Human hubris

Monday 18th January

In the best of all possible worlds we work for the greater good rather than our own good. The ideas that gods or conscience or ‘devas’ put forward is spiritual. Which means it’s not materially motivated. Good for the soul but these ‘spiritual’ goals always seem unreachable and dreary in their pursuit. But a milder manner is all we need, without being spiritual at all. Putting ourselves second is addressing the greater good and deflecting our own fears, because whatever fears WE may have they are nothing compared to the torments of those we’re aiming to help.
The problems facing each one of us are seen within that context – of others’ greater suffering. For vegans it comes down to straight-out empathy with exploited animals. By deflecting the focus from the ‘me’ to ‘you’ we deal with problems more intelligently, since there’s so much less self interest involved. Self interest is a motivator but also a dead weight, it sucks the best juices from any personal fruit before what’s left over can be of much use to ‘another’.
I suspect humans see all this well enough; there are enough examples of altruistic acts of kindness to make us proud to be part of our own species. So, at first it might seem best to focus on the personal, closer-to-home problems, get them out of the way and then look at the deeper stuff, which we can call ‘The Greater Good’ … but we don’t get that far. We never quite clean up our own act to our own satisfaction to address ourselves fully enough to ‘the greater good’.
I suspect that single decision is the turning point and the ruining point of adulthood. Bcause we never clean up the personal issues (which often come down to wanting people to like us more) we never get round to vegan principles. But at the other extreme, vegans look down on their fellow man and make it known that they want others to be better, like us.
While these extreme perceptions exists what help can non-vegans be to vegans or vegans to non-vegans? We each have important things to learn from the other. That medium, portal has to be opened somehow, opened with common consent.
That’s why I think it’s futile to be trying to win anyone else over. But if you don’t you feel as though you’re not doing your bit for ‘the animals’. It’s so understandable that activists are willing to engage in very ineffective actions to feel better about ‘their commitment to the cause’. ‘Action’, how can you be an activist without action?
By taking another look at this whole thing from a slightly different angle we might find an answer to that ‘action’ problem, wanting to be actively expressing a dearly held belief. But the hubris we are all infected by is not really being acknowledged. The disease of it is harming us.
We deal with problems like we deal with farm animals, we try to inflate them and kill them. Whereas they are sign posts to follow. Our problems we interpret for their symbolic meanings. I stub my toe: I know I’ve been caught with some nasty little hubristic thought that took my eye off the beach and onto my SELF. Stubbing your toe on a rock on the beach, taking the pain, taking the ego assault, getting some advice from the ‘little people’ … when the pain subsides I can look back and laugh at myself. In garage-mechanic terms, where there’s a big job to be done on a vehicle, like dismantling egoey things, you need some team work. Where ego is involved in our troubles we need a specialist team of devas to deal with us. They go in hard. We perhaps take it hard. Obviously everyone knows all this since it’s happening all the time. It happens on a personal level and a collective level. It’s the same advice ‘the devas’ always give – that we look to our fears, but to look at them without getting annoyed or blame or without going to war or ultimately without having to be right all the time. The hubris-free human is the mostest!