The human condition

(Here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for. Or at least one of you, which gave me a bit of a chuckle, as she gets an extremely indirect mention in here)

There's something that's been bothering me lately about human nature - well, two things really, and I'm splitting this into two posts (the second one tomorrow) to give it a bit of separation.

That said, they are somewhat intertwined. However, I'm going to start with the part that I know affects everybody, rather than the one that may or may not.

Conditioning. It's not all Pavlov's dogs expecting food at the sound of a bell. It's not even just about the things we think of as things we've been conditioned to do, such as stopping at a red light or holding the door for someone behind us.

I learned the other day about a boy who was raised by wolves (or maybe not, but away from society regardless). He had no comprehension of "hot" and "cold". It took me a moment to wrap my mind around this, but then it made perfect sense. We're taught in school that heat comes from the sun, cold comes from the sun being farther away. But it's not something that would otherwise be obvious - it's not like the sun looks noticeably smaller during the winter. If we didn't understand *why* we were getting hotter or colder (this also assumes no knowledge of stoves, freezers, etc.), we might register that we're experiencing some discomfort, but we wouldn't comprehend the reasons behind. In this sense, temperature works on a similar principle to time - it's there, it's affecting you, but we had to create the concept of it as a rigid, measurable quantity.

But back to the boy. My mind jumped to "what else wouldn't he know?". (Yes, I know there's been books, movies, etc., with this premise, but I'm looking for something a little deeper than traffic lights and cutlery.) Obviously he'd be amazed by things like television and cars, but what about mattresses? Formalized education? Democracy? (On much the same level, you can ask yourself what intelligent life from another planet would think if they descended upon Earth.)

However, one thing the boy likely *would* have is routines. Whether it's when he eats, the last thing he does before falling asleep, or something else, he has some sort of ritualistic behaviours that he practices on a regular basis. This is no different from the rest of us - we each have patterns that we follow for no reason other than familiarity.

But these routines aren't born into us. Case in point - every morning, the first thing I do when I wake up (baring a phone call or fire or other interruption) is use the toilet. Then I wash my face and put in my contacts. What happens after that can vary from day to day, but those three steps are my daily morning routine. Yet that wasn't always the case. I remember when I was too young to put in my own contacts, I'd spend up to a few hours waiting around for one of my parents to put my contacts in - watching TV or playing with toys through the legal blindness. But now I don't have that, and I perform those three actions ritualistically, without even thinking about them.

Routines are surprisingly prevalent in everyone's life - whether it's the route you take to school/work, where you sit in the classroom (if applicable), where you eat your lunch. My dad used to give the exact same greeting to the rest of my family upon his return home from work every weekday, and when he stopped doing that, it took several weeks for me to adjust.

The problem with these routines (and this is how I tie it back into conditioning) is that they breed complacency, and complacency is never good. Case in point: at the Brantford Jazz Festival, a block of Dalhousie Street was closed off to traffic, with two stages set up (one at either end) facing the closed part of the street. At either end, people were much more likely to stand and watch from the sidewalk than to go out on the road, in front of the stage, and watch from there. Due to other evidence (this practice slowly discontinuing as the day went on, and the lack of shade on the sidewalks), I'm convinced that this was simply because people figured they shouldn't go on the road. Roads are for cars. But had the boy with no experience in civilization been there, he'd have gravitated towards the sounds - likely standing on the road. In this case, he'd have been right.

So what's my point? I'm not entirely sure. Conditioning is overall a practical tool, but like any tool, has its downsides. Routines really serve no purpose (if I ever have kids, I like to think I'll intentionally have them sit at different places around the dinner table, eat breakfast at different times, etc.) and are probably detrimental to the human experience. And complacency is bad.

Part two tomorrow. And I know the point to that one. At least, what I think is the point. (That'll make much more sense after you've read it.)

--Ryan