Philosophical Context: Human Nature

Human life is a balancing act. The cultures humans make are prone to imbalance.

The human creature contains various capacities and tendencies. Like all living beings, they have the capacity to regenerate. Additionally, they have the capacity to sense the outside world (sight, hearing, touch, taste, pain, pleasure, etc.) and the inside world (hunger, thirst, tiredness, etc.). Upon these senses are built the abstract capacities to emote, imagine, and rationalize.

The tendencies are psychological predispositions. The philosophical traditional with all of its disputants rarely agrees on any topic. In judging human nature, notably, most philosophers concede that humans are self-interested and social. By self-interested, they usually mean that a given individual will under normal circumstances do what is most advantageous for himself. By social, they usually mean that a given individual will under normal circumstances be happier and more prosperous should he be integrated into a social circle (both in the sense of friendships as well as societal relationships like those established in commerce and politics). The two are related insofar as the self does not contain enough material to meet all the needs of the self, and thus others are necessary for flourishing.

Beyond these well-documented tendencies, I would add two more: slothfulness and starvation. People, like all bodies, are given to taking the path of least resistance. Be it ease of physical progress (e.g. walking around a barrier rather than climbing over it) or mental progress (e.g. thinking of immediate, accessible subjects rather than training to think through more abstract subjects), people are prone to choose what is easiest. A person is more apt to find something to see or do than something to live for and more readily serves the seen rather than unseen.

People, like all bodies, are mired in a process of ultimate depletion. Like all life, humans are prone to disease and ultimately death. These can be hastened either by atrophy of the capacities or disregard for the tendencies. To subsist, people must replenish what they lose. Satiety does not only apply properly to the stomach. The eyes need to see enough, the ears need to hear enough, the flesh needs to be touched and to touch enough. (This is why we need the arts and natural beauty: because they provide for us that which sustains our most central outer senses.) The capacities exist in a range of fullness to emptiness.

The human heart abhors a vacuum and some form of discontent accompanies an intuition of a lack. As pain is the ambassador of physical regeneration, discontent is the ambassador of immaterial regeneration. With so many capacities that require filling, it is easy to become malnourished. Each of these facets requires specific sustenance with a specific material to make it healthy. Flourishing is a level of satiety across the span of personality. The multifaceted nature of humans gives provides a plurality of sources of discontent.

The individual is a whole made up of many parts: body and mind. We must refrain from taking the division too literally. The parts are interrelated; they form a plurality within the unity we call the self or soul. The individual is then like a web: when one point is pulled, the others are strained towards it. Pain often incites emotion. Depression soon becomes the mood of a person suffering from chronic undernourishment. The quality of his thoughts decreases and soon his body suffers from an immune system weakened by dejection.

All of the capacities share a need to be exercised and most share the quality of being intuitable (i.e., made conscious). Regeneration is the only unconscious, unwilled capacity. The ability to grow and heal is limited largely be uncontrollable factors. One has no direct (i.e., intuited) awareness of growing taller, of healing, of replenishing depleted nutrients. All capacities are capable of decaying, and thereby require regeneration. To see to it that the aspects of regeneration which are voluntary are take place, one of the capacities--the capacity for pain--often activates. Being self-interested, the subject is enticed to utilize the dormant capacity. The discomfort of prolonged hunger is one such instance that spurs a person to eat.

One form of straining upon the web we call stress. If there could be a national malady, ours would be stress. The basal discomfort associated with too many tasks, victimization by supervisors or siblings, health issues, and all other lamentable states, make us more susceptible to the slightest additional discomforts. What appears to reason alone as unrelated can nevertheless be causally significant. By the logic of human holism, one cannot tolerate silence because one has too many school assignments. A pebble in the shoe can make a tyrant.

Deserting Deserts

(For a newer draft of this story, click here.)

Big-box stores flanked Jacob and Francis as they walked to rent a movie they had not yet determined. While waiting for cars to pull through the driveways they crossed, the sun warmed their exposed skin. Upon resuming their stroll, the brisk early spring wind infiltrated their cotton clothes. Their tennis shoes slapped softly on the worn asphalt, establishing a syncopated rhythm to the music of passing cars.

"The other day I was reading Kant for a class. He said something interesting I wanted to float by you."

"Uh huh."

