I was watching a tv series called "The Sandman" about a familial pantheon of godlike figures, and in one scene one of the "gods" is giving a eulogy for her brother and she says:
"To me, he was arrogant, and judgemental and impossible... and he was all of those things... but then, so am I... so are all of you."
Now in this series, that was probably a particularly true statement for the "people" present in the scene, but it struck me as quite true as a general condition of mankind. We tend to believe we are the hero or tragedy of the universe... the main character of life. Whether we ourselves are "judgmental and impossible," we definitely have little trouble finding those things in others. Everyone else "just doesn't understand."
If you're the 1 person who has perfect judgment, the perfect amount of patience and assertiveness, and always takes the appropriate action in all situations, then forgive me, disregard this, and carry on. For everyone else, a healthy dose of introspection now and again is probably warranted.
I don't know if this is a healthy habit but I find it humbling to make a habit of just calling myself (and humanity) a "dumb monkey." When you find yourself being totally dramatic or unreasonable, you are a dumb monkey doing dumb monkey shit. It doesn't mean we should completely give in to our dumb monkeyness... but it means you are just a human, you feel what you feel, you are compelled to have human reactions and behaviors. You are attracted to other dumb monkeys for dumb monkey reasons... you want to eat/drink/smoke/inject things that are bad for you, you get embarrassed, jealous, arrogant... dumb monkey shit.
Instead, we should create a society that enshrines the wisdom we have accumulated into our goals and laws, but also account for the fact that we are fragile and fallible dumb monkeys at times... intractably so.
On top of all of this, we live in a sensationalist society, completely designed for inhuman creatures... evangelizing the "hero's tale" into every piece of media. We preach "might makes right" in every superhero and action movie. We burden our children with the impossible "standards" of Instagram models, and YouTube stuntmen. Ambition is one thing but we often strive to become impossibly weird and inhuman creatures.
We need to stop designing systems for non-humans, we must appreciate it when we excel beyond normal expectations, but also accept our limitations. We must also admit that we are not in continuous homeostasis, we are always in varying degrees of compromise, energetically, physically and mentally. No system will create good outcomes and reduce suffering as long as we rely on ambition instead of data, designed for inhumans.
