Why the Fuck am I Doing This?

What motivates people? What makes us tick, what is the force that drives us to do what we do? It’s a question I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, and recently I’ve been realizing that if you try to find out, it’s more than likely that you’ll end up thinking introspectively, looking at yourself and wondering – why the fuck am I doing this? Imagine you asked a set of 100 people questions like, “what do you do for a living?”, “Why?”. The question itself would probably throw people off enough to get a great reaction and answer out of them, but it would almost definitely provoke some thoughts that most people don’t normally have. Using a diverse set of subjects would also be awesome, the responses from say – a doctor, a criminal defense lawyer, a soldier, a teacher, a writer – to a question of why they do what they do – would be a really interesting look at what forces push people to get up every day and use their brains and bodies. Biological instinct would also be a possibly interesting aspect to include as well. The human brain and body need movement, exercise, and training in order to function well – without movement our muscles deteriorate, without exercise our arteries become clogged with garbage, without training we can’t learn to talk, walk, feed ourselves, shit in a toilet, or read and write, and that’d definitely be something to consider when trying to analyze the driving forces of any given person. I’d ask a question about money – how important it is to them, and what they use it for – if they even have any. You could do a comparison between a homeless or impoverished person and a well off working person – juxtaposing and finding out where the line is drawn between being motivated by money, and being motivated by basic necessity.
I could go on forever with these questions, and there are millions of mitigating factors that effect people’s motivation to live and use their brains and bodies, but I think my main point is that after asking people all these questions, the really interesting and scary part would be to take a look at yourself, and ask yourself those same questions – being forced to weigh the importance and relevance of your daily activities, and lack thereof, in comparison with a diverse sample of other human beings who also live in a society, on earth, under governments and religious structures, in families and possibly born with all the same basic biological motivational instincts.

That’s all I got for now.

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