I’m going to get pretty real in this one. I promised myself I would try and write more. I have a background in competitive argumentative writing and have always struggled writing narratives or from personal experience. However, there’s never a better time than the present to get better at something you don’t necessarily identify as a strong suit.
I feel as if I often get perceived as being overly analytical or even judgemental. However, this is rarely my intention. I have two passions in life at the moment, one of which being people. I’m fascinated by what makes people tick evermoreso in the modern age given that there is no shortage of disgusting human traits to observe among my fellow inhabitants of Earth and within my own psyche. Through all my years of making friends, conversating, and every form of social interaction imaginable I’ve found one tool to be the absolute sharpest in cutting to the core of one’s individual human existence: questions.
For as long as I can remember I’ve felt curious about the world around me. Granted, in the early stages of my life this manifested itself in a less sophisticated manner than it does today. I had a tendency to pick people apart and utilize their apparent weaknesses to my advantage. As a child this satisfied two goals: I was able to efficiently manipulate weaker minded individuals to my own selfish gain but also identify those worth spending more time with by finding those who cognitively resisted my antics. This allowed me to quickly climb the simplistic dominance hierarchy of early adolescence. I achieved this strategy through the use of very pointed questions that allowed me to derive the root motivations and emotions of those around me. One could make the claim that this trait would be defined as empathy; however, I disagree.
It wasn’t until about my Junior year that I feel as if my eyes truly began to open. I still had the same ability to x-ray the souls of my peers yet something was distinctly different and increasingly hard to deny as my brain began to boot up like a dusty spaceship in a Star Wars movie. The best way I can describe it is that I was beginning to care. This bridged gap brought a primal tactic of social dominance to the fully fledged trait of empathy. I’ve always been able to put myself so deeply in the shoes of other humans, however I only utilized the gathered intel to satisfy my own desires. It wasn’t until relatively recently that I began to understand that the data collected from attempting to understand the lives of others could not only be used to better the individual in question, but the community as a whole.
This began so feverish a hunt for a greater understanding of my peers ( and the universe by extension) that at times I feel as if I’m running out of time to gather enough information to solve the most pertinent riddle of our short lives: collective human existence. Every question I ask gets me one step closer to a greater understanding of another fellow inhabitant of Earth as well as myself. Given that we can only conjure opinions of others from the contents of our own minds, I think on some level every question is one my subconscious wants to ask my own Being. Therefore, I delve into my social curiosity with the same intensity as to which I pursue an understanding of my own psyche. This allows me to create a deeper relationship between my conscious and unconscious self; a companionship I believe is instrumental in constructing a meaning to life. On some level, every question is still motivated by my own selfish desire to form a greater understanding of who we are and why we’re here. However, when coupled with a genuine care for the creature we call “human” I can also craft a better collective database for not only my community, but the world. As such, perpetual curiosity has benefits to the self, society, and the collective consciousness on levels we still don’t understand to this day.
It is for this reason that I am so perplexed by an utter lack of questions that I receive. In writing this, I find myself grappling with the true motive behind the emotions I feel on this topic. As with most things, I try and uncover any unconscious bias I hold towards any emotion, given that our brain tries tirelessly to tell itself a story that paints our own Being in the best light possible. Therefore, I think it's important that I clarify that this desire to be the subject of one’s curiosity is, at its core, an insecurity. As a member of the human species, I have ancient mechanisms in my brain that lead me to pursue attention, acceptance, etc. Regardless of how consciously aware of these desires or how successful I am in overriding them, they still exist and if not acknowledged can lead me down a path of self serving bias.
That being said, my disappointment in the level of curiosity I feel from others also has other elements attached. I want more people to be generous with their curiosity not solely because of my own primal instincts, but also for the sake of the other individual and the entire population. We’ve discussed the ability for questions to chisel away at the blank block of granite that is existence until we are closer to the beautiful sculpture that is a collective understanding underneath. It is for this reason that my emotions in the face of somebody solely interested in talking about themselves or explaining something we all know even they have a minimal understanding of are bordering on anger. I try to reserve such strong emotions for things that can be truly altered or even fixed by such an intense release of chemicals in the brain. Not all things that make us “happy” or “sad” are truly worth the excretion of chemicals we allow ourselves to release and are simply lazy inabilities to control the processes of the brain. However, I feel as if I atleast get to a high level of frustration when faced with somebody lacking empathy simply because it's so innately tied to many tenets of life that I hold at such a high value.
If you’ve ever heard me talk, you’ve surely heard me proclaim the absolute privilege it is that we all get to exist in these dope meat suits, with a built in supercomputer, on a planet of even higher complexity, all at the same time. Furthermore, it is because of this complexity and lack of understanding that unites us all that makes life so fascinating and ultimately worth living. Therefore, I believe the reason I have such a propensity towards anger at people who oversimplify our existence and faithfully support one-track ideologies is because they’re hiding simultaneously terrifying and beautiful truths “in the fog”, as Jordan Peterson would say ;) .
It has come to the point in the blog where I attempt to speculate as to why somebody would so willingly disregard the collective experience that bonds us all. This is by far my least favorite part of the process. I identify myself as an exquisite observer and a mediocre thinker. I am very good at watching people and deriving patterns from their actions that may lend itself to deriving a motive behind their existence. However, when it comes to confidently making a statement as to why Mao Zedong would murder millions of his own citizens or why my classmates would take adderall and then proceed to not even write the essay due that night, I tend to get lost. The confusion that stems from attempting to understand the “why” of humans’ actions can be so mind-boggling that one may be more inclined to simply give up. This unwillingness to bare the intensity of the unknown is what I believe to be the root cause of many of my friends’ unwillingness to discuss topics that don’t pertain to the small list of subjects that they claim to “understand” (the most common of these subjects being themselves). Therefore, as with most of my thought processes around my peers, I make the attempt to not write off their actions as malevolent betrayals of Being as opposed to most likely simple inability. I know that sounds harsh but I’d sooner believe that my friend lacks the tools to join me in the conflict with the uncomfortable truths that lurk in conversations of the unknown as opposed to making a conscious decision to let me enter the realm of mental monsters on my own. Regardless of which is closer to the truth, I find my self willingly walking down dark corridors of the human mind on my lonesome while my conversational counterpart waits behind waiting to see how I fare against the chaos. This infliction of spiritual abandonment in the face of conversational adversity despite my attempts to press forward lead me to emotions that resemble loneliness and fear which can easily be contorted into anger given the right context.
As with most of these blogs I never really know how to wrap them up considering I could ponder the intricacies of human existence for days, which I often do. I guess all I really wanted to get out of this was to be vulnerable in my desire for someone willing to journey into the unknown with me. I could start giving tips for how one can be a better compadre in the face of chaos but I don’t want to be “that guy” who tries to self impose my will on others. That being said, just try and be very open in the discussion with yourself on how much you really know about the world, regardless of how terrifyingly small that may be. Acknowledge the possibility for somebody to give you information, perspectives, etc. that aid you in your journey despite how irrelevant what they say may seem on the surface. Ask questions and be curious all the time because contrary to the common narrative nowadays, we all have highly unique existences that lead us to understandings of the universe different than anybody else's. Maybe, if we were so generous with our curiosity, one day we could compile all our collective perspectives on everything and we may actually figure out what the fuck is going on out here :)