Of Humanity
January 6th, 2025
I want to be strong. I want to be weak. I want to be this. I want to be that. I want to be big. I want to be small.
I want to be worth something. Of what?
I spent the last two weeks with my brother who could not incessantly insist on becoming "giga chad." He desired to put on so much mass in a revenge streak against his ex, whom clearly he is traumatized by. I've concluded this by watching him play video games for eight hours a day everyday.
It's rub off on me, that feeling of "not good enough." It's true, there's a part of me that identifies that feeling, and it's certainly there. Sure, it's triggering to an extent, but I realize spending time in that home environment doesn't make me happy at all.
We are all products of our environment, they draw out different aspects of our universal shared human natures (a la Siddartha in the river of faces,) and I find myself particularly not liking what my home environment in Texas pulls out of me.
It's a strange thing isn't it?
How fiercely judgemental I am of my home though, it's what defined me up to this point. It's true, I have no right to be judgemental of it, for what am I? Where is my humility?
Why, can't I say humble things and judgemental things the next? It's truly all a part of me. My judgemental side, it's protecting me from pain. The pain of realizing that maybe, I am not good enough for some other people. It's true though.
Say a girl wants X and I can only provide Y, well, is it not true that I am not good enough? Say a boss wants Z and I can only give A, it's true then, I really am not good enough then.
The fierce relentless drive my brother is aiming towards will not protect him completely from the reality though—that somewhere, sometime, somebody will say that you're not enough.
It's true though. I will not be enough for some people. Why, I'm not heavy or tall enough!
The environment pulls out a mindset that focuses on external validation, but I come back home to focus on one that prioritizes internal validation, and I prefer it this way.
But are my folks in Texas wrong for prioritizing external validation? No! They do it to protect themselves, to protect their mind and ego, and to not get hurt. Isn't that what we are all doing? Just trying to protect ourselves and not get hurt.
And to love. We are looking to love.
Why, when I see all my humanity for what it is, and accept it as it is, that observation, that acceptance of my nature, that is true love.
For what is love but to observe?
My family, as they are
My brother wishes to get bigger. My mother needs my opinion. My father needs me to hear his opinion. My sister needs to be right.
They are all people. And I am beginning to understand them a lot better. Not from a moralizing high ground of superiority, but simply as another face in that river of ghosts.
But it's important to realize that I am just another ghost in that river, and I get to make choices of where to go.
I realize that I am trying to fix them, I am trying to prescribe them a vantage from my end, but I am not seeing things clearly as they are as the truth. I keep trying to be prescriptive instead of understanding.
My brother has had a hard childhood, and deals with a multitude of issues. Sexual abuse for one, of which I also endured, but also parents who wouldn't stop to criticize every little vulnerable piece of information he shared. A lifetime of loneliness in school, and an addiction to video games to cope with.
In the times after school, he finally found a girlfriend, and having discovered love for the first time he latched on and attached quickly—whether burden or not I know not, I'll leave that to the higher powers to decide, but after she left, he's left disraught and dysregulated. His emotions scattered and out of array, he can only find one vehicle to finding love again, and that is through improving his body.
My sister also had a troubled childhood, but she was treated much better. Every vulnerablility she shared was justified and supported. Everything she did was well and perfect, and though my mother disagreed with her often and forced her to do things, she often had her back and supported her decisions.
My sister is growing up to find that not everyone will agree with her, and that her own opinions aren't necessarily the opinions of other people. It's true though. Oftentimes she'll do the same as my mother, and say, "You like this" or "no, you want to do this." She does this out of "love," and I understand that she sees things from her world, it's such a human thing to do, but her world is the only one and therefore there's only one right way of liking or doing something for me.
Because she loves me, that's why she does these things. My brother too, he took me in to stay with him this holiday because he loves me.
My mother and father love me. They see the world their way, after going through so much in life, there's only one valid reaction, which is to defend the experiences you've had to justify yourself getting to such an established position.
It's a form of ego protection. That all that has happened has given some modicium of truth, and that therefore of that that only means that they could know better than a child younger than them. It's true though.
So they tell and demand me to act a certain way, and when they hear opinions and ideas that are against their truth, they cannot be anything but personally attacked when approached with such ideas. That my own thoughts and opinions are an attack on their existence and worth as a human being—I saw it with my own ideas when I disagreed with my father and he started yelling about committing suicide.
It's man's search for meaning, and search for worth of life—for what makes a life worth anything at all?
Why, I don't know. Why would I know? It's true there is a burning sensation in me, a sense of a superiority complex. I do have one. It's true. I think I do have some moral superiority complex. And an inferiority complex for that matter. But it's true—the truth of it is that our experiences don't really lend to any more truth than a newborn babe. It's the problem of induction.
Perhaps I have an epistemic superiority complex, which resonates true. No, I truly do think that I know better than to act like that and indulge myself in suffering, to frame my world in such a way that my suffering is lessened, and that I feel more at peace with who I am as a human being.
It is truly that I think I know better that causes the rift in my mind, the pain in my mind. Why, wasn't it the Wittgenstein that said that all language are played in games, with each according rules, and each right and wrong? And that truth is dependent on the language game and context employed at the time of writing or speech?
Why, I realize that epistemic humility is exactly what I needed to remember. Truly, that my family are simply playing another language game that I am yet unfamiliar with again, and that perhaps I've accidentally adopted as a result of conseqeuence of exposure—it's true. I am playing the language game of inferiority and superiority.
The language games we pick are itself a language game, the ladder of epistemology of which we must do away with, but the truth of it is, that whatever language game we pick, whichever frame we pick, there's no greater truth. The meaning of the language I write here are truly up to the context and interpretation of the culture I am in. There is no objective truth, there is no moral superiority. There is no this and that.
Why, the world is all that is the case. The meaning of language is in its use, and the frames and games we pick are ultimately up to ourselves or by change of pure environment and product.
Why, my family is wrong in my framework, but am I right in theirs? Is there even a consistency issue here? I know not of the truth anymore, for the words that I write are bound by a language I am unfamiliar with yet again.