We drive to work the easiest path. We avoid painful conversations and situations. We let culture and others' expectations push us around until it's habituated. We label ideas and everything we encounter so that we don't have to think about it so hard.
This belies the fact that we know individuals who defy the labels we have made, that we resent our choices and our body image and our unwillingness to speak up (until that resentment gets more uncomfortable than dealing with the bullying). We see it happening when we unconsciously make the turn to work even though we intended to go to the park. Sadly, we can count on laziness. It's kind of evolutionary. Is that what we mean by human nature?
On the other side, however, we have weird. We have inventors and artists and activists, whom we punish, but ultimately admire. Are they aware of the social pressures they resist, or do they just ignore them?
There's a terrific Robert Redford movie "Three Days of the Condor" in which he plays an accidental spy, and for three days, he's winning, not because he's brilliant, but because he doesn't know enough about the game to be restricted to the rules. At that point, does he begin to act 'by human nature' or laziness (efficiency, if we're being generous)?
We make statements and statistics and sentimental hogwash about 'human nature. Boys are stupid; girls are crazy. These statements are true, but they are really deep lies. We expect boys to be stupid and girls to be crazy, so that's normal, and you better keep it a secret if you don't fit that model.
We warn our children to be careful around 'wild' animals because they can be unpredictable, even though they are much less complicated than we are. What I would like to understand is why Zebras are not considered trainable while horses are. Anyone know the difference?Statistics: Posted by bralbovsky — Mon Sep 25, 2017 1:27 pm
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