HUMAN SUPERIORITY COMPLEX
Despite human being thinks that they figured all about the other creatures and in belief that their intellect separates them from other beings, this is a subjective view. My argument below will also be from human’s perspective as I was born with that limitation. Whatever words written below and arguments are discussed, there is a possibility of all of them being wrong, since we create our arguments one sided and they cannot cover for and against arguments from other creatures. We determine the capabilities and limitations of other animals from our perspective. What if our limitations are not allowing us to see the whole picture? What if other animals have different operating systems then our intellect and this is a more advanced one. Our limitations and arrogance with our own intellect would be the best tool to explain why we cannot create conclusions on this argument accurately.
It is believed that our intellectual capacity is our special differentiator. Though this answer is what most human beings believe; in my view, there is a differentiator between other animals and human and this is not necessarily makes humans more advance or more successful from intellectual perspective in the big picture. I cannot explain why people are arguing their identity`s superiority to other animals because so far I don’t have a clear understanding for many things why human do what they do which seems not superior at all. But in my argument below I will only try to argue, what mistakes humans are making by positioning themselves better than other animals.
When I look at the big picture, other animals have most of those that humans would list among their desires to have. Balance, live the life to the fullest, harmony, lack of depression, better connection with nature, unproblematic mate and partnerships and many more can be listed as other animals can easily have but people have to work for them all their life and many can not even get closer to these. I am sure many of you have seen some of generic inspirational quotes and social media feeds saying: “Why spent all your life closed in a building, working hard just to be able to spent your last few days sitting in the nature?” Well your end goal is already accessible by all creatures, including us humans. Only choices of humans are keeping them away from their desires. Human, don’t you see, you are the master of making yourself the prisoner of your own life? If this is not you who created the prison out of your life, it is the system; the system naturally was not there but built by your kind.
Balance, live the life to the fullest, harmony, lack of depression, better connection with nature, unproblematic mate and partnerships and many more can be listed as other animals can easily have but people have to work for them all their life and many can not even get closer to these.
Mankind, what a kind; they have to learn everything first to learn that everything they learned are useless in the big picture. They run around, work hard supposedly to achieve something but they are not sure exactly what, yes they run around breathless for years without question why they are doing what they are doing and then they realize they even forget how to breathe properly. Then they train each other to breath properly in later ages in meditation or yoga centers or in similar centers. Breathing is one of the core knowledge that we were born with. It is a tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is a knowledge that you do not get from being taught, or from books but get from personal experience (Macintosh, 2016). Yet, many of us feels obliged to revisit this learning because they kind of forgotten about it. Actually it is not the breathing that we have forgotten but it is ourselves we have forgotten about. Our intellect that separates us from other animals, plays us it’s tricks and develops us backwards. With that intellect, we can achieve producing the coffee machines we have and pressing the right buttons and we feel proud that we can do this and similar other things that other animals can not do but with that very same intellect we can not calculate or change the damage of the unfairness in the coffee industry and harm it gives to our planet. In our cycle of life, we first must feel superior, arrogant, and knowledgeable to realize that we harmed our own lives extremely and we have harmed the planet extremely.
We need to climb the stupid ladder first to see there is nothing where it took us to be able to get rid of the ladder. But look at other animals, are they like that? They don’t even attempt to climb the ladder. They are certainly aware of their capacities and they enjoy their life by not going beyond their capacities in extremity. If you look at the flow and cycle in the world of other animals, animal do what they do best. Some of their expertise are hunting, running, hiding, enjoying and mating and many more. We, human as an animal came to the world furbished with similar capacities but we think we have more and ignore the abilities that we were born with and always attempt to do things we are not very good at. I do not undermine discoveries of great minds but speaking to general human condition. Unlike us, other animals do what they do best. These examples are all around us maybe all of us. It is that common that human ruins their own life with his/her own choices. Because we always run after the abilities that we don’t have, we cannot positively fulfill many of the responsibilities we have. Look around, all the wars, all the environmental issues, all the other man made problems are created by people who acts as if they are able but not indeed. Some others watch and allow others to ruin their life. As individuals who ruin themselves in environment or in jobs or in targets that they are not a great fit, core abilities are forgotten along the way. Core abilities such as breathing, such as walking, such as loving, such as eating and many others are lost in our weird translations of life along the way. Other animals though, they never quit their core strengths or their identities and this way, they are always balanced and they live the life they supposed to live. To me this is the biggest difference between identity of human and other animals. To me this is the biggest sign that, human identity that humans think that it is superior to other animals because of their intellect is extremely wrong.
