Insecurity in the world and self

All mental experiences come from prior physical experiences. All genetics are the passing on of physical experiences that people had before we existed. These give us the reactions we naturally intend to go toward and away from considering what feels good and bad physically or emotionally. Mental choices can't come from nothing and even mental ideas are physical reactions in the brain to external events. The historicity of self dictates that as emotional creatures we will act out things based on prior experiences that felt good or bad without even without knowing we're doing so in most cases. When one argues they have free will by choosing to raise their arm you'll find that the choice to do so wasn't really free, but a reaction to something in the external world. If we trace back the willing to raise the arm, we find the actions in the brain were inspired to react to something outside the body before choosing to move the body from the inside, which is also physical in the brain. That something prior to the choice to move the arm came from someone challenging the idea of the free will to do so, meaning someone in your external world challenged an idea that caused an emotional reaction in your brain and then your arm. The act can even be delayed such as being challenged by someone early in the day, then doing the action later to try and prove your free will to yourself is still a reaction what someone said outside of you earlier. The choice of the person challenging who is external to the person raising their arm came up with this challenge from something external to them, which was likely reading a book or someone challenging them in person, and you'll see this is actually physical external activities encouraging internal mental actions and reactions that we aren't even aware of due to causality of prior events. Where did the first challenge begin? Most likely it started in nature and the mutation of ideas by viewing it was eventually decoded as such an idea as free will, because we become conscious enough to view our reactions and consider them our own.


When we react to someone to try and prove what we think, it's because we care about what they think. We care about what people think because we have beliefs created from prior experiences with other people we care about plus care about ourselves, and do we choose who we care about or does it just happen through interactions? We don't choose who we care about, or the beliefs and ideas we care about, and this caring about people and ideas is what drives our wills to do things because we care what people think of certain actions we do tied to those things we aren't even conscious of most of the time. If someone chooses to put their hand on a hot stove and hold it there calling it free will because they're choosing more pain than pleasure, the real reason is because of external incentive and causality of the event. The person who put their hand on the stove either has a gun to their head, is offered money to do it, is given pride when dared by friends to be cool, or it can be as simple as they are emotionally tied to the belief of their free will to do so and by reacting to the challenge of the capability they can have pride in their belief, but this is still a reaction and not producing of a will from nothing. It's about caring what people think and we think, and since we don't choose who we care about or what ideas we care about we react to prove what we care about outside of free will. We don't choose what ideas we care about even though we think we do, because what we really do is say what we are good at is good and bad at is bad, and the people we care about are good so we care about the things they care about. So the "free choice" to burn one's self is really a reaction to others actions of challenging them to prove something and not a choice of free will.

Even our genes which are a series of emotional actions and reactions that seem to come from nothing came from a physical history of something acting in the world. A child acts as they do because their emotions naturally tell them to laugh or cry when certain things happen in their environment and their genes react. The only reason we don't act like children is because as the environments shaped us they taught us what behavior is acceptable and unacceptable. We're still as emotional as we always were; we just learned that expressing certain emotions, certain ways, in certain places, will bring more pleasure than pain in our environments. Why did the Christians let themselves be persecuted so long? It's because they believed there was a greater reward in heaven and they are emotionally tied to this idea and their friends who share it. If someone acted in a way that naturally felt bad to prove free will, once again I'd make the same argument, which is they are acting in a way that would be awkward to prove a point that was driven by external physical circumstances to gain more pride in something they care about than the pain of that particular action. They seem freely willing in their actions, but really did so as a reaction to the environment, because we really are emotional creatures seeking gratification and validation for the actions we make due to genes and due to physical reactions we learned from past experiences in our personal lives tied to beliefs, friends, and values.

