It isn’t clear either how to deal with Monsters. Do you flirt with them and derive small amounts of benefit from them over long periods of time, or do we completely starve the Monster?
So how do we fight with the Monster within us? We struggle to contain it. We repress it and try to keep it in line. Ultimately, the struggle will likely never end, and we will never reach the peace objective that we had in mind. But we still fight it. Eventually, the repression ends up backfiring and we end up being consumed by the fight that we ourselves become a different kind of monster. Perhaps not the same monster that wants us to binge watch (explain how the monster can also be mundane), or abuse drugs and alcohol, or use violence, or gamble, or lie.
We are capable of the most obscene acts of evil. If we were born into a certain time period in a certain location, I doubt that most, if not all people will act maliciously. We can easily be conditioned to think and act within a predefined framework.
The counterforce necessarily needs to be strong, and thus, we end up cultivating our own anti-monster. the anti-monster is still a monster nonetheless and can dominate, and corrupt our lives in other ways. We push ourselves into a state of imbalance where the monster on either side is most comfortable. We substitute one monster for another. A monster of productivity, hard work, profit maximization, efficiency is capable of destroying other aspects of your life. It can harm your ability to feel sympathy. It can make you lose sight of your values. It can make you stop prioritizing vital aspects of your life.
But I note the word “careful” in the quote. There is no inevitability here. Mere plausibility is implied in the event that proper care is not taken. Similarly, a hard worker who is not careful enough can develop into a workaholic.
The remedy is to be mindful. As is implied. To cautiously examine the kinds of habits we reinforce, and understand that a bias is inevitable, and habits have a way of strengthening with time seamlessly. You are not aware as you develop your cigarette habit from 2 a day to 20. You aren’t conscious of minute periodic changes that eventually manifest into major shifts.
If you allow your life to be too unstable, and lopsided towards a certain battle or challenge, you transform. The continuous transformation you undergo puts you at a state of disorder and chaos. Your identity shifts too quickly without you taking notice. Suddenly, you’re somewhere you didn’t intend to be and you wonder how you got there.
Imagine the story of a man who had to immigrate to another country to secure employment. He left because he needed to survive and sustain himself, and build for a potential future, even if it meant abandoning his country. After the first milestones are completed, new ones arise, and like dominos, they start to get knocked down one after the other with the passing of many years. After, say, a couple of decades, the man has finally accomplished his goal of securing his future. He has gotten what he wanted. But he is no longer the man who immigrated 20 years ago. He now has a new identity. He is now a wealthy businessman who manages a multimillion-dollar operation, and his new goals are not defined by even remotely similar parameters to his previous self. They constantly evolve.
It’s kind of like autopilot. Once the gears are in motion for long enough, there isn’t any turning back. The race to get out of the predicament that life has presented becomes life itself. The prizes are only as valuable as the latest prize won. It’s not difficult to see how this works, you can take any example. People don’t evaluate results along lengthy timescales, the benchmark is simple, what was the last result. Whether you define time period by quarter or year or month, every month is evaluated first against the previous month. It’s easy then to see how after building a hill in performance, someone just gets to a point where they can’t do it anymore. Many completely revamp their lives, get into crises, and all the rest. Others just get on with it and follow the rabbit hole until the very end, when they have everything they never wanted.
This isn’t to say that it’s not important to aim high and plan to accumulate enormous amounts of wealth. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong in wanting to be the best musician or the best football player. There’s a lot of meaning in the climb. The question is to what end?
Where does it stop?
What kind of Monster can you develop into?
Staring into the abyss and it staring back, the reason why I love it is because the constant chase of things is sort of like the abyss. It’s the unknown. It’s intermittent and unpredictable. it carries much value but can also carry destruction. And when you become a monster, what will you expect to see but an abyss. And when all time has passed, and there is no more room for dreams or exploration, what is left when you stare into the abyss once more? What do you find? Do you find glorious meaning? Or do you just see the same abyss looking back at you, asking you the question right back?