Whats this? Two posts in as many days? Madness!

[lorimt]

I'm curious. How much do you feel beholden to biology? Not, oh wow, biology has done some great stuff, but rather things like instinct or such impulses. I tend to think of myself as fairly independant of such things, nurture and personal goals taking a much stronger role in most decisions I make. Anyone else? Any particulars where you do or don't obey some sort of natural or biological demand? What sorts of things? I'm especially interested in personal choices or ideas rather than observations about humans in general.

(It just occured to me, and I realize I have no idea how typical my approach to such things actually is.)

EDIT:
In rereading, I can see I danced around what on earth I was talking about. Things like bobbzman wrote about. For example, I know that I will do something different just because I'm scared, or unhappy or whatever, even when unrelated to mood. Stuff like that, if that makes sense. Not just emotional response, but things where I'm more rationalizing an action than rationally deciding to do something, or feeling an impulse to do something even when it seems like a bad idea. ::mutters:: I'm not really talking about emotion, I'm just not sure how to distinguish this case. Stuff like sithjawa are good examples too, and not ones that occured to me originally.

EDIT THE SECOND:
I'm still not coherent. I'll try again some other time when I've had time to think, and wave my hands about while talking at people.

Comments

[regisman.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I completely understand what you're asking, even after the edit, so I don't really have anything to say. It does sound like you're on the verge of a very interesting point, and that's why I'm rambling here at all. Maybe sitting down and talking about it would help me see where you're coming from.

You did mention instinct, though, and I will say that I'm a huge proponent of following instincts. I trust my gut, as cliched as that sounds. I could toss Bean's argument (from Shadow of the Hegemon) out, but then I'd have to look it up, and the book's like 4 feet away, and I don't want to get up. Meh. =o] The nutshell of it is that, though maybe he's really trusting his subconscious mind's ability to gather seemingly inocuous information and discover danger more readily than otherwise, it doesn't matter--it still "feels" like instinct (and, in fact, it's still arguably biological, as intelligence is genetically encoded, too). Okay, I'm rambling now, so I'll just close here. =o]