The headline would make you think of the title to a movie or a novel, but we are talking about humans and our behaviors or our characteristics which determine our behaviors. Thinking, feeling, acting, caring, strange, humble are all part of our ways of life which we have naturally and are independent of cultural influences, or are they?
The question would be, what implications do our characteristics play in our daily lives and how we conduct ourselves. These characteristics have a way of determining how we deal with life, how we deal with obstacles, constraints and even society. Character is defined as - " T he mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual. " But what causes them are questions Philosophers have been asking for years. Basically what is the philosophical thinking of civilization and what implications do they have on our ethics, politics and even theology.
Our lives are filled with experiences, and everyday we experience something either through our interactions with other people or the media or simply buy touching something. We have emotional experiences from signs and symbols or from just reading a good book or this article. Our society and our behaviors are what makes our culture, it's the integration of our learned behaviors and the interactions with others and objects that determine our characteristics.
For a very long time the thinking was that our character traits were inherited from our parents and theirs from their parents and so on, but we now know this isn't true. People will develop character as we've mentioned above from many outside influences and these can be good or bad depending on how they are presented to you and society. Our character is also developed through human conditioning which is the manner in which we interpret and manipulate the world around us, it serves our intangible needs like happiness, honor and how kind we are to others and how kind they are to us. We care for people who show kindness toward us or if you don't give a damn about anything, nobody's going to give a a damn about you, these interactions develop our character.
Our lives are filled with experiences, and everyday we experience something either through our interactions with other people or the media or simply buy touching something. We have emotional experiences from signs and symbols or from just reading a good book or this article. Our society and our behaviors are what makes our culture, it's the integration of our learned behaviors and the interactions with others and objects that determine our characteristics.
For a very long time the thinking was that our character traits were inherited from our parents and theirs from their parents and so on, but we now know this isn't true. People will develop character as we've mentioned above from many outside influences and these can be good or bad depending on how they are presented to you and society. Our character is also developed through human conditioning which is the manner in which we interpret and manipulate the world around us, it serves our intangible needs like happiness, honor and how kind we are to others and how kind they are to us. We care for people who show kindness toward us or if you don't give a damn about anything, nobody's going to give a a damn about you, these interactions develop our character.
"Humans and other animals have no truly fixed nature, at least in the very long term," was a statement made by Charles Darwin. However, he also gave modern biology a new way of understanding how human nature exist in a normal human time-frame, and how it is caused. Sigmund Freud said the decisive influence which the economic circumstances of men have upon their intellectual, ethical and artistic attitudes will have an effect on there personality.
When we dig deep into humans we find our character is influence by a multitude of outside interactions and will also effect our personality. The term "personality trait" refers to our personal characteristics and particular patterns of behavior we'll have in different situations. |
There are those who believe our personality comes completely from the culture we grow up in, and others believe that some elements of our personalities are also from other cultures. We certainly make assumptions about other cultures based on the information we either read or see in the news or media and these assumptions can build either positive or negative attitudes toward them which will influence our opinions and thoughts which will have an effect on our personality as well as our character.
Our behavior in our society is completely influenced by outside factors, these factors will determine if we are able to behave normally in society. Normality is the state of being normal, and is generally based on that particular individual and not associated with society as a whole. To behave normally within society we would have to determine what is normal behavior from all known individual sources and what constitutes normal and who would decide what is normal and what is not. If everyone then conforms to one particular idea of normal this is called Conformity which is behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards. The reason we are talking about all of this is because all of it determines our character, personality and behavior, everything we come in contact with will determine how we conduct ourselves either personally one on one or in society.
This would be our Moral Character or moral behavior, which social groups and societies define as a culture and adhere to. Moral character is generally determined by societies and the laws and rules that are put in place. We are all subjected to these ideals daily, everywhere we go their are rules and laws we are suppose to abide by and these ideals made by others will either affect our personality and character or they won't. Our character is the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual, but as we have shown, these are completely controlled by our daily lives and everything we come into contact with in our society and what our culture has determined as acceptable behaviors.
The distinguished character, the title of this article is just such and example of moral character, being successful and respectful, commanding and honest, authoritative and humble just to name a few. Basically our ability to behave consistently across a range of situations and emotions. Of coarse if we consider that character could also mean a silly or comedic person or a character in a play or TV show, we could go off on another tangent, but we'll save that for another article.
The book Moral Character above is available through Amazon, click on the image and you will be redirected to the Amazon site. Most of the books on our site are also available on Kindle, if you don't have a Kindle and would like one, click the link below
Our behavior in our society is completely influenced by outside factors, these factors will determine if we are able to behave normally in society. Normality is the state of being normal, and is generally based on that particular individual and not associated with society as a whole. To behave normally within society we would have to determine what is normal behavior from all known individual sources and what constitutes normal and who would decide what is normal and what is not. If everyone then conforms to one particular idea of normal this is called Conformity which is behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards. The reason we are talking about all of this is because all of it determines our character, personality and behavior, everything we come in contact with will determine how we conduct ourselves either personally one on one or in society.
This would be our Moral Character or moral behavior, which social groups and societies define as a culture and adhere to. Moral character is generally determined by societies and the laws and rules that are put in place. We are all subjected to these ideals daily, everywhere we go their are rules and laws we are suppose to abide by and these ideals made by others will either affect our personality and character or they won't. Our character is the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual, but as we have shown, these are completely controlled by our daily lives and everything we come into contact with in our society and what our culture has determined as acceptable behaviors.
The distinguished character, the title of this article is just such and example of moral character, being successful and respectful, commanding and honest, authoritative and humble just to name a few. Basically our ability to behave consistently across a range of situations and emotions. Of coarse if we consider that character could also mean a silly or comedic person or a character in a play or TV show, we could go off on another tangent, but we'll save that for another article.
The book Moral Character above is available through Amazon, click on the image and you will be redirected to the Amazon site. Most of the books on our site are also available on Kindle, if you don't have a Kindle and would like one, click the link below
|