Human Nature

So, what's made you smile today? :)

Today my thoughts have been on human nature, in particular the human capacity for love, understanding and care. I think it's amazing. Something so seemingly simple, so innate, and without us really realising it shapes the entire foundation of our lives almost.

As I've said before, it's easy to believe that the world is full of bad, but it isn't, not really. And even the people we consider bad had capacity for care, its just that the other desires they have are stronger. The beauty of human nature, comes in the humans capacity for love and understanding. Even before humans figured out why we love and why we manage to understand things, in the times when we still lived in caves with no scientific knowledge as we have today, love and understanding was still there. Another beautiful thing about it is that it isn't only humans who have the capactiy, look at the way animals care for their young. Mothers from all different species will attack anything they believe is going to harm their young. Not only is it universal in humans, its universal in all different species.

In psychology last year we learnt about privation, in some cases a child had suffered such severe privation that they ended up spending more time outside with dogs than they did with humans, incredibly these children picked up the traits from dogs, and lived as the dogs did. Perhaps even more incredibly, the dogs had taken these human children as if they were their own young, they let them share their food and their shelter, and looked after the human child as if they were a child of their own. Now, I'm not saying that the cases of privation are good, because nobody should be subjected to that, but what I really find amazing here is that in the absence of others, even other species can find it in them to take care of other species. That is amazing. And a child with no attachment figures and no internal model of what attachments should be, can find themselves attached to the dogs, in a similar way to how they should have been attached to the humans.

What I also found quite amazing, was the story of the war orphans (Freud). These 6 children had endured more in their short lives at the hands of humans than I think anybody will ever go through in their lifetimes. But their attachment to each other was astonishing, they loved each other, they still had the capacity for love even though all they had been subjected to was watching people die around them in concentration camps. In that case, love triumphed over the horrors of which they were victim to. Of course they had problems with adults when they were eventually taken out of the camp, but that is to be expected, and eventually, with persistence, they came to trust some adults and form attahcments with them, but I find the attachments they had with each other most incredible, in the face of such monstrosity, was still the desire to love someone else and to be loved by someone else.

Love and compassion are two of the most important factors towards our wellbeing. It is there, all around us, we all have it in us. Unfortunately in today's society it is often hard to see, everybody seems so self consumed and time pressured, but it's important to remember that that isn't everybday, I myself have met some wonderful people, and I hope to follow thier example as I grow older. My wish is just to put 1000000 times more good into the world, than the "bad" people put bad into it, and when I have managed that, I can rest peacefully.

Keep Smiling :)
Love, Tutti-Frutti
xxx