"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
The first time my heart opened, really opened, I wished it closed again immediately. It hurt so much. I couldn't understand why, either. I nearly broke down completely when talking with a Buddhist friend when the conversation got 'round to helping others who were suffering, because "human suffering" is so vast, so monolithic, so impossible to wrap one's head around -- even if you scale it back to one person at a time. It's a great part of my struggle with depression: sometimes, it's my own suffering; sometimes, it's someone else's. Can you imagine becoming so incredibly sad, feeling so incredibly helpless, over someone else's pain?
I'm gonna take a stab in the dark here and say that not too many people understand that feeling. Maybe not those of you who are reading this because you saw it posted on my Facebook, because the chances of your understanding deep empathy are pretty high. That's one of many reasons I call you "friend." Like attracts like and all. My father struggled with a deep sense of empathy, among other things. A strong sense of humanity drove him to do much of what he did in his life -- for good or ill -- and, at the end, nearly did him in. Sure, he was selfish, too. He hung on to the pain he felt and wrapped it around him like a favorite cloak, and used it to justify some of his shittier behavior. Sometimes, I feel that I was rather unfortunate to inherit his sense of empathy. It's driven me to incredible anger, deep depression and overall some very dark places in the recesses of my mind. I wish, instead, that I could go about my business and tend my own garden, happily ignorant of the lives and feelings of my fellow flesh motes. Really, I do. Or, I wish everything could all just be automatically "fixed:: everyone could be happy and carefree, have food in their bellies and a life that filled them with a sense of joy and wonder. Realization of the fact that that will never fucking happen makes me want to punch a hole in the wall next to me.
"But Jenniforensic," you ask, "how do you know it will never happen?" Well, my dear reader, the answer is simple: human nature. It's a concept that's often treated as kind of a "black box," especially among the social sciences. "Human nature" is a great compartment for all those things we cannot somehow logically explain away or pigeonhole. It's where all those behaviors come from that don't seem to have root in, say, upbringing or environment. And, by and large, that compartment tends to be filled with the causes of all the horrible things that we inflict upon each other. There are too few "positive" things -- for lack of a better way to put it -- in there. Those tend to get tossed into another black box: the "human spirit." This is that thing that's glorified every time one of those terrible things from the other box creep out, because it apparently contains things like resilience, humanity, and compassion. You should know I'm actually making my "thoughtfully confused" face while I write this, the one that I make when there's something causing a weird cognitive dissonance in my brain that I feel shouldn't be there, because the reasons for it shouldn't exist, but is.
I'm thinking this through today because a lot has happened lately, globally and locally, that gives me that terrible sense of WTF-fusion. I have this immense perplexity over this "human nature" thing, and primarily this part of it: What is it about us, as big-ol'-brained primates with smartypantsness, resourcefulness and all kinds of talent that causes us to tear each other down, rather than build each other up? Like, why did that old lady find it necessary to bang into me with her cart in the supermarket last week and then give me a dirty look like I'd somehow offended her? (No, that didn't actually happen, it's just an example.) Why did some dumbass with nothing better to do with his time, apparently, knock over a memorial to fallen firefighters? (That actually happened in Trenton about two weeks ago.) Why did two misguided brothers kill three people and destroy the lives of hundreds, if not thousands? (Oh come on, now, I don't have to remind you about that one.) Why are we so cruel?
"Well, that woman is clearly an unhappy person." Fine. Why'd she have to hurt someone else to show it?
"Well, that dumbass didn't understand the value of the memorial." Fine. Why couldn't he have just left it alone?
"Well, those brothers were part of a radicalized sect of some religion." Fine. Why does violence have to be the solution, and why does it have to be justified by pointing out that it's in writing in a holy book? Why was it written there in the first place? At the end of the day, no matter how many reasons (or excuses) we come up with, questions such as these can all be boiled down to this: No matter what was going on in someone's head or heart, why didn't their sense of humanity stop them from acting incorrectly?
Like many things for Bill O'Reilly, you can't explain it. So, we tend to wind up in that murky black box of "human nature." It's evidently in our nature to act out violently when faced with adversity. Unfortunately, having been a student of human evolutionary history, I honestly can't argue against that very well. We've seemed to co-operate and build communities when it suited us to do so, and fight each other rather than share. In the beginning of our history, this may have made some-- some, mind you -- sense. Here in the crazy-advanced Twenty-First Century (!!!!waitIstilldon'thavemyflyingcarwtf), though, really it doesn't. Or, perhaps more correctly, it shouldn't. There is the potential within us and within this planet to create more than enough resources to support us all, and do it well, if we work together. All this hoarding and moneychanging we're doing really doesn't work for us anymore. Neither does the violence. Granted, just plain hoarding and moneychanging are forms of violence, too, but in this case I'm talking about the interpersonal crap more than anything else. Hitting someone with a grocery cart or blowing someone's legs off isn't even particularly satisfying (not that I would know ... forget I said anything), it's just childish acting out and further illustration of the old axiom that "violence begets violence." And, lest you think I'm just talking about the things that are relatively easily perceived as violent like explosions, I'm not -- I mean all of it. Sexual violence. Emotional violence. Psychological violence. Spiritual violence. All of it. None of it serves us. So much of it anymore is the product of the violence of generations past. That's sort of easily understandable. But ... where does it stop?
Why is it that we, with all our smartypantsness, resourcefulness and so on still choose -- and it is a choice -- to inflict violence, when certainly at this stage we realize that it doesn't serve us anymore? Because we have chosen to. We have chosen the easier path of saying: "This is the way we've always been. As soon as we learned how to make tools, and control fire, we made weapons. We are violent creatures by nature." We have chosen to allow ourselves to stagnate, and to disallow a glorious union to take place: the intersection of "human nature" with "the human spirit." We know that the latter has all that stuff that we like a lot, like crying eagles and hugs and rainbows and puppies, and makes us feel like we can do anything we set our minds to. Is it really going to take some sort of bad-special-effects alien visitation to bring us to the point where we can allow ourselves to become greater than we have historically been as a whole, on an individual basis? Do we really need someone else to remind us that, no matter our philosophical differences, our hearts tell us -- if we care to listen -- that the truest Law is that of Love, and that it can overcome even the basest of black-box tendencies if we permit its enlightenment?
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature." It's true. One entity, no matter how powerful, cannot change us, and certainly we cannot be changed overnight. We have to do it ourselves, make a conscious choice to do it, one person, one effort at a time. What's more, we have to choose to do it each time. It's often the more difficult choice.
Maybe I'll start by not hitting someone with my grocery cart the next time I go shopping.
