when thinking about people, what do they pursue?
wealth, titles, fame, immortality, happiness……
if you look at these things, you see that they are not, not
within us, they are things outside of us…our engagement is
with things outside of our reach…let us say, I am engage in
trying to get a promotion at work, I am pursuing a promotion…
I can’t get that promotion by myself… it is not within me…
a promotion is something outside of me, given to me by others…
I could work until I die and never get that promotion because it
is something that is out of my control…out of my hands…I have seen
good and valuable workers being passed over by management to
the promotion of idiots and bloodsuckers and brownnosers…
why are you pursuing something that is outside of your control?
why pursue something that doesn’t even benefit your life?
you might say, I will make more money if I am promoted… as if money
has some value… it doesn’t have any value…
money has value only, only because we have agreed to that proposition…
it has value because for those in charge…it is a way to control people…
think about it… if you get money, enough to pay for your basic necessities,
food, water, shelter, health care, education… then what is next?
that level, that bottom level of existence is the animal level of existence…
that is what animals do… simply spend the day attempting to gain the basic
levels of existence, food, water, shelter… if that is all we do, then we are nothing
more then animals… it is the next steps that make us human…if we think of
the bottom step of gaining our basic necessities as the beginning step of human
existence, not the primary step of human existence…as in the use of money
in modern society in which money is the one true goal of society… but not the
next steps of the pyramid of Maslow’s… where we must go after we have
gain our basic, bottom step is to the next step of the pyramid which is
safety/security… and that is easy enough for us to achieve… most of
America is fairly safe and secure… the next step is the love/belonging
level…this rises far above the basic bottom step of the pyramid…
to love and be loved is a basic human need… to belong is as strong
a need in humans as food and water is to us…the next step/level is
to have the esteem of friends, family, co-workers… but notice that each
level is needs that lie outside of us…we cannot have safety or love or belonging
inside of us, as traits we give ourselves… those lower levels are given to us by
outside forces, beyond our control…
the only level or stage that lies within us is the top? level and that
is self-actualization… and that stage is for us to become who we are…
to realize our possibilities, our potential for who we are……. that is the first
stage that is truly human and only possible by humans…
the drive is not to gain wealth or get titles or promotions or
second or third houses… no, those are things given to us by outside
forces… the only true path to becoming human is to seek out the
higher level, the self actualization level…and we humans, we dick around
with the small, insignificant matters of pursuing money and titles and
promotions that can never offer us anything of value or of worth…
we dick around with matters that are unimportant…
instead of an engagement with who we are and what is possible for us…
I try to engage with being moral every day… at work, I handle
hundreds of dollars a day, if not thousands of dollars…
people quite often hand me more money then they should
and I promptly give the money back… not because I might be fired
or punished, but because it is the right thing to do… it is the moral thing…
it isn’t my money…I don’t take what isn’t mine…that is doing the moral thing,
doing the right things lies within me… it isn’t outside of me, it is me…
and I can control that… and I choose to engage with the values of honesty
and integrity as values to live by… to become my values… not because
anybody expects me to, but because it is a clear choice I can make, I can
pursue these values and feel pretty good about myself… I am making choices
based on my possibilities…based upon what I want to become… not just
another animal/human, but to become fully human and pursue values
that lie beyond just an engagement with seeking the basic needs of human
existence… something animals do… I am rising above animals by
making choices about who I am, by the striving to reach the last level of engagement
of self actualization… that is the important thing… to reach the last
level of our human possibilities, not to sink to the level of animals and
engage with seeking the lowest level of human possibilities of seeking
food, water, shelter, health care… but by reaching for that which is
above me…
the human existence, the path of human beings as gone from animal
to animal/human and we must make the next step to rise above
animal/human become fully human…
what have you done today to rise to being fully human?
Kropotkin