The Start Of Another Day: Chapter II
By A.H.Z
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CHAPTER II: Understanding
Even though I almost never agree with my parents, I often do understand the reasoning behind their actions. Before going any further into this chapter, I’d like to clarify where I stand first: I believe that right and wrong are subjective terms. In my opinion, those terms are in reality a human concept made to assure our species’ survival in a social structure, and are by no means absolute. I also believe that there is no real distinction between the so-called “bad” people and “good” people, “bad” people are viewed in a negative manner simply because their behaviors and actions harm others and aren’t helpful to society overall, the reason why we tend to harbor resentment for them is because we have developed instincts that incite us to stay away from the people that harm us. I am sure that most of you have been in a situation where you blamed someone for doing something “wrong” only to then discover that the story had other layers that you were not aware of, by delving into this deeper I came to realize that you can never really judge people simply because you can never know the entirety of the circumstances surrounding a situation, you’ll never know the true state of mind of the people involved in it, therefore you cannot objectively point fingers and say “he/she is wrong “ since in my opinion, you can never judge someone for something he has little to no control over fundamentally. How do people become “bad” people? How are we any different from them? Many people believe that humans willingly choose their actions and the way they behave overall but I disagree, how I see it, what affects our personality is the multitude of circumstances and factors that influence us(no human is a neutral entity that doesn’t interact with its surroundings), in addition to other genetic factors ,such as having a tendency to get angry hastily or being naturally very logical and understanding; many people will argue that it is us that we make the choice to change, but the fact that you made the choice to change in the first place means that you have been influenced by something to want to make that change a reality, whether it is a person, a situation or even something as simple as an observation can change a person’s opinions and his views on life significantly. All of this relates to the Chaos Theory which can be explained through the all too famous butterfly effect: the butterfly effect was named that way due to an observation made by scientists that affirms a possible causation relationship between something as puny as a butterfly wing flap, and hurricanes in the other side of the world, however, the butterfly effect was only meant to be used as an example to understand the chaos theory, a more concrete and relatable example could be the following: imagine yourself walking down the street, when you are suddenly distracted by a cat sitting in a nearby porch, while looking at that cat you fail to notice the truck taking a turn at the cross-roads that you’re about to set your foot in, and thus leading to an accident that leaves you paralyzed for the rest of your life, which then leads you to spend more time at home and to discover that you are a talented artist which –after a while- grants you many awards and recognition from an arts organization. This might seem very situational, however situations like these occur on a daily basis, -although admittedly with less grave results- try to remember every time a seemingly insignificant detail changed your life in a grandiose way and you will be able to realize how much events are connected in our lives, one event leads to another in an endless chain reaction that leads to significant changes, that is what we call the Domino Effect. This is one of the reasons why predicting the weather isn’t always accurate, since if you fail to take into consideration all the factors that influence your initial state, you cannot be certain of the end result, especially when you take into account that a simple gust of wind might render your calculations utterly useless. The same can be said about human beings, for example, I only started researching the university I am currently enrolled in because of a random conversation with my sister, which eventually led me to being enrolled in this university that I am in. That is to say that if that discussion never occurred I would have probably never set foot in this establishment .Some of you might be wondering how this connects to what I stated earlier, and the answer to that is the following conclusion: people often underestimate how much they are being influenced by external factors, and human beings themselves aren’t very self-conscious by nature, and are naturally inclined to make decisions based on what they prefer, as an example, let’s say that a certain person loves someone, he doesn’t want them to get hurt and wants them to be happy. In reality that is because them being happy implies that he would be happy as well, some of you might argue that many times people do things that do not necessarily appeal to them, and to that I reply that if someone helps someone else by doing something he dislikes, it is only in order to avoid an undesirable consequence, such as losing an advantage or benefit, or he does it simply to avoid being disliked by that person. In the end, the deep reasoning behind our actions is very much self-centered, even if we aren’t aware of it.
What originally influenced me to think that humans aren’t very conscious by nature was Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave, where he states that if people spent their entire lives chained in a dark cave where they can only see the shadows of the objects outside of the cave, they would believe that shadows are the only beings on the outside, that is until one day when one of them manages to escape into the outside world, where afterwards, he goes back into the cave telling the others what he saw. Of course, they refuse to believe him and still insist that the world is made out of shadows, simply because that is what they believed in their entire lives. As humans we have to adapt to our surrounding, which sometimes comes at the cost of our consciousness and awareness, as we see here, these people were born in the cave and grew up in it, so they had to accept their reality and form their beliefs about the world surrounding them.
