Self-Awareness, Save Me From Myself

I’m trying to move softer through the world these days. It’s a tough path, but that’s only because it is so foreign to me. I’ve gone a long time blazing my way through space and time. There was a time I had no regard for my impact. A tornado ripping through lives. Now, I am painfully aware. The pain is worth it.

It amazes me how terrible humans can be to one another. It’s one thing to be unaware that you’re hurting someone. At least a person with any semblance of emotional intelligence could overlook such an unintentional transgression. It’s when humans knowingly increase the suffering of another for their own gain that I get squirmy. How can it be that a species sophisticated enough to send people into space, and then sustain life for extended periods of time, can still torture, mutilate, manipulate, extort, and take full advantage of one another? Just so you know, there is no way I can give an answer to this that will satisfy everyone. Honestly, I doubt I can even pontificate an answer to satisfy myself. Would it even matter if I did?

No, not if I’m being my most rational self. I could comb through books, have conversations with priests and Holocaust survivors, and do 180-day silent darkness retreats and gut blasting cleanses and produce something, I’m sure. It might be an explanation so eloquent and deep that when one hears it the only word that enters the mind is the single most beautiful word in the English language… “duh.” How long before that explanation loses its luster, though? How long before a human comes along and does something to me that doesn’t jive with my current perception of reality and then everything is flipped upside down? What will happen to my messianic explanation of the human condition then?

Well, it will parish in the same dumpster fire that our collective humanity has been seemingly vaporized in. So, why should I allow myself to hold on too tightly to my interpretations of the culture surrounding me? I think the main reason I seek an understanding of why humans can suck at times is so I don’t have to confront the reality that I have indeed met some evil humans. It’s hard for me to accept that others can carry out atrocities, on a massive scale as well as in the realm of interpersonal relationships, because to do so is to accept the evil within myself. We are all the same animal and so are capable of the same things.

I study history, and in doing so I’ve come across some notorious individuals. The obvious cast of characters comes to mind with Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, and their ilk, sure, but what about the common people? What about Abu Ghraib? What about the thousands of suicide bombers during the two front wars America and the coalition forces waged for 20 years? What about the reserve police unit from the book Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning? If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it to everyone I come across, all the time. These guys were the equivalent to our reserve forces and came from a variety of backgrounds, most of them completing their duties only every so often. Then wouldn’t you know it, by the end of the war they had participated in the execution of more Jews than any other unit during the entirety of what we call The Holocaust. I bet some of them woke up one day, around June ’44 I’d say, and asked themselves, “Well, now, how the hell did I get here?!” Let the finger pointing begin…

Knowing that all humans come from the same evolutionary line as Adolf Hitler is a sobering thought. Honestly, I wish more people would consider this. When I think about it, the only reason little Adolf became “Hitler” was due to a mixture of environmental factors, the perfect geopolitical climate at the perfect time, and a LOT of human manipulation. If I were in World War II, would I be Hitler? Stalin? A member of the SS? A twelve-year-old Jewish girl? Statistically speaking, I would become whatever became of those in the people group I was born into. That was simply the nature of the beast. BUT! I digress…

If we lack awareness, which I did for a long time, it is easy to slowly become the complacent and easily malleable animal brain. I have a choice to make, every single day, which gives me back my sovereignty. The power comes when I realize that I am all those roles and identities I assume in life all at once, always. I have the capacity to do harm to others, violence at great magnitudes, if I am so compelled and I ALLOW myself. A man who can control his innate capacity to destroy and dominate is the most powerful man in any room he walks into. Evil comes with a lack of impulse control which leads to the drunken orgy of rage, ecstasy, adrenaline, and heat. There is one ingredient missing from that list though: pain.

If you hurt a human enough over a long enough period, their tipping point towards acts of evil is much lower than the average human. This is a terrifying thought when I realize the number of average humans who have taken part in ideologically driven wars, genocides, mass shootings, lynching events, and even hate speech due to something as shallow and meaningless as peer pressure. (Well, as shallow and meaningless as peer pressure ought to be.)

If I am capable of conscious thought, I can become the best of humanity or the worst. That is the power of the human mind. Only through self-awareness can we keep ourselves from slipping into the dark abyss of human depravity that so many have succumbed to over the centuries. I must monitor my mind daily through reflection exercises like journaling for fear of letting an intrusive thought become reality. As my friend Akshay likes to remind me, “I am not my thoughts. I am the thinker of my thoughts. I am not my feelings. I am the feeler of my feelings. I am not my experiences. I am the experiencer of my experiences.”

If I do not disconnect a bit from my mind, if I act impulsively on every single thought that comes in, I’m screwed, and so are most of the people who care enough to invest their time in me. When we believe that our thoughts, feelings, and anything else that comes out of our minds is the end all be all, then we become tyrants lording over ourselves. This can easily expand out onto those around us. Then, it is only a matter of time before the red flag cannot be ignored. Then, the tyrant becomes lonely and bitter, and that mind becomes a breeding ground for atrocity. A mind like that has no issue designing gas chambers and work camps.

We are not destined to be one or the other, a tyrant or a victim. The human mind is extremely malleable, but we first must dive deep into learning who we are without all the cultural conditioning. For me, that is the hardest part. Now, I am not saying every human being is evil and is going to become a Nazi. What I am simply saying is, we are all capable of what we are all capable of. If a human has done it, I can do it, too; the good, the bad, and the atrocious. Be mindful of how you speak to yourself. How we interact with ourselves is how we interact with other humans and the space we occupy.

I’m trying to move softer through the world these days. It’s a tough path, but that’s only because it is so foreign to me. I’ve gone a long time blazing my way through space and time. There was a time I had no regard for my impact. A tornado ripping through lives. Now, I am painfully aware.

The pain is worth it.

We choose. Keep going.

-Marcus