Survival

Another mind wondering dialectic.

The title to this post is the answer to the question: Why do we do what we do?  Seems like a simple question.   Most really interesting questions I suppose are simple questions.  But why do we do what we do?  My answer on a deep down level is: survival.  Why is that? My posts are free thinking so lets see where this goes.

In our society if you ask someone "why do you do what you do?" They will probably look at you funny and maybe say "what do you mean?" You know why are you doing what you do?  It will then come down to what do they do for a living or why they are in a relationship or what they are doing at the present time.  But this is getting lost in the trees in the overall forest.  Main goal is to survive. That means to eat and then safe shelter.  I'm talking about at the basic level  Since we don't think about it since its very depressing.  But in  our society most middle class folks are only a few pay checks away from being poor again. If you lost your job how long can you last on your savings?  Credit card living and then you can end up bankrupt.  Its depressing so let's not go there.  But that the main goal is survival.  We do what we do so that we can eat and have a roof over our heads.  That's the answer at the most basic level.

We tend to not think about that since most of us have a job or a source of income.  This provides us with food and a place to live.  But this is why people do what they do, eat and shelter.  Its just how different folks go about doing this that leads to interesting scenarios, some good, some bad. I think as young children we are all born with that state of child wonderment.  Just staring around bringing it all in.  Psychologist study this stuff all the time.  All kids are natural born explorers. They ask questions like: "why is that?","how's does that work?"  Hopefully they are given answers or are encouraged to explore more and to figure it out for themselves.  This assumes caring parents or caregivers at an early age.  Hopefully this will continue on in school.  I think that one of the best forms of education is to ask questions and hopefully in some way the child can through coaching or direction figure this out for themselves.  It is important that they get speaking listening and reading skills at a very early age.  Again lots of studies have been done on this.  But this unfortunately is not really happening in our society as a whole because we don't emphasis this enough.  I'm sure every parent looking down at their child wants the very best in life for their child.  Unfortunately in our society that life doesn't always happen.  In the richest country on this planet that just doesn't happen.  Education of children is not the number one priority.  If you ask people I'm sure they would say it should be and it is in their hearts and minds and in the best of a society it would be.  In America today we do not allocate our resources to make this happen.  Our economy is not based on making this happen for our children and for ourselves.

Let me talk in a broad sense based from a 57 year old male point of view as I see it.  Notice the word I, its my opinion hopefully I will not offend anyone but I probably will.  Why do we do what we do?  In our society that means work.  Why do we work?  To pay the bills.  Hopefully we have the option of having a job that we feel interesting.  So that the job to pay the bills is fulfilling so much so that we don't even think about doing it so as to pay the bills even comes into our minds.  Our parents encourage us to do well in school.  As kids we want to do things to make our parents happy and the teachers happy and we are curious.  I'll come back to our education system later.  When I was asked "what do you want to do when you grow up?"  I remember answering I want to be a dump truck driver.  I'm sure my parents were really excited about that since they all think that we will be the president or rich or famous but mainly be better off than them.  (Nothing against dump truck drivers if they are happy with what they are doing).  Did Ug and Ugess want their kids to be head of the group, have all the furs and food or be known to all the other cavemen?   Whatever that all really means to cavemen. Basically be better than them.  But even at an early age in the society I grew up in and I suppose its still true today, its what you are going to do when you grow up?  Grow up get that job I was talking about.  Job to pay the bills that is interesting.  Back in my day at least for me it was go to school and learn.  School was fun.  Classes and recess.  Learning was fun and playing was fun. In the third or fourth grade we had a learning program where we taught ourselves and learned to read at our own rate, take tests on subjects we just read then move on to a more difficult topic.  This was self learning of subjects at our own rate that I really enjoyed.  You can tell I never really learned how to write very well.  This worked for me, how it worked for other kids I don't know.  But the goal is to get a good education so as to get a good job with a good income to pay the bills and to do what you want to do when you grow up.  (A really long sentence full of really small words).  The word good and how it is used in the previous sentence is interesting. What is a good education? What is a good job?  What is a good income?  Each one is a huge topic. Every human deserves the best education.  This should be one goal for humanity.