Wednesday, 23 August 2017

What humans want

In that old not-great-but-actually-quite-good-and-maybe-great-if-you-squint  film, 'What Women Want', we follow a classic Alpha Male (ie. douchebag) type as he gets his brain bust-up and learns, in fact, that he needs saving just as much as anyone else. And in doing so he finds love, family and freedom. Huh. Interesting, that. 

Sounds familiar (*cough cough Major Tom*)

Been thinking about it recently (not because I have a
thing for Mel Gibson, you understand...
), as I think it works for any gender. In fact, on a different scale it works for the whole lot of us in one big stupid clump. And what drives humanity is a hugely important subject when we look at a broken, gutting series of total BS all over the World, driven largely by people who have been radicalised.

I mean, that there are Nazi flags anywhere in the media in anything other than a historical film is just so, so sad. On the face of it; it's utterly beyond comprehension.

So am I going to have a go at Nazis? No. There's no need, really.

People can be both extremely wrong, and hurting, need punching, *and* have the potential to be free of that bullshit too. This is very good news for all of humanity, extremely bloody good news for each of us. We all need punching every now and then, eh? Though I've never dabbled in Nazism, I certainly do act like a total bellend occasionally and, in retrospect, would have benefitted from a good swift punching.

I think people have a few key needs:
  • make me part of something bigger than me
  • make me feel special.
If (normally due to local geography/deprivation/demographics), we find these needs met in a dodgy group, such as the local radicalised Muslims, the extreme Nazism cafe, the Alt-whatevers, the sex-trafficking club, Westboro Baptist 'church', Marxist Activist Breakfast Club, the Racist-But-Well-Groomed Police Force, or whatever, it becomes easy to understand why people fall into radicalisation and extremism, because the deep need for identity is in each of us.

Also easy, is to judge 'them' for it without first looking at how we all do it on some level. I am not condoning extremism, I'm saying it is part of a pattern of our shared humanity which we must understand at the meta level before we try to solve it at the personal level, with our fists.

Understand that we each [myself included] deeply need to feel special, need to make some sense of our place in the universe, before we can be free. And if those needs seem to be met by controlling douchebags (or our own bad habits) then we can all fall into extremely damaging cycles.

So what do we do about it? 

That's a good question, and one which we must each answer mindfully in our own lives, before the punching begins.



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 - PS. Oh you came here for tits? Yeah there's bound to be tits here soon, don't worry about it. It is possible to be interested in both tits AND the freedom of all humanity.

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3 comments:

darkmikasonfire said...

Humanity doesn't want freedom as a whole to be honest. People want to follow, be led, 99.infinite 9s out of 100% of the time. That's why there's not a great deal many 'leaders' anywhere, that's why people join into group thinking and mob mentality. That's why instead of just being important in their own right they oft want to join groups to become a cog. People want to be somewhat important, most people don't want the spotlight, many who do don't really know what to do with it anyways. People would rather be just another cog in the machine, something they know is of mild importance, but they won't have to think or do much themselves. People are lazy more than anything. Most innovation is straight up born from laziness, which isn't necessarily bad, it's just a fact of life.

My thoughts are thus, people as a whole are stupid, a large percentage of the human population is stupid individually, stupid people have the reigns of everything. That is the problem with the world. Smart people can be terrible people and control a large amount of simpletons, simpletons will put those who shouldn't be in power in it, or someone as incompetent as themselves in it. People are bad for people as a whole because people are stupid.

Belle said...

I think I probably disagree with a bunch of points in this comment, though there's some truths in there. I read recently a tweet that agrees with your points about control: https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/901918380843835392

There's a fine line between discerning what's going on with humanity, and dishonouring the whole lot by being judgemental, I guess we must choose our paths.

Belle said...

Thanks peeps for the various emails etc I've received over the last week. I can understand the desire for anonymity in this type of conversation, so if people prefer not to comment here that's fine.

Interesting topic, and one we'll never fully crack. In my experience the people who think they've cracked it tend to be the ones most truly isolated and in desperate need of help, though on the surface they may have all the boxes ticked (money, stuff, fame, blah blah) my most tragic friends and acquaintances do tend to be those who pretend they have all the answers.