One significant advantage engineering, physics and much of the natural sciences has is that they speak in mathematical terms. The individuals often speak in formulas or mathematical verbiage that is clear and concise and understandable by all the members. The use of every day words like habit can be confusing because of a lack of clarity.
What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.
I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.
Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions. We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits. “Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction.â€
“The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought.†“Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness.†“Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will.â€
Because each job requires a different type of character a journalist would make a lousy military officer and vice versa.
Quotes from “Human Nature and Conduct†by John Dewey
I think that habit is the primary reason for human behavior. I think that habit is a broad description which encompasses genetic makeup, educational and religious instruction, and social influences.
Me and Dewey disagree. Habit is developed because it is willed. Habit expresses what we have decided to be. There are forces upon us such as our mother, however, if a boy decides he does not wish to develop the habits his mother desires he will follow his wll.
I think habits start of as being “willed” but then become subconcious thought patterns. When the brain is first learning something new, a lot of its regions are active and the task/idea at hand is fully concious. But as the type of thought being done becomes more familiar to the brain, it is pushed out of immediate awareness and is handled by the systems of the brain that act/think automatically.
Habits are initially willed, but as time goes on and they become more familiar, they become automatic, steming not from concious, critical thinking but from the brain’s “autopilot” systems.
I don’t know if this falls within coberst’s discussion, but according to sociological/psychological factions … the formation of a habit is a directly applied behavior/thought for no less than twenty-one consecutive days as an intented, active cognition.
Yes, I think that willed is an appropriate word. This force of will coupled with action to establish our character is what makes it so very difficult if not impossible for a person to ‘turn on a dime’ and change their character. Often we wonder why someone does not understand what we are saying and change their behavior then and there.
Something the U.S. military understands very well. It’s called “Boot Camp”, and is precisely designed to break down the individual, and rebuild their character in proper military fashion. It works for all but those suffering the most intense sociopathy/ies.
I don’t mean to push this off in a tangent, but consider the old advice about breaking a habit. You have to have willpower! If it takes will to break it, it must have taken will to make it.
For me it is a matter of won’t power. I WON"T eat that twinkie…