This brings me to the insecurity of self and insecurity in the world. Although they are different concepts they are closely linked so when someone says they aren't an insecure person this is actually relative only to environment related to past similar or different environments (people, places, and things). It's the things and people we are most familiar with that we are most comfortable with and this is where we have the most security. Everyone is insecure insofar as they are in an unfamiliar task or interaction with a person they don't know well. Friends and family are people we're very familiar with, so we are the most secure with them. If we grow up in environments that had stable friends and family we're more likely to be naturally secure the more places we go for this reason, but that doesn't mean we can't have insecurity in the world, which does create insecurity of self. The first time we all went to school as kids we were very insecure because we were unfamiliar with the environment. As the year went on we became more secure with the environment realizing certain norms constantly take place in a particular manner and we make friends we become familiar with. The next year after a whole summer away from school we feel a little nervous again, and this pattern goes on all through life, but we get more and more secure with school in general because it became something we learned to always be somewhat familiar with. The insecurity of self can come about if we were always unpopular and picked in school, so no matter what school we go to for college we are always more shy and less talkative. This makes us more insecure in the world of school, but it doesn't mean we can't be more secure other places in life. The more environments we learn to be insecure in the more we have an insecurity of self over all. Since there will always be new environments we'll always be faced with the insecurity of self on some level. The same goes for people who have bad relationships over and over develop an idea of what a relationship should be like by claiming all things that made them insecure must be bad and all things that remain secure must be good unless a new person can prove old things wrong in our life, there by changing our interactions in the relationship as well and our belief of relationships.

Insecurity in the self exists on a spectrum due to relative insecurity in the world we found through prior experiences. If we always fell off a bike we'd never want to ride one again eventually. It's because we fall less than don't fall that we keep riding, and as long as the accumulation of good feelings override the bad ones we continue in a direction. What looks like free will then in a sense is more driven by utilitarian like ethics beneath the surface of subconscious action then by what we think is being freely willed. The past and the present dictate the future for us and the conscious mind is really just watching ourselves in action and not controlling the actions. Free will is the illusion of thinking we're causing an action, but the will is really due to prior physicality's we are most likely not aware of.

I'll express this further in some neuropsychology studies done by Patricia Churchland that show how ingrained our habits really are. Choices are made in the lateral intra-parietal cortex of the brain, which is influenced by the middle temporal area. It also gets information from sub-cortical structures that inform it of the goal. In a study where monkeys were asked to push a button showing the direction dots were moving on a screen, the action of pushing the button came seconds after the cells in this part of the brain started acting. The brain thinks before we are conscious of it, and the reason the monkey was willing to act is because if they answered correct they were given a food reward. Just by looking at a single cell it could be seen which decision the monkey had made before it even acted. LIP cells interpret the external environment and then react the way a statistician does by evaluating evidence and making a decision. This shows our rationality is based on probability and we make decision when we think we have enough evidence to act on something. Further evidence could possibly prove otherwise but the mind doesn't care to accumulate evidence on this level before acting. This is because our time in life is finite and we have limited time to fight or flight in our situations.

Brains are causal machines because neurons behave in causal manners where one neuron works on another and so on. A particular order of sequences must take place in order to exercise our wills. We consider, choose, intend, then act in order to will, but what makes us consider is caused by things around us based on what we know from prior interactions. The four things I listed before we will something are what we are conscious of, but that doesn't mean we're controlling them even if we feel we are. As Hume said we have beliefs, desires, reasons, and motives, and these all come from past experiences. We'd have to have such immense computational power to understand all probabilities that we can't possibly predict all out comes of the future so how can we will our life in specific directions? We can only base what we are familiar with to hope it sends us in a general direction. In another study people were given a clock to watch and push a button noting the time on the clock. Once again electrodes were placed on the scalp showing that people feel the urge to act in their mind quite some time prior to when they actually push the button. The point is that we already have different motor responses, skills, and habits, we developed prior. Part of the motor structure's job is to send signals to other structures that they are making a report of what is happening and we interpret that. There's a temporal contiguity between the cause in our minds and the actions we perform. It is unconscious elements that play a more powerful role in actions than anything conscious.

In another study by a psychologist in the Netherlands (I can't pronounce his name) he has number of cars that differ on four features in one experiment. The optimal car with the most features is pretty obvious. There's another experiment with cars that have twelve different features. These are two different experiments with two groups on each experiment. In the first experiment one group gets to look at the four aspects and consciously choose right away which car they want. The second group is distracted with a task for ten minutes before getting to choose. The first group does better. In the experiment with twelve features the same thing is done and oddly those who were distracted for ten minutes with a task picked the more optimal car than those who had time to consciously think about it. In other words we can make better decisions consciously when what we're focusing on is very simple, but we're more likely to act in our favor with the subconscious power when the variables and probabilities get to choose for us.

