That which drives us………
we have many drivers of behavior… we have (and in no particular order)
lust, hate, fear, love, anger, greed, duty, honor, passion, biological needs…
and beyond those individual needs, we have social, group needs…
the need to fit in, the need to be part of the group, which is part of our social needs…
now these social needs and our personal needs often match up, we need to feel love
and being part of a group can allow us that…….
sometimes our social group and our personal needs don’t match up……
for years, I was a committed pacifist and I wasn’t going to fight, commit
acts of violence for me or for my social group… so if I had been drafted,
I would not have served regardless of how much “benefit” I might have received
from serving…my own personal convictions prevented me from engaging
in actions that would have benefited my group…
we have heard of other drivers of actions or behavior…
the human need for pleasure or the pursuit of “life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness” or the pursuit of knowledge or the avoiding
pain or to escape suffering………there are many different drivers of
actions or motivations to act that we humans have………
Now these motivations are sometimes driven by physical needs,
love is just as much a physical need as it is a psychological need,
and much of our actions and behavior is fueled by needs of
food, water, clothing, shelter, physical needs……
but much of our actions and behavior is driven by mental,
emotional and psychological needs………we must account
for our psychology needs as much as our physical needs…
in other words, our psychological needs drive our behavior as much
as our physical needs…………we cannot construct a honest appraisal
of what a human being is unless we address the psychological side
of who we are……….it is these inner needs that we exist in
that makes an understanding of who we are so difficult…….
and it is the experiences we have that, in large part, shape
who we are… but each experience understanding is shape by
the very tools we bring into each experience… Think garbage in,
garbage out………if the information we receive is garbage, then
all we have to put out is garbage……….but part of the philosophical
experience is to shape our inner self to be better able to internally
understand experiences, be it garbage or not… Think the Stoics…
by training and discipline, we can shape the way we react to experiences
and thus not be affected by such experiences… be it good experience
or be it bad experiences………philosophy has gone ahead and tried to
train people to better handle the experiences of life… it is time that
psychology becomes more pro-active and get people the tools to
better confront or explain the experiences we human beings
face in our lives…….
we don’t need classes on how psychology works, we needs classes
on how psychology prepares us for the experiences of life…
how do we cope when bad things happen, how do we cope when life happens,
how do we cope when good things happen……… psychology is too static in
allowing people to become prepared to undertake this emotional/psychology minefield
of life……. we spend far too much of our education training people for jobs or careers
instead of training people to become prepared for life and its consequences…….
what does it mean to be human instead of what jobs skills can we train you for…
that is the point of education, to train human beings, not workers………
and psychology can be an essential aspect of our training human beings…
one might argue that psychology is much to confusing to people and it
will cause harm to them if they actually understood themselves……
that is the point of psychology… to get people to understand themselves
regardless of any confusion it may cause………… for it is better in the long run to
be able to understand yourself then to have a job skill or to be confused about
your self………….
we must begin to understand what drives us into actions and behavior…
and that is the point of psychology… to understand what drives us………
what causes us to act and behave in the way we act and behave…….
that is why we must unite psychology and philosophy… for these
two disciplines can allow us to gain an understanding into the forces that
drive us to actions and behaviors………to allow us to prepare to
engage with and understand experiences that we human beings
must deal with on a daily basis……. life, death, despair, sadness,
happiness, joy are just some of the reactions we must deal with
every single day, reactions to events and experiences we have every single
day…………….
and we must train for and begin to learn how to cope with these
multitude of possible responses we can have to events and experiences…
This is really more important then learning a job skill……
learning how to cope with life and all its ups and downs…
and psychology/philosophy must lead the way into this future………
we must have an education that allows us to deal with future events
and experiences and job skill are secondary to that primary mission of
learning how to cope to the events and experiences of life………
Kropotkin