| I'd like to talk about choice. It is an illusion. Do we really have free will? No I'm not talking about some imaginary sky fairy controlling our actions or 'guiding us'. I'm talking about social constructs and pre-determined behavioural patterns. Aren't we just rats running through a maze trying to find the most efficient route to the cheese?
During our lives we learn behaviours, mannerisms, memes, etc. What I came to realise was that I was not actively making choices about anything. I was just following pre-determined responses to given stimuli. I was a machine. I was an ant. A robot. A computer program. A flowchart. 2 months ago, if you'd given me the same input multiple times you'd get the same output each time. Show me a pretty girl (or even semi-pretty to be honest) girl at a bar and I'd get approach anxiety and not approach. I was a flowchart that always took the safe option.
However, was it really a choice? Did I choose not to approach? In a way, yes, but more accurately, this is my DEFAULT BEHAVIOUR it's not a CHOICE per se, it's what happens when I don't actually make a choice, it's my fallback mechanism, my instinct. A pre-defined pattern of behaviour.
I wasn't choosing NOT to approach the girl. I was just declining to allow myself to make a choice. I was falling back on my default behaviour. My inner flow-chart. It all worked it out nicely with the same outcome each time. Somehow I was hoping that "this time the outcome will be different". Hah. Of course it wasn't.
I realised the only choice I could make was to deviate from my default behaviour.
From an evolutionary perspective, I suppose it makes sense. It has never got me killed so each time it happens the weighting on the "don't apporach" action becomes stronger and fear sets in due to the relative unknown.
Breaking this was, and to a lesser extent still is, my problem. Once I realised that I wasn't even making a choice it gave me all the more reason to actually make one and helped me understand better my own decision making process.
Last edited by ix. on Mon Jan 03, 2011 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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