Not feeling all that certain about my own coherence. I said something poignant to Annette and it really upset her. I have been thinking about it as well.
“Nobody cares about what you do”, I stated.
A kick in the belly to the ego. She took it hard and as I am thinking about it, I can feel something very significant in the bonding of an individual with regards to the tribal and community unification.
I recently saw a documentary on PBS about raising sheep in the wild mountains of Austria. They let a pack of dogs graze and live with the sheep to defend them from wolves.
A group of villagers wanted to try raising sheep again. They had heard of this technique from the past before the wolves were driven out in recent years. Wolves have since returned and migrated from Hungary in recent times. This was a practical experiment to test the story. They were mostly interested in dog behavior and how they would do.
There was one incident during the forming of the dog pack. The pack was composed of a particular cross breed of sheepherders from the past. There was one female, she was rejected by the dominant male and her association within the pack. She was driven away—having to survive on her own.
The dogs sorted out each other’s place in the character of strength and aggression, focusing on the task of defending the flock and in “organizing” the functions. The dominant males roved in and out of the perimeter hunting and driving off the wolves. Some of the dogs lived closer and within the flock. They essentially had a separate behavior and identity from these dogs while also living with the herding sheep.
The female was rejected for a reason that couldn’t be determined other than it seemed the dominant male didn’t like her. The female didn’t seem to have the ego presence, temperament or place to hold herself in a functional relationship within the pack, and couldn’t change the dominant male’s rejection of her presence.
It happened to illustrate one aspect of the image of “people don’t care” that I had stated earlier. It might make more sense to say others don’t care, unless it is relevant to something they feel, want and/or need. I would add that this is both circumstantial and fleeting, kind of like hunger after a meal. Appetites and desires rise and fall, come and go.
At any rate it is another complexity in the human social order embedded in the human’s neural matrix of behavior just like the dogs, sheep and wolves. So, when one is convinced that people care, it’s more of a feeling-based mechanism of social cohesion than it is a personal regard for another’s actions or performance.
I think that having been rejected or invalidated by the reality of the absence of what isn’t there, in the response from others, that one is left with a feeling of emptiness and disorientation, as well as other feelings that are generated.
What one does in response comes out of the integrity of oneself, and an objective regard to the importance of meaning and purpose out of its own integrity and purpose. This is a rising or elevation from animal behavior to conscious individuality and choice—beyond primitive tribal forces.
The choice is based on the substance of oneself with or without the others. It becomes the core of free individuality and the objective liberation from ego accommodations.
In any case, the intention of the comment is to guide the individual to independence from opinion in the sense of judgment without content on a more animal level. If one takes responsibility for oneself—in what they do, feel or think—that knowledge, sense of responsibility, rises out of integrity rather than the illusion of the need for other’s feeling-based acknowledgments.
It is futile to chase the ghost of success in the ambiguity of uninformed, feeling-based, judgments of others. Isn’t this Politics?