Mankind's Slow Evolution

I have been reading several books lately on interpersonal communication and conflict--newer books--The Guide to Compassionate Assertiveness (2012), The Triangle of Truth (2011), Conscious Communication (2010), Breaking the Argument Cycle (2009), and How to Hug a Porcupine (2009). 
These books Should be the latest and greatest knowledge on communication, yet I am under the impression that most of these books are complete garbage.

Conscious Communication seems to be the best book I have ever read on interpersonal communication. I think it comes closest to reality and the "truth" as Plato would put it. In one section of this book, Miles Sherts begins to touch on the evolution process of man and my mind began to mix with his thoughts and I think I completely understand where he is going with this thought:

One of the things that separate us from Animals is that we have the ability to create complex noises to communicate with one another and formulate sentences; we also have the ability to think about thinking--which supposedly animals cannot. Most importantly, we have the ability to recognize our feelings and to name them. We can assess ourselves and determine: I am sad right now, I am happy, I am grateful, I am distraught, I am angry.

Yet even though we can create complex sounds and communicate how we are feeling--we haven't advanced very far in this field as a human race. 

Most of us communicate logically rather than emotionally. We make assumptions and treat them as facts. When someone does something that hurts us, we say "You are a bad person" and we live on the assumption that that person is out to get us, out to hurt us, out to dishonor our families and circumvent our lives. It is the simple: "Because of this, therefore this." Logic. That's what that is. But that's now how logic is supposed to be used, because it isn't an avenue to the truth.

Rhetorical tools, Logic, Ethos, Pathos, Kairos--these are supposed to bring us closer to the truth, not theory. They are supposed to bring about good in the world, not fear. They are supposed to help you learn or teach, rather than narrow your mind to new ideas.

The thing I have learned from my recent studies has been that the NEW avenue of evolution--the area in which we humans NEED to evolve in order to survive, the area in which we have been fighting generationally to overcome this and unfortunately it has been a slow process can be explained as follows:

We have found a way to gather resources so that all of our physical needs are easily taken care of, but our emotional needs, because of society and the culture required to reach this level of human advancement, have taken a back seat. Instead of addressing emotional needs we focus on physical needs as the means to an end, but it doesn't help to heal emotional wounds.
We run away from emotional pain or blame others because of 'logical' associations we make between other people and our emotional pain. Because our emotional needs aren't met and more importantly, because we don't know how to address or resolve emotional wounds, we sever relationships, we lash back, and we "fight" to survive.
But emotional pain isn't like physical pain. We don't need to fight for our emotional well being like we do for our physical well being. Gaining possessions, securing more resources of food and water, these might help us resolve our physical well-being, but our emotional well being isn't resolved by securing more relationships. If you don't resolve your emotional needs, having more relationships will only bring more opportunities for conflict and can ultimately lead to you pushing away your relationships or hurting other people and making your emotional pain even worse because the closer people are to you the more likely they are to bring out your emotional wounds.

As a society, but more importantly as individuals, we need to focus on resolving our emotional needs ourselves and being more compassionate to others who are suffering emotional pain. But before we can do that, we need to evolve so that we can recognize emotional pain--in ourselves and in others. And then we need to learn how to resolve emotional pain, because emotional pain can be triggered by other people, but resolving that emotional pain is an individual process in which we might rely on the support of others but ultimately must make the journey ourselves in the confines of our own minds.

You shouldn't walk away from other people simply because they trigger emotional pain in you, just like you shouldn't blame the fire for burning you.

Everybody got their problems

99 Problems

This song doesn't fit 100% but here goes...

Why is it that people blame others for their problems? I'm not talking about when clearly something is their problem but they blame it on other people, like when someone gets in a wreck and blames it on the idiot they crashed into, I'm talking about when people get offended. I'm talking about when people are annoyed. I'm talking about when people fight over things and jihad and crusade. I'm talking about when people get something stuck in their head that they believe so strongly that they can't see the other side.

And I'm guilty of it too.

It is human nature to be one sided--it's how the mind works, it's how we sleep at night. It's because our minds try so hard to make sense of this life and if we don't understand something we compartmentalize it under some other umbrella so that we don't have to think about it. We only see what we see, and that doesn't mean it's the truth. It's just perspective.

But people base their whole lives on their perspective--and how else can they? We are the product of our experiences, and our experiences are biased by our perspective.

So, I suppose I'm not really talking about blaming others for one's problems, I'm talking about hypocrisy. People look at their perspective and they see things they can't understand and they compartmentalize them in some category that makes sense to them. They look at differences in opinion as right and wrong; differences in actions as acceptable or unacceptable behavior; and they let other people's methods of thought or action affect them positively or negatively.

People are always under the assumption that society is following the same rules as they are, the truth is that there are very few rules that have been universalized among society. People think society governs sexual conduct, ethical conduct, and they assume that we live in society and follow mores and norms because they provide us with safety and resources. But a society is really just a collection of people, each with a different perspective.

The assumption is that by living in a society there will be greater good for oneself than living outside of that society; what people fail to recognize is that there is greater bad by living in society as well. Instead of choosing to be even-keel, a member of society chooses to have higher highs and lower lows.

I'm not talking about society in general, though this applies to them as well, what I'm referring to is smaller sub-groups of society. Churches, cities, corporations, families, race communities, gangs, etc.--anywhere that people come together. Parents take on a burden for their kids, church leaders go out of their way to help their members, corporations pay the managers more than they employees and shareholders reap the profits even though they barely work at all.
You hear stories about parents complaining about their kids because they put effort into them and are disappointed by them. You hear church leaders frustration with their flocks at not following the principles they teach, you hear shareholders complaining about the poor work of their company employees; and yet none of this is related. It's all in perspective. The kids don't see life as an adult--they haven't lived long enough. The church members pick and choose their ethics because they don't know any better or because their perspective is such that they don't care. The employees and managers of companies make decisions in the moment that effect the future.

Is society doomed? No. Because society has operated this way since the dawn of man and it will continue to operate this way forever. There are good parts, even great perks to being in society, but nothing is free. And if you know how to take advantage of the system, you can see great things from being in society and diminish  your own loses--thereby limiting risk--but it always comes at a price.

People see others as the problem when they themselves are the problem. Not because they blame their problems on other people, but because they lack knowledge, they lack skill, they lack ability, and most importantly, they are trapped in their perspective.

By my perspective, everyone would confront problems in their relationships and discuss them in an environment where both parties agree to not take offence by what is said and both parties agree to act cool headed and not purposely say or do things to hurt the other party. But not everyone sees this as the best way to go. Some people see problems in relationships, conflict, as a negative thing, and they desire everyone to avoid it, not talk about it, keep cool headed, ignore it, and find a work around at whatever expense. Is one more correct than the other? No. They are just different.

The wise person walks through this world understanding two things: 1) that others don't see things the way that they do, and 2) understanding that we aren't meant to know the truth and therefore can't be more right than the next guy/girl.

I think one of the keys to this life is to simply understand, nothing more, nothing less.