Early on in my life I felt something, I never get angry at nature, no matter harmful, but disappointment by other beings hurts deeply. Nature doesn't pretend to choose, it just is. That made me a lot more at ease with objects than people.
I don't think we are.
We sure as hell can be. Seeing bright minds at work is a special kind of inspiration, and its own mental turn-on for me. People aspiring to do well by their desires and talents – that's quite a picture. But it only happens when effort is put forth to surround ourselves – and others around us – with the kind of attitude we seek to promote.
Imagine punishing a child for not seeing things the way you do, from the height of the years of experience and the education you'd received. Imagine promoting literacy when you're yet to read a book meaningfully. Imagine moving others to start exercising more, while you're raiding the kitchen every couple of hours for another snack or two.
I don't think we're supposed to be intelligent. I think it's in our best interests to be, but I also see the effort to put forth if you seek to improve someone's livelihood. Not against their will, obviously: this much you can't do even if you try really hard – but encouraging them through the natural flow of things, setting an example, or even writing better guides.
Perhaps we don't choose, either. For all I know, we might as well be only semi-autonomous, or have no free will to speak of. Maybe we just are.
My argument was against what I saw as a notion that human beings must always express the intelligence we all undoubtably possess, simply because we do. I don't think that's the case. It's not about using straight logic, either: it's about empathy, and the emotions that influence (or even underline) our decisions, and the bigger picture, and whether being angry right now is worth our time...
I think we all can be like that. I think we're not encouraged enough to act that way.
There are certainly selfish motives to every single one of us – and yet, some of us are superb at overriding those motives for the sake of a better act, some struggle to the point of giving up, and others yet barely even tap into the altruistic motives.
I think it all has to do, in half, with the environment we're in. Generally speaking, fear promotes fear, and empathy promotes empathy. There's about 40 to 60% to do with genetics (the number I've seen was 55%), but that much we can't control.
We can control our environments, to an extent.
Terrorism? Force of nature. Someone being shitty on public transit? Force of nature. Littering? Force of nature.
We can change our environment though and that changes the genre of nature we see around us. So I concentrate on that.
All suffering comes from a desire unfulfilled. To desire others to act as you would and not as they would is to set yourself up for disappointment.
I think that's too cynical for me these days; we love relationships; it's just that our culture didn't nurture our nature
That's the key to happy life. Don't have expectations even towards people close to you. Appreciate good things you get. Ignore bad. If there's too much bad, move. Also seek people who don't expect things from you.