This is not a rhetorical question. It feels an existential one.
My basic character structure tends towards harmony in social
relations. So much so that I would rather not have people than
have inconveniently dramatic people in my life. On top of that
I also have some trauma that tells me conflict will end up with
the destruction of my world and the upheaval of the social
network around me.
So, to me it was clear that I should always avoid hurting people.
It's quite amazing I have been able to get this far with such a
limiting philosophy. I have really gone pretty far with it in
terms of acrobatics needed to pull in order to manage a career
and just move around in the world. I hear there are buddhists
who brush the pavement in order to remove bugs they might
accidentally step on.
I won't go into all the mentalics now, since the question is more
important to me than what I did to avoid it. I do want to give one
valid seeming idea on why it might be extremely important to not
hurt people (too badly). It's the social animal reason. To us the
social network is much more important than access to food, water
or shelter, since all of these are provided so much more easily
through the social network than without it. So, it makes sense
that when the social network is disrupted, we get a strong
negative signal. Some people obviously get a stronger signal than
others. I probably get too strong of a signal. In any case, we are
talking about survival level signaling here, so it's not a
surprise that people can be thrown into existential crisis due to
a prospect of an overhaul of their social circle.
Stated in that way it seems like it just can't be ok ever to hurt
people, right? What can possibly overcome the expectation of a
survival level negative signal were you to disturb the social
status quo? Another strong signal.
The meandering and mental acrobatics that have funneled me to find
a niche where I find my existence to be positive on the whole is
an extremely important factor in the next trick. I am going to
say that cohesion is the reason that I can choose to hurt people,
but this would not be possible if I didn't have a purpose that the
cohesion is serving. There is no value in cohesion alone. It is
nothing more than inertia. A bowling ball. A psychopath.
Of all the negative influences coming my way from other people, I
don't count even 1% to be aimed at me particularly. Even the
people who truly wish to cause me negative consequences are
largely ineffective or only accidentally effective. Basically I
see people bumbling along and brushing against me just by
happenstance. It is like gas molecules. The impact is a side effect
of occupying the same space. The pain caused by this is largely
without purpose.
Yet, there is pain. I cause pain just by fumbling along. I cause
pain by removing myself from the social sphere. I cause pain even
while brushing the bugs out of my way. By not choosing I cause
pain. It would be better to choose and cause pain. Why? By making
a choice I can hope of being coherent to my purpose. If I fail,
I can do better next time. The pain is not for nothing.
I have a feeling people would rather not choose to cause pain,
since the pain existing in the system is not their problem. Yet
this is just a way to diffuse our own responsibility for our
blindly inflicted pain, instead of owning the hurt and making it
count for something.
I am just figuring this out now, but my unconscious was there
many moons ago. The stronger signal was in there as sort of a
statistical analysis that came to the conclusion that one strong
connection in my life was having very large chance of turning me
into a skeleton of a soul, and later there was another strong
connection that was very likely a source of inspiration and
nurture. These analysis came to me as feelings, but they were
demanding enough that they overrode the entropic choice. And now
I need to live up to them to give them purpose.
As a final pointer, I would like to challenge you to think of
yourself in that gasseous room. It is totally ok for the random
particles to be democratically, undecidedly neutral, but if you
are the main character of your life, how can you choose to not
cause pain? If you have purpose and cohesion it is immoral not
to choose to hurt people.