“There is an interesting phenomenon wherein power decreases the activation of the neural systems which are thought to underlie empathy, which by extension generally causes us to mentally simulate those who we perceive as less powerful less like subjects who have feelings and experiences and more like objects. Given the systematic subjugation of animals to the human race and their essential impotence in contemporary society, people generally think of them much more like objects than our ancestors who lived among them and somewhat at the mercy of certain animals probably did.” (Lynch, 2014)
A child with amazing musical ability, is pushed away from music because the most reputable thing for that child should be doing is maybe science at that time and parents push him away from music and push him to do something he is not good at. Then he strives all his life to fulfill this direction and then his unhappy, unfitting life ends as “a not so good street musician at his 60`s, or with no music at all.” That kind of stupid complexity can only be created by the useless and harmful part of human intellect, which seems to appear in most cases.
When writing the above comments, I would like to distinguish my comments from true intellectual from the ones using the intellect without having one. For that reason, I declare that I exonerate those small percentage of human beings who uses their intellect because they are extremely capable of it and they don’t use it for harm as they can perfectly calculate the consequences.
Imagine for a moment that Gaia theory is real, which animal group, including humans, would you think less superior or less intellectual in that collective unity. In following sentence, I will share the description of Gaia Theory and I request that sentence is read by thinking human’s part in that big picture.
“The Gaia Theory is a compelling new way of understanding life on our planet. It argues that we are far more than just the “Third Rock from the Sun,” situated precariously between freezing and burning up. The theory asserts that living organisms and their inorganic surroundings have evolved together as a single living system that greatly affects the chemistry and conditions of Earth’s surface. Some scientists believe that this “Gaian system” self-regulates global temperature, atmospheric content, ocean salinity, and other factors in an “automatic” manner. Earth’s living system appears to keep conditions on our planet just right for life to persist! The Gaia Theory has already inspired ideas and practical applications for economic systems, policy, scientific inquiry, and other valuable work. The future holds more of the same. Pick up a newspaper or listen to the news and you’ll quickly see that our understanding of the Earth and our relationship to it has never mattered more. The Gaia Theory offers insights into climate change, energy, health, agriculture, and other issues of great, if not urgent, importance.” (gaiatheory.org, 2016)
Per Adler; “The superiority complex is one of the ways that a person with an inferiority complex may use as a method of escape from her or his difficulties. She or he assumes that she or he is superior when she or he is not, and this false success compensates her or him for the state of inferiority which she or he cannot bear. The normal person does not have a superiority complex, she or he does not even have a sense of superiority. She or he has the striving to be superior in the sense that we all have ambition to be successful; but so long as this striving is expressed in work it does not lead to false valuations, which are at the root of mental disease.”
From Alfred Adler’s point of view, an individual faced with a task wants to overcome or master the task. This is known as striving for superiority. For a well-adapted individual, this striving is not for personal superiority over others, but an overcoming of the task, or finding useful answers to questions in life. When faced with the task, the individual will experience a feeling of inferiority or a sense that the current situation is not as good as it could be. This feeling is similar to stress. If the individual has not been properly trained, the task may seem too much to overcome and lead to an exaggerated feeling of inferiority, or intense anxiety. The individual may, after several unsuccessful attempts to accomplish the task, give up on mastering the task, experiencing the inferiority complex, or a depressed state. The individual may also make several attempts at solving the problem and find a solution to the problem that causes problems in other areas. An individual who answers the question “How can I be thin?” by not eating will become thin, but at the cost over their overall health.
An individual who is not properly trained to answer life’s problems may turn from striving for superiority in useful ways to that of a personal superiority at all cost.
If an individual cannot be better than another on their own merit, they will attempt to tear down another person or group to maintain their superior position. (Ansbacher & Ansbacher 1956)
“Mankind’s dream is superiority but inferiority is their reality”.
In my belief, how human positions themselves next to other animals is explained very well in Adler’s superiority complex. In summary “Mankind’s dream is superiority but inferiority is their reality”.
Deniz Başıbüyük
This is a shorter version of a paper,
presented at the U of C, December 9th, 2016
