Personality And Motivation

When I was at the university, many people were working on themselves to become the best people that they could be. I believed that I did not have very long to live and that for me to be doing this would be wasted effort. But now that it appears I am here for the long term, I am putting in that effort.

I would most certainly like to be the best person that I can be. And right now, most people in my life see me as a good person. There were people accusing me of being such things as a sociopath and a narcissist; however the people who actually knew what they were doing did not have that opinion. I was told by a psychiatrist that I have the heart of a humanitarian. And indeed one of the most fulfilling things that I have done is volunteer for the Salvation Army.

My problem was not one of chemistry or personality. My problem was one of conviction. I was at that time a nihilist. I thought that character and similar things were neurological delusions. Of course now I no longer believe that; and since I no longer believe that I am acting and thinking in a completely different way.

Before being a nihilist, I was a Soviet Communist. I had a very strongly constituted conscience. I wanted to do meaningful and rightful things. Communism was a wrong solution, and it got deconstructed; at which point I was left without a conscience. And people without a conscience do wrong things.

What many people face in teenage years is unbelievable hypocrisy. They are treated cruelly and told to survive and status-climb at all costs. Then the people who have such convictions and act in such way decide that the kids who are not motivated that way are the problem, and that they are selfish and cruel instead. I cannot think of a more deceptive ideology. A person starts out with principles and ideals and desire to do what they can to make the world a better place. He is met with people who see such things as Communism or egomania or delusion. Instead they say that they, pulling this trick, are good, and that the person is bad. This is worse than ridiculous.

We see the same thing with the baby boomers. They started out being kind and generous and wanting to make the world a better place. They were met with a mentality of selfishness; and now they are being accused of being selfish or narcissistic, and the people who used to beat them up are seen as good and law-abiding citizens. What kind of a sense does that make?

There are many ways to motivate people, and there are many ways not to motivate people. If you motivate a child by telling him that he needs to be a certain way or else he is a loser or a freak or worse, then that will not work with children who come from conscientious considerations. Instead it will alienate them and lead them to become one's enemies. What it may do in some situations is set off a power struggle that the person will fight to his death. The correct way to motivate a child like that is to inspire him toward accomplishment. And this is what teachers and parents who actually know what they are doing tend to do.

So what I have seen myself being faced with is unbelievable hypocrisy. They teach and practice cruelty and nastiness, and then they claim that it is the people against whom they are being cruel and nasty that are the ones with the cruelty problem. The person comes from idealistic considerations. He is told instead to live by the code of cruelty. And then the people who live by this code of cruelty tell him that it is he that is evil instead.

I would like to see more people see through such things. I would like more people who are vulnerable to this kind of thing to understand what they are dealing with. That way they will know what they are dealing with, and they may be able to figure out how.