Unwanted Thoughts

One of my (many) curses is that I spend too much time thinking about things I shouldn’t think about and can’t do anything about no matter how much I think about them. It’s not by design, trust me. I’d be thrilled to keep my mind empty of all the unwanted thoughts that get dumped in there. But the thoughts bull their way in, like enemy invaders crossing the moat and storming the castle.

This isn’t a unique problem, or at least I don’t think it is. It probably happens to everyone by varying degrees. In my case, the thoughts don’t even involve matters that are all that important in the grand scheme of things. The really big puzzles – like what happens after we depart this mortal coil, or whether our whole existence is nothing more than codes in a highly advanced AI program – don’t worm their way into my brain that often.

What I do spend too much time thinking about are earthly matters involving people I shouldn’t waste two seconds on. Most involve sociopolitical forces that sadden and madden me but are unstoppable and irresistible, and will never go away.

I’m now going to devote a single paragraph to a couple of the forces that are much in the news here in the USA. A divisive and ethically challenged rich boy with 2 billion dollars and a million grievances recently won an election to lead the most powerful nation on earth – for the second time in three tries. Another rich boy recently (and allegedly) murdered a health insurance executive in midtown Manhattan – shot him in the back in cold blood, right there on the street. One of the rich boys is a hero to the political right. The other appears to be a hero to the political left. People apparently choose their heroes with no more thought than they choose a condiment for their fries.

I am troubled by these events, these people, these forces. More troubled than I probably have a right to be, considering the multitude of things you could potentially be troubled by.

As usual, now is a good time to pause and acknowledge that these two problems – a corrupt politician and a single murder – would barely raise an eyebrow in much of the world. Other countries have real problems. The U.S. creates fake problems to distract from its real problems (gun violence, environmental degradation, various others).

As I write this there are bloody conflicts going on in the Middle East, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Sudan, Russia/Ukraine and other places we might not even know about. People are starving to death. Children are orphaned. Whole communities are wiped out by bombs, storms, fire, drought.

But: My thoughts don’t linger too long on those things. Instead, they keep coming back to the two rich boys mentioned earlier. I would like to strike them from my mind, but can’t. I can’t get away from the grim and angry thoughts I have about them – and their legions of admirers, and a world that does not instantly recognize how unworthy they are of praise.

And maybe that’s the problem, right there. A world that not only doesn’t reject these people – but openly accepts them, values them, rewards them, holds them in high esteem.

But nah. Even that’s not the real problem — at least from a personal standpoint. The real problem is that I continue to be disturbed by this kind of stuff. You’d think, at my age, that I would simply accept them for what they are – the inevitable byproduct of the human experiment. These dynamics have always been around. They will always be around. It’s naïve to think otherwise. I don’t consider myself a naïve person – not anymore, surely not anymore.

But man. How goddamn naïve is it to keep being troubled by the endless tide of bad people doing bad things while much of the world turns the other cheek?

*****

One of the oldest philosophical questions has to do with the nature of humankind. What are our natural tendencies as a species? Are we naturally generous, or naturally greedy? Is it our natural inclination to treat others with compassion, or with suspicion? I can’t answer those questions – and neither can anyone else, probably. I’m not sure there is an answer.

I guess if I were pushed for an opinion, it would be that most people just want to get by without being troubled or troubling others. We come into this world blind and innocent. Newborn babies scream when they’re hungry, but I doubt they’d try to steal or cheat or kill someone even if they had the mental capacity to do so. That comes later, after they’ve learned a few human tricks.

The one instinct I think holds the most power over humans is survival. If that sounds cynical, I don’t mean it to be. When I say “survival,” I don’t just mean the survival of our individual selves. I also mean the survival of our loved ones, and the human race itself.

Think about your reaction if you’re walking down the street and see someone else’s toddler suddenly break away from their Mom and make a mad dash toward heavy traffic. You will likely make your own mad dash to prevent the kid from getting hurt. You don’t know the kid, you don’t know the kid’s Mom, but some survival mechanism kicks in and tells you to save the child.

There are other examples.

The poorest of the poor have shared what little food they had with people even more destitute than themselves. Men and women have sacrificed their own lives to protect the lives of total strangers. People stranded on the road have knocked on the doors of homes in the middle of the night, and those homeowners have invited them in for a meal and a place to sleep until daylight. You could fill the Solar System with acts of human kindness and compassion both great and small.

But….

You could also fill the Solar System with acts that went the other way – acts inspired by cruelty, greed, prejudice, ego, hate, pettiness, etc. I’d venture to guess that there hasn’t been a single day without war since humans first started forming civilizations. You can bet the house that there hasn’t been a single day without murder, either – or rape, theft, abuse, bullying, torture.

What are we to make of this dichotomy – the capacity to do such good, but the willingness to do such bad? How can we reconcile the fact that we live on a planet with enough resources to feed and house everyone, yet every single day people die of starvation or hole up in a box on the street? What makes us elect leaders who are driven by madness, and a craving for absolute power that is so intense they will stop at nothing to obtain it?

*****

Well, these certainly are deep and dark thoughts to have around the holidays, no? But they bring me back to the original point: Why my head gets filled up thinking about dark forces that have always been around and I am powerless to stop. I take a grim view of these forces, which leads to a grim view of humanity. But here’s the thing: I don’t really have a grim view of humanity. I’m more or less an agnostic on these things. I’m not necessarily surprised by the bad news — but I am troubled by it.

I’m not sure how others deal with it. I only know that I need to find another way to deal with it. The anger and bitterness I feel do no earthly good. They don’t change a thing.

It’s coming up on a new year. Maybe this will be the year I finally learn whatever it is I need to learn.

Note: My wife took the photo a few years ago along the bank of the Thames in London. I’ve used it before on this blog. I’ll probably use it again. I don’t know who the gentleman in the photo is, but he had great timing….