It is said that people’s claims grow over time. That there are more and more people who believe that “they deserve everything” and have more and more demands and arrogance towards those around them.
It is said that our reactions are no longer “rational” and “values” are lost…
It is also said that we have never really known any other attitude: the very calculation we call “rational” is determined by what a person considers his personal “gain” – everyone considers it “illogical” or senseless to do something without receiving something in return that makes you feel like you “won” something, that means that all people can’t help but being “conceited.”
And is there anything more than that?
Is there any “proof” that there is another type of calculation other than the “rational” profit calculation, present in each and every person?
Of course: you exist. And your way of life is sustained by the existence of a civilisation that would not be possible based on “rational” calculations:
Everything is based and sustained on something that we “deny” it exists in our individual thoughts and actions: accumulations in financial markets are possible because there is a degree of “trust” – automatic and unconscious – of the masses in a series of ” rules”, a certain “shared” will that sustains everything – in exchange for “nothing”. If it was not, each person would simply accumulate in “boxes” or “under their beds” or in “electronic files” papers and amounts that, since they could not be exchanged, would be worth absolutely “nothing.”
It is a “hidden” principle of association “above reason or “logic”” – and what sustains its existence – which in turn sustains all civilisation and the survival of the species – What “rational” gain in money or long-term “respect”, or “power” or etc. in exchange, does a person gives to those who care for him when he is a baby? Our survival in the weakest state is “irrational,” and the survival of humanity as a whole within a system we do not “control” is also “irrational” – a considerable alteration to the surface of the sun could “erase” the earth along with all our pretensions and “dreams” in moments and at any time, just as an example.
But this is “denied” by our everyday attitude and by our feelings of “personal satisfaction” – everything that openly presents this quality, such as rain or sun or ecosystems, or labour and remuneration are taken for granted and only begin to “exist” in our calculations when we feel that they may “disappear”.
Furthermore, this quality above the usual calculations is at the centre and sustains all the rational gains that people pursue and the way in which we pursue them – exclusively for one self and at the expense of others. If that quality is “withdrawn” or “hidden,” all pretence to money, status, power, and recognition “fall away,” lose momentum, and begin to “run out”—as if they had “dried up” the source from which they unconsciously drew “all”.
This is analogous to the way we have exploited natural resources and the threat of their depletion, also the way in which “rationally”, when projecting into the future, we can only “see” a universe that will “cool” and we will not exist…
It is also the process of civilisations and their “rise” and their “fall” or transformation: a civilisation is always based and draws all its forms from an “involuntary” principle of association and its “advance” occurs through all pretensions and persecutions that each person “extracts” from that principle-money, power, territorial expansion, world recognition, discoveries…etc.
Once a civilisation reaches a “limit” in its persecutions, it usually falls into crisis and expels or attempts to eliminate the “representatives” of the quality from which it extracted “everything.” No longer being able to “use” it – and they themselves pursuing the “same” as others– they begin to consider them the culprit of all their dissatisfaction and stagnation.
Today, the entire development of civilisations and human groups has been “added” to a kind of “global civilisation,” which is the result of all the forms that have preceded it and contains all those forms. The majority of the population has access to forms and aspirations and an attitude of “entitlement” that at one time only “medieval princesses” had.
In the not too distant future, we will have an “Egyptian princess” with her corresponding presumptions and self-entitlement in every person on the globe… and we will need to deal with it somehow, since the “growth” of aspirations and attitude of “conceit” they do not stop… they only take “pauses” after an experience that forces them to “slow down” – just like in civilisations that lose wars or territories and realise that they are not what they thought they were…
But the point of this development does not seem to be to point fingers at others and try to “limit” their presumptions “by force.” After all, experience can give someone an “advantage” over another person – or one “people” over another – to be able to “evaluate” them more objectively. But who can assure you that this point of evaluation is not simply “pretence” to a greater degree that at some point will “fall” making you see that you are not what you “thinks you are” either?
And the latter seems to be of the greatest importance. Our development as a civilisation and as a person seems to lead us to the need to be able to evaluate “objectively”…exclusively “ourselves”. It is not something we are unaware of: all “power” games always end in the need to “analyse myself” and my motivations and discover what “that which I am” really is.
Our accumulated experience is reflected in more and more studies that come to the conclusion that people do not know what we are and “see” exclusively what we want to see.
And objectivity can only come from a “calculation” similar to the one that underpins everything. A calculation or thought that does not seem to be within a person, in any of their qualities and aspirations. It is “above” our reasoning and nature.
But it will be increasingly necessary.
Here there is a “place” towards which to direct our ever-increasing arrogance and pretence. Here we have something to “demand” with all the obstinacy and arrogance and “chutzpah” of an “Egyptian princess.”
Snakeeskin 