On Human Behavior

Why did you do that? So many possibilities in answering this question. And sometimes this question comes in rather hot, with emphasis. Hear it in a parent's tone, or from an upset partner for example. "Uh, not sure." "What?" "Yes, I meant to do that and I'd do it again." "The devil made me do it." Or the inquiry comes in with curiosity, and appreciation or amazement.

The capacity we have for action, words or deeds is a remarkable skill. We exist, we think, we feel and we can act, just not always in that order. We sometimes attribute certain functions of our being with certain body parts. I've heard this quip referenced in various forms, "You have a body and its purpose isn't just to tote your head around from place to place." That's an invitation to do more than think, wonder, daydream – it's an invitation to action. Frequently something I heard as I was working construction jobs as I made my way through high school and college from the foreman or crew leader. "Get to work. Act!" "Do what you have been told to do." When we have authority over us, as in a parent or designated leader, what we do is not necessarily our choice but something we do as a part of something larger than ourselves and for a purpose.

And the outcome of the effort to act can be rather amazing. I come from a family of engineers, and the products of engineers are roads, bridges, dams and other structures, vehicles or devices are very considerable and mostly very useful to some purpose to make other objectives possible. Consider just one of the capacities designed into us humans: our opposable thumbs. That we can grasp a tool, and through it turn sticks and stones into roads, bridges, dams, and structures, is something to appreciate and even marvel at.

Unfortunately, some of the actions taken by us humans bring death and destruction as well. This morning as I type this, it is September 11, the day we remember the death and destruction of 25 years ago. Capability of action, indeed. The motivation of our action comes from the developed "stories" within us, paired with our essential desires, whether at a survival level or some other level of attainment of personal, familial, or societal needs, wants, or desires.

There are considerable studies and theories in psychological processes suggesting that emotion (that complex blend of neural processes, physiological changes, subjective experience, behavioral tendencies and cognitive appraisals) leads to choice options or potentiates some behavior responses. Nico Frijda, Magda Arnold, Conrad Baars, Antonio Damasio among others have wondered and explored this question I addressed at the beginning regarding not only what contributes to, but why we do what we do.

Some of the competing larger philosophical frameworks over time have included a Platonic/Stoic/Cartesian idea of the battle between the factions of reason and emotion, one good and the other bad, and an Aristotelian/Thomistic view of the person as a unified whole where emotions are an essential, intrinsically good component of our human nature, that just need to be guarded from excesses. I suspect some of the ideas about causation, as I often hear in my office from concerned parties, may be explanations for outlier phenomena, much the same way we oversimplify some experiences with conclusions of explanation which aren't fully tested out against a larger sample size, or neglectful of any comprehensible connection to the original intent, design, or in the greater view of us humans, our anthropological theses.

Whether behaviors are good or not is not always easy to answer. Consider our fast and slow framework again.

Slow = need → emotion → action readiness → executive choice → select response →
Fast = trigger → emotional activation → learned action readiness → habitual response →

To evaluate the good or bad we must check for the outcomes or effects (post response) of our behaviors to make a judgment, whether it worked or didn't work. Of course, assessing the outcomes is only possible by measurement on a scale of the need or expectation and according to the point of view measuring it. Building a road through a mountain pass which then allows traffic and people to get to a place they hadn't been able to get to previously with relative effectiveness might be easier to measure as successful than say a gesture of a gift given to another human (I made you a plate of cookies), who may or may not appreciate the gift based on their own needs or wants (I'm allergic to, love or hate ingredient x). Successful behavior choices within relationship dynamics are instantly more complex.

Here's what I've come to believe, and what I tell people who sit across from me in the office: we get better at whatever we practice getting better at. I've watched a man in active addiction develop a speed of thought to action, a resourcefulness, a negotiating skill that would be the envy of any executive — all of it aimed at one target: use more, drink more, feel less pain. The capacity itself was never the problem. It was never absent, never damaged beyond use. It was simply practiced, day after day, toward the wrong end.

That returns me to the authority I mentioned earlier — the parent, the foreman, the one who says "act" and expects it. When we embrace an understanding and acceptance that underneath every human authority is a prior one: the Creator who made us capable in the first place, and whose authority over us is inseparable from the love that gave us the capacity we hold. We are powerful beings because we were made to be powerful, on purpose, by Someone with the standing to do it.

Conrad Baars, the Catholic psychiatrist who worked alongside Anna Terruwe, spent a career showing what happens when that love doesn't reach a person the way it should. Their clinical claim was straightforward: a person's capacity to love and act well isn't self-generated. It has to be set free, and it's set free by first being loved — seen as good, worthwhile, wanted. When that affirmation never comes, the capacity doesn't disappear. It keeps running. It just runs compelled instead of free, driven instead of chosen. Which is most of what lies behind the old clinical saying: hurt people hurt people. Not because the hurt person is short on capability — often the opposite — but because their considerable capability was never freed toward love. It was drafted into service of the wound instead.

So, when the question comes — why did you do that? — it may be worth asking a second, quieter question underneath it: what have I been practicing, and toward what end? The same hands that build the bridge can build the bomb. The same resourcefulness that gets a man through one more day of addiction could, freed and redirected, get him through one more day of recovery. The raw material was never in question. What was in question, all along, is whether that power has been loved into freedom, or left to run on empty toward whatever promises relief.