© 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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Do these two forces co-exist? No. How could they? The pull between these two elemental forces in the human animal never ends.

The play No Exit, by Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, took place in a similar setting to the previous example. Room after room, corridor after corridor of luxury, and you couldn't leave, or even find the door. What did all this mean? It was all a metaphor, first, for hell, second, for human life itself.

We can profit by looking at a less extreme example. A husband and wife finally retire in comfort, only to find within a few months that they're driving each other crazy. Within a year or so one or both is engaged in some kind of productive work instead of sitting around. Nothing new—we hear about this kind of thing all the time. But we tend to make easy, somewhat simplistic judgments based on psychology about why these people get antsy, why people in comfort cannot sit still. And that's the problem. Because unless we treat this problem philosophically, and go to the core of what makes human beings strive for more no matter what they already have, we never learn anything new about who we truly are.

Let's look at yet another example, and we'll keep it as “real world” as we can. Here you are, in the prime of life. Things appear to be working out. You're comfortable, you're secure. Yet you discover, somehow, that you don't want to just sit back and let life live itself around you. You want to improve yourself. You want to become more creative. You want to open yourself up to many new and different things.

Why is that? What impulsion do you have for that? Why? Why plan, hope, dream when you've basically made it. No, you're not the type who sits in front of the TV like a slob, letting others program your each and every reaction. Let's assume your pastimes are themselves stimulating and enriching. You do quality things: read good books, listen to good music, exercise. Why do you have to disturb it all? Why do you feel that discontent? Why do you feel that you have to succeed and achieve, when you've already succeeded and achieved? Why? Why? Why?

And then why do you ask why? You ask why, because the fact that you ask why makes you very uncomfortable.

“I've worked hard for these comforts. I've worked hard for this security. Why does something inside me tell me to risk it all? For what?”

And here you are—you're going back and forth:

“I'm restless in this environment. I've got to get out. I've got to move on now. But I'm frightened of moving on. Restless. Frightened. Restless. Frightened. Restless. Frightened.”

You can't win. You move on. You push through. You succeed. You reach a new level of comfort. What happens. Again: Restless. Frightened. Restless. Frightened. Restless. Frightened. You can't win… unless you understand why you swing the one way, and why you swing the other way. Why you hold tightly onto those walls that surround you, and why you take a sledge hammer and start knocking them down.

Once you understand this basic why you can begin to enjoy the process. And it all comes down to how you think.

We have two sides, we humans, and they pull us in different directions. Each side is powerful and complex. We have the biological side, the animal side of our nature. The animal side guides us toward safety and comfort. We also have a “trans-biological,” or strictly human side. The human side pushes us through the wall of animal need into the realm of human want. Animals need certain well-defined things; humans want everything. Against all logic, the human side of us rejects all that is automatic, pre-ordained, limited and stagnant. These human wants are so strong that they often become needs.

The animal in us speaks to assure survival or get something done; the human in us speaks for the glory of words. The animal attaches itself to a mate; the human engages in intimacy and love. The animal builds a physical and psychological wall for safety; the human breaks the wall down in order to achieve, to triumph, to challenge authority, to create, to experience excitement, passion and joy.

The basic need for food, air, water and shelter are, of course, biological. But the list doesn't end there. One of the most damaging biological imperatives, one that holds us back so much, is the human desire for certainty. Any teacher of logic will tell you that certainty is impossible, even absurd. And yet, humans crave certainty. They surround themselves with structures based on a crying need for order, lack of change, predictability. They build norms, they seek structures, they kneel before rules.

“I can handle anything,” a friend once told me, “but, please, no surprises.”

The drive for structure, norms, certainty, answers—walls—is based on biology. The drive exists so decisions do not have to be made. Instead, we consult or evoke authority. The strictly biological imperative is neither good nor bad. Without a wall or two, you've got nowhere to hang a success motto. Even free-wheeling creativity needs forms and norms to express itself. We cannot escape biology. We'll always be sorters and classifiers. We need to sort to keep things straight. We need systems and structure to allow our creative juices to flow, to get anything done.

The problem comes when biology becomes too strong. It is very strong. In later chapters we'll cover the concept of Dynamic Interrupt, “Trope,” and other techniques designed to activate the trans-biological side of our beings. We need these techniques, because the biological, certainty-craving side is as strong as it is. There is absolutely no danger of our ever losing the benefits of this strong biological side; we just want to take a vacation from it every now and then.

Human beings are not “natural.” “Nature” is an arbitrary human concept, a way of narrowing an outside world that is infinitely complex. We cannot go back to “nature.” Perhaps we were once innocent, as in the Garden of Eden. But once innocence is lost it is never regained. We cannot un-know what we already know.

Our human story is like a ratchet tool that turns in only one direction. And the ratchet turns, not smoothly, but in discrete, individual clicks. That's how humans progress, in flashes of brilliance. Some are giant and earth shaking: the work of an Einstein or a Rembrandt, for example. Most are less noteworthy but equally important, spread among us by the millions. And the progress, the sophistication, the distance from a state of “natural” innocence, goes in only one direction.

And that is where we derive the need and motivation to achieve. We might believe we are motivated based on the satisfaction of needs and wants. But those who profess this view are looking at it the wrong way around. The needs and wants are only there because we freely put them there, based on our innate discontent. The real reason we are motivated to achieve stems from the plain fact of being human. Striving is basic to us. We are not content unless we achieve. And even then the discontent rears up again. The best humans out there are a widely varied group, but they share a key trait: discontent, the basis of all true motivation, the refusal to accept things as they are.

Exercise: What Drives You to Risk?

The goal here is to help you make the emotional jump to the realization that you have no choice but to be human, and that your discontent and drive for more will always lead you away from innocence and toward greater and greater levels of personal growth and sophistication. Answer these questions to get these matters straight:

• Are you comfortable being comfortable? Dredge up instances in your life when you left a comfortable situation because you wanted more out of life.

• Does risk and uncertainty frighten or overwhelm you? Or are you too comfortable now?

• How have you been affected by losing innocence—by growing up (whatever your age is)? Have you welcomed the state of knowledge, or wished you were still ignorant and unknowing?

• What do you do to balance your inner restlessness with the need to get along with other people and exist within the world outside you? Can you improve in this area? How would you accomplish the improvement?