In another experiment Churchland shows the difference between intention and choice. What she does is give people a handful of pictures of children to choose from, takes the pictures, turns the pictures around in her own hand, and then gives them a different one than they chose. In 90% of cases people didn't notice the difference between what they chose and what they didn't. When asked why they chose the one they didn't they would tell a story about how this one is prettier and I like their hair and so on. They lied to themselves about what they didn't even choose. The only way we can possibly have a better future is to listen to each other in life because those minorities who see things slightly different may have insight into things most of us don't. Think of all the things we think we choose in life and then tell ourselves what actually happens is what we wanted compared to what we claimed to have wanted prior in the abstract. In another scenario people are given two jams to try in a supermarket with two very different flavors as well as with teas and the outcome is very similar to the pictures where people are told they liked a different one than they chose and they make up why they chose it and like it more. We seem to function better when we don't think about what we are going into very hard than when we over think.

In another experiment we are shown how the unconscious will can be primed. People were given words they had to unscramble and make into sentences. One group has words like social, connect, and relationship to give them a mindset of a talker and listener. Another group is given words like compete, do your best, and someone for achievement and success. After this they give each group another unrelated job to work on a puzzle with someone. Those who had words to be more social and listening were more likely to be the confederate and take orders as well as be dumber and make mistakes, where as the second group wanted to take control of the process. When people say words don't hurt me they're lying. Another thing is when the non achievers were asked to quit the puzzle they didn't want to and would say wait I can do this. Those who were primed to be successful quit easily. People can be primed for power too if they are put in the professors chair versus a guest chair. People who were found to be more communally oriented and put in the chair really wanted to help people while taking responsibility for the situation. People found to be in it for themselves oriented or exchange oriented and were put in the professors chair had a more self oriented way of giving out tasks to benefit themselves and blaming others when things went bad.

In another experiment two pictures were shown to two different sets of people. One was of a library and one was of a railroad. Each person was told to examine closely and give opinions on what they thought about the architecture and design because they were going to go to these places to work on them. Afterward they are given a completely unrelated list of words to read and the people who were told they were going to the library would whisper them and those going to the railroad would yell them. If they were never told they would visit these places it didn't affect how they read the words afterward.

When giving people achievement words versus neutral words in another unscramble into sentences task, they were also given another task after this. Those who are taught to be aggressive and compete without knowing it and were given tough tasks after tended to fail and get very angry or miserable. The neutral people were given tough tasks and didn't care if they failed much. After this even a confederate was told to walk down the hall toward them as they left the test like they were going to collide with them. Those who were taught to be competitive would walk right at the confederate and dodge at the last minute. Those who had neutral words walked out of the way past the person moving aside early on. People who are taught to be aggressive tend to have worse moods and are less happy than those who aren't. Even Aristotle talks about developing appropriate habits from the time people are young for the right rewards if we are to live well. People with long experience and discipline in certain environments and actions will be the most secure and perform the best.

Since we are creatures of desire and only speak and act to get things, we won't be happy till we're in the right environments that give us the things to desire that will make us the happiest long term and we can have. We can't stop caring about people and ideas, so we don't freely will where we choose to act. When a friend gets hurt by someone and they ask us for advice, we'll find that in most cases people don't listen to us if they love someone more than the advice we give, and so people will act on what they want even if everyone around them claims it won't work to their advantage. The only way people seem to learn is by running into a brick wall enough times that they realize it hurts more than it brings good things before they change actions. We can prime people before they walk into situations so they may act a little different but it seems we only get more secure and knowledgeable with our own experiences. You can't speak sense into someone about something they love or care about and it's only through their own pain in pursuing it they may eventually change from learning that.

This is why we should prime people to stop putting their fingers in the dyke of a person who is a part of their life when that person starts leaking. People who leak on us are going to keep leaking till they have enough other experiences away from us that make them realize we were a good thing being taken advantage of in their lives. When we hang around and try to fix things with someone that keeps making our lives painful or try to find solutions in the area that can't be fixed anyway, such as a person breaks our heart and we start thinking of how to fix them, replace them, or date different; what we're doing is putting our finger in the same dyke. The person will respect us less for hanging around and trying to fix them and our situation with them when they were broken before us and then blame us instead for their brokenness. Trying to figure out how to approach dating different or replacing people is still worrying about that part of your life that isn't changing at this point. It will hurt regardless but it's wiser to move to an area of town where the dykes are good and the resources we have there are stable and can be built on till the pain in the old part of town has a few years to pass. By this time things will have changed in our lives or the place we came from enough for us to visit that place, and possibly start a new friendship where it used to be part of our problems.