world.

(As absurd as that sounds -- we've all been through it).

Now that's not to say that playing a bit of video games is inherently bad. Some of them are actually really complex works of art. It's just that the NON-SIMULATED world is also a pretty amazing place and it's a matter of where you choose to spend the bulk of your time.

I know in my case, treating myself with respect is like a behaviour cycle I'm always trying to slide myself into.

Motivation has nothing to do with living up to other people's superficial expectations of your lifestyle or "Keeping up with the Jones's".

This is about a PASSION FOR LIFE.

I have a straightforward set of assumptions, which while simplistic, are basically a source of inspiration that doesn't quit:

1- I am alive.

2- It is all futile, yes, but unless I'm going to take action on this and KILL MYSELF then I'd might as well take the action to make for a happy life.

3- Living a happy life is about your internal world, of course, and it is simultaneously about enjoying the FINEST that this world has to offer (travel, food, literature, friends, personal connection, risk, amazing women, and the whole shebang).

4- Nothing in this world will inherently "tickle" you as advertising suggests, so YOU have to BRING THE PASSION to it and make it fun.

5- To find passion you need motivation which means knowing that "gaining value is about making a living, but offering value is about LIVING A LIFE" -- and to offer the most value to other people you have to LOVE YOURSELF and MAKE YOURSELF STRONG.

So yeah, this might sound woo-woo or melodramatic. But this is how I've made sense of the world.

You might have also noticed how it's a recursive cycle, and that #5 flows right back into #1.


Alright time to wrap this up...

The title of this article posed the question "Do human beings inherently hate themselves?"

So what's my opinion??

For me, without the proper social structures to educate folks about the pros and cons of their humanity, yeah, I think it is definitely an issue.

What we need to realize is that the idealized views about human behaviour, the simplistic narratives with which we've been raised -- they do not represent the entire picture of who we are.

Human beings have both "admirable" qualities and "despicable" ones. And by this way of looking at it, we are very complex.

In every person there are multiple "selves" that operate at various times. Sometimes we are in our "higher self" and sometimes we are in our "lower self" -- or so to speak.

For that reason you can judge instances of behaviour but never ultimately categorize a human being. It just depends on the paradigm with which they're operating at the time.

People need to stop judging others for their flaws, but more important is that in order to do that, they need to stop judging THEMSELVES.

Behaviour can be changed. People's paradigms can be changed.

For that to happen we have to recognize that we are WORTH the investment of time and energy to create the conditions of a happy life.


Right now humanity is in a place where it really needs to forgive itself for it's flaws, or else suffer the consequences.

That means becoming "OK" with the complex nature of who we are.

It's not about convincing OTHER people to wake up and get their lives together. It's about BEING AN EXAMPLE and making the decision to live by your own values first.

From there, it's all about the execution.

Making choices that are befitting of person who treats himself and others as first class human beings.

And how do you get a first class ticket on that path??

I think it's a topic that deserves an article of it's own. So stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!!


Tyler

PS: Tim's blog has been *buzzing* with activity lately. WOW. You really need to get in the loop on this: www.naturaltim.com