In reply to Bear

In reply to Bear's comment on the previous post, because its too long for a comment!

Bear asked, "If 'we just don't have as much control of our minds, attitudes, or behaviours as we think we do' then why not? Is it due to some hard limitation of our beings, or through laziness, lack of education or arrested emotional development?"

We don't have as much control of our minds, etc etc as we think we do, because control, and consciousness, take a lot of concentration. ahah. :)

Experiencing life as a human being is a matter of receiving a very very large quantity and variety of stimuli (all the smells! things to look at, to listen to, to feel, etc), and people are not equipped to be consciously thinking about everything at once. It's simply not effective. Which is why, if u're consciously attending to something (like reading a book), everything else you are receiving, is taken in and sorted through and given appropriate attention according to your er.. peripheral attention. Or subconsciousness, or animal instincts, although those things are each a little bit different. For example, you might be talking with someone, and paying close attention to the content of what they're saying. At the same time, however, your mind is also picking up and reacting to their body language and tones of voice, the smell of their hair, whatever, you get what i mean, and this is affecting you even if you don't notice it.

All this information that you receive, even if not consciously attended to, does very much influence what you learn, and how you feel, which affects things like your mood and memory, resulting in subsequent attitudes and behaviour, etc.
In any case, default animal behaviour (i prefer automatic behaviour) is probably only overcome with education/training. Otherwise, it serves us pretty well i think, getting us through life without totally stressing out our attention capacities or missing too many important things. For those people who know enough about bears to be scared of them, the first reaction is not either to run or stand and talk, it starts in your autonomic nervous system, your heartbeat quickens, adrenaline is released, etc. The first reaction is fear. Then, if you have not been trained or taught otherwise, the next reaction probably is to run. Which is not so bad, if u didn't know any other way.

Bear quoted and wrote, "'To know others is wisdom, to know oneself is enlightenment.' - Lao-tzu. Sadly, sometimes it seems we still live in times where wisdom is scarce and enlightenment almost non-existent."

Well its all very well to bemoan the lack of self-knowledge and knowledge of others and then disclaim "i have never studied psychology!" heheheh. Perhaps you should. :P And then we should all study bears! Megafauna!! yeah!

"To know others is useful stuff, to know oneself saves a lot of trouble too, but to know Bear is best of all." - Su-yin