I have to admit that one of my very favorite hobbies is pondering the human condition. I've never found that as an option on a drop down list of interests and it certainly doesn't help make me the life of a party, but it is all the same. Because humans are simply fascinating. I therefore have a very high appreciation for books, movies, or television series where the writer(s) has a unique insight into human nature and does an excellent job revealing these aspects in their theme or characters.
One of my favorite books is the old classic, 'How to win friends and influence people'. And it's a favorite not so much for it's good advice regarding human interactions, but because while reading it I learned something I hadn't realized about human nature. To quote a paragraph, "There is one longing- almost as deep, almost as imperious, as the desire for food or sleep- which is seldom gratified. It is what Freud calls 'the desire to be great.' It is what Dewey calls the 'desire to be important'." Basically, every human being desperately wants to feel like they are important, that in the grand scheme of things, somehow they matter.
Which brings us to Breaking Bad. Besides being filmed in my kickin home town of Albuquerque, NM this series offers an incredible picture of this aspect of humanity in the character of frustrated genius, Walter White. The series begins with Walter as an extremely over qualified high school chemistry teacher, wallowing in a slow and unsatisfying life of wasted genius. He discovers he has terminal lung cancer and through a series of events has an epiphany that he could use his chemistry genius in the meth business to save his family from financial ruin upon his death. As the seasons progress we witness Walter's downward moral slide as he becomes the meth industry's most talented and savvy new boss. He picks up the trade to provide for and protect his family, but eventually despite more money than he can launder and the destruction it begins to rain on the family he set out to protect, Walt is unwilling to walk away. Suddenly he's found the thing he had always desired. Suddenly he's no longer some obscure and unimportant little man doing nothing of consequence. Now he's the best at something, now he has a name people fear, now he feels powerful. And the perceptive watcher will see that what this man always wanted most was not the best for his wife and kids - what he always wanted was to matter. And if the only way to be someone important was through something destructive like the meth industry - so be it.
The average person might not resort to being a drug lord, but this law is at work in all of us. We are all desperately trying to matter. Why do we love talking about ourselves? Why is one of the most satisfying experiences talking to a truly interested listener? Why do we have a tendency to make the things we do sound more noble than they are? I talked to a salesperson from the Buckle once and they described their work as almost nothing less than saving humanity one low self esteem at a time by helping people pick better clothes. I'm guilty of this in talking about my job as an ER nurse - I want people to be impressed by what I'm doing. I want to feel important.
People all pursue this elusive longing in different ways. Some people throw themselves into philanthropy, others will take getting a sense of importance from crime over a life that seemingly goes unnoticed. Being known for something bad is better than not being known at all. At least you mattered. Why do some people go for a massacre before killing themselves? Maybe because if they kill only themselves, no one will care - but if they kill a bunch of other people first, no one will forget. I believe that a lot of suicides and suicide attempts are tied to this. The deepest despair I think we can feel is the despair in believing that we don't matter. I also believe some people take extreme measures like suicide attempts to prove to themselves that they do. So that the people that come clamoring to their bedside and to their aid can reassure them somehow that their life means something.
Why are we like this? Why do we need to feel like we matter so desperately? If we look to Naturalism, we have no answers, because if you journey through the philosophical ramifications of the atheistic and naturalist world view you can only logically arrive at the conclusion that we don't in fact matter. Not really. Of course you can find things that feel meaningful, particularly if you are born in the upper crust of civilization and don't have to deal with hunger, war, and disease, and if people you love don't die prematurely, and you don't suffer a debilitating illness and the people you love don't betray you and leave you. Our existence having meaning is a longing that none of us can deny. And besides, it is just fascinating to me that we need it to matter. Even when we are healthy and enjoying family and good weather, we wonder what it means. How much more the majority of the world that suffers. If ever there were an internal hint - directing us to look outward and upward, and whispering to our souls that there's something more, surely the longing to matter is it.
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