Coming back to our topic of “good” and “bad”, I would like to add that even if people with genetic tendencies to be “bad” try their best to be “good” because they were affected by a certain factor, I would personally consider that a superficial change; first and foremost, ”good” and “bad” are highly subjective, even if there is a general consensus on what is considered “good”, it tends to differ from culture to culture, and more importantly, from person to person, as for the reason why I think that is a somewhat superficial change, it is because they will have to repress their emotions and urges and basically become someone other than themselves in order to appeal to society rather than being themselves and changing the aspects of their personalities that cause them the most harm, all the while not repressing their feelings too much. In reality, the part of us that we can change willingly (even though we are still being influenced to a certain degree) is our conscious self, our subconscious self rarely changes because we want it to. Take for example the difference between these two people: John and Bryan are both sore losers, however, the difference between them is that John voices his thoughts every time he loses and starts complaining and insulting whoever it is that is playing with him, Bryan on the other hand, does not say anything and tries his best to suppress his feelings while congratulating the other team, but deep down, he feels the same amount of anger and frustration that John feels. They both are fully aware that going into a fit of anger because they lost a game is very childish in everyone else’s eyes, but the ways they handle their anger differ quite a bit. Now imagine if John and Bryan were “bad” people and if they handled their emotions in the same way they did in the last example, life would be very hard for Bryan, trying to please everyone around him while suppressing his own feelings to make everyone around him happy which would then lead to him being unhappy and unsatisfied with his own life for the sake of other people even though he is getting what he wants, which is pleasing people of course. This leads us to the conclusion that not all people can or need to be “good” people , I believe that the world we live in was meant to have “bad” people in it as a balance mechanism, this might sound strange at first glance but the more you think about it the more reasonable it would seem. I have always wondered why killers exist in our world, I came up with an answer that will not convince everyone but it is an answer nonetheless: I think killers are a sort of balance mechanism in our world that will unfortunately not cease to be, killers exist for the sole purpose of limiting the number of human beings existing on this planet, of course, they aren’t aware of it since the only reason why they start killing in the first place is either because they have been traumatized at one point in their lives or they were genetically inclined to do such acts(natural born killers), most of the time it is a combination of both. Cesare Lombroso was an Italian legal doctor that wrote a multitude of essays regarding the types of criminals that exist, he believes that there are three types of criminals besides the “naturally born” criminal which are: occasional criminals that do criminal acts under certain circumstances, criminals by passion that only show signs of being criminal once they get emotional, and the “moral imbeciles” that simply have a very weak sense of justice and morality. This classification can be further simplified in my opinion to only three types of criminals as I said earlier, the naturally born criminal (or the one influenced by genetic factors), the influenced criminal (the one that is influenced by a multitude of circumstances) and the criminal that is a naturally born criminal to a certain degree in addition to being influenced by a set of factors. Cesar Lombroso also mentions multiple times that criminals are physically identifiable and that they have a certain cognitive similarity with certain primates, these are both points I do not personally agree with, but feel free to research Lombroso’s work and form your own opinions about them.
All these points considered this is not to say that we should feel empathy nor change our course of actions towards these “bad” people, since sometimes in doing so, we might harm ourselves and our society, and all things considered, there is a reason why their treatment is different after all. Most people would agree that we shouldn’t set all prisoners free because they technically were influenced by external factors, however, this dilemma is what pushes humanity to search for better alternatives to deal with them, such as therapy for certain criminals, even if it still isn’t a very reliable way to deal with criminals, with further progress there might be new, more beneficial ways to deal with criminals where instead of only locking them up -which is less effective long term compared to therapy-, we look for ways to treat the causes behind these behaviors, though I firmly believe that there is no ideal method that turns every single criminal into a law abiding citizen. The same could be said about those who seem like “bad people” in your opinion, even though you should try to understand them and not judge them or resent them, you should most certainly not get involved with them, especially the toxic kind. When I refer to someone as a toxic person he/she generally meets the following criteria: he or she is a person that fails to solve his or her own problems alone and tries to push them unto other people or blames other people for his own inability to make a change, it is also the type of person that constantly talks about how dissatisfied he is with certain things, this is something that I will delve deeper into in the later chapters, but as you should know, this term is not void of subjectivity and this definition isn’t absolute.
The final point that should be addressed in this chapter is a crucial one: it is about how misunderstandings often occur. Misunderstanding generally happen when someone assumes something about the other person without confirming that information from what he considers to be a reliable source, this happens for many reasons; the most notable one is being under the influence of emotions such as anger or sadness. This –more often than not- leads to many unnecessary conflicts that might compromise your relationships with people, therefore it is imperative for every individual in my opinion, to identify when they are not in a state that allows them to judge, and to refrain from being too judgmental when it comes to the people around him. Although you might not realize it, you are put into situations where you misunderstand others a lot more than you think you are; giving people the benefit of the doubt has proven to be a very fruitful decision for me at least. I believe that learning to identify when you are about to make a “false” judgement about someone is the optimal way of resolving a misunderstanding that almost happened on your part. Another way to deal with misunderstandings is healthy communication, however, it is a very risky approach if you aren’t in a state of mind that allows you to choose your words carefully; if you think that someone misunderstood your intentions then communication is the only way out of a possible argument besides resigning yourself to not clarify the misunderstanding, which is a reliable option if the person in question does not want to resolve it, and instead is actively insisting on staying on bad terms with you, in that case, you should not feel obliged to justify your actions to anyone; your goal in clearing this misunderstanding is keeping a healthy relationship between you and other people, not clinging to them nor looking for their approval and acceptance, if someone choses to view you in a negative light, you should accept it and move on without regret, especially if this misunderstanding starts to weigh down on you, after all, not all people are meant to stay together, or at least that's how I always saw it.
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