Far Removed

At the heart of every human person is an expectation of conflict. For their psychological well-being, humans need to engage in tribalism. But out in the world, they're expected to be civil and deferential most of the time. They're pressured to engage with outsiders politely. It's a big pressure, and it's counterintuitive. Given the opportunity to treat outsiders however they want with no consequences, humans reliably default to cruelty. Look how people behave online. Behind the relative anonymity the internet provides, people drop their politeness. They're eager to do so. Being nice must be a tremendous inconvenience. When the free opportunity to insult, accuse, shun, or ridicule presents itself, the temptation is too great for many. In fact, using the word "temptation" here may be a category error. Humans aren't tempted to violence; violence is inalienable from humanity. It's fundamental. Evidence abounds that H. sapiens doesn't want to use ...

Don't expect me to conform. I'm not like you. I've been called recalcitrant. If I seem that way, it's because I won't do anything that can't be examined. I never act without rationale because knowing why I'm doing something is an important part of knowing what I'm doing. If I don't know why I'm doing something, I probably won't do it very well. So I ask questions, and people don't like that. " Because I said so " and " Because that's just what is done " aren't reasons to do anything.  I can't accept them because they contain nothing to accept. They aren't persuasive because, pragmatically, they're defective in that they're circular. People don't like phrases like that either. They don't like thinkers. I've learned that simply thinking about directives looks to many like bucking directives. I find it difficult to accept that anyone does whatever they're told without thinking s...