There are a few things about the human species that ring and echo through generations, through race, ancestry and bloodlines, through both sexes, all ages, and all eras.
Among those things is that we, as a species, harbor both fear and the inclination to dominate that which we fear, so that we may either eradicate it, or have control and power over it so that we may use its strengths and assets.
We, as a species, are domination-oriented. Control-freaks, if you will.
We like to have control over the things, situations, and goings-on in our environment.
We "tame" lions, tigers, and elephants. We've "domesticated" wolves and big cats, and bred them into more easily controllable creatures. We even keep whales (dolphins, mostly) and sharks in aquariums.
Ever kill a spider or a hornet? How about a snake? A rodent?
Did you really think it was going to attack you, did you even know what species it was?
What was the real reason you didn't capture it and put it somewhere else?
What were the FEELINGS that you experienced?
There are several animal species that humans have completely wiped out due to this compulsion to dominate our environment. When we destroy an animal or an entire species, we come up with all kinds of rationales for WHY it was "necessary", especially when it becomes evident that we didn't need to do it, or shouldn't have done it.
We make all kinds of machinery to harness the power in our world for our own use, and then use the power we've harnessed to try and capture, control, dominate, and master over other things in our natural world. Even WEATHER and SPACE, for pete's sake. Flying is "old hat" now, we dominated that decades ago.
Control and domination: It's WHAT WE DO.
So, in light of THAT admission and illustration that doesn't even scratch the surface, and which most of us would agree with and even be proud of, why is it so difficult for us to come to terms with the fact that we turn this compulsion to dominate on one another all the time?
If it's in our nature, then it's in our nature, so why pretend it doesn't exist?
The reason that we pretend it doesn't exist is simple, and it's yet another old and well-known human habit: "Denial".
We "go into denial" for a few reasons. For example if a person has a chocolate cupcake habit that he can't seem to shake, he'll probably want to hide it from others so they won't judge him negatively, which is understandable; humans will judge a person as "bad" for the most ridiculous things. ALSO, he might want to hide it so no one knows about it, because he doesn't really want to stop. He's getting something out of it that he does not want to lose, whatever that might be. It might be the sugar, but it might also be the comfort from a memory that's invoked when he eats a chocolate cupcake. That memory might be giving him a beautiful place to be in the midst of an otherwise chaotic environment.
Denial! We usually do it so we can hide something, so we don't have to give it up. So we can keep doing it, whatever it is.
So when a man tries to show "superiority of maleness" over a woman, or a woman tries to show "superiority of femaleness" over a man, they are trying to DOMINATE the other person, and they are trying to give excuses why they think it's plausible and "okay" for them to dominate another person.
The excuses, the "reasons", are part of the DENIAL process.
How many excuses of male superiority or female superiority have you heard just over the past couple of months? People are constantly doing this.
We want to DOMINATE what and whom we FEAR, we want to DOMINATE whom we want to CONTROL, and we want to DOMINATE what and whom we want to OWN and USE for our own purposes.
That includes the opposite sex, as well as other races, and it ALSO includes people who are the SAME sex and race as ourselves. And you can be sure, it's being done TO us as well.
If we're a human and we're with another human, someone is going to be doing some "dominating" at some point, using tactics that they've learned from others over the years, that they may or may not be aware of.
The more a person harbors the desire to dominate and control others, the more likely they are to either deny that they do it AT ALL. And if they do admit it, the more likely they are to try to come up with "reasons" that it's "okay", such as biology, evolution, or even excuses so far fetched that they're almost comical, such as that the person they're trying to dominate WANTS to be dominated.
There's not much more to it, really. We could go through our evolution as mammals and primates, almost all of which have domination instincts, and we could go through human history, we could read all the poetry, we could read Darwin's theories, we could listen to all of the great philosophers, spiritual leaders, writers and poets and learn a great deal from all of them, but on the most basic level, there is this:
We as Homo Sapiens like to dominate the things in our environment, we are naturally compelled, no matter what our sex or ancestry is. Some more, and some less, but all of us, nonetheless.
The matter of WHAT we turn our domination compulsion ON, and the consequences of that, is a serious matter that most of us don't seem to pay nearly enough attention to.
We are born with a compulsion to dominate things in our environment for certain valid reasons like feeding ourselves, finding and building shelter, and defending ourselves...
