Not entirely sure exactly what I’m trying to do here, but that’s never stopped me before.

But I feel the need to address certain issues that I think plague the nerdish class, and intellectuals in general, and I am going to try to do so in the form of a process.

This process is a progression of levels of acceptance of the truth of emotions. Consider this to be a rough guide to how to level up on a spiritual level, or if that’s a word that makes you nervous, think of it as a way to upgrade your software to make it more life-compatible.

Each of these levels will take the form of a truth you must accept. And not just accept… believe. There’s a huge difference between mere acceptance of a fact and truly believing it. If you resist and refuse to truly believe, you will gain nothing from this process. This is your deep code we are talking about here. The very firmware of your mind.

Prepare yourself to accept this patch.

Level 1 : You are a human being. Get that? Not an alien. Not a mutant. Not a freak. You are simply human. You are no more and no less human than any other homo sapiens. As such, you belong to the grand extended family that is our species. Don’t let anyone tell you that you are not. Especially not yourself. Your humanity is not circumscribed by anyone’s lack of imagination.

Level 2 : You will never be more than human. . Being a human being is most definitely not something you can hope to transcend. You will never be more than human. You will always be a real, physical, biological being who eats, sleeps, urinates, defecates, gets horny, gets cranky, and otherwise does all the squishy biological animal things that all us mammals do. You are not a mind riding around in a vehicle made of flesh. You are flesh that happens to have a mind. No matter what you do with your mind, whether it’s thinking, meditation, prayer, or psychotropic drugs, this will remain true.

Level 3 : There is nothing wrong with being human. It’s not a weakness, a flaw, an embarrassment, or anything to be ashamed of. It’s also not something any sane person can afford to ignore and pretend it does not matter or does not count. Your humanity is a truth as certain as gravity.

Level 4 : You must embrace your humanity. Warts and all. Accept that you are a finite and flawed being and forgive yourself for it. After all, it’s just as true as everyone else who has ever lived or will ever live. Everyone, no matter how impressive, no matter how amazing, no matter how talented or capable or competent, is the exact same kind of monkey you are. They too are finite and flawed and human. And there’s nothing wrong with that in them or in you. Once you accept and forgive your own humanity, you will find it far easier to forgive it in others, and indeed, you will realize that it is our humanity that truly unites us. In our flaws and limitations we are united. Once you stop holding yourself to an inhuman standard, the world opens up to you.

Pretty easy so far, right? Well, it gets harder from here on in.

Level 5 : Human beings have emotions. If you can read this, you have emotions. And they are yours. They are you. They are as much a part of you as your intellect. You cannot separate them from yourself. They don’t go away if you ignore them for long enough. We are what we feel, and there is no escaping that.

Ready? Big leap here.

Level 6 : You are ruled by your emotions. Okay, calm down and put down the gun, you’re only proving me right. All human beings are ruled by their emotions at all times. There has never been such a beast as a logical human being. For humanity, logic is merely a tool. It happens to be the most effective tool we have, but that does absolutely nothing to change our basic nature. All action steams from emotion. You are reading this because you felt it would be interesting or of use to you. You are online because the emotion of boredom drove you to seek stimulation. The best that logic and reason can ever do for us is to give us the most effective means for accomplishing our emotional goals. But it cannot replace or displace emotion as the undisputed monarch of our lives, and any attempt to claim different is a mere psychological dodge to attempt to avoid accountability for one’s actions by claiming a kind of ascetic moral purity. Either that, or it’s an attempt to flee from the truth of one’s own emotions by retreating into a cerebral fantasy land. Either way, it is cowardly and unworthy and, most importantly of all, it is very unhealthy.

One more. Might want to get a running start for this one.

Level 7 : And there is nothing wrong with that. Dealing with irrational people can create the false impression that both a) it is wrong to be ruled by your emotions and b) it is possible to not be ruled by them. But we are all equally driven by emotion. The difference between a rational person and an irrational one is a matter of restraint and consideration, but even in exercising both of those you are responding to an emotional need to feel like you are making sound decisions based on a consideration of all the relevant factors. To your deep emotional self (who is in charge), this is the best way to avoid pain and acquire pleasure, and feel like you are in control of yourself and your life. Thus : a logical means by which to achieve emotional goals. We are always, always, always acting on emotion with everything we do. The only logical course of action is to accept this truth and once more forgive ourselves for our humanity.

Thus ends our little journey. Remember, it’s all about forgiving yourself (and others) for being flawed, finite, emotional animals instead of pure expressions of our highest ideals.

But if you don’t make it through all the levels the first time, don’t be too hard on yourself.

After all, you’re only human.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.