Responce

I was reading through blogs to see what else to blog about this week and Katie Emerson's blog in titled "Just a thought" made me think a lot. She asks some really thought provoking questions. For example, Why do we act in certain ways?  And why do we do what we do? I constantly catch myself thinking about these topics all the time. I am a psychology major so it is my goal to figure these out. I have come to a conclusion that we act the way we do depending on different situations. For example, if we are with our friends we will be a little bit more loud and talk quite a bit more than we would at a social with the governor. These are typically learned behaviors that our parents pound in to our heads at a very young age. It is called "learning to act in public". Or the one I am more familiar with, "there's a time and place for everything". Our parents try to teach us to do certain thing and act a specific way that way we don't get badly judged. Now, what our parents kind of set us up for are new situations like moving in to college. The only hint my family gave me was "to just be myself". As people get older their parents advice on social situations becomes more vague because they expect us to be able to make good judgments. I think we act the way we do because it is a learned behavior from when we are young. This entire blog just got me thinking.

Freud

As I stated in my introduction, I love Freud. In almost every class his name is brought up at least once. So I thought that I would actually research what his theory on human nature is and discuss it. Freud believed in the unconscious and that everything is driven by that. He believed that conscious part is what you are aware of at any given moment. For example, thoughts, feelings, memories, and perceptions. He believed that the preconscious which today is known as anything that can be called in to the conscious easily. Freud thought that the largest part is the unconscious. The things that reside here are drives, instincts, and morals. Things that just come without actually thinking about. This also ties in with the chapter on Confucianism because Freud believed that all our morals are located in the unconscious. 

Individuals

Something else that stood out to me was the part where Confucius says "all human beings are fundamentally the same"(11). This stood because in our media people are always talking about having individuality and being unique. Now, according to Confucius this is won't happen. He says that we are shaped by our environment and that defines who we are. He also says that we are "in need of constant modeling to achieve our ultimate end of moral perfection"(11). This all goes against what I believe because I always thought that everyone was completely different from one another and that we are shaped by society to be the same. The people that didn't want to abide by society's norms were the people were seen as different. I just think it's interesting that Confucius thinks that we are one in the same when we are born then get changed and molded.

Destiny

One thing that sparked my interest was the part about destiny. Confucius says that we have no control over our destiny and that it is predetermined before we are born. The one part that  I do agree with is that we have no control over the social status that we will be born in to. Everything after we are born I believe that we control the rest of it. For example, if we become good or evil. I believe this because it is human nature to do better than the persons parents did. Which leads to a person being able to change their social status after they are born. A person can change their social status by attending college and getting more than one degree. This is because the more degrees a person has the more money they will potentially make. A person can also change how long they live. For example, if they don't smoke, eat right, and exercise the chances that they will live longer are increased exponentially. Destiny as Confucius says does not exist. Nothing about the future is set in stone before a person is born, except for what they are born in to.