Why We Do the Things We Do (and Think the Things We Think)
The Seed of My Striving
For me, trying to understand is like breathing. It is both natural and necessary.
Simply absorbing and regurgitating information has always given me trouble. My workaround for a weak memory has been understanding connections — how something new follows from something old. Even as a child, I suspect I relied more than most on whether or not the things I saw, heard, or read about made sense. Picture a youngster, reserved more than most, sitting quietly in Sunday School and listening to the story of Noah’s Ark and the flood. The child found the story interesting, but it didn’t seem to mesh with reality. The story went into the fiction bin while Sunday School teachers and religion took a credibility hit.
In regular school, I gravitated toward subjects where a few key pieces of information and an understanding of how things fit together were all that was needed to shine. Is anyone surprised that I enjoyed math, chemistry, and physics? Those classes made sense to me, while people-oriented subjects were a struggle. No one, however, can live permanently within a world of math and science.
Due to the unavoidability of interacting with others and a desire to make sense of both their behavior and mine, a quest began. It was not a conscious endeavor, at least not at first. I was just a confused teenager looking for bits of understanding that might help make sense of a confusing world.
The intensity of my quest ebbed and flowed over the years, depending on mood and time availability. Windmill jousting came only after dealing with the more immediate needs of life. Eventually, a concept came into focus that enabled me to make sense of people’s behavior.
The Heart of the Matter
What is our essential objective in life? What do we strive for? Survival? Suicide bombers and a soldier who protects his unit by using his body to cover a grenade suggest otherwise. What about pleasure? If people are willing to sacrifice their lives for a supreme desire, they will undoubtedly forgo pleasure. Consider athletes and their not-always-pleasant training for conditioning and skill development. Or, for a more mundane example, think of all those who, day after day, go off to work at a less than pleasant job. What fundamental objective drives our behavior when we endure the unpleasant or sacrifice our lives?
Consider the words Patrick Henry reportedly used to end his speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775.
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains, and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! — I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”[i]
The American Heritage Dictionary[ii] defines liberty in two ways:
1) “The condition of being not subject to restriction or control.”
2) “The right to act in a manner of one’s own choosing.”
There is doubt about the accuracy of Henry’s words[iii], but not their sentiment. Henry wanted to be free of restrictions imposed by King George III. To achieve that objective, he made an impassioned plea for the Virginia House of Burgesses to mobilize the Virginia militia.
Was Patrick Henry in favor of liberty for all? As an enslaver, what might have been his reaction if one of those he held in bondage had recited the words of the “…give me liberty or give me death!” speech? Patrick Henry did see slavery as evil. In a letter to Robert Pleasants, dated January 18, 1773, he wrote, “Would anyone believe I am the master of slaves of my own purchase! I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them. I will not, I cannot justify it.” [iv]
If Patrick Henry valued liberty more than life but did not want to free his slaves, despite knowing that he should, can we clearly define what he valued most highly? Consider the following hypothesis:
We strive for control of the world in which we live.
Patrick Henry desired more than liberty. He wanted to maintain control over those he felt were necessary for life on a Virginia plantation. He also wanted to exert control over King George III and the King’s agents who were interfering in his world. With the same motivation, we see King George III trying to retain colonial control and the souls subjugated by Patrick Henry wanting to walk free.
Whether our station in life is king, slave, or anything in between, Control of the World in which we Live (CWL) is what we desire.
Given the CWL hypothesis, we can revisit the situations described above. In regards to suicide bombers, they sacrifice their lives to impose their will on those whom they perceive as thwarting their desires.
What about a soldier who sacrifices himself for his unit, and what about one who doesn’t? What does each obtain with their different actions? Anyone willing to sacrifice himself must have an intense bond with his “band of brothers.” The “world in which he lives,” his CWL world, extends beyond himself and encompasses his unit. In a situation with limited options, he controls what he can, thereby preserving a portion of his world. For the soldier whose world is more constricted, whose bond with his unit is weak, he acts to preserve what is important to himself.
Relative to the athletes, the objective of winning and, if possible, dominating their competitive event is what they sacrifice pleasure to obtain. Once the competition begins, they want control.
Next, we have the worker with the unpleasant job. They obtain a net benefit by sacrificing a portion of their time to gain the means (i.e., money) to achieve control over the remainder of their time.
A cursory reading of the CWL hypothesis might lead one to think that we should all be trying to do the same things since we all have the same objective. However, while we all strive for control, we do it in different ways and toward different ends because we “live” in different worlds. As a result of varying abilities and environments, everyone’s world is unique. Even identical twins growing up in the same family do not “live” in the same world because their experiences are not identical.
