(Inner Monologue: Not Everyone Has It. Before I get into the topic of this entry I want to throw out the discovery that not everyone has an inner monologue intrigues me. I myself, have an inner monologue and I never shut up inside of my head. Others think in abstract ideas and not full dialogue’d out sentences. I cannot wrap my head around how that would work and how you would translate your thoughts into verbal communication. Very interesting. Anyways, the below link is one article on the subject that includes Twitter commentary. https://mymodernmet.com/inner-monologue/ )
I only understand myself and I cannot state that I understand myself fully. I believe that I generally understand my behaviors, habits, and desires. I think that I know what motivates my thoughts and actions most of the time, but there are instances that I do not understand why I do the things I do or the things that I say. So, this partial understanding of myself makes it even more difficult to try to understand the actions, ideas, and motivations of others.
As stated in the previous paragraph, I know and understand myself the best. How do we measure others? I would answer the question by saying that we measure others by comparing them to yourself. Their ideas to your ideas, their actions to your actions, and their motivations to your motivations. This is what I am about to do for all of humanity. I am going to use myself as the standard and compare all of humanity to me.
One of the biggest questions that I often have is, “if only humanity would act and think like logical adults, the world would know peace, vastly reduced poverty, and increased satisfaction with life in general. Why can’t this happen?” This is my question because my values (norms) lead me to this question.
I value life and because I value life I believe that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect. Since I am the model to which I am comparing all humanity to, then if everyone held this same core value, we would not hate anyone because they are different. Violence, and war, that stem from hatred towards another individual, or groups of people, would no longer exist.
Imagine if everyone valued life. Nations, countries, and states would make a concerted effort to work together to increase the worlds standard of living. We would work together to ensure everyone had shelter to live in, food on their tables, clothes on their backs, and access to education. We would no longer try to destroy those different from us, but try to work together to ensure everyone benefits from the positive aspects of our many cultures.
Another of my top values is logic. Logically speaking, I know that what I am proposing is only a thought experiment and anything positive happening because of what I am writing has a minuscule chance of impacting the world. However, it is logical to me that it would be in the best interest of every country on Earth to find, and work towards, common goals for all people. Logically, these goals might be to end war, bring everyone out of poverty, provide education to all, access to information to everyone etc, etc, etc… What isn’t logical to me is killing others over beliefs, fighting other nations over resources that can be shared and distributed, and this list could go on and on.
I hope that it is possible for these things to happen. I want everyone in the world to experience and have the life that can be had if everyone acted like logical adults who valued life.
Take It Easy!