The “Human” Stage

When Pink Floyd said, “I was just a child then, now I’m only a man,” they were hinting that we tend to dismiss our failings by minimizing our capacities. Being the idealistic fool that I am, it disturbs me when bad behavior gets written off as “merely human,” especially when the one doing the “writing off” is also the one who has behaved badly. Even when motivated by more “altruistic” concerns, I’m still disturbed that we demand so little from ourselves and each other. And no matter how good we’ve become at settling for less, I have to ask: How has our trying to cheat our way through worked out for us?

An unfortunate fact of reality is that our abilities to conceal, ignore, pretend, and steal help out a lot when dealing with those who would do us harm. And I’ll bet that those same abilities were very useful in all of those hostile environments that our species have had to evolve through. But another unfortunate fact is that those same abilities have also been the root cause of all human conflict. And while we may still face many “natural threats,” the most undeniable fact of all is that, in today’s world, we are our own worst enemy.

As I said in my article, It’s Nature’s Way Of Telling You Something’s Wrong:

But the laws of God or Science (your choice) use volcanism and weather to maintain the Earth’s energy balance. They also use famine and disease to maintain the Earth’s wildlife population balance. And despite our apparent belief that mankind is above the law, those same forces provide the means to keep us in check as well.

It’s called War….

The fact that we have such a knack for behaving badly, combined with that behavior having been so instrumental in getting us to where we are, might lead some to think that we’re locked into a fatal “Catch-22″ that will inevitably result in our destruction. I have to admit that I swing back and forth between excepting that we truly are fated to destroy ourselves, and what I’m afraid is a hopelessly idealistic faith that we can work things out. Considering the epic numbers of prescriptions being written for depression and other anxiety related illnesses, I think that I have more than a little company in that regard.

In a comment thread on What side of your Brian do you use?, I said (talking about yoga):

Building up my strength, balance and flexibility sounds good. Maybe it’ll ease my mind from thoughts like “Peace from the type of troubles we have is going to require another step in our evolution.”

Could it be that we must grow beyond the “Human” stage in our evolution in order to survive yet another great threat to our existence? We’ve done it before. Can we do so again quickly enough to avoid extinction?

Perhaps it’s as they say, “Timing is everything.” What do you think?

I want ice water.

Tolerance... Not! Perfection

Because I had a tendency to hold up the process of testing and quality control on my job, my supervisor once remarked that, "if we waited for every system to be perfect, we’d never ship anything." I had to agree that he was right, but that doesn’t mean that I was ever comfortable with that idea. In fact, I later became the company’s technical writer mostly because the engineers were never able to design our products so that it was obvious how to operate them.

I’ve had such a problem dealing with the ramifications of my perfectionism - if you only knew the massive amounts of time I have spent just writing and editing these articles - that I think a look at the subject of human perfection is in order. As for the attitude that most people seem to take towards people like me, I think Pink Floyd’s song Not Now John is a fair representation:

"Fuck all that we’ve got to get on with these
Got to compete with the wily Japanese
There’s too many home fires burning and not enough trees
So fuck all that we’ve got to get on with these...

Not now John we’ve got to get on with the film show
Hollywood waits at the end of the rainbow
Who cares what it’s about as long as the kids go
So not now John we’ve got to get on with the show..."

Even those who aren’t so callous in their views on getting things done, most of whom owe their ’gentleness’ of attitude to a religious upbringing, think that it’s ’sinful’ somehow for a human to strive for perfection in the things he does or in his life in general. While I completely agree that things must get done and products must be shipped, I have a problem when it comes to avoiding the idea of human perfection altogether. How else do we continue to move up the evolutionary ladder?

I realize that some will object to my reference to evolution, but I made that reference specifically because of the fundamental conflict that exists between the various views on how we got where we are and how we will survive and move forward in the future. I have to wonder if those amidst this raging debate have ever considered that, regardless whether one thinks we got here through divine action or random happenstance, we absolutely need something better than the our interpretations of the past to guide us into the future.

Perhaps a start on that can be achieved through a good definition of just what a 'perfect human' would be. My personal view is that, since absolute perfection is impossible for beings who don’t possess the power of omniscience, human perfection is better thought of as a road on which those who strive for perfection must travel. And while the occasional detour is to be expected - after all, trial and error is a fundamental part of the learning process - striving to stay on the road is absolutely essential.

Those who would treat as weird those of us who tend towards obsession when it comes to getting things right should remember that all of those people in history that we hold up as examples of human greatness were considered weird for their obsessive behaviors as well. While I may never be considered qualified to stand amongst those great people, I have no doubt that they were just as disgusted as I now am at the way creative people are treated.

After all, if more people considered it their duty to travel down the road to perfection, then perhaps the rest of us wouldn’t have to be so obsessive about our own pursuits. If nothing else, we wouldn’t be such a rarity that we seem weird by comparison.

I want ice water.