“Oh, that’s just the way I am . . . “
“It’s human nature to be self-centered and greedy.”
“S/he can’t help it, just grew up in that kind of family. Know what I mean?”
“You know how Republicans/Democrats, men/women, Yankees/southerners, British/Italians, Christians/atheists. . . are.”
I’m considering going to the store this afternoon. As is often the case, my mind makes this a monumental decision as if it will affect humanity at large. Same with having another cup of coffee, exercising, shifting the clothes to the dryer, or having a talk with my wife about something which may birth friction. Conscious stuff, mixed liberally with a cavalcade of unconscious data, emotions, intuition, memory, fear, hope, illusion, biochemistry, all of which help complicate and debate what I do next. It’s a wonder we ever get a damn thing done.
Meanwhile, chugging away with remarkable, dogged determination, my autonomic nervous system runs the business end of me - breathing, digestion, that sort of thing, plus the sympathetic side (speed up!) and the parasympathetic side (calm down . . . ahhhh).
Though our thinking triggers changes in this part of our OS, the autonomic nervous system plugs away pretty much on its own. Aren’t you glad we don’t have to think through every breath?
It seems like our current state of social, cultural, and political friction—more heat than light—is resident in a land of autonomic lameness: “I can’t help it. That’s just the way I am and I’ll never change.”
Our minds are not our kidneys. Our minds are not even organs. The autonomic nervous system does not run them like immutable, repetitive machinery. We choose to beg off development when we excuse exercising self-examination and imagination.
We do not live upright lives because we are ethical and exceptional. We are those things because we live upright lives.
I’m not qualified to make up bogus generalities about the immutability of human nature.
I am, however, trying to develop the quality of shaping the nature of this human.
On the lighter side, my good friend Mike used to say, “My first apartment was so tiny you had to step out into the hall to change your mind.”
Not quite the non sequitur it may at first appear to be, right?
