© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete text of Human Action, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's philosophy of human achievement.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Human Action Table of Contents
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Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. (Søren Kierkegaard, 1813-1855)

If you don't learn to recognize the enormous biological and mechanical urges all humans have to sabotage and mis-direct their efforts, you will end up sailing, without rudder or compass, on a sea of life you cannot understand. Great forces will swamp you, overwhelm you, sink you.

If you don't understand, in your brain, what makes the human being a human, what makes you tick, nothing else will help you. Yes—faith, drive, determination, perseverance, endurance, strength, heart, hope and self-esteem are also necessary. But if you fail to define yourself and your place in the human condition, you don't even get a chance to play the game. There is no success without motivation, and there is no motivation without definition and meaning. Once you have that definition, once you establish that meaning, you can do anything. Until you do, all that goodness in you, all that energy, all that talent, is doomed to go unused, under-used, or mis-used.

Deep inside, you have a drive that is not animal, not mechanical, but essentially creative, risk-taking, restless, brilliant… human. You cannot reach the human impulsion inside you through faith, emotion or belief. The way straight to it requires no magic, only the power of your mind to ask the question why? And that's precisely the question we're going to be asking, and answering, in this book. Along the way, we're going to throw out many ideas that may seem to make you comfortable. That's all right, since human beings—ultimately—don't truly like being comfortable for very long. We'd rather leave the house and get something done.

I want to seize fate by the throat. (Ludwig van Beethoven, 1801)

In this book we'll be creating a tapestry out of the two. We'll also weave in other strands: for example, the human head vs. the human heart, certainty vs. excellence, culture vs. human civilization. Each balances the other in the difficult yet exquisite task of living a full human life. Freedom affects every step we take in life.

“Freedom” is quite a word, of course. We use it constantly, but rarely define it. Sometimes we overuse the word. “Freedom” becomes an icon, a detached thing, something we worship rather than use. Sometimes we under-use the word. “Freedom” becomes a “right” to do something we otherwise couldn't, a narrow window of economic or political opportunity.

Freedom can be all of these things and more, depending on the situation. But how we define freedom is less important than how we use it. We will use it, even if using it means to run from it. Freedom sticks around. It makes demands on us. Like an unruly child, ready for a tantrum, freedom does not like to be ignored. We can be free of almost anything but freedom itself.

In the outer world of things and people, nations and ideas, each of us digs a well, hoping to extract some meaning. At the same time, we all possess an inner world, the self we imagine, nurture and build. Freedom affects both these worlds and our places in them. How we use that freedom determines the meaning of these worlds for us, and our own significance in these worlds.

My “freedom”—my premise for this book—is that the truly human part of us is not the freedom to do anything, but freedom from what I call biological necessity. At some time in the history of the human race some of us decided that feeding, clothing and protecting ourselves was not enough. We created civilization. We decided that beauty, ideas, laughter and tears were as important as food and shelter. We moved from existing as humanoid animals to living as human non-animals. The move was not easy. We have not yet completed this task. We are in process. The book of humanity is not yet written. No one knows its ultimate length.

This book sets forth my philosophy of human meaning on this earth in terms of freedom and self-definition. But it's not just philosophy. Instead, this book is an applied philosophy with instant ramifications in every area of human life from business to dating, from art and literature to shopping. If I had to choose a word to hem in the concepts presented in this book, I would be forced to turn to the familiar word “excellence.” Human beings strive for excellence not because survival demands it, but because they demand it of themselves.

Un-applied philosophy is like un-pumped gasoline: it doesn't get you anywhere. And so this book is filled with techniques that will allow you to reach into your own human core, create meaning, and turn your freedom to act into action itself.

All fantasy should have a solid base in reality. (Max Beerbohm, 1872-1956)

The greatest level of excellence we can attain is to maximize both the rational and non-rational areas of our lives. Let's not short-change the rational thinking mind by worshipping it above all. Rationality has its limits. Real creative thinking does not occur in a cold objective vacuum; it requires some passion. By the same token, let's not short-change the non-rational portion by cleaving to mysticism, notions of universal one-ness, and the like. Without a connection to our free conscious ability to think and decide, the non-rational side, instead of becoming the soaring creative imagination it can become, slides into animal instinct. Both sides of our nature (if we can truly separate them at all) require free choice to create meaning.

Freedom is uncertain by nature. Even lovers of freedom will sometimes blanch and run when faced with uncertainty. Each member of the human species hence wrestles to some extent with the pull of freedom on the one hand and the need for order and certainty on the other. Even if we live like Jonathan Swift's brutish Yahoos (those barely-human creatures Gulliver encounters in his travels), a basic freedom-centered human discontent will nag us. At the other extreme, total freedom, by its very totality, would limit rather than free us. Such a “freedom” would not be free (or fulfilling) unless it related to the world we live in, unless it were relevant.

The refined human intelligence is a superb tool. It is ideally suited to creating an orderly world where freedom isn't necessary to keep the species alive and comfortable, even prosperous. But it's like that cliché from the science fiction stories: the computer gets too powerful and takes over. Our brains are too powerful to be controlled by systems that limit our horizons, no matter how clever we may be in devising those systems. Human bodies require an agonizingly long time to evolve. Human brains do not. A single human brain has the capability to break through any limiting boundary. A human brain in communication with others has power that cannot be comprehended. But we can tap into that power, we can add to it, so let's get started.