I've been told that I'm one of those people who's good at formulating and articulating complex ideas. I attribute this largely to writing and wanting to be creative; art in all its forms is about trying to express an idea, and the more practiced you are at a medium, the better you get at conveying what you want to say. I'm also one of those assholes who's great at giving advice but can't seem follow any of it myself (I do try . . .) but regardless, I feel like I've developed a good sense of understanding people.
The more you understand the world and the individuals in it, the more sense life tends to make. And while it's hard to boil down the complexity of the unique individual experience on this earth into a blog post, there are certain fundamental notions I've pulled from various experiences over the years that have given me - what I believe - tools to better understand the human condition, and thus give a better understanding of who people are and why we think and act the way we do.
If you'll permit me a moment of your time, I'd like to share some of those notions with you in no particular order.
PEOPLE GENERALLY DO EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT
Before I get into the nitty-gritty of human psychology, take a second and visit this link here. I'm mainly posting it because I want to give credit where it's due, and this is the only article I can distinctly remember that was a direct influence for what I'm about to say.
If you didn't click the link (shame on you) I'll try to summarize: it's an article on Cracked.com by author David Wong, who proposes a game to understand whether you're a filthy liar to yourself. He asks you to write a list of your top five priorities, followed by a list of the top five things you did yesterday in order of how much time you dedicated to them. If the two lists don't sync up, then you're not being honest with yourself. If you say that following your faith is important but you only begrudgingly go to church an hour a week, it's clearly not your top priority and probably shouldn't be on that list. If you say spending time with your kids is important, but you spent more time watching Netflix last night than you did playing with them, what was actually more important to you?
All of this to say that generally people will often talk about the things they would like, but actually put time into the things that they genuinely want (and aren't always honest about what those things are). We might say that we want to be fit and exercise regularly, but will take any excuse not to. We may complain endlessly about how we hate the job we're in, but if we're not taking steps to remedy that, then clearly the security of working a shitty job is more important than taking the chance of pursuing something more meaningful. We grow up with an ideal of what we should be doing with our lives, and feel if we can't achieve those aims then we've done something wrong. In my experience, the majority of people have the time and resources to pursue the goals they claim are important to them, but simply aren't honest enough to admit that in actuality those goals aren't their top priority.
To put it in personal context, I enjoy writing and playing music. Someday, I'd love to make a living as a writer, but right now I'm content with just writing stories and not pursuing publishing them. That priority might change in the future, but for the time being I accept that publishing isn't as high a priority as actually writing. Likewise, I play music in a band with my best friend. We don't play as much as we used to and don't write any original songs anymore, and while we sometimes talk about "what might have been" if we'd put more effort into it, we acknowledge that we have no one to blame but ourselves for not being rock stars. We also acknowledge that "blame" isn't a negative word in this scenario, but rather an admission that our success as musicians is entirely dictated by our own efforts, and that we've gained enough satisfaction already not to pursue it beyond what we've already achieved.
The next time you think about how much you want something, ask yourself if you've done everything in your power to achieve it (and of course I'm not talking about breaking the law or hurting anyone - don't be a dick). If you haven't, then ask yourself if that thing is truly important to you.
WE HAVE UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS OF OUR FUTURE SELVES
The human race is unique as a species in that we're the only one on this planet that are cognitively aware of our own existence (except for maybe dolphins, because dolphins are smart as fuck). We're the only species that knows we exist in a place in time, and that in the future we will exist in another place and time. Other animals are only concerned with survival in the here and now, which is why you've never seen your dog listening to Linkin Park and asking "What's the point of it all?" If your dog could talk it'd probably say "What do you mean 'what's the point of it all?' I'm alive, motherfucker! Isn't it amazing that I'm alive?!"
Which is why dogs make better friends than people sometimes.
Anyway, my point is that people are still evolving out of the primordial ooze, and one of the pitfalls that comes with our recent cognitive capabilities is the habit of projecting unrealistic expectations on future versions of ourselves. It's why we say "I'll start my new diet on Monday" and then Monday comes and we're no less motivated to start. Why would Present You worry about starting your diet right now? That's Future You's problem! We live our lives under the assumption that a future version of ourself will somehow be more capable then our present version. What we often fail to recognize is that Future You and Present You are more or less the same person; you're not going to magically gain more motivation or discipline.
It's why I get nervous whenever I see someone in a bad relationship say "I can change!" It's placing an empty promise on a hypothetical future scenario. It's more or less saying "Don't judge me for being an asshole now, just believe that I'll somehow not be an asshole later." People who wish to enact change in their lives don't talk about doing it, they actually do it. Saying that you'll do something in the future is taking a gamble on whether or not a magical interim event will cause a radical shift in your psyche between now and then. With this in mind, you learn to trust facts and history rather than hope for the best, like when Honey Nut Cheerios say they "might help" lower cholesterol - empty promises all around.
Displacing agency from a present version of yourself onto a hypothetical "other" version removes the responsibility for immediate change. Everyone does it, and most of the time, we do it to ourselves.
EVERYONE HAS THE SAME FEAR
Fear is the great binding force for all humanity. It unites us in so many things, and to boil it down to its simplest element, there is one universal fear that almost everyone the whole world over shares.
We fear the unknown.
And this makes sense. We fear things that are different from what we're familiar with because we don't understand what they are and how they might affect us. It's why when we were all primitive apes we were cautious about approaching that massive cat with sharp fangs, or drinking from that unfamiliar watering hole. Those things might eat or poison us, so we grew this collective fear of the unknown as a defense mechanism. Unfortunately, that mechanism has evolved with us and manifested in unforeseen ways.
