I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my habitual behaviors. Perhaps it’s sitting on the cusp of the wrong side of 30, maybe it’s the continuing glut of neuroscience literature to read, it could even just be a side effect of considering exactly what I want the rest of my life to look like; in any event the idea of the function and features of our habits has been in the forefront of my mind. Both good and bad, I am who I am because of and despite my habits. Some I would certainly like to change (I am excellent at sinking many of the opportunities I create, cannot seem to help it) and some I would certainly like to reinforce (I love feeding my habit of being active) but in either case it’s definitely worth a look as to what our patterned behavior actually is.
The habits we dislike may be considered our flaws, but they do not stem from some inherent weakness. Evolution necessarily shaped our minds to function on autopilot for as many operations as possible, programmed for basic survival and the opportunity to flourish. It makes perfect evolutionary sense for our ancestors to voraciously feast on anything available – where and when would the next meal be? The same goes with all of our animal habits of consumption be they drugs, sex, relationships, listening to pop music, collecting shoes, whatever: if you’re unsure when the next drought or saber toothed thing might come for you of course you’ll want to get while the getting is good.
The scarcity argument aside, remember just how automatic our ancestors were. Unless you’re in the creationist camp you probably believe that we evolved our mental abilities over thousands of years. While there are different theories of the evolution of our consciousness, it seems most reasonable that we ever so slowly gained some sort of independence from our automatic functioning and responses. As mentioned in yesterday’s post we didn’t just wake up with our full complement of cognitive powers – more likely we developed conscious access to ourselves on a strictly need-it-to-survive basis.
Further, just because we developed the potential to overcome our basic responses we still have to understand how fragile our store of willpower actually is. The idea may be a bit confusing but consider what happens the minute we’re compromised in any way (think hungry, angry, lonely, tired). Our lizard brains take right back over – how many diets have fallen to the stress of the holidays? How many bad relationships have been re-consummated when we’re not at 100%? Why do you think a bad day drives many people to the bar? The wash of chemicals we get from these behaviors on some level reinforces our most primal instincts for comfort and satiety.
The only difference now is that it isn’t the loss of half our tribe or threat of mammoth stampede that drives us, but our modern society. Between the business world wanting us uncomfortable (because consumers don’t consume when they are happy) and modern media telling us we aren’t beautiful or rich enough (because we aren’t like who we see, hear about etc.), we’re always in a somewhat compromised state.
There’s also the trouble of sophistication – at basic we do fit the hedonist principle of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. While we have as a race developed some additional powers of discernment we still do live by the maxim of getting the most of what we like and avoid as much of what we don’t as possible. It’s easy to want to disagree, it can be argued that even altruism can be considered part of this principle – we help other people at the expense of ourselves because it brings us more pleasure than the alternative of not providing altruistic service. We simply haven’t evolved enough to be able to push our higher values into our animal wiring.
It doesn’t seem so confusing then that we struggle with changing our habitual behavior; even in our best case scenario the fight is not only with our internal wiring but the external forces of society. The next time you’re ready to get down on yourself or someone else for what they are or are not able to change (or just how they are), it’s important to remember what we as humans in modern society are still ill equipped to navigate our situation. We’re wired to overdo it (scarcity principle) on a very basic system of needs (pleasure v. pain) with a consciousness that requires optimal conditions to transcend such predispositions (which is made even more difficult by continual comparison to some fantastical state of existence which no one being can hope to achieve). Where our peculiar habits come from is a topic for another day, but remember when you’re struggling to change yourself you’re fighting against not only your own lizard self but a world that often wishes to play on that that primal response for financial or personal gain. We are way more imperfect than we often like to think, so cut yourself or your loved one a break, we are truly doing the best we can with the little that we’re given.
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