alt Hacker NewsIt is my view that we are all apes. And therefore all sadists, all maschoists, all vengeful and envious and jealous and have all of the primal things living social animals need to survive in the hash environments of nature. We all displace aggression, we are all hedonists and much else besides. The sweetest person you know has to displace aggression somewhere, or otherwise, has none -- and would then quickly fall victim to the aggression of others on one day of bad luck.
There are those who live lives where this can be tamed/sublimated in a mostly socially acceptable manner, with the socially unacceptable elements "hidden from view" and not too dangerous or harmful. And there are those, unfortunate perhaps, that find themselves (suddenly) unconstrained by their social environment or suddenly imbued with sufficient power to do as they wish. Not many survive such freedom or power, morally in tact, because morality doesnt properly belong to that domain.
The story of Oscar Wilde captures this doubleness to our nature -- split by the socially acceptable. He lived a life of relatively unconstrained freedom in private, perfectly constructing a socially acceptable veneer to his "entanglements" with young boys and the like. Until one environment this pretence could not survive: a court room.
You could see the lesson of Oscar Wilde as about the hypocrisy of people. Or, if you want to remain a (post-cynical) optimist, about the need to keep people like Wilde out of court rooms so that their public image serves as a role model of sorts.
Role models are just those people who never find themselves in court. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. Young children are apes too, and all a role model can be is a shaming mechanism to civilise what they will, eventually, hide from social view -- tame it and make it, ideally not too dangerous or harmful. Perhaps say, only a thoughtless bullying, only a trivial kind of stealing, only revenge on someone who might at least deserve it. But who knows.
None of our species, at least, can become a role model for real. This would induce such a drastic split in the psyche with a tremdenous shameful repression of our real nature; and any real attempt creates profoundly unself-aware monsters. All role models can be is an attempt to ameliorate. An impossible standard that internalises a mild helpful sort of shame
I appreciate this. Though I'm not in agreement on all points, it is, in my opinion, thematically correct.
The role models people keep are all merely partial truths. They are, necessarily, an abstracted and partial view of the person or people underneath. Whether or not the universe is technically infinite, we are dealing in an informational reality that is effectively infinite.
No singular, static ideal can survive on its own in the face of change across an effectively ifinite domain. Ultimately, growth is learning how to let yourself be like "them", and honestly evaluate whether or not they are represemting some truth. That's easy to do with the things we all typically agree on, but much harder when it comes down to things like murder, or abuse.
The key is to not lose your own truth in the process - to come out of that process being someone you can actually love - or, comprehensively identify with.
In any case, it's hard to demonize anyone if you understand where they're coming from. ..and, yes, that means nobody is the perfect creature they think everyone should be. But if one doesn't undertake this process of growth on their own - to include, but not be limited to what others are - you will simply be exposed to it in reality, and have to deal with it anyways.
you cannot remove complex information dynamics from a reality you are founded in without losing the fundamental benefit of that foundation. I.e., you cannot remove the pain or strife from life. ..but, you can add to it new experiences and adaptions that make the whole thing worthwhile.