Advice For Humanity

Advice, like drugs, alcohol and children, should be dispensed responsibly and taken in moderation. I often find myself deluded with an overabundance of advice ranging from the sane to the insane and downright preposterous. I can sit and waste time trying to come up with a logical explanation for the illogical thoughts of my advisors, but I will just say in their defense that everyone is different and opposing points or methods of thought process are about as random and abundant as the many stars within the night time sky.

When you were young, your system of values and attitudes were shaped and influenced by your friends, family and acquaintances. Your putty-like mind and consciousness were molded and shaped by the many, many instances of trial and error performed time and time again by your often-wandering-but-never-too-far-from-the-mark mind! By any reasonable standard, it should be easy for ANYONE to learn right from wrong, correct? Enhance and define good behavior with reward, praise and self-esteem building - inhibit bad behavior with reduced privilege, scolding and ego-busting. If this were indeed the process, we would live in an elegant, thriving Utopian society where peace, prosperity and freedom are an everyday right. There would be no crime. There would be no want. There would be no wrong doing. Lovely dream...

Human nature is fickle at best. Scientists have been studying the human mind in all of its complex glory for sometime now and have devised and revised theory after theory. Whether it is nature or nurture, human behavior cannot be pinned down by one simple waypoint or defined by any one event - the mind, psyche and the behavior that comes from with us all is a diverse mix of many events over a course of a lifetime which makes us all truly individual and unique. Free will and choice, like lightning and earthquakes, cannot always be predicted.

I have given advice to many people - in some instances, the best advice was no advice at all. Arriving at a conclusion is far fetched - sort of like reaching into one side of a burlap bag and searching that side for one particular potato amongst the many within the sack. Coming up with the an answer that will provide insight and meaning is more chance than fact. Because of the differences in our make-up, our systems of delivery and dispensing of advice has been molded by our values and attitudes. If there is a problem to be solved and you assign 10 people to remedy it, you may get the same results and the same answers from 8 of them, but the divination used to arrive at the conclusion will be different for every single one of them. Think about it for a second. Realize that the logic used to figure out a problem is a random one - every situation is different and not everyone will react the same way each time. There are variables to instances which are as variable as the thoughts within our minds. The conclusions can be derived in a similar fashion, but everyone arrives by taking a very different pathway.

To further compound the issue, you must look at the differences between the male and female thought processes. Oh! Now there's the "Mount Everest" of all topics, there! I am just going to touch the tip of the iceberg and say that science has proven that the differences between men and women are not only in our physical make-up, but there are differences in our neuro-chemical stimulus pathways, chromosomal differences and the physical differences in our very brains. Men and womens thought process can be best compared to two rivers which run into the very same sea that is humanity; they both have twists, turns and rapids to shoot, but they both empty into the same ocean...eventually!

Advice, it can be concluded, is as random as the wind and as abundant as the grains of sand on the beaches of the Earth. You can ask the same question to hundreds of people and get different answers every time. The fact that we are as diverse as we seem to be, makes the planet a little more larger in the realm of individuality. I will be the first person to states for the record that I have always embraced the diversity of this planet - both for its good and bad and regardless of the circumstances. There is something more that is unseen that binds us all - each and everyone of us. It's a mish-mash of the many forces in nature, and a trail mix of emotions, behaviors and instincts. It is something more than mere hope and it is larger than both faith and love put together. It spans the Earth from shore to shore and permeates the existences of everyone on the planet - what is this force you may ask? The answer I have come to embrace is the one that makes us all united in our race for existence - It is called "being human"

My advice is to embrace it - live it - learn from it - love it! Then humanity will truly endure...

(Originally published 27 March 2006 on the blog "The Curbside Philosopher")