While I am always amazed at the traps we create for ourselves, even more amazing to me is our inability to see that most traps are of our own creation and that the easy way out is simply to decide not to be trapped. I was prompted to think about this again this week while watching a friend painfully extricate himself from a job he had outgrown some time ago.
I have long pondered over what it is that prompts each of us to continually trap ourselves, and I have come to the conclusion that deep in our past we must have been herd animals prior to rising through the primordial murk as a dominant species. Nothing else explains the incredible array of rationalizations, fears, and downright excuses used by all of us at one time or another to explain why we don’t just pack it up and move on when entrapped in some distasteful situation. Most of the traps we endure are creations of our own minds, with the locked trap door consisting of the constant ebb and flow of mental anguish over how we got there, why we cannot leave, what others will think of us if we try to do so, and how good life might be if we could only get out. Most traps are no more than the real time equivalent of the tormenting midnight sweats we all suffer from occasionally – the ones that make you wonder about your sanity when viewed in the limpid light of a new morning and the realization that fears suffered in the dark have little bearing in reality.
Why my conclusion that we are herd animals? If we were truly the thinking and rational individual beings in the style that John Stuart Mill imagined us, we would not have such a strongly felt need to make decisions primarily in light of the expectations that others have of us and we would, instead, make those decisions by proceeding immediately to our personal expectations, goals and needs.
For the record, I am not hereby advocating that we all engage in rampant Ayn Rand-ish selfishness. I am no fan of Objectivism or of Howard Roark and his airborne dollar signs. I am simply making the observation that it is the rare person who can first analyze and understand a present dilemma by the immediate application of personal goals and needs without having to first undergo considerable anguish over what others might think if he or she were to take individual action. In other words, it is almost always true that our loyalty to our particular herd has to be first mentally worked through prior to an individual taking an inevitable personal initiative that seems, when viewed in the rear view mirror of time and roads taken, to have been glaringly obvious all along.
Since we never seem to learn from these experiences so that we act differently in the face of the next, succeeding dilemma, I have to assume that this is how we are biologically hard wired to think. I suspect our innate herd instinct also explains why our initial reaction to Paul McCartney’s departure from the Beatles and Paul Simon’s departure from Simon & Garfunkel was to think them selfish and suspect in their motives. Only with the fullness of time and the subsequent realization of what the two Pauls achieved in their later, individual careers, can a herd animal come to appreciate the wisdom of an individual leave taking.
The implications of this conclusion are not as obvious to me as they might appear to you. I suppose one might argue, as Ayn Rand did, that there is glory in selfishness and that we all ought to act accordingly and let the chips fall where they may. I have long felt, however, that there is greater glory and satisfaction in working for the communal good than for personal gain. If so, the herd instinct is not only strong within us but necessary for our survival and success as a species. Even so, each of us has individual needs that must be seen to and there are times when we must look past the herd to take care of ourselves.
Friedrich Nietzsche maintained that “morality is herd instinct in the individual.” As such, our beginning the resolution of a personal dilemma by worrying about the perceptions and goals of others prior to applying our personal needs and goals may be nothing more than an attempt to define, determine and rationalize the morality of an action we will inevitably take for the sake of our own sanity.
Seen in this light, the herd anguish that puzzles me may not only have merit, but may be a necessary mental process that must be undertaken prior to taking effective, individual initiative. Notwithstanding that conclusion, when one is merely an observer of another’s attempt to extricate himself from an obvious personal trap, such anguish seems a high price to pay for achieving necessary personal peace of mind – especially when it is obvious to the observer that the individual involved is extricating himself from the kind of situation where far more was given than received.
I guess all of these ruminations are really nothing more than a public adjuration to my friend to move on, to look forward and not backward, and to enjoy the next phase of his life.
