The Perfect Humanoid Symbol, 6

And how do humanoids know one? By its distinguishing features from their viewpoint. So they seek it, survey such distinguishing features and put them on in order to attract either admiration, dread, attention. Unfortunately enough, “winning” personalities often play the tough, so that’s what gets imitated. Even more unfortunately, our evolution in this respect may stand some improvement: when we were cave men in an unconquered world, young warriors were put to the test of real dangers; now that we’re civilized in a tame world, prevarication supplants courage and young warriors short of real trials make do with asking for it; lacking a hostile environment to tackle, they turn against their fellows, and even against themselves, too, with antisocial behaviours, degrading of both others and of self, both destructive and self−destructive – addictive poisons being the perfect case in point. That’s what gets imitated. The more one puts oneself in abjection and jeopardy, the more one is “cool”. In the eyes of the unprepared, champing at the bit to be “cool”, the coolest are always the addicted.

Then the “winning” personality merges with the herd instinct. If one craves for consideration, then one probably abhors ostracism. The herd ethics is simple: right is what the herd does, wrong is what the herd abhors, and usually not just regardless of its real outcome, but rather inversely to it. History provides the percentages of how many times lemmings drowned themselves compared to how many times they rescued themselves, but history is a perennially endangered subject because of this very fact: after all, isn’t the majority the “winning” entity within a herd? In other words, a sort of herd within the herd, its quintessence. So much so that even if the herd within the herd commandeered the herd to destroy all food, it would nonetheless remain the “winning personality” in the eyes of the herd until the last one of them starved to death. This tends to endanger history as the truth of facts just a tad but… never mind; instead, let’s put on some of its distinguishing features; how? Being part of it, dissolving self into it. And history is paved by herd rituals one would slap oneself for if only one had the guts to break the spell and look at oneself in the mirror. But it takes courage, and it’s been often reminded that ganging up as a herd within the herd is quite its opposite.