Why Do We Do What We Do? Random Musings.

Sometimes I wonder why we do the things we do. More specifically, why we do things that have the opposite effect to what we want. Often I think back to how this might have evolved over time, because many instinctive actions and reactions we have today don't always make sense until they are put in the perspective of how we would have functioned in tribal settings. Anyway, some recent behaviours from a couple of people I know got me pondering.

There was a time when life was about survival. Our minds would have been occupied with feeding ourselves, keeping ourselves safe from predation and finding shelter in bad weather. The concerns of our immediate family and tribe would have been the only things to worry about. It would have been a tough, but simple kind of life.

Over the years our tribes and villages have grown and with it our social etiquette would have had to change and develop. More people means more distance, physically and socially, so you can't get to know everyone as well as you would in a small group. Social behaviours need to be developed so that people can interact safely within boundaries that everyone expects from each other.

As villages merge to become towns, social etiquettes may differ and they can either be abandoned or perceptions altered to accept the differences. In the western world Christianity played a large part in setting social and behavioural boundaries. Priests would be the guides in their parishes. The family unit was important and each would have their roles within it.

As our experiences and knowledge of the world grew we had more time to question things; how and why we do them, rather than just accepting what we were told and taught. Women gained more freedom to question their roles and didn't just have to support their husbands without question.

Technology allowed us to reach farther and farther afield, to learn about what was happening in other countries in real time. Then in the last few decades the internet has almost reached every part of the world. When there is an awareness of the whole world within your own home, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that we question ourselves. Have we taken the right path, are our moral beliefs correct?

Then if we don't question ourselves and are strong in our moral beliefs and path, do we allow that others are going to have different beliefs, or should the world change to our own beliefs, because they must be right, mustn't they? What if my moral beliefs are more akin to a culture living in another part of the world or another time? Would that be accepted in the culture surrounding me?

If I wanted to raise my children in a way that is completely different to what was the accepted norms in the communities around me, I'm likely going to run into problems. For example, I might believe in the Amish way of life and that would be fine if I were in an Amish community, because the support network around has the same beliefs and values. When they reach 18 years of age, Amish are expected to go out into the rest of the world for a while to experience other ways of life and choose if they want to stay in the community. Most of them return. They have their support network there and they likely still appreciate their way of life. However, if it was just one family doing this without the community, then they are isolated and going against the flow of the people around them. Once the children reach an age where they realise that they are isolated, not fitting in and maybe even being restricted in ways others are not, then they are likely to turn away from the very people who raised them, questioning why they would have restricted them like that.

So why would we choose to try and live a life that is in conflict with those around us? Why would we try to stand by our convictions in the face of opposition to it and no support? Perhaps we stand firm on our moral grounds despite the lack of support because if we don't stand for something we will forever be floundering in a world where there are too many conflicting beliefs and we can't cope with accepting those conflicts.

Yet, on the other hand why do we judge the position of someone who is going against the grain? There is a word many use for the sorts of people who believe in a different way of life to the majority and choose to segregate themselves as a community; cult. Yet, if what they are doing causes no harm to others, are we really in a place to judge them? What we might call missing out, they might be happy to miss. That weird homeless couple who choose to live outside rather than in a house like everyone else, are they merely just wanting to live without constraints as tribes would once have done and some still do? They could say that we are the ones missing out because we are cut off in our houses.

I guess what everyone does around us is seen as normal and it's hard to understand why someone wouldn't want to fit in, so we think that something must be wrong with them if they do things differently. They must be a bit crazy...

~○♤○~