AND we are also born with the ability to SEE OURSELVES,
REFLECT ON OUR OWN BEHAVIOR,
LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES AND CONSEQUENCES,
CONTROL OUR ACTIONS, SPEECH, AND BEHAVIOR,
and PLAN OUR ACTIONS AND WORDS ACCORDINGLY, SO THAT WE WON'T REPEAT TERRIBLE MISTAKES THAT HAVE RESULTED OVER AND OVER IN ALL MANNER OF PROBLEMS AND TRAGEDIES FOR THE ENTIRE SPECIES.
Turning our domination compulsion onto OTHER HUMANS is one of the most common mistakes human beings make every day, and it's one of the EASIEST things to learn to STOP DOING.
But...
DOMINATION ADDICTION
...those who are addicted to domination over other humans will probably protect their HABIT, because of the high they get from it.
Many who are addicted to domination actually believe in their own superiority, and often believe that the reason others don't dominate THEM is because they CAN'T, because they're not strong enough or smart enough. Their addiction to domination, like most other addictions, causes them to RATIONALIZE the reasons for what other people do and don't do, and the reasons for their own actions. Basically, they just make things up in order to explain why, for example, their spouse doesn't clock them in the head every time they're abusive to them, or why the other people in the apartment building don't break down their door and just throw them and their drug dealing operation out on the street, or why people get out of their way on the sidewalk or in the store, or even on the road.
They usually attribute other people's "allowing" and "submissive" actions to fear and weakness.
That's all that's floating around in their heads. It doesn't cross their minds that there are OTHER reasons that a person doesn't just smack them back down, hurt them, or hold them down, because those reasons ARE NOT IN THEIR HEADS. They don't know about those other reasons, they can't reason them out, and they can't figure them out. It's just not there. Even if someone told them what those reasons are, if the person is an adult, it probably won't sink in, they won't be able to comprehend it.
SELF AWARENESS
But even those of us who are more aware than that still have domination compulsion, and nearly all of us have it toward other human beings. Sometimes it's only reactive and defensive. But sometimes it's ego, sometimes it's offensive, sometimes it's just for envy, control, jealously or greed.
Self-awareness is the difference between being in control of one's self as a Sentient being, not the absence of tendencies, emotions, and compulsions. We all have the propensity and the tendency to assert control and domination, it's our level of awareness of it that makes the difference.
Among those things is that we, as a species, harbor both fear and the inclination to dominate that which we fear, so that we may either eradicate it, or have control and power over it so that we may use its strengths and assets.
We, as a species, are domination-oriented. Control-freaks, if you will.
We like to have control over the things, situations, and goings-on in our environment.
We "tame" lions, tigers, and elephants. We've "domesticated" wolves and big cats, and bred them into more easily controllable creatures. We even keep whales (dolphins, mostly) and sharks in aquariums.
Ever kill a spider or a hornet? How about a snake? A rodent?
Did you really think it was going to attack you, did you even know what species it was?
What was the real reason you didn't capture it and put it somewhere else?
What were the FEELINGS that you experienced?
There are several animal species that humans have completely wiped out due to this compulsion to dominate our environment. When we destroy an animal or an entire species, we come up with all kinds of rationales for WHY it was "necessary", especially when it becomes evident that we didn't need to do it, or shouldn't have done it.
We make all kinds of machinery to harness the power in our world for our own use, and then use the power we've harnessed to try and capture, control, dominate, and master over other things in our natural world. Even WEATHER and SPACE, for pete's sake. Flying is "old hat" now, we dominated that decades ago.
Control and domination: It's WHAT WE DO.
So, in light of THAT admission and illustration that doesn't even scratch the surface, and which most of us would agree with and even be proud of, why is it so difficult for us to come to terms with the fact that we turn this compulsion to dominate on one another all the time?
If it's in our nature, then it's in our nature, so why pretend it doesn't exist?
The reason that we pretend it doesn't exist is simple, and it's yet another old and well-known human habit: "Denial".
We "go into denial" for a few reasons. For example if a person has a chocolate cupcake habit that he can't seem to shake, he'll probably want to hide it from others so they won't judge him negatively, which is understandable; humans will judge a person as "bad" for the most ridiculous things. ALSO, he might want to hide it so no one knows about it, because he doesn't really want to stop. He's getting something out of it that he does not want to lose, whatever that might be. It might be the sugar, but it might also be the comfort from a memory that's invoked when he eats a chocolate cupcake. That memory might be giving him a beautiful place to be in the midst of an otherwise chaotic environment.
