The Divine Excuse

Humans, we are meatbags all. Step outside your neurochemistry for a second and observe as we flap our meat across the surface of the world, controlled entirely by the organic but steely grip of a complicated chemical soup that dictates our every action and reaction to every other thing that flaps its meat across the hills, fields and wastes of the Earth. The notion of a soul is therefore a terrible joke – were it even to exist, the pure being that would emerge from our corpses would have little in common with who we consider ourselves to be. A good meal can change our mood, a stroke can change our personalities entirely and irrevocably. As our immortal souls fled our bodies, divested of the chemicals, it would not be “we” as we could possibly know it.

This kind of treatment of the universe is fine as an overview for a hard determinist scumbag such as myself. It is probably true that everything in the universe moves to the dictates of absolute physical laws, but such a view is near impossible to apply on any practical level. Put simply, the variables involved in calculating how physical laws apply to every atom in existence are so brain-buggeringly complex that such an outlook of the universe is rendered nearly useless. The same goes for personality. We are all meat, controlled by meat and meat-related compounds. But the complexity in the way these chemicals affect us and manifest themselves in personality and behaviour belies such a simple explanation and makes the topic infinitely more interesting.

Personality is used as an excuse for all kinds of rotten and stupid behaviour, as well as a way to predict the rotten and stupid behaviours of others. Angry personalities lash out, grumps are prickly grumble-bums, eternal optimists are insipid pricks. This standard view encourages us to see personality as a driving force behind behaviour as well as an immutable law. Personality becomes the divine excuse, a blank cheque for the committing of all kinds of idiocy. The “addictive personality” is a societal washout because he can’t help himself –the victim of his personality, pawn to the unchangeable law of behaviour imposed on him by another part of him. He appeals to determinism as he cries his freedom to the heavens at every other juncture. The man is free to drink himself into a stupor and wander into a primary school with his wang out, precisely up to and not including the point at which he is held to account for his behaviour.

Otherwise, because our personalities are supposedly unchangeable, we are swift to account our weaknesses as strengths. The man who visualises a grand plan but who is unable to commit any of it to details or actually lift a finger in working on it is accounted a “visionary” instead of a lazy oaf. The person who takes on all the workload and doesn’t lift a finger in their own interests is dubbed a “compassionate” personality instead of what they actually are, which is a weak-willed doormat. Humans who fit either of these examples, and many others beside, are not real people. Real people can plan and complete difficult works. They can be compassionate while looking out for their own reasonable interests. If you are not capable of doing such, you should strive to become capable. Using “personality” as a shield in this regard hobbles you. You allow yourself to become a part of a social machine that encourages the uselessness of its individual components in order to cobble them all the more closely and irrevocably together. You also become infinitely replaceable, so long as a spare part of the same type is available.

Personality is not, in fact, an excuse or any kind of limiting factor, so long as you don’t cave in to demands that it is. It is very easy to allow yourself to be pigeonholed. Companies will endeavour to label your personality into one of only a few basic types, and having done so will accommodate you so long as you adhere to the exact guidelines they have for the way those personalities should act. This makes it very easy and profitable to project yourself in a certain way and neglect most of the other aspects of being a complete, reasonable human. This also makes you what would be called, in the faux-psychological industry, as an infantile subhuman.

Far simpler, far more human, and far, far more difficult, would be to reject all labels on your personality, be whoever you are, and strive to behave in a reasonable manner to each individual stimulus in turn. Luckily the mental health system is so under funded these days, or this kind of behaviour might get you locked up in a lunatic asylum.

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