Why can’t we all just get along?
by Vic Shayne
author
The Self is a Belief: The idea that causes suffering
Why, after so many millennia, can we not get along as individuals, societies, or nations? While we have evolved as biological beings, we have not evolved at all psychologically. The problem has everything to do with a powerful and persistent image called “me.”
The “me” we have created is like a mirage, because it does not truly exist except as a thought about who you are. But are you really no more than an accretion of thoughts? You can call this the belief of who you are. When you say, “I am happy,” you are referring to a “me” that has attached itself to a possession, idea, ideology, person, animal, object, experience, or other thing.
The “me” is born out of psychological conditioning of the mind implanted by teachers, parents, authority figures, religion, culture, tribalism, the media, and so on. All of these influences tell us you who you are. As a young baby you don’t know who you are; you’re a blank slate. But then all sorts of people start to create the “me” by telling you that you are Christian or Hindu, you are a boy or girl, you are smart or dull, you are funny or too serious, you are an American or African, you are a southerner or northerner, and on and on it goes. None of these are any more than thoughts. A composite of a person is created that colors the rest of your life, guides your actions, and causes you to suffer.
The biological body does not have preferences except for those that are physiological, such as preferences for water, air, food, movement, etc. Even to call these preferences is a personification. The body is an organism made up of cells that are busy all on their own — including microorganisms that only belong to a “foreign” system called the microbiome and are not even human.
The only way to work together in a true relationship is to shed the sense of self, the “me,” who we take ourselves to be.
Our entire worldview and relationships come from the point of view of an image of who we take ourselves to be. Likewise, we also have an image of who others are. Therefore, in the case of two people in a relationship, we have a situation of four images trying to relate: The “me” I have created plus the “you” I have created; and the “me” you have created and the “you” that you have created. The image of “me” tries at all costs to preserve, protect, and perpetuate itself, and it has two preoccupations — to have pleasure and to avoid pain. It is selfish and narcissistic, even when acting altruistically, simply because it cannot avoid being so.
The existence of the “me” prevents love, compassion, seeing the truth, and true relationships. This is the whole reason we have strife, war, inequality, hate, violence, divisiveness, and conflict in the world. True relationships, devoid of the “me” cannot exist due to fear — fear that the people we take ourselves to be may be threatened, changed, or come to an end. In light of all of this personal conflict, how can the macrocosm of societies, groups, and nations begin to engage in mutually loving relationships?
