Saturday, December 2, 2000

instinct

I think about it a lot.

If I have an instinct, I question it. If it makes no logical sense, I attempt to stifle it. That there's the beauty of an evolved brain.
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4 comments:

Unknown said...

I think about this alot too. What's sad is that when I look back over my life I can see far too many times when instinct still go the better of me...despite my brain!

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 at 5:06:00 PM EST
leela said...

This is something I think about too, although it seems to me that there are times when the instinctive response may be the appropriate one even if it's not logical.

The key, I think, is to be able to exercise *choice* over our responses, rather than--for example--rolling up like a sowbug at the first inkling of fear. If, upon examination, the fear seems justified, a defensive response is appropriate...but sometimes a seemingly unjustified fear may be telling us something important that our brains simply don't recognize.

As my 4 yr. old granddaughter says, "It's a conundrum." ;)

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 8:51:00 AM EST
Cutter said...

Actions... Reactions are a little trickier. To me, in order to get control of your reactions, you have to get to the root of them, and at the root is often an "instinct" which you have... something inherent or seemingly "hard-wired". So, stifling something like that is like re-wiring your brain.

This could be an issue of linguistics though. I wrote it 7 years ago and so it's possible that I could have just not explained what I was getting at very well. I think that I was trying to explain that I spent a lot of time focusing on getting control of my impulses.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 9:35:00 AM EST
leela said...

Good point about actions vs. reactions!

Also, "So, stifling something like that is like re-wiring your brain." is very well-put. Zen aims for a similar goal, although the process is different ("letting go" rather than "stifling").

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 10:33:00 AM EST

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