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Each moment, little by little—and sometimes lot by lot—we are becoming what we do. And, unfortunately, we find ourselves easy prey for our own fear, fury, and foible, don’t we? I do not mean all at once. Take anger. We learn how to be angry. It is true that we get angry, but the fact is that we have learned since we were born, through a process of conditioning, how to react to stress, how to feel, think, and be. We learn from those around us, those we share our lives with, what we should be angry about and how. What’s your vice?
It is not possible for us to logically unravel the complex sequences and feedback loops that constitute rigid and reactive cycles in our lives and relationships. We each face our own difficult battles, which is not an excuse but certainly a fair casting, and our emotions, feelings, thoughts, and perceptions are nearly inextricably linked.
The pioneering psychologist and philosopher William James (1892) put it this way—
Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct… Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. Down among the nerve cells and fibers the molecules are…registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course this has its good side as well as its bad one.
“Its good side as well as its bad one.” Do you hear it, the mind-bending life-changing challenge? It’s one that has not escaped notice of modern minds—Martin Seligman has led a cultural revolution toward such a positive psychology for nearly two decades. What if psychological growth, like market investment, appreciated with compounding interest—muster a small amount of courage or vulnerability, extend yourself generously for the sake of someone in need, and love, peace, patience, kindness, self-control and the rest would be more quickly forthcoming?
Our lives are teeming with feedback loops with one thought, feeling, or action promoting another and secondary phenomena subsequently reinforcing the first. Stampedes are generated when psychological panic triggers physiological startle and when the physiological startle in one promotes panic in another, and so on. The dynamic of mutual reinforcement is common in the lives of human beings as well. There is a social positive feedback loop between beliefs and behavior—if enough people believe that something is true, their behavior can make it true, and observations of their behavior may, in turn, increase belief. A classic example is a bank run. You may be more familiar with the phrase “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Yet in considering the power of psychological impulse, psychologist David Shapiro (1981) contended—
In adult human beings, even strong impulses account only for strong temptations; they do not in themselves account for actions. Action involves more complicated processes. Human beings are endowed with imagination, and imaginative consciousness, and thus cannot act, even if they want to, without a certain degree of conscious anticipation and intention.
Could there be a causal link between virtuous action now and virtuous action later? C.S. Lewis (1946) contended, “Good and evil increase at compound interest. The decisions you and I make every day are of infinite importance.” Certainly our acts shape us not merely to the degree we choose them.
And so, our capacity to choose changes with the activity of life. An ancient proverb instructs—“Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it.” The more we fear oblivion, the more we chase ambition, and regardless of the prizes we gain, deep anxieties propel our actions and our actions, our anxieties. Our heart hardens. Conversely, the more we embody acts of courage and bear others’ burdens, the more our heart is enlivened. Each act which feeds integrity also increases my capacity for virtue.
Eventually it becomes more difficult for me to choose the foul rather than the virtuous action. On the other hand, each act of cowardice weakens me. Between the extreme when I can no longer do a wrong act and the extreme when I have lost all strength for right action, there are innumerable degrees. Vice sows compulsion, and virtue sows freedom. If the degree of freedom to choose the good is great, it needs less effort to choose the good. If it is small, it takes a great effort, help from others, and favorable circumstances.
Erich Fromm (1964) wrote,
We find ourselves on the wrong path not just because when the road diverged in the wood, we took the wrong one, but because at every juncture, it either becomes more wooded or more well lit, more difficult or more easy to discern which path might, in fact, be the better one.
One thing is for sure, and W.L. Bateman put it quite well—“If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.” Our fears have ways of bracing us in anticipation, and anticipation has ways of fulfilling itself. Faith, hope, and love are more audacious yet no less fruitful.
Cherokee legend tells of a boy who came to his grandfather angry at a friend who had committed an injustice against him. The boy expressed a desire to act in kind to his friend, and the grandfather listened well, and knowingly. When the boy was silent, the grandfather reflected on his grandson’s dilemma—
“It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you and inside every other person too.”
The grandson considered the words of his grandfather and then asked, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee responded, “The one you feed.”
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This post was originally published on LinkedIn and is republished here with the author’s permission.
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