Man is Free by Birth

An insignificant animal striving for significance

There are over god-knows-how-many million species of organisms currently roaming the earth, but one of them – the Homo Sapiens, seems much more significant than others. And why shouldn’t he? After all he has things no other animal can ever possible do. He has language - the most advanced form of communication, he has science - the most advanced interaction with nature, technology - the brilliant byproduct of science, Philosophy - the study of thought itself, and what not. But then he also has taxes, rent, electricity and water bills, and stores to buy food – something only he does, or if we are speaking honestly, something only he needs to do. Imagine calling out monkeys for being so stupid while you buy your food, water and a place to live, something which mother nature has promised and provided for each and every organism on the planet.

          Man thinks so highly of himself – as if he is not just another species in the Animal Kingdom with a much more complex body and brain, yet he thinks he is the only animal with a soul. Though there can be millions of possibilities of how god – or any divine entity for that matter could look like, almost all of his ideas of gods look like himself. Animals are simple creatures. Their basis of discriminating organisms works on one simple meter – “Is he of my species, or not of my species? To reproduce, or not to reproduce, that is the question.” And hence, all animals of their species are indifferent for them.

          But the great Human being discriminates members of his own species on the basis of nationality (nations are just random imaginary borders that humans drew on the face of the earth), of race (again just a very random evolutionary trait), of religion (simply a coincidence which would have been much different if one would have been born to different people), and of caste (this is so nonsensical that I don’t even need to justify why this is idiotic).

          Every single day, millions of trees die, millions of animals die, and several humans die, and they are supposed to, for they must follow the laws and the cycle of nature, but man cares so much more the deaths of “his own”. He eats the corpse of a dead chick in the morning, of a lamb in the afternoon and of a cow for dinner, but those deaths do not even seem like deaths, as if these animals were mere crops born in nature for the sole consumption of man himself. But whenever he himself is consumed by some carnivore, it’s a news headline, and also the script for the upcoming ‘The Man vs the Wild’ horror slasher film.

         

The nature of man

While he was, just like another million animals, simply supposed to exist in nature, he created his own baseless inferences from the randomness nature, “If he is black, he must be bad, if he speaks my language, he must be a good person, if he believes in the same politics as I do, he must be intellectually superior, if he is a Hindu, he must be spiritually awakened, if he is a Brahmin, I must wash his feet.” This is the same reasoning which when gains power results in wars, genocides, and the Holocaust. Man tried to give meaning to randomness, not knowing that being Black, White, Asian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Brahmin, or Tribal is a mere coincidence.

          He is just a simple animal, and his central needs are very simple yet animalistic. He needs food, water, safety, family and residence. All other needs are either unnecessary, or an extension of the innate ones above. But the jackpot (and the tragedy) of man is his very developed and evolved mind, which makes him self-conscious. There is no right or wrong, or beautiful or ugly in nature. But there are all of these elements in man’s creation. Because he works against the flow of nature, not because he was made to, but he is too conscious. Or as Rust Cohle from ‘True Detective’ puts it very sharply - "I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self-aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law."

          And this excess of self-awareness is what makes man suffer. For he is the only one, in the entirety of this world, who ‘suffers’. Because non-living things won’t feel anything anyway, and the stimulus animals feel is called ‘pain’, which is a biological mechanism, necessary for life, but suffering, on the other hand is the side-effect of the Ego, which itself is a side-effect of consciousness.

The cost of Identity

When man takes birth he is fed identities which are unnecessary and purely coincidental. As you were born to a Nazi, you are from now a Nazi. As you were born in the country called as Germany, you are from now a German. You were born to an aristocrat; you are from now an aristocrat. And we embrace these identities, even love them, for we think they would fill out the hollow within. And hence, never like to get them challenged.

          But man, as we know him, never gives out anything for free, hence when society gives out identities, it also asks for duties to be abided that adhere to those identities in return. Along with a certification of being a Nazi German Aristocrat, you get a to-do list of things to do to preserve and strengthen this identity.

1.     You must hate the Jews.

2.     You must bootlick Hitler.

3.     You must act, dress, and speak like an aristocrat.

4.     You must like such and such people.

5.     You must reject such and such people.

6.     You must believe in such and such religion and god.

And hence man is kept toiling, kept slaving away for the entirety of his life, he is made to make sacrifices, word hard, earn, donate, marry, reproduce, and simply exist for the sake of these identities. This was very accurately demonstrated by George Orwell in his novella ‘Animal Farm’ through the character of Boxer, who takes upon the identity of a loyal solider of the Animal Farm and a servant of Napoleon, the ruling pig, and blindly devotes his entire life to Napoleon and the Animal Farm, just to be sent to the slaughterhouse by Napoleon after he gets old and is unable to work more.

          Man remains devoted to his family, his creed, his language, his caste, his religion, his state, his country, and his species, toiling away his entire life; while not knowing it is all absolutely unnecessary.

Towards absolute freedom

You don’t need to break the bondages, you don’t need to free yourselves from the chains, because there are none in the first place. Know your true nature, know that there is no one to please, and that these identities cannot give you anything which is useful to you, and that they are absolutely inessential. Know that you don’t need to protect your identities, and hence, adhere to their duties, or spend your life worshipping gods you don’t want to. There is no need to believe in religious stories you don’t find believable. There is no need to be a ‘good boy’, or be an ‘ideal’ in the eyes of society, for there is no need to please any section of the society, any religion, class, or caste. You don’t need to follow the career paths your parents advised, just to please them. You don’t need to smoke or drink to make your peers like you, you don’t need to change yourself for some girl you like, you don’t need to spend your life, following and serving people and ideas you don’t want to. You don’t need to love or hate people because your identities tell you so, for you are not your identities. You are just a very ordinary, average, mediocre, typical, unmemorable, unimportant, insignificant animal, who will live, die, and be forgotten.

You don’t need to find freedom, for you are free from birth itself.