Human Soup

While reading a book in a nook at a narrow overlook yesterday, I had a great realization.

I was reading “Marrow” by Elizabeth Lesser. In a chapter called ‘special’ she wrote of driving her grandson home after school, and her interactions with him and his thoughts on being special while Oprah’s interview with Eckhart Tolle played on the radio.

She told her grandson that either every human is special or no human is special.

That line of thinking seemed awfully arbitrary to me. Well, why is everyone special? If that’s a choice, then there has to be some sort of reasoning behind it, right? A reason that everyone can be special. A reason beyond “Well, everyone wants to be special, so they are, because if they’re not, they’re going to whine and complain.”

That’s not good enough for me.

So it sat and stewed in my head for a second.

This is what I came up with:

Consider a human soup. If you take every human on the planet and put them in a cauldron, and had them all writhing and flopping around in it, no one person would be very distinguishable, right? Ignoring the physics and how those on the bottom would be crushed almost instantly, everyone would be an equal part of the human soup (I suppose keeping physics in consideration would make it more soupy, but I don’t want to kill anyone, just make an analogy).

In that situation, on that scale, an observer from outside the cauldron would see no individual humans. We would be too small. We would all be one cohesive liquid made of humans as atoms. It would be silly for any one human, at that scale, to claim that they were special. No difference would be gained, and the soup wouldn’t change. At that scale, we’re all the same, whether we want to be or not.

But scale is just a question of perspective, and perspective doesn’t change the reality, it just changes how you see it.

Zoom in, now. Zoom in to each person, one by one. No one is aware they are in a human soup. Who are they? What do they like? What do they dislike? What do they want? Why do they want it? And on and on and on until we know every single thing about every single person. We now know everyone in this soup better than they know themselves. We know their deepest darkest secrets, their desires and motivations, their fears and goals and traumas and insecurities and hopes and dreams and how much belly button lint they create on an average day. After knowing each person on this level on intimacy, can you say that any one person isn’t special? That any random selection has any number of people in it that aren’t special?

I would say no, but you might say something different. That’s just the way it is.

I don’t think specialness comes from any outside declarative. It comes from the inside. All the little idea atoms and thought molecules that make up a person, and how those tiny building blocks teem and seethe in the mind and interact with each other. The way a person’s puzzle pieces fit together to make the piece of artwork that is this puzzle of a person, is what makes them special. They are more than the sum of their parts. We all are. And it’s all the intangible things we hide from everyone that makes us special. We can’t possibly share everything about ourselves to everyone all the time. Life would get exhausting. That’s why we wonder why everyone has to be special. What we choose to show off are the things that make us the same as other people.

And that had a massive impact on me. I was crying while driving home after realizing that. Don’t worry, I have experience; I’m a safe cry-driver.

And everyone wants to be special, but because we’ve built this world that demonizes people who choose to express their specialness, no one feels special. No one is allowed to. No one has a healthy ego [hyperbole]. We all want to be better or in more pain than someone else. We find unhealthy ways to be special because we’re taught that healthy ways of expression aren’t appropriate. We’re not allowed to grow our egos healthily, so our egos find other outlets.

And what do you think happens when a group of supressed, unhealthy egos takes control of a planet?

Before and during the gross (large-scale) and disgusting colonization of Africa, European societies were probably the most oppressive in history. Strict rules and social customs meant no one could express themselves fully without being ostracized; if anyone had even wanted to.

Their unhealthy egos found people they could be better than.

Colonialism happened.

Horrors worse than anything before or since.

All because of unhealthy egos.

I had another realization after that.

The systems and societies we live in now are symptoms of the ego issue. They are the overgrown artifacts of our ancestors’ unhealthy egos and poor coping mechanisms. They’re not the problem.

Well, okay, yea, they are the problem, but they’re not their own cause. Oppressive governments don’t pop up for the sake of having oppressive governments. The ruler wants to have power and control, and the government is just a tool for that human to sate their unhealthy ego. So, in order to really, actually change and fix this SHIT that we’re in, we need to attack the issue at its source.

We need to fix the human ego.

Okay, wow. Just a second. Holy shit, how on earth are we supposed to fucking do that? I’ve honestly never heard a less actionable suggestion.

Well, I don’t know.

I have ideas, but they’re based on what works for me. Everyone’s brain is wired differently, and what works for some people doesn’t work for others. You all know that. It’s platitudinal.

But no one can change anyone else. We have to focus on and change ourselves.

There are MANY philosophies that talk about reigning in the ego and unreactivity, but none of them quite fit the wind in my sails. They espouse these ideas with strangely-shaped blocks that just don’t fit in most people’s slots.

So I’m not talking about total ego death.

I’m not talking about removing yourself from the karmic wheel, and I’m not talking about whatever other spiritual dharmatic bullshit is and has been out there.

I’m talking about a human experience.

You don’t have to fast and you don’t have to give up carbs. You don’t have to give up your life and sit in meditation for decades on end (though meditation helps a lot).

You don’t have to give anything up except your ego. That thing in the back of your head that tells you to get offended when you feel disrespected. That little bubble that grows and grows until you feel like the people around you are wasting your time all the time. The bubble that pops and makes you feel like the most worthless piece-of-shit thing that has ever crawled into an asshole and died. That thing that you cling to in the hardest moments of your life. The thing that tells you its okay when it’s not. That sense of you being you. That thing. That beautiful, horrible thing that cycles and spins and rotates and flings you around and around and around is what you have to let go of.

In order to slingshot yourself up, you need to push the lowest boundaries.

That’s the hardest part.

But once you’re down there, you’re no longer in the soup. You’ve removed yourself so far from the uncanny valley that lies in the spectrum of nonego and healthy ego. The middle of the bell curve. You won’t see yourself from the intimate place inside your head, but instead from the outside perspective.

You’ll see the soup for what it is.

And when you’ve finally removed yourself from the troubles and the hardship and the reactivity of the ego, you can choose to dive back into the soup. You can take this perspective of the world with you and bring it back to *your* world. You can show the others what it’s like, having seen the other side; having tasted the soup.

I feel like that’s a strange addition to the analogy, but I’m going to keep it in for posterity.

Not everyone can afford to throw their lives into utter and complete chaos in an attempt to chase something they’ve never experienced before. That’s totally valid. I am extremely lucky and privileged to have been afforded the support to act so irresponsibly.

The answer, then, to the question of “Well what the fuck do I do, then, Duncan?” is this:

Whatever you can.

Really.

Keep this place you want to get to in your mind, and do whatever you can in each moment to bring you closer and closer to that goal. Each time you make a decision, it will take you closer towards your end point.

Another platitude: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

An addition: It continues with the next step.

And the next.

And the next.

And the next.

And, of course, it’s not JUST that simple. You’re going to fuck up (very badly), and you’re going to have really REALLY hard choices to make. Steps will take you backwards and paths will lead you away from the goal. You don’t stop and sit in your car because you took the wrong exit on the interstate, right? It sucks, but you go turn around when you can and find your way back to the path Siri or Cortana or Goog. Ass. have given you.

But unless you start when you’re inspired to, it’s going to be very difficult.

So, if this inspired you, start.

Now.

For real.

I mean it.

You can come back to what you were going to do. Sit and think and try to figure out how you can do this. Burn some candles, light some incense, look up mindfulness, spend the rest of the day or night or week or month or year with yourself trying to figure this shit out. Do whatever you can to take that first step and to keep taking steps every day.

Every moment.

Make it important however you can; it’s your journey.

It’s your cup of soup. Take a sip.