Our simple, inherent nature is the root cause of all our problems
Question from the Internet:
“How can your simple, human nature be the source of your trading demise?”
Our “simple” human nature is at the root of all the problems we encounter in life, and at the root of all the problems humanity has ever encountered.
Our ‘simple”, inherent nature is 100% egocentric, subjective, and individualistic. Consciously and unconsciously, our “personal computer” makes totally self-serving and self-justifying calculations at any given moment based on the personal perception of “pleasure and pain”.
We can philosophize about what we do and why we do it, but the truth is that behind every calculation, decision, and action we make there is the single focus to move towards new and increasing pleasures while moving away from actual or expected pain and suffering for ourselves.
Even when we seemingly “love” another, when we “give” to another and we “care” for another, behind that action there stand the 100% self-serving and self-fulfilling calculations. If we do not expect to receive some kind of reward or self-fulfillment from the planned action, we cannot act.
This is how we all work, this is how we are programmed by evolution.
It is true, that other parts of nature, like animals for example, also have a basic survival reflex and they also make such self-serving and self-preserving calculations. But there is a huge difference.
Animals and all other levels in nature live within nature’s “circle of life”, within nature’s “mutual guarantee”, where each and every element obeys the general balance and homeostasis of the system that is the foundation for life and optimal development.
Animals — and everything else in nature — would never violate this general balance, they keep it even at the expense of their own “personal” survival. In nature, this is instinctive and automatic, animals do not have to make conscious decisions about behaving this way.
But human beings are instinctively “unnatural”. Our survival reflex and our self-serving and self-justifying calculations work differently. We actually gain reward and joy by surviving and succeeding at the expense of others and nature, even when we do not need to succeed at their expense.
We are accumulating resources and profit for ourselves and taking from others what they have beyond our actual needs. Our whole human system is built on excessive and unnecessary overconsumption. We all aim for controlling, manipulating, and exploiting others and nature just for “fun” and for selfish gain.
And while in the short term, this seems to benefit us — and from nature’s point of view even thousands of years counts as short term, in the long run, we are all losing due to existing and behaving in effect like cancer.
And this has become very obvious in our times when the whole human system started collapsing and we are facing a very real threat of self-destruction in this or in the next generation.
This self-destruction can unfold directly through wars, socioeconomic collapse, and destroying the natural environment. It can also unfold “indirectly” as we are desperately helpless in comprehending and solving the mounting global problems that threaten our existence — since we cannot act and behave in unison as a single species within nature.
Any positive turnaround and change require the recognition of our inherent nature as harmful and destructive. Only when we have already recognized and accepted that our inherent nature, the human ego is the root cause of all our problems and we also developed a true and irrepressible need to change ourselves — seeing this as a true life or death decision and action — then we can start a unique and methodical self-change and self-development.
This methodical and purposeful self-development — when we all change and develop ourselves instead of focusing on others, trying to change, correct, or destroy others — will lead to a positive and constructive rebuilding of humanity. And this rebuilding of humanity will lead to a safer, better, and sustainable human future.