Our first priority as individuals is to gain control over our lives, circumstances and possibilities. But that is not enough. We also strive to gain control of others. We all believe that our way is the best for everybody and it is a true challenge for any of us to let each other be who they want to be or have their own beliefs. Especially when they strongly disagree with our beliefs. All of us have felt that another is a fool because they cannot see our point of view or will not share our beliefs.
How many times have we found ourselves saying “It's like talking to a brick wall!” exasperated and puzzled by the fact that one person, no matter how compelling our arguments or reasoning, will not accept our point of view as their own.
To Quote Rodney King, “Can't we all just get along?”. The fact is we can't, as sad and cynical as it may sound. Nearly all of us have one issue or another that we feel we are absolutely correct about. And on that particular point we will not yield. Yes, there are many individuals who are open minded enough to consider that they are not correct. But, they are too few, in relation to the masses, to have a truly significant impact on our world wide society. We find points of consensus here and there that allow us to form nations and governments, but eventually those unified bodies develop their own agendas and then impose their will on the masses.
Our own government is at this point. Almost daily there are new laws enacted that impose the opinions of a few people on the rest of us.We may complain and grumble and even curse about it from time to time but there it is.
This election is a prime example of this human need to control others. The candidates that have been presented for our approval are certainly not the best men for the job, a small number of people have controlled our options so that we are forced to select a person that will support their agenda instead of our own. We are forced to choose from the “lessor of two evils”. It is a phrase that has been used to describe the presidential election for many years. I believe the first time I heard the phrase was during the election between Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. in 1992. I was so disgruntled I voted for the other guy, Ross Perot.
It is human nature to attempt to impose our will as an individual on the masses. We all want to rule the world so to speak. The vast majority of us would deny any such ambition, but if we really think about it honestly and objectively we must concede the point. Each and every one of us has some little thing that we would change if given the chance and once that change was implemented and our point proven there is something else and after that there would be something else.
Is this a bad thing? Well that is a loaded question. You see if it was bad to attempt to change things for the better we would have no desire to affect our lives at all and then we would lose a major component of our humanity. I feel that our humanity is what it is. We should attempt to be more moderate in our opinions but we cannot abandon them all together.
We are human, for all our flaws and all our perfections. Yes we do have perfections. We are creatures of unlimited potential and the struggle to be more than we seem has made it possible for us to reach our current status as the dominant life form on this planet. I believe in our unlimited potential, therefore I must also believe that we will work out our imperfections over time. I believe we will live among the stars in ways that have only been imagined. The fact that we can imagine it means it will come true, for we live in a universe of infinite possibilities and that translates to “All things are possible.”
Why are we Driven? by Nathan L. Lowe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at nathan-lowe.blogspot.com.
