Plea #79: Indulging in Instinct There's a strange sense of pride I feel in seeing *my* team win.
It's a completely barbaric, primal, and illogical feeling.
But it's a good one.
There's some part of me that feels as if I played a role in their victory.
As though *my* career was just furthered.
I try to behave rationally and live beyond my surface emotions, but the feeling I get when the confetti matches *my* team's color is one I'm guilty of indulging in.
The trait is almost definitely rooted in our evolution.
Those who felt the pack's success as their own were probably better members of it, and thus, survived and reproduced more often...
And when our pack was celebrating a successful hunt, this was a beautiful thing. But now I see the same urge widening the moat between people.
When these clans grow to exceed our field of view, they fade into the background, and we develop smaller clans within them, disconnecting from the intelligent creature race as a whole, in favor of a subdivision.
When there's no longer any "other" group to point the stick at, we start searching for it within ourselves, turning the stick inward.
We cheer for our warriors triumphing in battle, and detach from those who are dead and defeated.
When we indulge in *some* of our toxic traits, we introduce new predicaments.
What's the acceptable amount of poisonous sludge consumption? At what point have we crossed that line?
Will we know exactly when the lines have been crossed, or will we only notice once we're past the point of no return?
I therefore try to resist these innate behaviors... at least when it comes to contests of life and death.
But I continue to indulge in sport.
My awareness of the dilemma that such behavior creates does not deter me from engaging in it.
I derive pleasure from it!
And at least I've painted a line!.. Though over time, paint runs... And what once was a pronounced, bright white, becomes a smeared, faded grey.
I can only hope that when that happens, I recall what I've written here...
Such is the cost of living.