Belongingness

What is this thing people call humanity, and why should I feel it, need it, or want it?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/What-is-this-thing-people-call-humanity-and-why-should-I-feel-it-need-it-or-want-it/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

“Humanity” is from the late 14th century and derived from the Latin word “humanitatem” or “humanitas” for “human nature, humankind, life on Earth, the human race, mankind,” and Old French “humanité, umanité.” “Humanity” includes all humans but can also refer to the feelings of “kindness, graciousness, politeness, consideration for others,” which humans often have for each other.

Variations of the term, such as the adjective “humane,” which arose in the mid-15th century, refer to the ineffable qualities of being human rather than the physical characteristics of human existence. By the early 18th century, it evolved from meaning “courteous, friendly, civil, and obliging” into “tenderness, compassion, and a disposition to treat others kindly” and evoke “kindness” within the sphere of the human condition.

By the 1700s, the plural of humanity — “humanities” was adopted as a description of the study of “human culture” through the literature branches of rhetoric and poetry and from a secular perspective rather than religious via “literae divinae.”

“Humanism” emerged from that evolution in meaning from the Latin “humanitas” or “education benefitting a cultivated man” while supporting the notion of humanity as symbolic of the best qualities of our species.

Much of this evolution in meaning is derived from a history stretching long before prehistory to a time when our survival as a species was contingent upon working together to feed and clothe ourselves as we hunted in packs.

Successful interdependence requires supporting one another; thus, empathy was given rich soil to grow.

I suspect, however, that none of this constitutes new information for you even though your question misses the point altogether — and to such a degree it screams severe psychopathy, even as an entertainment-seeking provocation.

From initially reading it in my notifications for questions I’ve been asked to answer, my first thought was that it’s an apparent provocation from a misanthrope and most likely a troll. What I discovered upon encountering your profile is something far more insidious.

Let’s begin with the presumption in this question, “Why should I feel it?” etcetera.

There is no “should” in that you are not “obligated to feel” anything. That’s not how emotions work. You appear somewhat educated — or at least literate — based on the number of publications you’ve written and have posted on Amazon.

Somehow, though, a fundamental comprehension of oneself as an “intelligent” member of an interdependent species escapes your notice. You rely on others to feed, clothe, and house yourself through literary endeavours and can’t acknowledge how you already “feel it, need it, and want it.”

Even this provocation attempts to cater to those basic needs by identifying people who can respond in ways that support egotistically defined goals.

Most literate people develop a basic comprehension of emotions and the atavistic precursors making them manifest. On my behalf, this could be a flawed presumption, but I’m pretty sure you’re no stranger to “darker” emotions such as fear and anger, and you have no misapprehension about their manifestations within you. The sarcasm in your writing indicates your preference for wallowing in those emotions and is consistent with the attitude displayed within your provocation disguised as a question.

The problem you struggle with is that you hate your interdependence and deny that it exists within you — most likely due to having found yourself disappointed and hurt repeatedly by people who failed to live up to your expectations from a very young age.

Sadly, in a world where a whopping majority 70%-80% of the population is raised within a dysfunctional family unit, your experience is far from being a minority. Unlike some lucky few who can cope with their pain to the degree that can transcend it on levels that allow them to minimize the transmission of a toxic mentality characterized by misanthropy, you have chosen to embrace the cynical view that humanity is beyond hope.

Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant to me because my biased perspective shudders at the prospect of living in a world where one broadly hates all of humanity to such a degree they fail to see or experience the gestalt of existence within each of us.

To live a life without comprehending the value of joy is the equivalent of living a life deprived of meaning. It’s like a walking death. Even if one’s life circumstances necessitate a deprivation of joy, knowing it exists can often be enough to overcome the most painful hurdles.

Even the briefest taste of love in a fleeting life characterized by its absence or a prevalence of fraudulent forms of love is enough to sustain one’s spirit for a lifetime.

That’s the power of living on the side of light those who wallow in the dark fail to comprehend.

Once one understands that power, one no longer feels pushed into seeking something out of conceptual reasons but from an atavistic need to partake in as much as one can, like struggling for breath while deprived of oxygen because of a plastic bag covering one’s head.

Sadly, you’ve never tasted it, or you would know why you are drawn to it while feigning a disinterested rejection. As much as your ploy may feel like a shield protecting you from further disappointment, it’s a cry for help heard echoing its way around the world, crying out in pain.

If nothing else, in your case, it merely reveals you as a product of a wholly dysfunctional era in which we exist today as a species suffering from generation upon generation of transmissible trauma.

In other words, you asked this question because, on some level, you realize your struggle. Although it may be easy to peg you as a statistic identified as part of “the one in five” visible sufferers of a mental health condition in society, you’re not. Instead, the psychopathic dysphoria you struggle with is made invisible by its type of dysfunctionality and how it fits within the accepted definition of a psychologically well-adjusted individual within a maladaptive system (by which I mean our environment and economies are not suitable for cultivating the best of humanity).

As unhealthy as your expressions are, their implications exist outside the boundaries of what the psychological sciences deem unhealthy because you seem capable of functioning at a high enough level to adapt to the rigours of your day. In my view and statistically speaking, of the remaining four in five who do not display visible signs of an inability to adapt, three of those four are still victims suffering from degrees of stress that remain invisible to a triage mentality characterizing the state of our species today.

Your wallowing in cynicism is not your fault. You’re a victim of an entirely dysfunctional world. You happen to be smarter than the average bear, making a positive adaptation to a broken world much harder.

If you’re lucky and can make yourself willing and available to receive the cream of humanity, you’ll feel the answer you seek that words alone cannot give you.

Try not to let the bastards wear you down.

Boa Fortuna

Is it okay to be different and not be like everybody else?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Is-it-okay-to-be-different-and-not-be-like-everybody-else/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

Got news for you… you ARE different.

You may think similarly to many others.
You may like similar things.
You may do similar things.
You may believe similar things.
You may be so similar in so many ways that it’s hard to differentiate your identity from the group identity you are affiliated with, but you are different.

You don’t have any choice in the matter because you see through your own eyes, hear through your ears, think with your mind, and have different experiences, even if your experiences are defined by strict adherence to a group protocol.

You are different because no one else can live your life. Your experiences, thoughts, and feelings are irreplaceable, making you a unique and significant individual.

You can share as many details of your life, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and dreams as you want, as much as anyone else is willing to tolerate, but they will never know life through your eyes.

Here is an example of how different individual perspectives are through an issue that went viral about a decade ago. It was a photograph of a dress which, dependent upon the context of one’s biological composition of rods and cones in their eyes, their state of mind, and the lighting in the room at the time of examining this photo, people would see either a black and blue dress or a white and gold dress.

The dress — Wikipedia

Physically, psychologically, geographically, and within the context of your environment, you ARE different. You cannot help but be different.

You should acknowledge and embrace that fact about yourself and the human condition before deciding how much you might want to be like everyone else.

Wanting to be like everyone else is a generally healthy desire to feel like one belongs somewhere, that they have a place in this world, a community, and a family that supports their existence and accepts them for who they are as they are.

Belongingness is a crucial component of a healthy psychology. Belongingness is a fundamental need we all share in different ways.

We have survived and prospered as a species because we are interdependent beings. We rely on our community bonds to achieve our potential. When we work together, we can accomplish miracles through a force multiplier called “synergy.”

To this degree, wanting to be like “everyone else” can be a healthy motivator to fit in with one’s community and explore one’s unique contributions to achieve one’s potential through support from one’s community.

The downside to being “like everyone else” is to subsume one’s identity to the group and lose one’s sense of identity. The negative consequences are many, varied, and often horrifying, as we have been exposed to numerous nightmares arising out of toxic conformism to a group’s identity and mandates.

Ranging from the inculcated fears of communism that hyper-capitalists invoke as their favourite boogeyman of doom to the cyanide-infused Flavour-Aid victims of cult conditioning, we have all been exposed to the inherent danger of toxic conformism.

Human societies and groups have all evolved along a vector resulting from the conflicts we’ve experienced between two oppositional poles in our thinking about which is the preferred option for a social contract — independence versus conformity.

Neither in their pure form is healthy for any society or group.

The major problem with wanting to be like everyone else is that you can’t be like everyone else precisely because you can’t know what everyone is like beyond the superficial characteristics you identify that make them appear similar to your perceptions.

Your unique perspective identifies similarities unique to your viewpoint. All your efforts to be like everyone else are attempts to be what you imagine everyone else in your group is like.

It’s a subjective approximation of what you perceive as reality, not an objective representation. It can’t be because everyone is just as unique as you.

No matter how hard you try to be like everyone else, you will fail because there is no “everyone else” outside the confines of your imagination. You may even associate yourself with large groups where everyone agrees that everyone else is like them. The reality is that they’re just agreeing with themselves and validating their bias with people who validate their own by acknowledging others who express a similar bias.

It’s a rabbit hole of agreement in which the similarities are no more profound than wearing similar clothing.

The worst part of all of the effort to be like what one imagines of everyone else is that one loses sight of one’s own identity, unique nature, unique path in life, and the unique nature of one’s potential contributions to the world.

It’s almost a paradox in which the more solidarity humanity can achieve, the more we all benefit from the synergy of united effort. At the same time, the more homogenized we become as individuals, subsuming ourselves into a group, the more exposed we are to decay and threat by systemic collapse.

As in all things, the answer to your question is that it is much better to consider this:

There is light within dark and dark within light. While acknowledging this, one arrives at the most crucial understanding of the nature of dichotomies: neither one nor the other is superior — or can even exist without the other because they both exist as a dynamic.

In essence, the best way to be okay is by finding a balance between the two that work best for your unique you.

Temet Nosce