The Principles of Psychology
Habit as Part of the Human Condition
In James' book he provides solid theories and supporting data from extensive research of human life and interactions regarding instincts, habits and the human condition. Nearly every point that he makes (in 1890) is totally relevent and useful when dealing with today's challenges and especially in understanding and helping people survive disasters and extreme situations.
Understanding how the human mind functions in relation to the perpensities, experiences, and habits acts as a master key to unlocking the potential of how people make decisions that are often negative for themselves. Such clues and insights allow us to help ourselves and others "course correct" and move in a better direction for our health, safety and happiness.
William James
(1842-1910)
William James; the father of American Psychology grappled with the human psyche and it propensities in relation to life, survival, religion and life after death. In Jame’s book: The Principles of Psychology (1890), he posited a series of ideas that have serious and valuable importance in the understanding of how humans are driven psychologically and we can simply draw some very important points that can increase our ability to survive dire circumstances.
Excerpts
In the excerpt from the book below you can see the correlation to many of the problems that cause many of us to shake our heads in disbelief as to how people elect those they do, fall for their self serving lies and promises and how people allow others to steal their freedoms, liberties and lives without a fight. Written in 1890 these points are still on point for today’s issues.
HABIT. 121
horses, seem to be machines almost pure and simple, un- doubtingly, unhesitatingly doing from minute to minute the duties they have been taught, and giving no sign that the possibility of an alternative ever suggests itself to their mind. Men grown old in prison have asked to be readmitted after being once set free. In a railroad accident to a traveling menagerie in the United States some time in 1884, a tiger, whose cage had broken open, is said to have emerged, but presently crept back again, as if too much bewildered by his new responsibilities, so that he was with out difficulty secured.
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter ; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow ; it protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. It keeps different social strata from mixing. Already at the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism settling down on the young commercial traveler, on the young doctor, on the young minister, on the young counselor-at-law. You see the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought, the prejudices, the ways of the shop, in a word, from which the man can by-and-by no more escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. On the whole, it is best he should not escape. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation of intellectual and professional habits,
122 PSYCHOLOGY.
the period below twenty is more important still for the fixing of personal habits, properly so called, such as vocalization and pronunciation, gesture, motion, and address. Hardly ever is a language learned after twenty spoken without a foreign accent ; hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he even learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things. An invisible law, as strong as gravitation, keeps him within his orbit, arrayed this year as he was the last; and how his better-bred acquaintances contrive to get the things they wear will be for him a mystery till his dying day. The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our j nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund * and capitalize our acquisitions, aid live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can t and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every , cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right. In Professor Bain’s chapter on The Moral Habits there are some admirable practical remarks laid down. Two great maxims emerge from his treatment. The first .....
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