New Behavior

 

Endless Possibilities

“Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.”

Margaret Mead

          From birth until adolescence, we are directly and indirectly taught the behavioral expectations of our culture—we learn much of it by observing others and mimicking them. From adolescence until adulthood, our job is to sort through what we have been taught and decide for ourselves what resonates with who we are and who we want to be. From then until we die, we add to, reinforce, or change our chosen behaviors. They are not cast in stone unless we believe them to be.

          Once upon a time, I dated a man who frequently asked me the question, “Can a tiger change its stripes?” By this, he meant that he was who he was and he would never change. It was his set response when he did something that caused trouble in our relationship. My response was, “But you are not a tiger, and you don’t have stripes.” In other words, our cerebral cortex should count for something. Right? We have the capacity to change because we have the capacity to learn new information and adjust our behavior accordingly.

          We do have patterns of behavior, as individuals and as a culture, that identify us. Ask any European, African, or Asian who the Americans in the room are and they will have no difficulty pointing us out. Too often we are the loud and obnoxious ones. But those patterns of behavior can be changed even for our whole culture if enough of us decide to do it differently. The Dalai Lama said, “If we make a steady effort, I think we can overcome any form of negative conditioning and make positive change to our lives. But we need to remember that change doesn’t happen overnight.”

Positive change begins with honesty. Honesty about our history, our behavior around the world, our good qualities, and our bad ones. We are, as Carl Sagan said, “no longer at the mercy of the reptile brain,” so we can change ourselves. We no longer need to be territorial, aggressive, and dominating, because at this point in our evolution, those qualities are not adaptive. In other words, they do not give us an advantage, they no longer serve us, and in fact they keep us stuck in the same behavior patterns as lizards and baboons. Perhaps they once were necessary, but in the last one hundred years that has changed. The new essential skills include negotiation, cooperation, and mutual interest.

As the Dalai Lama said, change doesn’t happen overnight, but the sooner we begin the better. If enough of us change our negative behavior patterns we can cause something like behavioral “herd immunity.” We can change our cultural patterns toward positivity and good will. And then the possibilities truly will be endless.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane