The Illusion of Happiness: How Moral Law Separates the Human from Humanity
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This is the sad reality of human happiness. We expect it to appear without work, because we've never been happy and worked at the same time. We speak of happiness as if we know what it is, without questioning when and why we felt it before. Worst of all, we assume that it happens to us, not within us. An old love letter does not physically transfer some form of energy into my body that makes me feel emotional, that feeling comes from within. If it wasn't the case you could hide the letter in the room without my knowledge and it would affect me as if it were mental kryptonite. We are right to pursue happiness within ourselves, because it is there and can exist without external force, but first we must examine what makes a human happy. Even before that, we must attempt to understand what makes us human, and how society, culture, and law have removed or hidden our natural balance with the world.
If an honest man were asked why he was unhappy, it would sound something like this:
I want to be happy, and I acknowledge that I could be happy, only if something in my environment would change that could allow me to feel better about the way another person might perceive me. To secure my own happiness would mean I would have to make a choice independent of external thought and pressure, which I have already subconsciously allowed to be the most powerful influence on my personal development. Bypassing outside thought could result in finding a unique, personal happiness that many others could not share with me. The contradiction of acknowledging the happiness, while assuming I would also feel alone, will be discarded because I know what it feels like to be alone, and I certainly couldn't be happy by myself. The weight of happiness has already dragged me down and I haven't even made my decision. The actual choice could only be more of a burden so it's probably best that I don't think about this anymore. I also admit that I have no idea what could actually make me happy, because identifying a source would only show a way to resolve my goal, not to fulfill it. And since I'm not happy I probably don't have any of the things I may find, and that would just make me feel worse. At this point I should just hope that I can hang on to what I have, so that no one can steal it from me. I know people are always trying to take things from others, so when I see people who aren't like me, losing their minds and lives, I won't bother because I should just be glad it wasn't me. In fact, I should do whatever I can to get on the side of those who are taking from others. Surely I could find a quiet space among them where my misdeeds would go unnoticed while protecting my possessions. I think I could be happy if I was more like those men. They take so much, they must have an enormous space to fill. Maybe they'll take me next.
"Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values." --Ayn Rand
What does it mean to be human? Each of us is a conscious collection of matter that is composed of water, drinks water, cleans in water, plays in water, lives on a planet mostly covered in water, and lives on the land. To the outside observer this may seem contradictory, until they realize we can't breathe in water. The more men distance themselves from humanity the more we become outside observers of our self. This behavior is even more magnified when men attempt to create law and organization based on a similar perspective, coupled with a misunderstanding of the real world.
"Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve." -- Erich Fromm
One of governments main duties is to protect the people it serves. This protection has extended to guard each individual from themselves, and has violated each humans basic right to freedom and self sufficiency. We made clothes for warmth and protection, but if you choose to show your natural skin, to physically be only yourself, you can be charged with a crime. I understand that the law is aimed at people sexually harassing others, but a very small portion of the population has made natural skin in public illegal. There are other societies where men and women wear very little to no clothing (climate being a large factor), and they have no need for these laws because of their perception. Cultural indoctrination and public perception have guided us to feel embarrassed, or even disgusted, with our natural bodies. We choose to react that way, as involuntary as it may feel, when we choose not to identify the basis of our reactions. You have to search for what is pre-programmed within you to identify what life and belief have shown you.
I'm not advocating everyone run around naked to embrace their humanity, but rather would like to highlight an outside perspective on how our cultural and moral views cross into laws which are designed to limit our natural tendencies. We are taught that our bodies and natural tendencies are vile and immoral. Men are born as good as they are born evil, but we have chosen to highlight and prevent the negative, instead of promoting and praising the positive. We spoke of heaven but preached of hell.
"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." --Ayn Rand
Does the fear of consequence motivate us to do well for ourselves and others? Self awareness and consciousness have allowed us the opportunity to selectively eliminate or promote specific instincts, thoughts, or emotions? Is it, in a sense, a higher form of evolution? People who commit crimes are removed from society by placing four walls around them. The time spent in prison is also time removed from the gene pool. I'm not sure how that actually affects their offspring production compared to non-criminals, but they are removed either way. Should man genetically and morally protect itself? What if the protection limits their happiness, security, or freedom? Does the protection only amplify the perception of the unwanted behavior?
Let's look at some more examples of limits on the natural world. There is a plant which is illegal to burn and inhale, because it changes your perception of consciousness, despite being non-addictive and non-lethal. There is another plant which you can legally add harmful chemicals to, burn, inhale, experience a perception change, get addicted to, and someday die as a result of the practice. I don't promote the use of either plant, but I also don't think any human should be told what they can and can't naturally do to themselves. This is a great example of how commercial and cultural issues are behind the laws. The legal plant, tobacco, was an economic powerhouse and valued by the upper class. The illegal plant, marijuana, was not regulated, and popular with minorities and the lower class. The justification for the discrepancy centers on the government protecting the citizens from themselves. Each human should be responsible for their own protection, and if they chose, their self destruction. No man should be forced sacrifice his freedom so that another does not hurt himself.
“A drug is neither moral nor immoral -- it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary license to act like an asshole.” -- Frank Zappa
Humans have identified words which are not allowed to be spoken at certain times or places, by law, and are otherwise considered socially negative. Each word is merely a collection of sounds which symbolically represent our thoughts and emotions. Speech is produced by using air pressure from our lungs to release energy as sound. Next time you are with a bunch of friends really listen to them laugh. Listen as though it's a word you have heard spoken repeatedly, to the extent that the sound itself feels unfamiliar. You have to lose touch with the perception of humor and what the laugh communicates. It is an odd moment the first time you truly hear people laugh. We cackle and call, perhaps thrusting ourselves over or searching for breath. In that moment we are as every other animal howling in the forest, a free man. We can then realize that many things we do are animal and free. We have only succeeded in adding layers of symbolism to our behavior. Where does it take us if laws are created, or people choose societies that block the expression of emotion and thought? A curse word is a collection of sounds that refer to ideas, practices, or thoughts that society deems immoral or destructive. If a frustrated child in class yells "fuck" instead of "chair" does it actually make it any worse? Is the child being punished because the use of the curse word implies he meant to offend others? Is the child not allowed to express the level of emotion that fuck implies, and by using the word chair, he could compromise by holding the emotional difference between the words fuck and chair, while communicating a more pacified message? In this example, we have to gauge the distance between what the use of the word expressed, and what we assumed it meant. The perception of intention is too often substituted with mind reading.
"Fear is the mother of morality" -- Friedrich Nietzsche
We have begun to prematurely strike against ourselves... to prevent us from striking first. Wait, what did I just say? We think in terms that would create something bad so we could be labeled good. And when worrying about opposing ideas in our personal space isn't enough, we try to widen the distance between us and our fears. The issue of gay marriage is an example of this. A large part of the opposition is based on fear, because they need a theoretical distance between them and the thought of gays being married, somewhere, anywhere, especially if it's near them. The reality is there is no logical reason to care if it does not affect the reality of your every day life. Who is one man or group of men to take rights from one while giving them to another? If you cannot deal with the thought of non physically threatening ideas being practiced near you then you live on the wrong planet. The intention to create a more perfect world only destroys any uniqueness or expression by making 'average' or 'normal' the only choice. Societal or human perfection could only occur if every person was identical, so that no individual could be greater or worse than another. Moral law effectively punishes cultural and perceptual human change while promoting our growing sensitivity.
Our current practice of moral and cultural legal influence has directly divided portions of the population into levels of allowed humanity. The reasoning is based on intangible, symbolic interpretations of various communicative, and other basic human behaviors. We are caught in a system that preaches one way streets and good versus bad, and if that's all you've been taught, how would you know otherwise? The problem is our perceived system of education. A nationalized collection of copy machines. We are taught how to eat from their hand but not to hunt with our own. We create a society of individuals who are unaware of their ability to self sustain. The wonders of technology have allowed us to continually distance ourselves from the things that make us human. Our education has cornered us into specialization, and each of us are saddled with a narrow strip of intellectual land that could not support our hunger. They say that the specialization is a consequence, or rather, a privilege of an advanced society. It is a weakness, a series of cracks and faults that will crumble when the supporting infrastructure, which allows the specialization, has fallen. If nuclear wars, an asteroid, or some large scale disaster were to impact the world, the civilizations that would survive are the same ones technology laughs at. The tribes, the "native" people, the animals hiding in the jungle, oblivious to the world around them, will continue to inherit this earth because they are the only ones who have come to a balance with it as natural humans.
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." -- Albert Einstein
Technology is great, don't get me wrong, you wouldn't be reading me without it. What I worry is that we will lose touch with our sense of humanity if we continue to substitute creation for discovery. Technology does not make us any better, it makes other things easier. We are not the clothes we wear, humans wore animal skin and fabrics for thousands of years before mass production came along. We eat steaks like cavemen who surrounded themselves with ornaments they deemed valuable. We still live in houses built of sticks and stones. Man's ability to manipulate his environment has inspired the illusion that walking through a door changes the room he enters. We continually surround ourselves with physical creations to narrowly define a personality we never thought to change. "If I own this thing I will be this kind of person." "If I lie and others think this about me then I will be like that."
As a society, we have given up personal responsibility for government protection. Traded personal freedom for collective security. We fear ourselves more than anything on this world. How can any species survive or prosper when a mirror is our largest obstacle? Only when we learn to understand what it means to be a human, will we find what makes us happy.
“If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own . . . how much kinder, how much gentler he would be.” -- William Allen White
-- Joseph Aguirre, 1/14/08
[If you have come this far I would greatly appreciate any comments, suggestions, or ideas you have. This is a work in progress and still needs more direction. Thank you for taking the time to read what I've written, it means more than I could express.]
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