Ravings About Cravings...

I have often heard people saying that what really sets humans apart from animals is their rationality, that human beings aren't driven by their instincts like animals are, and that humans have the ability to be more than what their instincts make them.

I think that is a whole lot of crap.

Just yesterday, at an office party, my boss asked each one of the team members to say something something about themselves that nobody else knew. I kept it short and simple. I told them what I aspire for. There was so much more about myself that I could have said, but the fact is, I don't think anybody cares enough for me to go to the trouble of expressing who I really am.

(I do see the irony here. Here I am writing a new article about myself. Ha ha. But at least I am not boring you at an office party by revealing mundane facts about myself which have no real bearings on your life and dreams what-so-ever.)

So, moving on, even though I kept it short, I gave it a bit of thought later on my way home. That's when I started thinking about what I am writing in this article here. You see, every now and then, I think about who I really am. (And even though who I really am doesn't make much of a difference to the larger scheme of things, this article is not about that. So, please be patient and read on.)

And every time, my mind has only one really apt reply to that existential question. I am a slave of my desires. I am almost absolutely driven by my cravings. In the big bad world, I am guided to survival by my instincts only. Had I relied on my rationally thinking mind, I'd have gone nuts like ages ago. And that is why I say that all that stuff about humans being different from animals is bullshit. (Again, my opinion, my blog, no real relation to the larger scheme of things, bla, bla...you get the drift!)

And like all the self deluded bastards of this world, I too have so many instances to support my argument. Have you seen at the world around you recently? Such overwhelming amount of terrible shit that is happening daily, you've got to believe that people are driven by raw instincts and cravings and not by reason. We have wars and unrest in places like Syria over religion. We have narcissists like Trump in the US & extremists like Duerte in Philippines, head of states whose ideologies are driven only by their selfish and skewed perception of the world. Do they seem like people who are driven by reason?

If that got too political for your taste, let me draw your attention to some thing else. If you read the news, you are aware of how many women are raped/molested/abused everyday in this world. So these rapists/ molesters/ pedophiles, do they seem like people driven by reason? Hell, no. They are monsters driven by their perverted instincts. 

Funny thing to note here: The only difference between those people and myself is that my perverted cravings lead me towards, say sinful chocolate fudge brownies whereas their's leads them towards atrocious acts of violence and aggression. (I am not making light of serious crimes here. Just trying to establish that I don't have a 'holier-than-thou' attitude about myself in all this.)

In all my rustic cynicism, I fail to notice the 'civilization' in the so called "civilized" people. And because I believe we are all but animals, I don't have such high expectations from us either. It's like I said to my colleague Mithun yesterday, "All this corruption, violence and greed in this world that we keep complaining about is who we really are. Individually, some of us might turn out to be a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King Jr., but those are just exceptions to the rule. We are all animals, driven by our instinct to preserve and alleviate ourselves. And there's no getting around that."

I will be signing off with that happy thought.

P.S. Did I tell you about this amazing Danish Pastry that I had today? Do try it out at 'Sugar & Spice', the next time you're at Galleria Market, Gurgaon.