Wo/man cannot evolve beyond his/her character

[coberst]

“Man cannot evolve beyond his character”—Becker

 

Becker makes the point that the humanization process is one wherein the individual exchanges the natural organismic propensity for a mysterious symbolic dictation. The child in its very essential formative age is faced with denying that which ‘comes naturally’ for what are symbolic dictates that are far beyond its ability for comprehension. The child’s formation of character is dictated by its need to be somebody in the symbolic world.

 

The child continual loses battles that s/he cannot comprehend. John Dewey learned long ago that “the child continually loses battles he does not understand…we earn our early self-esteem not actively but in large part passively, by having our action blocked and re-oriented to the parents pleasure.”

 

In the very essential formative years the child develops character traits that in many cases remain with that individual for the rest of their life.

 

What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.

 

I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.

 

Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions. We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits. “Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction.” “The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought.” “Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness.” “Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will.”

 

Britannica specifies that attitude is “a predisposition to classify objects and events and to react to them with some degree of evaluative consistency.”

 

If I consult my inner self I cannot focus upon an attitude but can infer such an attitude based on behavior. If I wish to become conscious of my intuition I can through observation of behavior describe the attitude, which, in turn, allows me to ascertain the nature of my intuition.

 

When a mother tells her son “you must change your attitude”. The son cannot change the attitude directly but the son must change his intuition from which the inferred attitude emanates. This does become a bit convoluted but in essence when we wish to change an attitude we are saying that our intuition must be modified. We can modify intuition only through habit directed by our will.

 

“Were it not for the continued operation of all habits in every act, no such thing as character would exist. There would be simply a bundle, an untied bundle at that, of isolated acts. Character is the interpenetrating of habits. If each habit in an insulated compartment and operated without affecting or being affected by others, character would not exist. That is conduct would lack unity being only juxtaposition of disconnected reactions to separated situations. But since environments overlap, since situations are continuous and those remote from one another contain like elements, a continuous modification of habits by one another is constantly going on.”

 

My understanding of character and the quotations concerning the nature of character are taken from “Habits and Will” by John Dewey

 

John Dewey: "Habits and Will".

[Sacri Sankt]

not true. there is lots of evidence that the increasing complexity of our lives is directly evolving the brain. culture and mind are interlinked, there are influences going both ways. so i would say, our character will change with our minds.

[wine]

"So I would say, our character will change with our minds"

 

Man, did you even read his post?

He's absolutely right, I look back on my childhood and think of all the things I did and thought and I look at me now and I realize that I had to be this way, there wasn't anyone like me so I had to fall into this catagory, this partition.

 

What are our minds?

 

We are one mind, intermingling to a higher collective understanding.

Each one of us who we always had to be.

Whether we have the drive to change, or not, was inevitable.

[rocket art]

The history of Humanity should be probed deeper, and not necessarily be based only on the conventionalities of creationism. Both evolution and creationism need to be adressed (but am not referring to materialistic views on evolution, which may not be enough), as I believe Earth Humanity is a product of both. To discredit the capacity of an individual to evolve (considerably the Evolution of Consciousness) is a bias to interests that sought one to subdue for servitude to an Establishment or as commodity for a Machinery.

[wine]

Read "Psyche Genetics" by S.W. Pringle if you want to probe humanity's history.

It's quite an impressive overview of present, past, and future.

[Sacri Sankt]

hmm, i read some of that. seemed very much fringe, occult ideas to me but then i dont have any expertise in the subject. but i would say i dont think its valid as a support for a scientific argument, since it doesnt reflect scientific consensus, quite the opposite in fact.

[rocket art]

Evolution is a leap necessary for the survival of a specie. It may even extend perhaps as a mutation, or an anomaly that deviates itself from existing structures and norms and yet follows a pattern that portray a better development of the structure. Materialistic perspective of evolution is not a sole, and neither accurate basis. as Earth Humans, these require more holistic perspective. Secularly speaking, the human had evolved much from an animalistic cavedweller into a member of modern civilization with sets of 'moral' character. It is repleted with religion and other organized systems that had guided him in the past, yet these may stagnate as his conscousness continue to push beyond its limiting boxes.

 

Creationist viewpoints perceived the completeness of physical make of the Human courtesy of 'Creator'. Still, as Humans, Evolution cannot be denied as it is a necessary, continuing process. Stagnation occurs when the principles of the former are manipulated for subject-master agenda. Still, there is the necessity for the Evolution of Consciousness for the survival of the Human species.

 

This is an Individual prerogative not solely reliant on consensus of unevolving systems, but rather such systems are reliant on the evolving individual. The evolving Conscious Individual require the necessary, holistic tools of higher visions in Philosophy, Spirituality (one can be without being religious),Awareness, and envisioing of Ideal Future ( I need to use some my terms as there are yet terms to be composed, while these presently engage the actual process of evolution itself..).

 

(by the way, I browsed the web about Psyche Genetics book to have a glimpse of it)