Are we all walking on a stage?
All the world's a stage.
And the man and women are merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one in his time plays many parts.
His acts being seven ages.. .
The quote is from Shakespeare's comedy As you like it.
But it could also, although not so cynical spoken, have been from the course Buddhism and modern psychology, an online course from Princeton University:
In an interview with Bob Kurzban (see Reading and Resources, week four in the course) we can learn that we can see the brain as built by "modules". Some models react to certain stimuli as it was learned to do by the natures selection. We think that we choose the actions, but we don´t. It is probably more true to say that it is our genes or natural selection that rules our behavior.
Our environment has changed, but our brain and the genes have not.
They still sometimes let us react as we live on the stone age.
But our conscious mind cannot tolerate that and we produce some motivation to give the action a more reasonable flavor.
We seldom admit that we act in a wrong way, even if some people say that it is so. Probably the genes favor a strong man or woman, even if she/he is a hypocrite...
With meditation and a mindful living we can fool the genes, we can reflect before we act and we can look at other people in a compassionate way.
Perhaps it long ago was in our favor to be in a rage, but nowadays it's not.
Status it's still important, but it seems that what is seen as status is slowly changing.
It can not be high status to have a big car in an over polluted city.
It's probably foolish to motivate anger and violence with the reason that it's out nature to act in that way.
In many ways we have stepped out of nature. We can look at our own behavior and we probably have to do it to avoid catastrophes. We can also look some hundred years ahead and imagine what will happen if we will go on like this.
Is it possible to step down from the stage?
Who will win, the genes or we...?
On the other hand; meditation is also "designed" by natural selection and perhaps the genes.... And it has survived a very long time...
And the man and women are merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one in his time plays many parts.
His acts being seven ages.. .
The quote is from Shakespeare's comedy As you like it.
But it could also, although not so cynical spoken, have been from the course Buddhism and modern psychology, an online course from Princeton University:
In an interview with Bob Kurzban (see Reading and Resources, week four in the course) we can learn that we can see the brain as built by "modules". Some models react to certain stimuli as it was learned to do by the natures selection. We think that we choose the actions, but we don´t. It is probably more true to say that it is our genes or natural selection that rules our behavior.
Our environment has changed, but our brain and the genes have not.
They still sometimes let us react as we live on the stone age.
But our conscious mind cannot tolerate that and we produce some motivation to give the action a more reasonable flavor.
We seldom admit that we act in a wrong way, even if some people say that it is so. Probably the genes favor a strong man or woman, even if she/he is a hypocrite...
With meditation and a mindful living we can fool the genes, we can reflect before we act and we can look at other people in a compassionate way.
Perhaps it long ago was in our favor to be in a rage, but nowadays it's not.
Status it's still important, but it seems that what is seen as status is slowly changing.
It can not be high status to have a big car in an over polluted city.
It's probably foolish to motivate anger and violence with the reason that it's out nature to act in that way.
In many ways we have stepped out of nature. We can look at our own behavior and we probably have to do it to avoid catastrophes. We can also look some hundred years ahead and imagine what will happen if we will go on like this.
Is it possible to step down from the stage?
Who will win, the genes or we...?
On the other hand; meditation is also "designed" by natural selection and perhaps the genes.... And it has survived a very long time...
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