"Well, I don't remember the whole discussion exactly. The point of the whole thing was that our--people's--purpose is not to be happy, but to be the sort of beings that deserve happiness."

"Mmhm."

"That's it. That's what I wanted to float by."

"Oh. Um. No. No, that's a load of shit."

"I figured you'd disagree. Now tell me why."

Francis exhaled loudly, as though explanation was a strain. "Ever since you started going to college, it's like you're a...a thought mercenary vigilantly guarding this fair city against errors." Francis gestured towards the street with a sweep of his arm. "I just want to rent a movie Jacob. That's what we left the house for."

"Calm down. I'm just curious. You know that about me."

"Curiosity doesn't involve an agenda beyond learning the facts, you know. You open that door in the attic, take a peek in, and shut the door knowing it has a bunch of cobwebs and old lamps and posters in it. This has more of an agenda to it. You're a moralist and you've come back to make moralists out of all of us."

"Oh, get off it. We've used to have these kinds of conversations."

"Well, while you were off at college filling your head with dusty thoughts I've been here handing douche bags coffee they're disappointed in and mopping up old man piss in the men's room. I'm more tired than I was in high school and a helluva lot less curious. I've seen more of the world than you have, and it's not so great. We're not so great. I was hoping to have a little easy-going fun with an old friend."

"Why'd you call me then? I've never been much of a fun lover."

"Because I was bored and heard you were in town and figured I'd have to call you to snatch you away from your books. I knew you wouldn't come on your own."

"And you were bored because everyone else was busy with their what?...jobs and drinks and the forced gatherings that pass for parties now?"

"Something like that. Neither one of us fit that scene. I thought we could both use the company to pass the time."

"And we are. We're talking."

"We're not passing time. You're trying to take us outside of time or something...to the world of ideas. But that doesn't work the same way. Time flies when you're having fun because you aren't thinking about yourself. Nothing is more tedious, more arduous than introspection. You philosophical types need to figure that out and lighten up a bit. Honestly, I don't know how you do it."

Bunches of windblown hair settled out of place on the friends' heads as they entered the vestibule of the store. Past a bank of carts and through another set of sliding doors, they were greeted by a faint smell of spices. The brown tile featured a diminution of footprints from dirty parking lot water that had been tracked inside. The lights overhead cast an unnatural sterility onto the various goods.

"It's over here." Francis pointed to a box tucked in between a green coin-counting machine and a row of automated miniature rockets, jeeps, and ponies. The two approached the automated kiosk and Francis began tapping upon the screen.

"I don't want to watch a movie."

"What? Why not?"

"It's too nice of a day outside."

"The sun's going down soon enough."

"Let's just take a walk."

"And when we get tired?"

"We'll sit down."

Francis turned to face Jacob. "Okay, fine. Deserts, rights, whatever you want to call them--they're all make-believe fabrications of politicians and people who have to find things to theorize about for a living. None of us deserve anything. The only obligations I can think of are legal, and we all agree those are made-up. The only reason why anyone obeys those obligations is because it's so damned expensive to violate them if you're caught. That or the person is scared. Either way, the choice what's-his-name gave you was between happiness and nothing. That old coot chose nothing and you're well on your way to choosing the same. For my part, I'll try to scratch out a bit of happiness whether I should have it coming to me or not. There. Now I've indulged you. Indulge me and watch a movie and drink a few beers and help me forget about this town for a while."

"Well thank you, but I'd rather continue this line of thinking. Nothing says we can't tip a few back in the process. Or later on."

A tinny voice squawked above about a sale on paper towels.

"Ugh. Why'd you say you'd watch a movie then?"

"Because I knew you'd give in to persuasion. You like talking too much not to."

A shopping cart rattled nearby. The man pushing it was wearing black sweatpants and walking on the sides of his tattered sneakers. His large abdomen poured over the elastic waistband like a leavened dough over the rim of a mixing bowl. The pink hue of skin lightly contrasted against the heather grey of his t-shirt. "'Scuse me boys. I wanna get a movie."

The two moved back and walked out one after the other. The sun was at such an angle and orientation that its rays lodged into their eyes upon exiting. They squinted reflexively and sought shelter underneath an awning that covered a cache of gardening equipment. They passed a series of smaller storefronts with fading posters and cracked paint exclaiming discounts.

"Right. So, make-believe you say. Hmmm. I don't think Kant was figuring for that. Coincidence and accident bear heavily on happiness, though, right?"

"Completely."

"And that's not fair."

"No. That's not not fair. Fair has nothing to do with it. There is no fair. Some people catch the breaks and some people are broken. It is what it is."

"And that doesn't upset you?"

"Sure it upsets me, but there's nothing I can do about it. It's not up to me."

"What's not?"

"Meting out justice."

A bell jangled nearby. A mother and her young daughter exited a cheap salon. Jacob heard the mother ask what the girl wanted for dinner as they walked past. "McDonald's," he heard behind him.

"Not in a grand way, no. But in other ways you do. You give people back exact change."

"Because I don't want to get fired."

"And because you don't want to take some poor schlub's money."

"Not many poor schlub's come in where I work. Mostly businesspeople."

"You sure are difficult. You could use some lightening up."

"That's what the movie was for."

"Well, walks are nice too. Aren't you glad for spring?"

"Sure, sure."

"I think the greater point is that we ought not invest ourselves in something so transitory as happiness."

"As if nothing is more permanent than something."

Francis pulled the tab up on his zipper to close his jacket. His chest began the process of warming. "Why do you insist on calling deserts nothing? You really think a person never earns anything?"

"Oh, I suppose people earn all the time. We're all earning paychecks, earning wrinkles, earning grey hairs, and ulcers. I don't think there's an earn beyond what we agree to or what nature gives us, though--some earn with a capital 'e'."

"Is that because you've not gotten what you think you should have, so you've ditched the notion of should altogether--called it nonsense?"

"Maybe."

"And if I were to tell you it was a shitty hand you were dealt and I think you deserved better, what would you say?"

"I'd say it is what it is and I don't care."

"Because you can't stand to care anymore."

Francis stopped. "Come again?!"

"You're just as guilty of imagining as you think Kant and all the politicians and the professional thinkers are. Rather than admit life currently sucks through no fault of your own and reserve some dignity for yourself by asserting that you deserve better, you'd rather deny the possibility and make light of the situation--which it is not. The situation is not light. Sticking your head in the sand in order not to see does not stop the predator from attacking. It just keeps you from feeling anxious and maybe becoming scared into doing something about it."

Francis looked into Jacob's eyes. The setting sun ducked behind a signpost for a shopping center. A passing car honked at the two of them, but neither were distracted from their gazes. "And what exactly do you expect me to do about it, Jake? I'm flat broke. I can't so much as afford brand-name cereal."

"Money's got nothing to do with this. Well, it hasn't much to do with this. If you can't buy generic cereal...Anyway, I'm talking about having a little righteous pride and thumbing your nose at injustice. I'm expecting you to do what you can--which is still a great deal. You're too thoughtful to play dumb. You can't just loaf around here. It's not in you."

Francis started walking in the direction they had been headed previously. "Come on."
Jacob took his place aside his friend, who started to speak without looking at him. "Conversations with you still get blurry. Have you managed to make new, smart friends with that quirk of yours?"

"A few."

"A few more than me then. I'm woefully bored. I feel like I'm shriveling up."

"What've you been up to?"

"I don't know. Work. Watching my roommates watch television. I think I stare a lot."

"Hung it up already, huh? What're you...eighteen?"

"Nearly nineteen. Same as you."

"Besides recognition, what is it that you can get in college that you can't get here?"

Prompted by the throbbing of his fingertips, Francis stuck his hands in his pockets to escape the air. "Vegetarian entrees?"

Both of the boys snickered.

"Seriously, though..."

"Recognition would be good for starters."

"Plenty of people are recognized that shouldn't be. You ought to know whether or not you've done something well without others patting you on the back for it."

"What am I going to do well out here? Latte art?" Francis smirked.

"Well, I wouldn't make that the only thing you try to do well, but sure...latte art can be beautiful and it would be a good thing to brighten another person's day with a nice leaf or some such."

"Yeah, yeah."

"See? You really need to pay attention to Kant's point. It's better to pursue the desert of recognition from one who is qualified to give it than to be recognized by those who may or may not be."

"Uh-huh."

"Want to go swing on some swings?"

"Mmhm."

The two friends turned the corner and headed up the street to a local park with a patch of grass and four scrawny trees. Furry buds had begun poking their way out of branches.