Our cognitive evolution has gifted us with a brain that can think beyond the capacity of our primitive ancestors, and yet is still locked in the same "fear the unknown" mindset that informed day-to-day survival millions of years ago. When confronted with the unknown in our day-to-day life, our first reaction is almost an immediate threat analysis of "What is this thing and what will it do to me?" And when we cannot obtain those answers, we freak the fuck out. Not knowing the parameters of a potentially threatening situation can be terrifying; it's what Batman bases his whole goddamn philosophy for beating up criminals on.
And it exists at large in society too. Religion is a response to the fear of our own mortality, because it gives an understanding and explanation for what happens to us when we die; staring into the abyss is terrifying, but being told on the other side is a compassionate and loving deity makes the abyss a little less scary.
The root of racism and sexism is a fundamental fear and misunderstanding of one demographic by another. Protests of non-segregated schools didn't occur out of genuine hatred; they occurred because people didn't know how the introduction of another ethnicity would threaten their current, comfortable existence. It's why the predominant mentality against feminism isn't "I'm scared about what women might gain" but rather "I'm scared of what men might lose." And while homosexuality is becoming widely accepted now that people realize it's not some kind of threat to established societal institutions, there's still misunderstanding over bisexuality and transsexualism because there's still a general lack of knowledge in the public consciousness, which fuels caution and ignorance and elicits responses such as "bisexuality is just a phase" and "deep down, you're still a guy, right?"
Most people fear what they don't understand, and in my experience, emotions like hate or love can be the result of a fear over something else. "I hate that person who did better than me on a test . . . because I'm afraid I might not be the smartest anymore" and "I can't imagine living without my girlfriend . . . because I'm terrified of being alone" are scenarios we witness everyday.
WE'RE TERRIFIED OF BEING THE BAD GUYS
People love narratives. Storytelling is an ancient art, and it's our natural tendency to consume it because it's how we learn about life and the world, whether it's learning right from wrong through the stories of the Bible or Grimm's Fairy Tales. Storytelling is a multi-billion dollar industry whether it be books, films, comics, the news, or anything in between. It's a natural tendency to associate with relate-able characters and follow a protagonist through to a satisfactory conclusion, which is why we always feel a bit conflicted about rooting for villains or when good guys don't win.
In the context of our greater understanding of life, we think of ourselves as the hero in our own narrative. One thing we also share, however, is a fear of being the villain.
According to statistics, 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted. If you work in a public environment, look around, but don't look at the women, look at the men. In order for that statistic to be true, there have to be a lot of perpetrators, which means more than a few of the men you work with and see everyday are probably guilty, and some of them might be your friends or maybe even you. If you were to ask, however, I doubt anyone would honestly admit that they've ever sexually assaulted anyone. That means that there are two possibilities: either women have greatly exaggerated their stories of assault (and if you believe that, then you can fuck right off to an M.R.A. website) or the more likely scenario, that most men don't believe they've done anything wrong.
And that, dear readers, is the biggest obstacle to all advocacy.
No one wants to think or admit that they may be responsible for having done something wrong, whether its trying to convince yourself that at least YOU are not a racist after reading about a celebrity getting caught saying a racial slur even though you've probably said much worse (you just didn't get caught) or a college kid trying to convince himself he's not a rapist because he simply "misread" the signals a female friend was giving him before she passed out. Admitting that you've done something wrong - especially if doing so comes with a title that will forever haunt you such as "racist" or "rapist" - is practically a death sentence in polite society.
People will defend themselves to the death if it means never having to acknowledge a problem in a system they're comfortable with. It's why male gamers will scream about how sexism doesn't exist in gaming instead of admitting that their all-boys club has been exclusive for far too long; it's why white people will say racism isn't an issue anymore instead of admitting that their comfortable existence has come at the cost of repressing another ethnicity. It's why advocates will always have an uphill battle, because they often have to convince the general public that a problem exists, and they're the problem. People immediately get defensive when they feel they've been accused of something, regardless of whether they've actually done something wrong, which is why you can't throw around the term "white-privilege" without someone immediately yelling "but my family never owned slaves!"
And that's not to say that people on the other side of the fence are without fault too. I've encountered militant-advocats who are so staunchly entrenched in the notion that they are crusading on the side of the good and just that they resort to the same underhanded tactics and negative actions that they are supposed to be campaigning against. Everyone wants to be right, and the easiest way to assure yourself that you're righteous is to vilify your opposition, which is also the direct root of victim blaming.
Our minds are locked into very rigid constraints for what we think is socially acceptable, and rather than admit fault or acknowledge that we should change, we make excuses, hurl insults, or play mental gymnastics to convince ourselves we're in the right.
A FINAL THOUGHT . . .
These are some of the broader notions I've come to realize when trying to understand how people generally behave and operate. It's a lot easier to comprehend why someone behaves a certain way when you try to fully understand their motivations, priorities, and fears.
Have you ever had a friend who constantly talks about wanting to exercise, but when you show up to take them to the gym, they make any excuse not to? Ask yourself what their real priorities are. Have you ever met someone who makes a bad decision and excuses it by saying "I'm just a bad person"? Ask them whether they truly believe that or if they just want an excuse not to change their behaviour because that's the much tougher course of action.
Just don't take it too far and assume you know someone better than they know themselves and therefore think you know what's best for them, because in spite of everything you've just read, we very rarely can truly understand absolutely everything about another person. Unless you know someone's entire history - all their thoughts, feelings, and the extent of their goals and dreams - the only real life you have full authority over is your own.
We're all still human at the end of the day, however, and a lot of our behaviours and ways of thinking come from the same biological mould.
We're all unique snowflakes, but we're still all made of snow.
