I always find the logic people use to understand the rich and powerful and famous, or saints and sinners for that matter, kind of amusing. In general people do a really bad job of really putting themselves in others shoes…. Like they are abysmally bad at it.
I have my faults too, and there’s no way I can guarantee that I understand what motivates anyone, but at the very least I think I am aware of my blind spots and I look at myself and the people I love without rose colored glasses.
I have no doubt that I am capable of horrible things. Capable doesn’t mean inclined. It doesn’t mean likely. It just means capable, under different circumstances maybe.
I think the lack of admittance of these kinds of uncomfortable truths is at the heart of why people are so bad at understanding others and their behavior.
We are motivated by the stories we tell ourselves. So if you want to understand someone you need to understand the stories they tell themselves.
The best way to do that is not to just listen to what they say m, because they likely don’t understand themselves deeply, but to see what motivates you now and in the past and to be brutally honest with yourself.
Use that as a starting point but don’t forget to forgive yourself because life is complicated and you didn’t choose the hand you were dealt. Your attempt to understand and evolve is already admirable.
Dig into your own stories.
“You can’t trust anyone”
“You can only trust your family”
“No one can ever truly understand you”
“Nice guys finish last”
“What goes around comes around”
“You have to project an image of success”
“No one wants a loser”
“Money doesn’t grow on trees”
“God is good”
“God is cruel”
“God doesn’t exist”
“God is punishing me”
“God loves all”
“You have to fight for what you believe”
“Love is a battle”
“Life is mysterious”
“People are dumb”
“People are inherently selfish”
“People are good at heart”
“People are complicated”
“Life is what you make it”
“You have to leave a legacy”
“Having kids is the best thing someone can do”
“These people are out to destroy democracy”
“These people only want money”
“I hate myself”
“I hate everyone”
“Everything is love”
”Nothing good can last”
“I don’t deserve this”
“They deserve it”
“Boys don’t cry”
“A woman should stay in the kitchen”
“A woman can do anything a man can do”
What’s true and what’s false is not at question here. The truth is less consequential to your behavior and the behavior of others. To believe that you have the truth in itself is a story.
Whether or not something is true, if you want to understand what motivates someone you need to understand the stories they tell themselves.
And if you can’t understand how your own stories work, you’ll never understand how someone else’s might.
What motivates your belief in an ideology or in some fundamental idea about life? How do you react to someone disagreeing with it? Have you truly questioned it yourself? If not, why not? What are you scared of?
To truly approached an unbiased view, one must always consider that everything they know could be wrong. To see the world as it is rather than what one thinks it is is an impossibility, but we can always get closer.
Freedom is freedom from your own beliefs. The ability to look at things without judgement. This doesn’t mean we should abandon everything we believe in, just to be able to step outside of it for a period of time.
Our understanding of the world is painted by our judgements and so they distract us from reality.
Being able to pop in and out of your belief systems and world view allows you to understand another. Without it, you are just a program clashing with another program in a PC.
You can keep your worldview, your beliefs, your truths close to you. You can believe in them as deeply as you wish. But in practice, they are just the software you use to navigate the world. There is other software. You could say that software is worse, horrible even, but if that’s all you do, and you never try to understand it outside of bias, there will always be aspects of this world which you could understand but choose not to.
Think about all the stories like these you’ve told yourself over the years. Think of the ones that may have possessed you for a short time, or the ones that pop up in your worst moments.
These are not just passing thoughts, they are programs, running on in the background, that decide how you behave. When they conflict with each other your behavior will come off as erratic or unpredictable to people. When they change, suddenly you find yourself living a completely different life.
Many of these programs are installed in us by our parents and teachers and friends and media. Some resonate with us deeply at the time because they match our experience while others are merely filling a gap, covering up fear.
Either way they can be examined, and with each examination, you find the world makes a little more sense.
For me it was the idea that no one would understand me and that I’d need to hide my true self to live in this world, instilled in me from my early experiences. It was the idea that life is hard, instilled in me by my parents.
It was a deep sense of meaning and wonder that was instilled in me through religious practices which, to me, seemed both nonsensical and blindly adopted by those around me but certain aspects of which felt primal and core to my experience.
It was the questions I asked myself while lying out sprawled in the grass and looking up at the sky and reading science fiction in elementary school.
I’ve spent years digging into each of these and discarding all the beliefs that didn’t feel core to what I want in this life, that didn’t feel like me. I looked carefully at how these experiences helped me form the stories I use to navigate the world and compared how each story reinforces itself.
I reexamined each of the ideas that felt right, pushed and pulled at them from every angle, tested them, and kept what remained with an awareness of the vulnerabilities.
And now it’s very rare that I can’t come up with some kind of logical explanation for someone’s behavior. I see a tree of possible motivators and no one looks like a full on saint or a monster at the core. While they can behave as either, they are a complex set of algorithms that I can guess at the inner workings of but also a beautiful and sometimes horrifying painting that I can enjoy and see myself in.
I wish this was taught to children. I believe it’s our birthright, to find joy in constant self-discovery and refinement of our desires and a pursuit of harmony with the universe around us.
I’m not sure how this was to read, but it was cathartic to write, so thank you for coming along with me
🐊
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