First You Gotta Be - Then Maybe You Can Be Good

I am taking two courses now about human behavior. The first one The Morality of Everyday Life started off fine - I liked the teacher. But he disappointed me, by being too polite. I wanted to know how people are the way they are -  and he was only interested in the results.

My second source is the Interactive Design Foundation - that is getting right down to brass tacks - and talking about why people are the way they are. They have Three Levels of Processing: Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective. This is a simplification of what actually goes on in the body - but is useful anyway.

The Visceral, or Reptilian Brain, is where much of me is. It acts instantly (in milliseconds, actually) and is much like a computer program. If these conditions exist - react this way - without taking the time to think about it! If something is about to eat you - either run as fast as you can - or turn around and attack it! Gradually, over millions of years, each species refines this response - and survives.

Its not hard to see how this process can go wrong. And how the next level of processing developed to take care of this. It involves chemical signalling. We have glands all over the body (many of them in the brain) and chemical receptors all over the body also. This amounts to a huge information processing system - using emotions. It is much smarter, but takes more time - it takes seconds for the blood to circulate through the body - carrying all those chemical signals with it. This is where our social processing happens - we are very skilled at reading the emotions of others.

The next level involves consciousness, and reflective thought. This is what made us the dominant species in the world - and is the part of us we are most proud of. And should be proud of.

But getting all three levels of processing coordinated, is not easy. And when you throw in, our latest technologies (our smartphones, for example) - it is easy to see, that we are not coping very well.