Why Do Most Modern People Live with a Heavy Heart?
Dr. Chou Chih-chien of Taiwan is an authority on psychotherapy; he founded the narrative therapy model of psychotherapy and advocates that modern people embrace their imperfect selves. The following passage is from an article by Dr. Chou: "Every person's heart is full of suffering. Those stories that cannot be told weigh heavily on the heart and make us suffer. But through the stories we tell, being heard, being understood, and being accepted, life undergoes a miraculous transformation."
What this passage reflects is precisely the spiritual predicament modern people commonly encounter in life. Some Western sociologists hold that the behaviors forbidden by our society's rules of law and morality are precisely the things human nature wishes to do. This statement has a certain reasonableness, but it is also biased, for it assumes that human nature is wholly evil, as though everyone wanted to be a rapist or a thief, which denies the good side of human nature. In fact, human nature is neither purely good nor purely evil, but good and evil united; the good and evil in human nature often struggle with each other: when good overcomes evil, the behavior manifested is good; when evil overcomes good, the behavior manifested is evil.
The anthropologist Malinowski held that the various customs, laws, morals, and other social rules of a whole society are devised by human society to maintain the stability of its own structure, and that these social rules are strongly functional; thus later anthropologists defined the school Malinowski founded as the structural-functional school of anthropology.
From the moment we enter society, we are inevitably constrained by these many rules. If self-restraint succeeds, one becomes a "good person" recognized by all. If self-restraint fails, one is cast out by society and punished accordingly. This self-restraint, however, is obviously contrary to real human nature and human will.
Thus, once a person enters society, he suffers the spiritual devastation brought by these rules. A person often has to yield to reality and make many choices contrary to his own heart. Rules are ruthless; they are merely a whole set of dogmas developed in the course of social evolution that, to a certain extent, stifle human nature. But these dogmas are very beneficial to the stable development of human society, and so they are supported by the majority of people in society.
Once one violates the rules, one is certainly punished. Most people are thoroughly familiar with this causal relationship, yet human nature always urges them to do things that violate social rules. These things become what Dr. Chou calls the "hard-to-tell" things. The reason they are hard to tell is that, once told, one must accept "punishment." But if not told, not confided, these things are buried in a person's heart, becoming that person's psychological garbage, tormenting him or her day and night. Therefore, in a certain sense, whether we are inside or outside a prison, each of us is essentially a prisoner; the difference is that the prisoner inside the prison is caged, while the prisoner outside the prison is self-imprisoned deep within his own heart.
According to Freud, what is most repressed in the depths of the human heart is libido. Some translate libido as sexual desire, but in fact libido's scope is not limited to sexual desire; it also includes all other pleasures of the bodily organs. If human libido were allowed to develop freely, it would cause enormous destruction to society; so our society automatically developed a whole set of rules to repress libido, and through this repression achieve human self-restraint, so as to preserve to the greatest extent the stable development of human society.
Some recent scientists, through research, have found that the reason human society evolved into today's monogamous society is that, over thousands of years of development, humanity endured the devastation of venereal disease brought by promiscuity, and finally developed into the present marriage model, which can minimize the spread of venereal disease. This actually runs counter to human nature, which tends more toward polygamy—that is, polygyny, or polyandry.
From ancient times to the present, the wise among humanity have all perceived the social unrest brought by libido; therefore, in the doctrines of the great majority of religions, asceticism is an important element. The religious veneration of asceticism is also related to the destruction libido wreaks on society. What the Chinese ancients called "preserve heavenly principle and extinguish human desire" is the goal our human society tirelessly seeks.
Although most of us no longer believe in religion, and some even hold ordinary social rules in contempt, I dare say that as long as one is a person of sound intelligence, upon entering this society one inevitably suffers the repression of various rules and unwritten rules. In this world, apart from idiots, there is not a single person who dares to do as he pleases in all matters. Even if they wish to do something that violates social rules, they only dare to do it on the sly; the consequence of doing it on the sly is precisely what Dr. Chou describes as forming life stories that are hard to tell, weighing one down.
This problem is fundamentally insoluble; apart from finding, when one has violated social rules, someone to whom one can confide and from whom one can receive forgiveness, there is as yet no better way to solve it. For the individual can never confront society as a whole; the balance of power between the two is too disparate. And for a person to go a lifetime without violating the various rules of society is almost absolutely impossible.
So this is how helpless we are in living.
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