Recently a friend and I got into a philosophical argument of sorts. It began with my comment saying that “We are both so random,” and he began to talk about our similarities and differences. It boiled down to a discussion about whether people were alike or not. Here are our arguments:
Mine-
I believe that people like to believe that no one in the world is like them, and that is true to some point. But I also believe that fundamentally, we share many things. Not just physically, but also mentally. All people have some sort of belief system. All people have morals that they stand by, even if the actual morals are different. We all have wants and desires. We all have secrets. We all have emotions and can be happy or sad or embarrassed or hurt. As pessimistic as this sounds, we are all the same person with small differences. Of course there are outliers, but all statistics have outliers and exceptions.
His-
People generally behave along certain guidelines not because it is their innate nature, but because we are products of society. The moral and social guidelines by which we act are no more a part of our basic humanity as is fast food. Besides of meaningless physical similarities, these action guidelines are really the only things we have in common. If humans were capable of fully developing completely separate from these guidelines, we would have no concept of secrets, morals, or etiquette, as these are all products of society. Similarly, many emotions, such as embarrassment, and love, would not exist, were it not for other humans.
If you have any opinion on the matter, then please comment below and either let us know who you agree with or your own opinion.
<3 e
Gee, that's a tough one. I think I would tend to agree with you, that we are all the same person with small differences. What is it Byron Katie says? "There are no new thoughts."
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of us have unconscious beliefs systems which dictate the way we act. i.e., "There's something wrong with me, and everyone else is normal." or, "I need people to see me a certain way."
If we actually looked at these thoughts, we might realize how crazy they are, and we might also realize that everybody else does this too.
Having said that, we ARE all unique.
I think that both of you make valid points. I agree with your friend that we don't simply have morals because we're alive, but because we've been raised thinking one way. Think back to history lessons- the Aztecs to us *seem* ruthless because of the way they killed their own, but in their eyes, they were doing the right thing. I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm not gonna be the one who stops the sun from coming up every day!!
ReplyDeleteHowever, I also think that despite that, we are all unique. We have many things that make us alike, and yet no one is exactly the same as the next. Sure, someone else in the world feels the same way on one subject, but they're going to disagree elsewhere.