The other day, my 9 year old asked me why adults like end of the world movies. I don’t remember what brought this up, but she pointed out how a lot of shows and movies grown ups watch are about surviving the end of the world. So I started thinking of shows, movies, books, etc., that I enjoy watching. The Walking Dead, A Friend for the End of the World, The Book of Eli….the list goes on.
So I told her, “Well, when you lose everything, and the world as you know it disappears, you are brought back to your human nature. When there is no standard of style, pressure of socially acceptable conversation, or motivation to move ‘up’ to one job or another, our real selves come out. Are we a leader? A follower? Would you harm others? Or protect? Watching these shows open our imaginations to what we would do if it happened to us.”
Then, my fiancé and I had a conversation while listening to Ween. We were talking about Super Ego, Ego, and Id. The internal balance we all maintain. Through our entire lives we question this internal struggle. It’s the whole nature versus nurture debate. Ryan compared it to the cartoons with the devil on one shoulder, and the angel on the other.
With this vision of walking around with good and evil riding on my shoulders, I realized how our civilization views Id and the Super Ego. We have painted our natural instinct into a little devil, as if to suggest we must fight it or else we become evil. We learn and teach self control over our impulses to be able to function with others. In our society, we do go against a lot of our base instincts. Our ego is what separates us from animals. Having reason keeps us balanced. Yet, humans are self preserving. When the direct threat of harm or death is gone, we strive for something more. We protect the weak. We set up rules for life. Laws, consequences, and etiquette form on small and large levels. With our basic needs met, we spend our time micro-managing and obsessing about insignificant details. We start leaning toward the Super Ego, vilifying the Id portion of our psyche.
Now, my A.D.D. took over at this point, and I started to think about offensive things. Not actual things that are offensive, but the concept of being offended. How silly is it to take offense to anything? The Id part of us wouldn’t give it a thought. I imagine a caveman. Leaving to hunt, and his wife comes out crying because the cave woman next door “ughed” at her meanly. Hahaha.
Which brings me to pride (hope your enjoying this jolt filled ride through Beth’s mind). I do believe pride is instinctual. Even animals are competitive and assert themselves as the dominant male, or the most sought after female. So when someone gets their pride broken, they feel anger, embarrassment, frustration, and jealousy. If someone belittles something you have pride in, you feel a sense of violation. Having someone violate or insult your pride is a lot more of a base, instinctual feeling. Being offended, to me, is surface deep. A penguin will not get offended another waddling by collecting stones a different way, but will fight and defend is own and see his stones as a personal reflection on who he is as a penguin (if he could reason that thought out. Haha)
There are so many things I believe we have developed to fulfil our overly suppressed Id side. Being offended was created by us. Our nature needs to feel pride and motivation. We have set ourselves up in such a way, we are stagnant and live monotonous lives. So we create insignificant problems. We find things that offend us, that really have no matter in the grand scheme of who we are. Our efforts are focused on things that are shallow or materialistic. We find socially acceptable ways to be impulsive with our wants or feelings. We believe that catering to our Super Ego is somehow superior to our base level Id. The problem is, when you swing too far to either side of the spectrum, the other part will come out in in other ways. Because like it or not, they are both part of us.
To come full circle, that’s why we enjoy reading Lord of the Flies, or watch Lost. We want to imagine a life without bullshit. Where nothing offends, but we fight for our pride and survival. A world where the angel and devil on our shoulders are redefining right a wrong based on self preservation, not socially acceptable expectations. We get to see ourselves in the rawest form that way. Would be thrive in a survivalist world? Or cling to the idea order and being civilized? How would superiority be shown? In our current world, the successful are, most the time, obvious to the rest of us. Properly dressed, perfect manners, and have a presence that demands respect. So what would be the cue for us to know our alphas? We know deep down we came from uncivilized to overly civilized. To imagine our lives redefined and being able to escape this world of rules and expectations to one of survival, let’s us experience the Id portion of ourselves. It’s fun 🙂
thatbethy 