Within most of our readings, we have come across instinct and reasoning. Some texts separated them, saying that instinct and reasoning two completely different occurrences. As if they cannot happen together or at the same time. There is reason, and there is instinct and they do not coincide. Usually, as humans, we believe reasoning to be the better of the two. With reasoning, we can think things through and make decisions based on what’s best. We believe reasoning to be the more refined of the two, the more sophisticated.
Why is this? It because humans equate instinct to animals. Our innate instinct is what connects to those “lower” than us. It’s all a power play; why are we taught from a young age to go against instinct and to think things through using reason? Perhaps it is because living only on instinct can lead to hasty and irrational outcomes. However, I believe that it is because our instinct is what connects to animals. And to be animal-like is not a desired trait. As humans, we find our raw instinct to be a weakness as it makes us less human. Living life completely through reasoning can also prove to be a weakness. If every decision you made was based solely on reason, just going to the movies could prove to be a challenge. Instinct is not the only animal-like trait that humans seem to find beneath their superiority.
Competition is the epitome of being animalistic. Animals survive due their ability to compete for food and shelter. It’s survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom and it’s the only way that animals can stay alive. When someone is “too competitive” in sports, or with academics, or with anything at all, they are looked at with pity and disdain. Being too competitive (whatever that means) has become something that humans find annoying about other humans. Why is feeding into your animalistic side so bad? Why is showing that you’re competitive met with irritation and disapproval?
Sex is also animalistic, but is looked at in a different way. For animals, sex is a way to reproduce and to create more. Humans have taken this basic act and have made it their own. We have made sex into an act of pleasure rather than an act of reproduction. This may be why humans aren’t as ashamed of their sexual acts as much as they are their raw instinct without using reason. But even sex for pleasure is animalistic in that sometimes it is done because the need for that pleasure is so great, even if the reasoning behind it is not. In this way, humans are again like animals.
I completely agree that humans are animals. If we strip everything down we basically do things for our own primal needs. We still live in fear that our heritages and memories will not be passed along, and because of that do we constantly find partners to bed. By this right of passage, do we shuffle through people; subconsciously do we start to pick and choose whom we like. We associate several features with what we want from our offspring, physical agility, attractiveness and perhaps a good sense of intuition.
ReplyDeleteWe have not really moved forward since our animal/Neanderthal days as when it comes down to it; everything still is all about competition. In classes, those who talk in class are viewed as the most attentive and intelligent as they express their opinions, making us believe they are the smartest. So, there is still the survival of the fittest aspect to our lives. We still want to be the best so that people like us more, we believe that we are more powerful when we have more skills, which is true as in the world it is full of competition so we need to be better in order for us to excel. Another reason why we go to college as we will have one step above those who do not have a college education, however what we go on to do with them is still up for question.