Why We Share Joy But Hoard Pain
Humans are animals. Yuval Noah Harari states it best in his book Sapiens, "We are the last surviving species of human so we sometimes forget we are in fact just animals." Granted we are very unique among animals but we are simply the most social of mammals.
Two and a half million years of evolution has encoded into all of us unique traits that are specific to humans. Like all animals, there are things we know without having to be taught. I will not go off on a nature vs nurture tangent, I will save that for another blog, but for the purposes of the title of this particular entry I will try to explain.
Young children are like cognitive sponges from the time they are born until the age of six. They are pulling in so much information at a rate that adults can't comprehend. They are forming emotional concepts, perceptions, trying to understand this foreign and scary world they are now a part of. But there are also things that we all know that we don't have to learn and unfortunately our experiences and environments can actually work to either enhance or inhibit these things.
We have the ability to master language, whatever tongue it is, at a young age without sitting in a classroom and studying it. The rules of grammar, syntax, and punctuation are internalized like they are nothing when we are children. After a certain age, some of us have a difficult time understanding, speaking, or writing in our native tongue.
Part of what makes our species of human so unique is our ability to be social the way we are. We learn the different social norms we are subjected to at an early age like we learn to speak. Children in the playground generally pick up on social norms of play without having to have instruction to do so.
Part of being a social species means we need to form bonds with one another. Generally these bonds are to help us and are formed from the creative energies of love, joy, and respect. Things we not only share but feel when those we are attached to experience them. When we experience pain we tend to not want to share that but if we are keen in our social norms, we can recognize when those we are attached to are feeling this thus we feel it and act to remove it from those we are attached to. This practice is called compassion and the Dalai Lama has stated that the human species as we know will cease to exist if we don't develop and practice more compassion with one another.
We want to share joy with others because we know that strengthens bonds and makes others feel good but we also seek to remove pain and suffering when we can for the same reasons, it develops bonds but we can have a tendency to hoard the pain because we don't want to feel responsible for making others feel bad. We seek to strengthen bonds with one another and that is something we aren't taught but may have to learn to do more effectively.
#elliotyi
#paradigmleft
#habits
#mindset
Two and a half million years of evolution has encoded into all of us unique traits that are specific to humans. Like all animals, there are things we know without having to be taught. I will not go off on a nature vs nurture tangent, I will save that for another blog, but for the purposes of the title of this particular entry I will try to explain.
Young children are like cognitive sponges from the time they are born until the age of six. They are pulling in so much information at a rate that adults can't comprehend. They are forming emotional concepts, perceptions, trying to understand this foreign and scary world they are now a part of. But there are also things that we all know that we don't have to learn and unfortunately our experiences and environments can actually work to either enhance or inhibit these things.
We have the ability to master language, whatever tongue it is, at a young age without sitting in a classroom and studying it. The rules of grammar, syntax, and punctuation are internalized like they are nothing when we are children. After a certain age, some of us have a difficult time understanding, speaking, or writing in our native tongue.
Part of what makes our species of human so unique is our ability to be social the way we are. We learn the different social norms we are subjected to at an early age like we learn to speak. Children in the playground generally pick up on social norms of play without having to have instruction to do so.
Part of being a social species means we need to form bonds with one another. Generally these bonds are to help us and are formed from the creative energies of love, joy, and respect. Things we not only share but feel when those we are attached to experience them. When we experience pain we tend to not want to share that but if we are keen in our social norms, we can recognize when those we are attached to are feeling this thus we feel it and act to remove it from those we are attached to. This practice is called compassion and the Dalai Lama has stated that the human species as we know will cease to exist if we don't develop and practice more compassion with one another.
We want to share joy with others because we know that strengthens bonds and makes others feel good but we also seek to remove pain and suffering when we can for the same reasons, it develops bonds but we can have a tendency to hoard the pain because we don't want to feel responsible for making others feel bad. We seek to strengthen bonds with one another and that is something we aren't taught but may have to learn to do more effectively.
#elliotyi
#paradigmleft
#habits
#mindset
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