Human personality

A comment to a post I wrote:

You say that all human beings are driven by the same inherently selfish and exploitative human ego. Don't you think that you personalize people with this?

My answer:

I am not sure what you mean by “depersonalization”?

Perhaps you mean that by saying that we are all driven by the same selfish, individualistic, and exploitative ego, I depersonalize people?

This is not true.

After all, we all agree that we are “human beings” that evolved from nature’s system, probably from apes. We all have almost identical DNA, which DNA is also almost identical to the DNA of many animals.

We have more in common than what differentiates us. Does it mean we are “depersonalized,” that we are not unique?

Kabbalah explains that the whole of living “creation,” everything we know and perceive, is based on a single “matter,” which is the “desire to receive.” This means that each living being that senses its existence — and that includes even what we consider “inanimate” or “stony” — has a desire to maintain, sustain itself, and survive by fulfilling its own necessity.

This desire to receive, survive, and sustain ourselves is the engine of life. For example, if a stone's molecules did not have the desire to maintain the structure of the stone, the stone would fall apart. This desire then becomes much more obvious and graphical in the vegetative, animate, and human levels of reality.

There is one very unique difference between nature and human beings.

In nature, the individual survival reflex and desire to sustain and exist remain within the overall balance of the system. An individual being in nature’s system would never want to sustain itself beyond its natural necessities since then it would become harmful to the whole system, and the system, the integral laws of nature that sustain life, would correct this “malfunction.”

It is the same in our biological body. Our cells and organs maintain themselves but only in order to serve the whole body. If the general balance and homeostasis of the whole body is broken, illness and death occurs.

When cells start to consume more than what they need and deserve in the system and continue growing and multiplying accordingly, cancer develops, which destroys the whole system and itself within.

In human beings, in addition to the basic desire to receive and fulfill oneself for survival, we also have the unique human ego. This human ego is the reason for humanity’s incredible development and rise compared to the rest of nature. This ego is also the reason for the self-destruction we are involved in.

The ego makes us highly inquisitive; we are constantly hungry wanting more. It drove our explorations, inventions, sciences, expeditions, and all the creating and building humanity has ever done.

A chimpanzee would never venture beyond its natural environment unless natural disasters or humans force them to do so. We, humans, are probing other planets to settle and want to make contact with extraterrestrial life.

However, the way in which this human ego expresses itself in each individual is unique. Knowing that we are all cancer-like egoists does not make us all the same. It is the ego, the unique desires that drive us to get more and more, the unique incentives to overcome and exploit others makes us unique individuals.

The egoistic and all-consuming human lifestyle has nothing to do with the “scarcity model” some people blame for the negative trends in human development. If we also lived within our natural necessities and available resources — which could provide us with a beautiful, comfortable, and modern life similar to the life we have today, there would be no scarcity.

The empty slogans of “sustainable living” could be turned into reality if we changed our original cancer-like software, if we learned and practiced how to change, limit, and harness our all-consuming and exploitative urges and inclinations, if we learned what our actual human necessities are determined by nature’s homeostasis, and then partnered with nature in maintaining and improving this general homeostasis.

However, empty slogans remain empty slogans because we fail to recognize, and we do not want to recognize that we do not need to change and destroy the world for ourselves. Instead, we have to get to know and change ourselves. We need to learn how to balance and even harness our irrepressible and consuming egos.

Until we humbly accept that the root cause of all of our historical and present-day problems is within us and that only by our own willing and conscious self-development can we change the world around us, nothing good will unfold. We will only encounter constantly worsening crises and destruction.

Humanity being born with the self-destructive ego is not a ‘sin”; we are not “evil.” Nature’s evolution purposefully programmed us this way so we could recognize this “inherent flaw” in our operating software and then start consciously and proactively partner with nature’s evolution in further developing and refining ourselves until we reach the final nd perfect potential of our “truly Human” existence as the peak of natural evolution.

We are at the most important transition and turning point of Human development: it is the moment where we have to recognize and accept what “unfinished beings” we are and start completing our Human development by ourselves. Then, all the seemingly negative and destructive states, actions and processes will also be turned into positive and constructive since everything we have ever gone through was necessary in order to achieve the final, perfect outcome.