Once, I believed the words people said about themselves, their lofty reasons for why they buy what they buy, wear what they wear, and do what they do. I took their stories at face value, clinging to the idea that people acted with intention, driven by purpose and intellect. But belief, I have learned, is the currency of the naïve. Beneath every carefully crafted justification and polished statement lies the raw, unfiltered beast of primal desire.
Love me, desire me, see me, worship me.
It’s all there, pulsating just below the surface of our sophisticated veneers. We shroud it in intellectual discourse, dress it in moral righteousness, and wrap it in the glittering paper of progress. And yet, we refuse to look at what truly drives us.
I stopped believing people because I began to see myself. Once you’ve stared into the chasm of your own instinct, once you’ve laid bare the silent truths behind your choices, you cannot help but see the same forces in others. Call it a humbling revelation, or the cynic’s awakening. Either way, the truth is inescapable, and it follows you everywhere.
The Primal Orchestra: Love, Status, Belonging, Transformation
Let us dissect this spectacle, this carefully orchestrated carnival of motives. Observe the choreography of human behavior, how we parade our choices as moral acts, rational decisions, or intellectual pursuits. But how transparent it all becomes when you realize that every performance, every carefully chosen word, is just a dance to the same ancient tune.
Love Me
The perfume ad declares, “For the bold and the free,” but its true whisper is far less poetic: “Wear this, and they’ll want you.” The little black dress, draped in allure, is an exoskeleton of seduction, armor for the battlefield of attraction. Even the fitness tracker, with its promises of health and vitality, isn’t about wellness. It’s a talisman of transformation, signaling to the tribe, “Look at my discipline, admire my evolution.”
Give Me Status
The luxury watch is not for telling time. It is for telling your time, declaring, “I am important enough to have my minutes measured by precision and gold.” The car is not mere transportation. It is a rolling temple to power, barreling through the streets with the silent proclamation, “Behold, I have arrived.” Every shimmering logo, every handcrafted object, speaks not to function but to the fragile throne of status we are all building for ourselves.
Let Me Belong
The sneakers, the cult brands, the coffee shops, are they not symbols of tribes? The logos, the hashtags, the rituals, they scream, “I am one of you, let me in.” Even rebellion has a uniform. Even the outcasts gather under banners of shared insignia, proving that nonconformity, too, comes with its own dress code. The need to belong, to be seen as part of something larger, is etched into our very bones.
Transform Me
Ah, the great lie of modern life: “This will make you better.” Every ad, every product, every glossy image is a chrysalis with the promise of a butterfly. The creams, the courses, the curated experiences, they don’t just sell items. They sell escape. They offer a glimpse of a more radiant self, a version of you that is finally worthy of the adoration you’ve craved all along. And we, the desperate caterpillars, buy into it every time, yearning to escape the banality of our cocoons.
Why I Stopped Believing
I stopped believing because I realized the lies weren’t even for me, they were for themselves. People don’t tell stories to convince others, they tell them to make their reflection in the mirror tolerable. And the greatest story of all? That we are not creatures of base instinct, that we are above such things.
But no. Strip away the intellectual excuses, the “This is sustainable,” the “It’s an investment,” the “I just liked it,” and you find the same primal drive I see in myself. The desire to be adored, the yearning for significance, the unquenchable thirst to escape the dull ache of being ordinary.
And so, I stopped believing their polished words because I could no longer believe my own. I have seen how my choices, those I once thought rational, even noble, are merely the puppets of deeper forces. That “timeless piece” I bought? A plea to be admired. That book I carried around but never read? A desperate bid to appear interesting. Even my “minimalist” phase wasn’t about simplicity, it was about showing how enlightened I was.
Primal Desire: The Great Governor of Us All
Primal desire is the true emperor, ruling over our decisions with an iron fist. We just dress it up in crowns of rationality and robes of intellect to feel dignified in its presence. We are creatures of the herd, the stage, and the hunt, forever seeking what we cannot admit we crave.
And yet, how absurdly beautiful it is. We hide, but we reveal. We justify, but we still want. We pretend, but the primal governs us all. There’s a certain dark humor in this theater of denial. A man buys a $200 T-shirt and says it’s about the fabric. A woman spends hours contouring her face and calls it self-expression. And I write this essay, pretending it’s for insight, when it’s just another way to feel seen.
Laughing at the Circus
Perhaps the greatest joke is that we are in on it, and yet, we are not. We know, and yet we pretend not to know. It is this tension that makes the human animal so endlessly fascinating and so utterly absurd. We are the beasts who rationalize, the predators who philosophize, the primal dressed in Prada.
But if there is a lesson here, it is not to scorn this truth, but to embrace it. Yes, we are governed by love, status, belonging, and transformation. Yes, we dress up our instincts in the language of reason. So what? If anything, it makes the show even more entertaining. Life is not a courtroom, it’s a circus. And if you’ve stopped believing the performers, it’s not because the show is fake, it’s because you’ve finally learned to laugh.
And so, I stand here, unashamed in my primal desires, aware of my own absurdity, and finally free. Not free from instinct, but free to see it for what it is, the engine of all that we are, both magnificent and ridiculous.
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