If you suppress your natural desires and instinctual inclinations, you are bound to become a villain. If you indulge in only your natural desires and instinctual inclinations, you are also bound to become a villain. So here’s what it looks like.
We suppress things that come up in us that we are ashamed of. We learn shame from outside sources. If conditioned long enough, we might be ashamed of seeking out even the most instinctual, basic, human needs. If you create a justification around the shame and conditioning it becomes a perfect storm for major suppression of all your natural instincts. You eventually learn to not trust any of your senses or instincts. This can become debilitating in being able to make meaning out of your world or sustain connections with other people. When you live in an environment where you can’t trust the creatures that brought you into the world, you have a harder time learning to trust yourself and your own experience of the environment.
If, on the other hand, we indulge in only our own desires and instincts, we forget what makes our desires valuable in the first place. We go to such extreme experience until we feel completely underwhelmed by our environment – no longer challenged. If our desires are not challenged, we cannot see the value of them being our desires in the first place.
For example, say you are a sexual creature that longs to find a match with a partner who shares your sexual prowess. If you have an opportunity, like say Steve McQueen (the actor/racer), to have sex with every woman in your proximity you might quickly lose interest in “the hunt”. Eventually the ease of everything might create a sense of disillusionment. Even Steve might say he could never really scratch that itch of finding the one person he was looking for that could challenge and/or match his energy. This led to countless sexual encounters that were more vampiric in nature than they were symbiotic with anyone.
Both of these extremes encompass the beginning of villainous behavior. I truly believe that we are not born as villains – we are perceived as villians when we are incapable of trusting ourselves or our environment to support our basic needs. This can lead us ultimately to engage in behavior that seems unimaginable out of our biology’s basic need to survive.
Here’s a good example of what I mean:
Doctor of Clinical Psychology, PsyD., middle aged, mother of two young adults, Latina, neurodivergent, came from the dirt and clawed my way out through the US education system, digital and AI artist, web programmer, writer, pure water elemental, dark creature, and goddess of water (one of many)!
I am one, of infinite possibilities.
This is me, who are you?
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