“Slaves to our social biology”

The topic of this blogpost is going to be about something else altogether. I just wanted to use that poignant statement made by a friend of mine as hook to pique the reader’s interest. Haha.

I’m going to talk about “inertia”.

Inertia is a characteristic of matter that tends to stay still, or to continue moving in a straight line, unless there is an external force acting upon it.

At the time of this post, it’s the year 2021. The whole world is still reeling from the impact of a global pandemic that had effectively shutdown and derailed everybody’s lives. With widespread lockdowns, the entire world was basically confined indoors.

You’d think with being trapped in your house for long periods, one would have plenty of spare time to do other things since social or out-of-doors activities are practically banned.

It’s surprising (and ironically not surprising at the same time) that people aren’t really motivated to do much else. We all have these pet hobbies that we want to do. Bake, cook, dance, paint, exercise, read, learn.

Actually we need to take time and figure out how do we adapt to these trying times.

Being physically disconnected from your family and friends, how do we maintain our relationships? How else would we relate but via digital means, even though that is a merely a shade of and a sad parody of real human interaction.

One of my friends posted a photo in our high school friends WhatsApp group chat. Captioned, “Keeping the tradition alive!”, it was a group selfie. Three of them were having what’s becoming the annual catch-up over desserts at an ice cream parlour.

I was envious. I don’t even live in the same country as those guys, notwithstanding the pandemic. Then I thought, what’s stopping me from texting these fellas and just have a quick chat? So that was what I did. I reached out to one of them and we exchanged messages for about an hour and a half.

“I always mean to say hi. But I have a lot of inertia too.”

I totally get it brother.

“Things really aren’t that bad.”

True. Yet, it’s human nature to languish the moment things don’t go our way. We’re too comfortable and averse to a little struggle or pain in life.

“Just slaves to our social biology,” he further lamented.

Well said. An apt adage to frame our plasticity. (In this context, based on material engineering terms, plastic means not elastic, i.e. does not return original stage after force is applied.)

Anyway, inertia, being plastic… I feel like I’m heading into a directionless, circular rant here. So to conclude, I just want to say that inside of us, we have a desire to achieve or do something significant. To leave a meaningful mark on the surrounding world. However, we let our fleshly weakness (for lack of a better way to phrase it) get in the way of creating the beauty we envision. At the same time, I believe in humanity’s indelible, ineradicable ability to evolve and overcome.

Am I going to continue being a slave to my social biology?