It’s amazing how sometimes you can torture
yourself with so many stupid little things. I guess we want life to be so
controlled, so perfect and calm that anything that poses a challenge or a
sudden change makes us nervous. I personally don’t like people who say, “I like
challenges” because no human with a proper brain would like to be proven wrong.
What people that say that phrase mean is that they are not afraid of
confronting themselves, but that doesn’t mean they are going to conquer their
fears, it only mean they are going to face them. Fear is something very
relative, almost having a world of its own. When you say you’re scared at night
in a dark street, it is not the same fear that I experience when looking at a
spider, even if it is on a TV screen.
Anyway, we tend to make everything so big, so
scary just to tell ourselves we can overcome it. Problems and dilemmas are now,
at least in appearance, more stupid than ever before. I mean, people think it’s
a problem to have fat on their bodies or to dress one way to a formal event and
not the other way. These are dumb examples but they are the truth. People now
have put their challenges at the same height of their apparent skills of when
solving problems and facing life. They are so afraid of anything than even
putting on a skirt or jeans is a life threatening decision. The idea behind
this is that people face smaller problems, challenges, than they would usually
do, avoiding the larger ones almost always. But when life comes and surprises
them, they turn it into a drama only they can understand.
Now that’s stupid. We are humans, a species
that is quite abundant in the world, so thinking only one of us has experienced
something that others haven’t, and it borders madness. We have a really big
problem realizing that we are not unique; we are not as special as we have led
ourselves to believe. The truth is, and always will be, that we are animals
and, as such, our lives and pretty similar, no one really standing out. What
makes humans stand out is the society and the rules we have built ourselves. It
is not through nature that someone takes power over others or experiences a
life of riches and others experience poverty. It is through the human
condition, which can always change, at any time.
Let’s say someone is born into a rich family.
We would think that said person has been a very lucky one as money guarantees
many things in life that, in any other way, you wouldn’t get. It wasn’t nature
that gave that person’s parents’ money, it was the society they live in. And
that same society can turn the tables on that family and make them poor, make
them starve an d know what it is to have nothing on your stomach for four days
in a row. It isn’t nature that took it all away from them, it was Man. In
nature we are nothing too special but in society we can be the best or the
worst, depending on how we play the game.
Now, what does this have to do with those
things that torture us everyday? Well, society made those too. They made us be
aware of things we do not really need to be aware with. Like the economy, some
other things are meaningless in a real way. We have created them as humans, and
they can be easily replaced at any time. That’s what has happened with the
technological revolution, where one device is replaced by the next with the
simplest of decisions. And, by the way, those decisions are never taken by only
one man or one woman. They are taken by a group, no matter the size, and that’s
what changes things. That’s why there are no more beepers and only smartphones,
that’s why we want to control every person’s move and thought these days.
The things that torture us have often much to
do with those things we still can control. It’s funny but even if we think we
have no control over something, we always do if it has been created by mankind.
We cannot cure cancer and we cannot make a storm at will but we can make human
things go our way. How do you think some people rob banks or create them? It
doesn’t matter which one is it because the trick is that we can do whatever we
want with it only because it has been created by us. We can always change
things that we have done; it is only what happens beyond humanity that simply
cannot touch.
That said, we have done many great things, we
have advanced in our evolution and have even forced a bit forward. That’s the
most significant relation on how we have affected nature but we still cannot
control that evolution. If we could, we would already have people living in
other planets and on the bottom of the ocean. But we haven’t because we are
still severely limited by nothing other than ourselves. The only way we can
achieve these things it’s by reorganizing the world we have and creating new
technology based on us. Because that’s what we have been doing for some time
and what we will keep doing for a long while. Of course, not all of us are
going to participate because evolution doesn’t need all of us but it does need
a group.
The realization that we are left behind is a
great worry among humanity. It is practically the same than knowing you are
alone, although you’re not ever really alone. We just feel that way precisely
because we have been led to believe we are special, when we are not. It is true
that our intelligence and ability to solve problems is quite remarkable but it
is quite impossible for it to be unique. If other intelligent life exists in
our cosmos, we wouldn’t be special at all and we are not now because it isn’t
something of a single specimen but of a whole species. The fact that we are so
many, makes us less special.
But our numbers make us prone to surviving,
even if we don’t really have that in us. Because not many people have real
survival skills but the fact that we are so many, like ants, makes us difficult
to eradicate unless a proper way to destroy us was invented. And it has, by us.
There are artificial diseases and weapons that could destroy every single human
on the planet and it would only take a few seconds. It would only involve the
decision of one person, not even a group, to do that. And the fact that
humanity has given power to one above others is simply ridiculous. That proves
that we are not as smart as we think we are because we have basically told some
people they can annihilate us whenever they want, they have our permission.
It’s all because we live in a world of fear.
We are not really free or will ever be because we tie ourselves down with the
same ropes that some groups give us. Self-confidence, fear, angst, sadness… So
many more that we use against each other, only to makes us feel a little less
us and a bit more unique. What do you think a person who kills her or himself
in the gym is looking for? They are not there to improve their health, no
matter what anyone says. They are trying to achieve a physical state where they
can be above the rest, be a little less them and a little bit someone better.
That’s what has made this “physical” revolution a success: we hate ourselves
and the fact that we are so, for lack of a better word, normal.
I’m not saying that people that go to the gym
hate themselves but most actually do. And not only them but all of us but every
single person that had forced change into their lives because they feel they
will never stand out if they keep behaving like the simple and boring organisms
that they are. We try so hard to make everyone feel so unique and special, that
it is a great pain when we realize that no matter what we do, we will never be
really unique. We can put everything on us, we can take things away, but we are
always the same people, no matter how many costumes we put on. Our personality
is different, from person to person, but it is not unique either, just
particular.
And that should be enough from us. Why singling
us out to the world when we know we all have the capacity to do exactly the
same things? We can all be singers and actors and engineers because we all have
the capacity to be each one of those things and many more. What we decide in
life, however, it is matter of the current conditions we live with and our
personal convictions and tastes, that are also no special but at least they
differ a bit from person to person because, as we all know, we are all made
from the same stuff but we are not copies of one another. We are very similar
and not identical and that should be enough for us to stop tormenting us by everything
and start living for real.
