While we look to the distant stars, speak of colonizing planets or their moons, we engage in these distant projections of ourselves—subconsciously or unconsciously—to avoid ourselves. That deliberate outward projection of our human nature conceals a submerged yet equally deliberate effort to neglect an inward perspective.
The maxim to “know thyself” is as ancient as our refusal to do so. None knows themselves to any degree; it remains an unplumbed quantity, a thing of unknowable depth. Even those who seek to know themselves, great minds from throughout the centuries, Aristotle or St. Augustine, Montaigne, Nietzsche, or Freud, only got a little closer than most of us; none achieved full awareness, complete knowledge, and understanding. Even Freud, despite being aware of blind spots, had them. And like these eminent thinkers, we ordinary mortals remain slaves to our instincts, passions, and emotions.
Despite our increasing awareness of the mechanisms affecting us and the consequences, despite the growing accumulation of scientific knowledge concerning how our brains and nervous systems operate, how genetics—breeding—define us, and the influence our environment leaves on us, we continue to be drawn more to an unknowable universe than to the universe within every one of us. It’s much easier to fantasize about living life on mars than it is to address the complexities of inner life here on this planet.
Instead of getting to know the most important person in our life, instead of showing any curiosity about the one person we will live out our lives with, we revert to distractions. We invent and pursue a myriad of distractions to avoid ourselves.
We’re so distracted we’re not even aware of the lengths we go to in order to distract ourselves; we don’t (or don’t want to) recognize distraction when we see it. Instead, we conceal distraction from ourselves with unconscious stratagems. The language we use masks what’s really going on. We don’t think about the words we use to refer to all the ploys, tricks and ruses that populate the man-made category of distraction. Yet all our entertainments and pastimes—even work itself—are simply distractions. While distracted by our work, a meeting, a conference call are further distractions—they represent distractions once removed from distraction. We prefer to bury ourselves in a geological complexity of distractions rather than peel back the layers of our Self.
Meanwhile, the life of the ordinary human being is consumed with the many stresses of daily life, as well as the ever-present anxiety of simply being alive, a combination capable of creating surprising degrees of aggression, even violence. So, our minds seek outlets. Our thoughts turn to the most common and accepted methods to address these basic human sentiments—to cope with the human condition.
We may turn to healthy forms of relief, like sports and exercise (distractions, too), or seek the less healthy alternatives that numb the mind and senses. Our outlets are escapist in some physical way; they are external. We lubricate our minds and emotions with alcohol, because it’s available and socially accepted to a point, as is sex. Basic instincts continue to rule us, and despite enormous intellectual advancement, we allow them to continue. The thinking and the science remain untapped, underutilized, by the ordinary person; no translation takes place to convey the discoveries about our species, about our individual selves from the laboratory to the street.
The external world, preferably the distant universe with its unmapped galaxies, its infinite and unknown proportions, somehow seems less daunting than to turn our gaze inward. But to know oneself must be the most valuable thing of all, isn’t it? Because only here will we find solutions to the seemingly intractable earthbound problems that plague us, solutions that go far beyond developing and implementing more of the same rules and laws to govern our unchanging and unpredictable behaviors, but solutions derived from searching inward for their causes.
To improve, we need answers to why, for example, exclusion fuels despair and violence, why isolation nurtures indifference and hatred, why hopelessness brings frustration, self-abuse, death. By knowing the causes and working out effective methods to address our less desirable behaviors, we have the possibility for progress to benefit all of us. Is it naïve? Yes. Is it possible? Perhaps. But it’s easier to conclude that we can’t change; we can’t be rewired; we can’t re-engineer our genetic makeup. It’s so much easier to accept that human intellect will never be capable of outsmarting human nature. So we look to the stars.
Our understanding of the impact of physical events on our mental faculties remains steeped in conjecture based loosely on the most superficial understanding of advancing scientific research and the psycho-therapeutic surface we’ve barely scratched. It’s too complicated, uncertain, so we reject it. Meanwhile, we cling to traditional beliefs, superstitions, and spurious claims. Our understanding of the impact of chronic stress on our mind and body, for example, continues to elude us.
Despite a wealth of advice based on evidence-based science, we remain unable to identify stress in ourselves and take steps to manage it. There are those of us who are still more inclined to seek external explanations for the terrors that plague us—a haunting appears the more likely explanation than an anxiety-ridden nightmare. Recognizing the brain’s method to process and cleanse the stress accumulated during waking life is often not our first port of call. We want to believe in the cures that exist externally—the pharmacology or the natural purges, depending on your persuasion—rather than face the prospect of facing ourselves.
Tragically, most of us—myself included—to some extent refuse to examine ourselves, choosing instead to torment those around us with our unexplored demons. Maybe it’s genetic. Maybe people are born with a predisposition to look inward, while others are not. Whatever the case, our society will only improve once we find a way to dig just a little deeper into understanding who we are and how we think, how we function and what drives us. Because we’ve tapped out the external controls, the laws, the therapy (retail and otherwise), the drugs and sex, Netflix—just about every distraction there is. We’re left now with only ourselves and the stars.