“But all of my life, I have wondered just who people think they are.”

Owen Scott, III (from my song Running backwards)

To be human is to be brought into a world I did not create about which I must be educated, of which I must make sense, and to which I must adapt. Although my parents might disagree (were they still among the living), I was not born human; I was taught to become human. Each of us has a capacity for development and learning and we become human through experiencing a process of socialization. This necessarily takes place within a society that has a culture. Science has found that the development of the brain itself, the physical organ of consciousness, knowledge, and all of our complex abilities, is shaped by social experience. By the time I was able to reflect on basic questions of who and what I am, indeed, in order to reflect, the process had already created me. Therefore, consideration of what it means to be me, a person, an individual human being, necessarily is a backwards look at how I came to be who I am.

The fact we must be taught to be who we are, I would think, is so obvious as to be noncontroversial in applying to everyone.  I would further venture that a large majority of people never give these questions serious thought. They simply take for granted what they’ve assimilated and how they’ve adapted. If they consider the big questions, they let someone else do the thinking and articulate the answers for them. In spite of the amazing complexity of the brain and the universe itself, almost everyone follows the principle “simpler is better.”

That minority of people who do take on the deeper and ultimate questions as a personal mission include philosophers, scientists, theologians, novelists, and mystics. These are the students of reality and truth. I am one of them. Today, at age 63, I look at the world and am concerned about what I see. To my understanding and way of thinking, too many people and too many of their leaders are controlled by false beliefs and faulty concepts about themselves and the world. In spite of the legacy of wise thinkers, teachers and leaders who have appeared throughout history in all parts of the world, people who are revered, people whose teachings converge on themes of compassion, tolerance, and service, and whose words are remembered, studied and repeated, it appears most people are not following the wise examples set before them. How can this be?

One of the first things I noticed as a very young and curious boy was the diversity of cultures and beliefs in the world. Even in the little town of Athens, Georgia in the 1950’s, I noticed there were black people and white people who looked, acted and sounded different from one another. The white people enjoyed obvious advantages. Later, I discovered layers of social stratification within the society of white people as well as great divergences of opinion, belief, and wealth. The more I learned about the world, the more diversity and disagreement I found. And yet it seemed that beneath these differences, human beings everywhere operated very similarly and had done so since written accounts of human behavior were first recorded. As far back as my memory goes, I wondered about these things and in the early 1970s, I wrote a song questioning how people arrive at their dubious conclusions.

Thoughtful and ambitious people, members of the Society of Truth Seekers, move on to other questions having to do with government, law and how societies operate. In the 19th and 20th Centuries, things came to a head in a great struggle between capitalist-imperialist and socialist ideologies. The empires fought it out in World Wars I and II and the greater political fight, between the rich and poor, continues now, long after the empires are for the most part defunct.

Students of reality also consider questions about God. Is there a God and if so, what is this God about? How can we know about such things? During the same time of political ideology wars and revolutions, a parallel struggle with major implications for the world broke out between objective/modernist ideas versus religious/traditionalist beliefs. These fights, which were embodied in the career and writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, continue to the present day (August 10, 2015 as I write these words). The global tension within and between Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish sects is one clear instance. 

Basic ideas in the political struggle go back to assumptions on the nature of the person. Should government and law prioritize protecting the hypothetical rights of individuals or should they prioritize the well-being of society as a whole? What are these rights and what’s the rationale for saying they exist and should be protected? Are these priorities the same or are they incompatible? Should a person, for example, be allowed to own property? Should the law and government put any limits on the right of individuals to own and utilize property? Should religious ideology play a role in the law?

Anything more than cursory thought and observation reveals narrowly defined self-interest (i.e., narcissism) to be the motivating force for many people’s beliefs. "All politics is local." My group, country and religion are intrinsically superior to everyone else’s. I want to have money, power, pleasure, convenience, and status and I don’t want anyone putting limits on them. The highest good is my personal happiness as I define it (in terms of money, power, pleasure, and status). Libertarians believe this is how society should operate. Persons who have less money, power and status view the advantages of the “haves” as unfair. Socialists believe government by agreement of the majority should put limits on individual freedom and property ownership in the interests of a just and healthy society.

