Humanity

I have been thinking a lot lately about the human condition and quite frankly it’s disgusting to look around the world.

I’ll be honest, I don’t really care for most people, I’m not a complete misanthrope, but the hypocrisy, the lack of drive to move forward, the contentment, these things drive me crazy.

I remember a quote from Socrates that I read years ago… okay remember is a strong word but I can paraphrase. He basically said that children were disrespectful to their elders, politicians were corrupt and businessmen were greedy.

He was describing his Greece about 1600 years ago, but what he was really doing was describing the human condition.

I know what most people think when faced with this, that it’s just human nature, and it’s very funny to me that they never think they belong in any of those categories, but we all do, it is after all, human nature.

But why do we restrain ourselves by our own nature? Early human nature was living in caves, eating fruit, and communicating by grunts. But we don’t do that anymore. Early human nature was to freak out and scream and act wild when something strange came into camp, even if it was another early human but we don’t do that anymore either.

The point is that we can overcome our own nature, the question is why we do not.

What happened to Nietzcshe’s ubermensch? What happened to human drive and our want to be better? Obviously our ancestors had it, but somewhere we seemed to have lost it.

We’ve dropped all of it and simply look to trod along the path even further to our own depressed demise.

The last place I worked was in an office filled with perfect examples of this quandary. My coworkers didn’t strive to be better, oh they talked about it, talked about how they prayed for their god to guide them and keep them, but that was the extent of their work. Otherwise they simply wanted to sit and fester in their own boring lives that are leading to the same places their ancestors went.

Some may say this is overly critical, some may say that life is simply to be enjoyed and both have a point. But I cannot abide to see the greatest potential of all the earth, the human mind, to sit and devote its time to how they’re going to have nicer things than their neighbors. To watch them suck up to assholes because they have a title. To watch nothing more than the newest form of feudal rule run the same course it has throughout history.

I grow weary of it and it angers me. The human brain and body are the two greatest tools on earth. To watch them wasted is, in my opinion, pointless.

Humanity has created a litany of fantasies and false reasoning so that they won’t kill themselves of boredom. We’ve created religions, gods and devils, and the worst of all the excuse of human nature all so that we don’t have to do the work, so that we don’t have to face the self.

Human nature is something to allow you to sleep at night when faced with the outside world, with its greed, with its corruption, with all its ugly truths. It allows us to placate our feelings about this, write them off, throw them out, and do nothing about it.

But human nature should never be an excuse for the self. To do so is to be weak. To tell oneself “that’s just the way I am” is to let go of all the power that a person has and accept being less than one is capable of. This is inexcusable.

I don’t mean to sound jaded or cynical, but there is simply no reason for all the problems of the world, we have the power to change the world for the better. Yet, we’d prefer to sit and be nothings. It’s easier that way, and our ego won’t get in the way and make us feel guilty because we have so many checks and defenses against it.

My point is very simple, be everything good that you can, and stop everything bad that you are. Learn, grow, push, do the things that scare you. But most importantly of all, be honest with yourself and never accept something you don’t like about yourself, it is your duty and your honor as a human to ever strive to be the ubermensch.