Almost everyone has a good intention when they start something. From what I have seen and heard, I think I can safely assume that each of us want to lead a happy and successful life. We try to do whatever is possible to achieve that. While we attempt to do whatever we feel is necessary, we plan things and set goals based on our capbility. Now the capability thing tends to become very subjective as it is quite difficult to measure and quantiy and therefore it depends greatly on self-perception and self-image. Some of us have great capability but we believe otherwise keeping in mind all the failures. Some us are capable but we perceive much more than what we have considering all the successes that we had till now.
I can safely conclude that at the basic level each one of us is focused on self. How can I do such a big assumption. Wait, I have an argument here.
If someone says, he is not self focused but wants to help others and is selfless, my question, where is this goal coming from. The goal is coming from the person himself, based on his thought that helping others will make them happy and improve things around and if things are better around he will be happy. See it again cam back to the person wanting to be happy. Only difference is that he derives his hapiness out of others happiness.
There are other people who have goals that are realted to them, their family etc. It is straight forward here and we can see directly that these people are sef-focused.
So whatever your goal in life is, you are self-focused as the goal itself is coming from within and it is yours. Even when someone is obeying orders given by someone he is obeying them beacuse he either fears a danger and wants to avoid it or he sees some reward (material or spiritual) which he believes will make him happy.
By accepting that all of us are focused on self we can deduce that our intentions always have something good for us. The problem comes only when our intentions clash with those of others. THough no one starts with an intention to hurt others, because of clash of interests goals of one person come in the way of others. Why do come in the way of others, because there are many things in nature and earth that are limited. Not only Earth and Nature but also other things like Time are scarce. That brings us to the theory of economics which says that we have all this trade, restrictions, taxes, competition, markets etc (picked randomly, no order). Another research says that human race survived and succeeded because there is trade, which means that scarcity is good. Otherwise we will never be able become better than what we are today.
While scarcity is good as it leads to competition and makes everyone involved stretch more than what they usually do, therby increasing the overall contribution - Total ontribution in a competitive scenario is much more than the sum of individual contributions in a non-competitive scenario, it also has flip side. After a certain point each party involved exhausts their positive ideas and that's when the negative starts luring us. Remember the basic intention is still the same - lead a happy and successful life. Despite reaching the maximum limit is someone wants increase his pie, only thing that he can do is grab the pie of another one and that's when the basic intentions start clashing and perceptions start playing in the minds.
Perceptions are not real. They are just impressions that each of us fomr in our mind based on our side of experiences. They can sometimes be totally missing the reality, sometimes get tuck in time (don't change with changing scenario), and even potentially harmful to others (extrapolating beyond the observed range - generalisation. Reactions are even dangerous. They are based on our perceptions about perceptions of others. Here we are fighting in air where our feet are not on the ground of reality. It reminds me of the Crouching Tiger and the Hidden Dragon. While it is possible in a movie to fight continuously in air in reality it is not the case. We can fight in air for a very minute period but immediately after that we hit ground reaity. If you fly too high reacting you may fall heavily and get hurt badly.
You can fly to certain extent without fogetting the reality and possibly you can be safe. But when you have the reality in mind it is better to allow the other party to fly high, aloow them to attack but just move away just in time. You have saved your effort and energy and may be you can help the other party to recover and thereby leading to a possible collaboration. I think it is time for me to stop and get back to my reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment