Sunday, May 31, 2009

Human Nature versus Human Morals

In my two previous rants about the "Duality of Nature" and the story of the rampaging bus conductor, I made another interesting conclusion. I summed up another duality: Human Nature versus Human Morals. Both are attributes of human beings but very much different.

In my philosophy, I have slightly erased the concept of Good and Evil (mainly because that concept is pretty vague and it differs per person). Right and Wrong is also pretty vague as well. But then, I conjured up a very primitive and fundamental concept: Instinct versus Emotion.

Human Nature comes from instinct and it pretty much explains what we do in our everyday life: eating, drinking, sleeping, etc. But it doesn't end just there. Our instinct is what makes us organisms - beings that live, that exist. Human Morals is what separates us from being just an organism. It is responsible for giving worth, value, and different meanings to things which don't originally have before we evolved. It is what arose from the realization of "self".

From human morals, humans have converted many things into those with sentimental value. Courtship and sex turned into romance and love. Territory became property. Competition became fighting for honor. It is human nature to try to explain phenomena through observation and experimentation but human morals try to explain things through spiritual means.
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I've always heard from cheesy teen romance situations when a girl thinks a guy is but a pervert or a playboy, which is definitely the result when looking at it through morals. Looking at it through nature yields a different outcome. The guy in question ogles at big breasts because it is in his subconscious desire to ensure that his offspring is given high quality breast milk. Big hips = Proper womb for fetus. Thinking about sex = innate desire for procreation. Human morals simply distort this natural instinctual behavior into something "immoral".

An explanation to that would be that cliche saying that guys think more with instinct while girls think more with emotion. For some unexplained reason, guys have more of this "Human Nature" while girls have more "Human Morals". It would be too extreme to say that "guys are animals", though. It is true that guys think more with instinct the same way animals do, but as human beings, guys still have Morals. Girls just have a lot more.
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As I stated in another previous rant, there is also a struggle between yet another duality: Peace and Existence. Obviously, Human Morals aim for peace and harmony and it is Human Instinct to live, thus it is attributed to Existence. If we eradicate one side, there would be a huge trade off but...


Emotions / Instinct = Humanity


Let's go back to the Book of Genesis. Adam and Eve were living a peaceful life in Eden until they ate the fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which we can call... that's right: Human Morals. Say they never ate it. Lacking Human morals, they can continue to live their peaceful lives with just Human Instinct. There might be havoc due to some occurrences of "immoral behavior" but since Human Morals isn't integrated, they wouldn't know the difference between war and peace. There wouldn't be "war" but there wouldn't be "peace" either. With the equation above, the net Humanity will be zero.

Since we attributed Instinct with "organism" and "body" earlier, it can be inferred that the Moral is what comprises the "soul". According to the many beliefs of the afterlife, our bodies rot as our souls bask in God's presence or be sent to the state of Nirvana for the rest of eternity. Having discarded the body which contains the instinct (as it would be useless otherwise), we, as souls, are left with morals. But with no real "society" to apply the Morals on, they would be just useless widgets. With the equation above, the net Humanity will be infinite... But since Humanity can only amount to 100% since no one can be "too human", the net humanity is undefined.

This is yet again another paradox solvable by the cliche: Balance. When more Instinct is applied in the equation, humanity levels drop, sending us down near the level of animals. When more Emotions are applied, humanity levels rise, sending us near the level of divine beings. The scale can never end up as a vertical line; neither Human Nature nor Human Morals can be completely erased from the reality we know. It can always be horizontal: a "perfect" symmetry called a Human Being.

1 comments:

Jon Lin said...

Hey there, this is Neoxflame from deviantart! I happened to be checking out your blog - very interesting post I got to say this one is!

Looking forward to more of your works!

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