Why the great emphasis on individual rights? The “Founding Fathers” who led the revolution against British rule of the American colonies were highly educated, successful, and mostly wealthy persons who had experienced the misuse of power and taken great chances to overthrow the British and set up a new and better form of government. Experience taught them those in power frequently abuse their power unless some controls are put on them. Although they were right and this is true of governing leaders and agencies, it is also true of those who accumulate private wealth. Persons who are highly concerned about government abuse of power often are not so worried about the abuse of power by private individuals. Persons who have been mistreated by one group are often not so concerned about their own mistreatment of other groups.

Marx and his followers correctly perceived the self-serving excesses of the great imperial powers that included Russia, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Japan, Austria-Hungary and Italy. They believed the solution was to take power and property away from individuals and give it to a state that would be set up in such a way as to be accountable to its people. In practice, the states set up on this model (always after immense bloodshed and brutality) turned out to be dictatorships that oppressed the people they were supposed to take care of. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Or even worse.

The question that should guide our societies and systems of government is this: What system will work the best for the society and its individuals? How would we know we had created such a system? The vast majority of people living under the system would approve of the system and be committed to keeping it in operation. Art, technology and creative play would flourish and the population would be healthier and happier. The system would be friendly rather than hostile to its neighbors and the environment. Persons living under other systems would look at the successful one with envy and wish to move there or change their own system to be like the successful ones.

So, what do I believe and how is this different from what I see in the beliefs of my fellow human beings? To begin with, humans still have a vastly overblown perception of our own importance in the universe. Nietzsche commented astutely on this and what he said is still valid. We as a species need to grow up and let go of our ridiculous self-importance. We are hypnotized by useful but deceptive features of the languages we learn to speak. Almost every one of us is overly attached to and invested in the fictitious identify assigned to us by our society, a character in our own internal narrative. We try to seize and hold onto illusions, things that exist more as words and ideas than as tangible realities. The desire for a personal advantage in money, power, fame, esteem, pleasure, security, beauty, vengeance or whatever gets us little more than, at best, a brief feeling of power and importance while leading us to act badly and to sabotage our own goals. Guess what? You are all going to die and you can’t take any of it with you. Then again, a desire for certainty and to avoid eternal punishment leads many to adopt rigid and simplistic beliefs about God and to impose these beliefs on others who may or may not share them. Thinking one knows the mind of God is a common and disastrous error.

And, yet, we develop remarkable technologies, produce remarkable art, achieve remarkable feats and have been doing so for thousands of years. Each human life, though small and transient, is amazing, valuable and worth living to the best of ones ability. I believe things work best when I am passionately engaged in bringing out my best and the best of others, when I view myself and every other self as equally valuable and deserving of equal respect and when I view the things of this world as there for everyone and belonging to no one. It matters to create a world that works but not to own or take personal credit for it.

Is the USA an example of a system working well for society as a whole as well as for individual American citizens?  Historically it’s worked relatively well compared to many other great countries. Yet the majority of people, regardless of political views and affiliation, believe our system of government is broken and isn’t working for one or for all. As for the rest of the countries and societies, the problems are glaring. The human world has too much ignorance, too much poverty, too much arrogant narcissism, too much exploitation of people and nature, too much religious fanaticism and intolerance, too much wealth in the hands of too few people, too many weapons, too little mindfulness, humility, love, and open-mindedness. 

What is one to do? That’s the question I think about most. If people thought more wisely, they would live more wisely. Every day I ask myself, what can I do about it? What can I do to facilitate understanding in more people so they will be inspired to go out and help create a society that works better for more of us? I'm still looking for answers.