Well…for this post, allow me to discuss human emotions, and how our emotions, and our deviations from pure human nature can affect us. Masochism and sadism are far from our only choices in life, but they are the strongest of those with which we are presented, so one may often percieve them as our only two choices. However, as there are more emotions than hatred and love, there are more choices than simply masochism and sadism.
Let us consider for a moment, the origins of society, and how humanity was able to raise itself from the level of isolated hunters in the vast savannas of earth, to bands, to tribes, to villages, and then to cities, to awesome civilizations that united huge area of land under a common language, common coin, common culture. Society was based on the limitation of our own individual spheres of influence, so that others may have the full usage of their own limited spheres of influence, leading to the promotion of the survival of the whole, instead of the individual. Henceforth, Natural Selection began to loose its grip on hummanity, as in the past, as now, the strong began to defend the week in a form of collective security that defines society. Altruism and charity grew out of this ideal “collective security”, in saying that one valued the needs of others above one’s own needs, or “the needs of the many over the needs of the few.” It was in this spirit, the spirit of unity and cooperation so that the whole of humanity might be lifted up, that organizations such as the United Nations and the International League of Students were founded, and it is this spirit of unity and collective security that dominates in the world today. As such, our species, in cooperating with itself and using collective security, has created series of world-spanning societies, so that today, we have grown from our humble origins, to masters and stewards of this earth. Consider this: If everyone were to be selfish and care only of themselves, we would not have developed a society, but would merely be rogue bands of hunters, roaming the world, and becoming extinct.
Everytime we are debating between performing an action or not, everytime we face a difficult situation, and everytime that we are affected by events of this world, we decide with a combination of emotion and logic, for a human being is not logic alone, or we would be merely computers. Nor are we pure emotion, or we would be merely one of the lower animals which cannot use logic. It has oft been said that logic is the ideal to which humanity should aspire, but its antithesis, emotion, is also necessary to human nature. Thus we should not scorn one or the other, but join them both together into a synthesis , a combination of these two ideals that will allow us to shed light on issues more easily than by one or the other alone, for it is the two together that define us.
I’ll break board tradition here and use a personal experience to better illustrate my point. This weekend at Thespian festival, five of my friends were involved in a major car accident and I was unaware of quite how serious it was until they were taken back to our hotel by my sponsor. Basically, the left side of their car was crushed by an eighteen-wheeler truck, and you are probably aware of the potential for injury involved in an accident of that magnitude. I did not know in what condition they were in, so I waited after the curfew (facing the risks of getting too chilled, sleep deprivation, getting caught and barred from festival, and other such) so that i could make sure that they were well, choosing to value the well-being of my friends over my own. Why? Because I cared about them, and they were valuable to me. Even in dire circumstances, I would place their well being over my own, because that is the way that I am, and the way that I would like others to care for me. To be willing to save the lives of others, instead of oneself requires a strength of character, a willpower that most do not have. It requires looking beyond the well-being of the individual, to the well-being of the collective whole. It requires compassion, love, and courage…none of which are to be found in pure logic.
The reason that those who choose to save the lives of others, to take risks for the embetterment of all, and to value others above themselves are respected and revered is because they have transcended selfish human nature, human nature, which dictates that the individual is most important of all. Those people are not reacting out of an artificial desire, but have managed to find it within themselves to challenge the basic human condition. What they do is not masochism, not “artificial”, because the desire to help others, to ensure the well-being of the whole dominates in them, rather than the selfishness that pervades many of us. Human nature, in its natural state, is primitive and selfish, seeking only to benefit the individual, while those who have transcended base human nature have learned to put others before them, for a person is only one being in this world, but perhaps one of you might make a difference in this community, so that the actions of one may affect many, and may not only benefit yourself, but others.
In life and society, it is not that we ask to revel in pain, or revel in the delivery of pain, but that we have found an alternative that is neither of the two. We are willing to deal with the pain, to ensure that others may not have to deal with the pain, for if a person can save at least one other person, then he or she has made a difference. We, as humans, should be willing to help make a better society, to aid others in the struggle of life, for it is not enough to know logic, but the emotions of compassion, courage, and most of all, love…for it is often true that “love conquers all”, and at the very least, it conquers the baseness of human nature.