11 wnt. Linguistic Model of Behavior

Much of life is based on judgement. Judgment has two facets, what is good/bad for me, and what is good/bad for the collective. In the short term they may be considered opposites.

In the long term, they may coalesce.  That takes the study of history (to understand the long term, history of the environment also).

I phrased it “what” is good/bad.  But I didn’t give any properties to that WHAT.  Let’s say that “what” is human behavior, of self and others.  But behavior doesn’t just drop from the sky.  It happens through a felt bodily sense to modify something, a mental urge to go in a particular direction, and the sufficient passion and energy that convinces me to jump into this endeavor.  You could use other words, like interest, motivation, rationale, survival, betterment, duty, all of which are more than individual, and are based on some agreement factor.  (Even if just agreement between gangsters.)

This “agreement” could be subliminal, just picked up by osmosis from the crowd, some kind of group madness.  But we are talking about whole sections of society, and not about a maidan demonstration in the central square.

I have chosen language as the central factor in motivating behavior.  At least it is one of the majors, that we can more or less easily access.  Through language a culture is formed and passed from generation to generation.  I admit that much of upbringing is learned through imitation and other forms of “wordless-induction”.   A usual comment when I share this model is, “what about babies?”  OK I will talk, what-about-babies now.

The capacity to understand the world, and understand the physical world is mostly kinetic.  We are born with a sense of balance and orientation, which locates us in a “field of awareness”.  It is our known limit of the world, expanding as we get deeper insights and denfinitions. This orientation can be expanded into distances assessment, movement detection, recognition of danger or the unknown, which is caution.  I conjecture that most human awareness is based on sensing a difference or a change. We don’t notice our static environment very well. So there has to be some (separate) reference point to make any judgment. Then there is some pre-processing, signal to noise ratio, prioritizing importance, or relevance.  Later we verbalize all of this, but even then, the kinetic factor might be dominating.  Those who excel in kinetic learning are good in sports.  You can also improve your kinetic abilities with sports. 

Does this kinetic factor directly motivate us toward certain behaviors, or is it the words that we attach on top of it?  Or is it the necessities and intentions impressed by those who prior formulated those words?  There are a few things to look into.

We are also born with a persistent memory and are able to retrieve images as memories.  They might be non-verbal images, but I say most often they end up with verbal interpretations connected with them. It is difficult to see them isolated from language. (Meditation is said to strip away language, and some experience ensues.)

There is some kind of ability to reason.  That might be essentially imagining the result of the outcome of a sequence of actions that we can envision.  It requires mental models that don’t have much to do with language, and probably most of our knowledge is derived from that direct interaction with the physical world.  Later we are often going to say something about it: “That’s Good”, That will work well, I will try it. It is an ability to Plan toward a vision.  That is more verbal in nature.

Most of human activity is focused on the collective, either with society, or just with my “customer base”, or with whom I trade and interact.  So therefore, both the vision and the plan have to be communicated, and that’s done through modeling with language and image, or video.

With the language part, we can say that it is an acculturation, and each society has different stereotypes of acceptable behavior, handed down from antiquity.  With regard to the kinetic part, I haven’t considered it for long.  Maybe that is the part of human-similarity, since it is not language or culture based?

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Back to the top where I said life is based on judgment.  I believe that a common judgment is that it is better to coexist than to fight wars, (civil wars or international), at least not with peer adversaries.  We do “mop-up all the time with the little guys, so those actions must be louder than any words to the contrary.  But there is another judgment out there that says “let’s teach those bastards a lesson”, or let’s finish them off this time.   In my judgement, I cannot understand this, nor what its end goal is?  It sounds only like someone claiming that power over all others, subjugation, is to their advantage, (but to whose advantage??)

Therefore, it is these “judgements” that I seek to find the motivation for, through Why Not Think.  Motivation is not a curiosity.  The goal is to understand how to change the motivation, and thereby change the actions, (the behavior).

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Again, I have chosen a verbal model.  In that model is also included the feeling level, (emotional content). I am saying that every perception, from the real-world senses, or from the conceptual reservoir of memory, is received both kinetically and as thought, kinetically as a bodily impulse, (a lessening or tightening of contraction, somewhere). And as a thought, which starts with recognition, and then further into judgments and conclusions.  I am saying that the feeling is linked-to, and authored-by the thought.  If the thought says no danger and this is how I like it, the feeling is further relaxation.  If the thought says this is dangerous or unknown, and it shouldn’t be this way, the body further tightens.  We call it suffering.  Under the guise of suffering all sorts of aberrant behavior can ensue. 

IS IT TRUE is the question?  Aberrant behavior can also be profitable, so we should watch for conflict of interest.

What’s next?  Where do we get our words from?  Are they “freshly coined” from what we see, or is it ancient wisdom from grandpa’s scriptures?  What were the circumstances and necessities of the times when this “wisdom” was developed?  Do we still have those same belief structures?  In reality, did it work for those who authored it, or did it drive them further into a hole?  Were there any other options at the time that were overlooked or not chosen?  Did someone benefit by not choosing those options?

Where do we start?  Maybe it is up to you to jump in where you want, but I say start with the self.  If you have “hot spots” and no-go zone where you’re out of control, or if you have “imperative-judgements”, what do you have to offer to the collective?  Only your pathology.  You have to clean that up first, or at least work on it simultaneously.  Same with local relationships.  If you have trouble in getting along with “the other” in your community/family, isn’t that something to look into?  Perhaps your mode of close relations is avoidance, by placing all of your energy on “those important world-wide decisions”?  Probably the world doesn’t appreciate your efforts.  Maybe they even call you the problem?

What’s new here?  I haven’t really thought much about kinetic learning.  Of course, I know it is here.  A more vibrant health, or an able kinetic system pushes you more readily into action.  But does it direct you on what to act upon?  Or is that your language?

What does this all mean to you?

Well, let’s relax first:

from Enigma; Sir Edward Elgar, 1857 - 1934