Throughout history we have witnessed how the most “high” ideals, when tried to be applied by people, usually result in a disaster worse than what they wanted to “correct.”
Like the concept of unity that ended in fascism and Nazism. Like the attempt to correct human nature through manipulation and force that ended in bloody and “totalitarian” regimes where those who sought to “correct” others exhibited the worst behaviours…etc.
But why?
Is it possible to explore it? Or do we simply have to “resign ourselves” to the fact that nature and people’s impulses are destined to lead us into an “abyss”?
Our learning is largely “assimilation” and “imitation” of the actions we see around us.
A person may not be aware that he is “repeating” forms of behaviour that he saw in his early years and this has determined all of his actions and situations. And you will only become aware if these behaviours begin to cause pain or disappointment. If circumstances change “suddenly” and that makes you “seek” other types of influences.
Our environment “widens” and we can “compare” with a broader circle of actions. It is the process that we could apply to each person and it is also the process of expeditions and globalisation.
A process in which through the search for resources, power, influence, status…etc. a person, a town, a country or a corporation, etc. “widens” their environment of relationships.
And gradually and inadvertently “assimilates” and “justifies” within himself more and more actions.
However, this process of “expanding” our sphere is mostly unconscious, against our will: if a person – or a people or a culture – encounters behaviours or actions to which they are not accustomed, they make a judgment about of it where he places himself “above” it and tries to adapt it to his own forms and “possessions”. The other party usually does the same, there are “victors” and “losers”, “owners” and “subjects”, but these categories are temporary and if we extend ourselves in time, we will see that this “fight” is “expanding” the judgments of both parties until they begin to include each other.
Let’s say that someone with many possessions could judge someone without possessions as “inferior” in initiative, drive, strength and talent…etc. and exploit the “difference” to feel “satisfaction about himself and try to perpetrate the state in which he feels “advantage”…until circumstances that do not depend on him and the calculations of “stronger arms” “tie” his hands and subject him to the same conditions that he “judged” before.
In the same way, someone without many possessions may “judge” resource hoarders as “unconscious,” “blind,” “sadistic,” “deceitful,” and “self-deceptive”…etc., until circumstances place them in a favourable position to accumulate satisfactions for himself, and he verifies in “his own flesh” that he cannot help but act like that which he “despises.”
In the end, we could come to the conclusion that the “peak” of the sensations of satisfaction that all people – consciously or unconsciously – seem to seek, is at the same time “at the bottom” of what we perceive as an “abyss”.
However, it is very different to be “thrown” into the depths of an abyss and begin to explore it – and discover it as the “summit” of possibilities – “out of necessity”, compared to exploring it by our “own will”.
It is equivalent to the difference between moving toward an inevitable goal with a “whip” on the back, or by making our will increasingly “bigger”—indeed more “inclusive”—until it is similar to the goal that all the “creation” has.
“Something” that contains within its attitude all the details, all the possible “actions” that we perceive around us, independent of place and even time.
We know that by seeing the action of a craftsman – say, a wooden table or from some “inanimate” material – we will only “understand” his actions and decisions when building it, by at least trying to build an equal table.
In our case, the material from which our history and our pursuits and objectives are built are thoughts and ideas, opinions, attitudes and the way in which they “incarnate” in people and their actions and above all: the interactions between them.
Therefore, taking history in our hands would mean building within each of us, a willingness to go on our own towards an ever-greater cohesion and justification of all ideas and attitudes and behaviours and stories, within a single “concept “or “idea,” or meaning in practice—as the construction of a table that you can somehow “touch” or “test.”
That is, to go by our will towards the “abyss” of our true attitude towards others, and discover in that “darkness”, all the “illumination” that it actually contains.
That is why concepts like equality, unity, connection, correction…etc. that are usually used in “light” ways such as blackmail, “self-justification”, “narrow judgments towards others”, even to obtain profits and “power” and try to manipulate to “impose” our narrow personal vision…etc. Deep down – or above all those “games” – they are very serious and elevated concepts.
And seriousness and exploring these concepts in depth, will be increasingly necessary.
Snakeeskin 