RE: The Human Being is Like a Novel
You write very well, and thanks for the good read! My tag line for many years now has been "Stop playing or watching the part of a hero, and be one instead."
Setting aside the fact that I believe we are surrounded by NPC's (Non-Player Characters), it seems most people are not in control of themselves or their legacy. They are at worst NPC's and at best farm animals.
Humans, unfortunately, appear to mostly be herd animals. The majority refuse to accept the individual responsibility that goes along with individual liberty, and they wouldn't dream of stepping out of bounds or leaving the farm.
The farm is safety. It is comfort. There's no conflict there.
Those people though are not writing their own book as you explained. They are having it written for them by the people controlling them. We can't make those people accept liberty either. No one can force them into becoming heroes.
They have to do it themselves. Most will not.
I will not be ruled and follow the warrior's ethos. I accept the individual responsibility required to maintain my individual liberty. I set goals and achieve them too, and I'm improving myself for a specific purpose. The only way to improve the world is to improve yourself first.
Thanks again for a well written and thoughtful post!
You are right. NPCs are NPCs by choice. They do not want to deal with the trials and tribulations that comes with writing your own novel; They just let the elites tell them what to say, act, and feel. If those elites turn out to be bad actors...well misery loves company and they will have plenty of it.
Not only do these NPC allows others to wirte their novel, I will go a step further and say that they are not even the main character in their book. In the mind of the NPC, the collective takes precedence over the individual. It's always "We" and never "I". That's why need to always identify with some group.
I am walking away from that script and I am writing my own future. I could fail, but at least it is MY mistake and not theirs.
You always write your own novel. Always. If not, you were dead. There is no such thing than NPCs. Once you are born out of this world, you become a player.
Sorry. For some reason, I just saw your response.
I disagree with the idea that everyone writes their own novel. Becoming a player in this world requires more than just merely existing in the physical sense.
"I think therefore I am"
To me this is the minimum standard for human existence.
NPCs do not think. Their responses are predictable and canned. Their dogma formulated and refined by special interest groups. Their novel was not written by themselves and if it was, they copied the text from somewhere. We have seen their story before and that is why we know what happens next.
The film uses an exaggerated stylistic device to convey a message. It de-humanizes people into uniform entities, for example to visualize something like Nazi crimes. Now we all know that the fear of a dictator is inevitably transferred to the people in the country and that adaptation happens out of fear. It is a psychological phenomenon that nobody is unimpressed by. What you call non-thinking is your projection on others, because you have certainly had experiences in your past where you behaved or had to behave conformally (because you were a child). These followers remind you of your own following, i.e. having adopted a passive attitude, which you condemn. You can assume that every person integrates both passive and active tendencies into his life and is a follower in one moment and a resistor in the other. A uniformed behavior, as shown in the film, is an extraordinary event, which is a mass phenomenon that occurs occasionally when the transmission from one to many succeeds. But as soon as a person has removed himself from this situation and comes back into contact with himself or is exposed to other influences, he will behave differently than at the moment when he is part of a large group.
But if you assume that people always behave the same way as the grey men in the film, you degrade them, condemn them to inhuman beings. Not only is it unhelpful to look at people in such a way, it is even damaging and maintains a picture that has no reason for hope or cooperation. It only leads to a brief elevation of your ego to classify you as better or more intelligent. For this ego to permanently feel better, it needs to repeat this view because the satisfaction of feeling superior to others lasts only very briefly and requires continuous repetition. In doing so, you contribute to the deterioration of interpersonal relationships and simply gather yes-men around you who want to feel part of an in-group and inevitably need an out-group for contrast. In doing so, you're basically imitating exactly what you're condemning.
Although opportunism is generally to be regarded as critical and indeed problematic, you leave the concrete in the dark and must always refer to those who are not in personal contact with you as enemies (people of public life like politicians or just grey beings). But if you give a person from your immediate surroundings a chance, you will notice that they are partly critical of their society, their living conditions and worry about destructive tendencies. They then worry about other things that you may not care about at all while you worry about things that they don't care about.
You can assume that you wouldn't even know what you are blaming other people for if you didn't blame yourself at least once. As long as you say that you are guilty and hold yourself guilty of your omissions, you will also say that the others are guilty. Hence my initial statement that you are always the writer of your story.
Both are usually exaggerated: both the movie hero and the total loser. We humans are neither the one nor the other in this pronounced metaphorical form. They are ideal images or non-ideals.
You learn a lot through a contradiction in an exchange with others. After all, your concern is that you want people to behave more responsibly than you perceive - a very understandable wish that I also have. But no one you call a nonthinker will come and say: "Right, I belong to the group of grey beings. Therefore, such films are often seen from the perspective of the one who feels entitled not to belong to the opportunists and to chalk something up to his environment that I suspect he has not yet forgiven himself.
So my question to you would be: In which situations have you been an opportunist yourself or have you been silent, touching you unpleasantly and making you difficult to get over? And in which you haven't and it was taken positively? I do not ask this question because I expect an answer here in public, but only because I wish myself to be pointed to my own blind spots when I reveal them.
So people exhibit varying degrees of conformity or grayness. I can definitely agree with that. Ironically not everything is black and white, but shades of grey lol.
Again, we go back to the question of what does it mean to be a human being. What does it mean to be treated like one? Is this a question that can only be answered from a purely physical perspective? If so, isn't that also dehumanizing? I would like to believe that humans are more than just base animals.
Now I have no ego and I do not look down on people who conform. Like you said before, we all have our moments. But to me it doesn't make it any less of a problem. Ideally, in order to engage in healthy and productive discourse, we must respect the opinions of others, which is something that grey beings do not do.
Very true. Having an exchange of different opinions can strengthen our beliefs or even change them. We discover more about ourselves when we communicate with others.
I used to be picky about when I decide to be an opportunist and when I decide to be "grey". I think this was mostly due to a lack of knowledge. If I didn't fully understand the consequences of my actions, then I wouldn't take the risk. Over time however, I realized that time is an invaluable resource, and I no longer have the time to calculate every single risk with my actions; as I get older, being an opportunist or being "grey" was no longer a choice, but a way of life.
Your experience already tells you that a human being is different from an animal. More proof than your own experience is not necessary, you see it every day, don't you?
Check your real life experiences. If you personally know someone you classify as a "gray being", you have not yet managed to take a different view of that person. Because, for example, you are not curious enough on the part of this person whom you have not yet experienced or you have not managed that this person can surprise you. In order to really get to know someone, you could spend a few days alone with them, perhaps go on a hike, go camping or build something together etc. It should be possible to penetrate the other's shield in a good way and let him dare to show himself as he does when he trusts someone.
You can't ask anyone to prove that they're not gray. You can only control your own view and what it feels like to have an experience that is different than your expectation suggests.
If you haven chosen another way of life, give people the time to walk their paths in their own pace. Ten years back it was different for you and it'll be different as well in ten years. Wanting to be flawless often creates more suffering than good. Then you put yourself on a strong chain and tend to be unforgivable to yourself.
Why anyway concentrate on which you find wrong? Why not concentrate yourself on things where you can feel you have a good impact and do what you can do?