Human Action: Ambition, Ability and Achievement

Human Action
Ambition, Ability and Achievement
Finding and Using the Passion Inside

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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PREFACE

We are free when our actions emanate from our total personality, when they express it, when they resemble it in the indefinable way a work of art sometimes does the artist. (Henri Bergson, 1899)

When we want to get something done in this world, it's not enough to go out and get something done. We first need a reason. We need a clear idea of what that something is and why it is important. This knowledge doesn't always stare us in the face.

Many, perhaps most, individual human beings run from freedom, decision, responsibility, self-definition and other hard choices of life. But I choose not to judge the human spirit based on a public opinion poll, or even on the will of the majority. A solid core of talented humans (and I believe the human race in general) is driven by a strong motivation to change, to create, and to achieve. This drive is the drive to remain free and to express that freedom in a meaningful way.

This book is an investigation into human freedom and what to do with it. My premise in writing this book can be distilled into a few major points:

By our nature, we human beings must express our freedom in achievement. We cannot choose not to be free. We add meaning to our freedom by using it as the basis for creative achievement.
Every house needs a foundation. To be effective in our lives we must think about our situation, our freedom, our choices. We must understand our human capabilities and drives, expand that understanding, and use it for action. Feeling and emotion are important, but they are not enough.
I believe how we achieve is important. We need goals. We need to develop techniques to implement those goals. But it's a mistake to dwell too much on success techniques and ignore motivation—the reasons we achieve. Why we achieve is always more important than how. Give any human being a good enough why, and he or she will develop or discover the how.
Alternatives to freedom have a strong pull on us. It's not enough to “believe” in freedom; we need to work to remain free. The why—the philosophical foundation or reason for action—is never static. It needs to grow. It does not grow wild. We need to guide it and help it grow.
Finally I believe thought and emotion are not totally separated. “Burning desire” without a basis in the brain doesn't burn for long. Thought that is not transmuted into reason, purpose, desire and action dies for lack of meaning. A house is much more than its foundation. A human being is infinitely more complex than a house.

Of course, laying out a philosophical outline in a few sentences doesn't get the whole job done. The meat of this book approaches our human life from eleven different directions. We start from scratch, with the startling realization in Chapter One that human life is New. Nothing is “written.” It's our world to make. But as we'll see in the second chapter, Walls, it's not so easy to escape from limits we ourselves set. Chapter Three, Blood, sets the stage for that escape by getting to the core of what it means to us to be human. Hurt in Chapter Four puts the important issue of self-sabotage into perspective. The next chapter on Beer uses the beer-brewing analogy to construct a recipe for balanced success in our own lives. Chapter Six, Thought, adds the critical thinking element to the brew.

Shock, the seventh chapter of our eleven, puts our philosophy into action in a wide number of areas. Creativity in every sense bubbles to the surface. We build, destroy and become more. Then we do it again. Then we do it again.

Love, the eighth chapter, builds on “Shock,” allowing us to truly succeed in this important area of life. Roots, extends the lessons of “Shock” to our family, community, and cultural lives. We then move to two chapters that give us further tools to implement our plans. The tenth chapter, Words, ensures that we have a constant supply of rich fuel to keep the “Shock” process going, to maximize body, brain, emotion, and even that area deep inside us that is so hard to define.

Chapter Eleven, Masks, ends this book with a unique discussion of how we position ourselves in the world. Escape, including sexual release and other passionate pursuits, gives us the ultimate balance in our lives and keeps us whole.

One lives but once in the world. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774)

I wrote this book to challenge you; the writing of it certainly challenged me. But if this book is not at least at some point fun to read, I will consider it a failure. You see, despite my having at my disposal what is arguably the finest vocabulary in my zip code, I still firmly believe that our lives are meant to be fun. The simple word does it. Our lives can be filled with wealth, wonder and fun. And so we will investigate core forces all humans share, why these forces push us to innovate and succeed, and why many times we resist these forces so strongly. We will take material from literature, from philosophy, from popular movies and magazines, even from rock and roll and stand-up comedy, to get to the heart of that condition we call human. Once we reach that human heart, we'll radiate from it, applying our core human ideas to everyday life: to wealth, to education, to family, to work, to friends, to love and even to sex.

We are humans, after all. We want to know everything. We want to do everything. We can. Nothing escapes us.

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Human Action Table of Contents
Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Elliot Essman's Life In The USA
Elliot Essman's Food Writing
Susie Essman's Comedy and Sitcoms
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