Denial! We usually do it so we can hide something, so we don't have to give it up. So we can keep doing it, whatever it is.
So when a man tries to show "superiority of maleness" over a woman, or a woman tries to show "superiority of femaleness" over a man, they are trying to DOMINATE the other person, and they are trying to give excuses why they think it's plausible and "okay" for them to dominate another person.
The excuses, the "reasons", are part of the DENIAL process.
How many excuses of male superiority or female superiority have you heard just over the past couple of months? People are constantly doing this.
We want to DOMINATE what and whom we FEAR, we want to DOMINATE whom we want to CONTROL, and we want to DOMINATE what and whom we want to OWN and USE for our own purposes.
That includes the opposite sex, as well as other races, and it ALSO includes people who are the SAME sex and race as ourselves. And you can be sure, it's being done TO us as well.
If we're a human and we're with another human, someone is going to be doing some "dominating" at some point, using tactics that they've learned from others over the years, that they may or may not be aware of.
The more a person harbors the desire to dominate and control others, the more likely they are to either deny that they do it AT ALL. And if they do admit it, the more likely they are to try to come up with "reasons" that it's "okay", such as biology, evolution, or even excuses so far fetched that they're almost comical, such as that the person they're trying to dominate WANTS to be dominated.
There's not much more to it, really. We could go through our evolution as mammals and primates, almost all of which have domination instincts, and we could go through human history, we could read all the poetry, we could read Darwin's theories, we could listen to all of the great philosophers, spiritual leaders, writers and poets and learn a great deal from all of them, but on the most basic level, there is this:
We as Homo Sapiens like to dominate the things in our environment, we are naturally compelled, no matter what our sex or ancestry is. Some more, and some less, but all of us, nonetheless.
The matter of WHAT we turn our domination compulsion ON, and the consequences of that, is a serious matter that most of us don't seem to pay nearly enough attention to.
We are born with a compulsion to dominate things in our environment for certain valid reasons like feeding ourselves, finding and building shelter, and defending ourselves...
AND we are also born with the ability to SEE OURSELVES,
REFLECT ON OUR OWN BEHAVIOR,
LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES AND CONSEQUENCES,
CONTROL OUR ACTIONS, SPEECH, AND BEHAVIOR,
and PLAN OUR ACTIONS AND WORDS ACCORDINGLY, SO THAT WE WON'T REPEAT TERRIBLE MISTAKES THAT HAVE RESULTED OVER AND OVER IN ALL MANNER OF PROBLEMS AND TRAGEDIES FOR THE ENTIRE SPECIES.
Turning our domination compulsion onto OTHER HUMANS is one of the most common mistakes human beings make every day, and it's one of the EASIEST things to learn to STOP DOING.
But...
DOMINATION ADDICTION
...those who are addicted to domination over other humans will probably protect their HABIT, because of the high they get from it.
Many who are addicted to domination actually believe in their own superiority, and often believe that the reason others don't dominate THEM is because they CAN'T, because they're not strong enough or smart enough. Their addiction to domination, like most other addictions, causes them to RATIONALIZE the reasons for what other people do and don't do, and the reasons for their own actions. Basically, they just make things up in order to explain why, for example, their spouse doesn't clock them in the head every time they're abusive to them, or why the other people in the apartment building don't break down their door and just throw them and their drug dealing operation out on the street, or why people get out of their way on the sidewalk or in the store, or even on the road.
They usually attribute other people's "allowing" and "submissive" actions to fear and weakness.
That's all that's floating around in their heads. It doesn't cross their minds that there are OTHER reasons that a person doesn't just smack them back down, hurt them, or hold them down, because those reasons ARE NOT IN THEIR HEADS. They don't know about those other reasons, they can't reason them out, and they can't figure them out. It's just not there. Even if someone told them what those reasons are, if the person is an adult, it probably won't sink in, they won't be able to comprehend it.
SELF AWARENESS
But even those of us who are more aware than that still have domination compulsion, and nearly all of us have it toward other human beings. Sometimes it's only reactive and defensive. But sometimes it's ego, sometimes it's offensive, sometimes it's just for envy, control, jealously or greed.
Self-awareness is the difference between being in control of one's self as a Sentient being, not the absence of tendencies, emotions, and compulsions. We all have the propensity and the tendency to assert control and domination, it's our level of awareness of it that makes the difference.