At this point, the reader might legitimately think that the CWL hypothesis doesn’t seem to say anything new. All it does is state people’s common notions about preferring to decide for themselves what they will do. To a degree, that’s true, but not entirely. The hypothesis specifies a single causal connection between the particulars of the world in which a person lives and their actions. People may appear motivated by a wide range of desires and emotions — food, drink, shelter, money, pleasure, survival, love, hate, revenge, jealousy, … — but underneath them all, there is only one. (If you think about your emotions, do they not seem driven by your sense of control?) As a result, the CWL hypothesis allows us to either:
1) Anticipate what someone will do based on their current situation (the world in which they live).
Or, going the other way,
2) Gain insight into their current situation based on what they do.
The CWL hypothesis can help explain the full range of people’s actions. This is particularly true when people do things contrary to what conventional “rational” thought implies they should do. Our next step is to dig a little deeper into the essence of this hypothesis.
Breaking Down the CWL Hypothesis
To clarify the CWL hypothesis, examine the two essential word groups — “strive for control” and “the world in which we live.” The second portion is the sum of everything that impacts behavior. For species other than man, the world in which they live is limited, for the most part, to their immediate physical environment, along with their physical bodies and genetically driven behaviors. For humans, that is not the case.
At the point in evolution when our ancestors began to use different vocal sounds to refer to particular physical objects, we could say that language was born. Humans began creating abstractions of key physical world elements in their minds. As mental and vocal capabilities improved, our ancestors could mentally represent more and more of the physical world with symbols for both things and processes.
Some species have a limited ability to associate symbols with tangible items. Humans, however, are unique in having the mental capacity to create alternative worlds within our minds and the communication capability to convey those concepts to others. In addition, due to the flexibility of our minds in utilizing various symbols to represent things, actions, and relationships between those elements, we can create conceptual worlds of virtually any design. We can create worlds that span from fictional to reality-based, trivial to profound, and demonic to saintly.
The conceptual worlds a person creates and inhabits are a function of the things on which that person centers their attention — sports, literature, antique cars, finding food, religion, politics, etc. Once people meet the basic requirements for survival, they have significant freedom in choosing the conceptual worlds on which they focus and around which they organize their everyday lives. How people choose/create their conceptual worlds follows from the CWL hypothesis. Specifically, their conceptual worlds will be ones where they feel at home and have or believe they can achieve a sense of control. Our striving for control drives both what we do and what we think.
For humans, the “world in which we live” is a hybrid of our conceptual worlds, our environment (encompassing all the people, places, and things we interact with), and our physical being.
The Utility of the CWL Hypothesis
For me, the CWL hypothesis makes people’s behavior understandable. Given that everyone is striving for control, I can create a mental model of someone based on knowledge about their lives, what they do, and what they say. If my model is complete enough, I can anticipate the person’s actions in a given circumstance. For instance, consider the person I know best. I previously related how, in my schooling, I gravitated toward subjects where memory demands were minimal. I chose a world where I felt a sense of control. My behavior at that point, and every moment of my life, has been innately consistent with the CWL Hypothesis.
Now, if you’re agreeable, I’d like you to perform a little exercise. Look at your life and see if you can find any situations where you made a decision or took an action that you expected would degrade your sense of control. If you can, I’d very much like to hear about it.
In doing that exercise, please recognize that we constantly balance near-term vs. long-term control and personal vs. extended control. What do I mean by extended control? It is control by those encompassed within our world who we are inclined to help (such as family, friends, teammates, and coworkers). Thus, when looking for an action or decision that degraded your personal sense of control, ensure it wasn’t done in favor of providing a benefit at another time or for another person.
Summary
Having read this article, you must have believed you might learn something that would help you improve your control over the world in which you live. I hope you haven’t been disappointed. I hope what I have tried to convey helps you better understand yourselves and others. Why? Because I am also striving for control. In “the world in which I live,” my focus with this article is the future. Trying to improve people’s understanding is my way of helping nudge humanity toward a world where our grandchildren and their offspring can flourish. If we better understand our neighbors, perhaps we will be better neighbors.
[i] Wirt, W. (1817). Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry. Philadelphia: James Webster, p. 123.
[ii] Houghton Mifflin Company. (1979). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
[iii] Olsen, S. T. (1989). Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” Speech: A Study in Disputed Authorship. In T. W. Benson (Ed.), American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism (pp. 19–65). Southern Illinois University Press.
[iv] Henry, P. (1773, 1 18). Copy of Patrick Henry letter to Robert Pleasants, 1773–01–18,. 67–69. Hanover, VA, US: Haverford College Quaker Collection, Manuscript Collection 968, Box 8.
Possible Future CWL Topics
(From the topics below, or something else, let me know what you might find interesting.)
Politics: Right vs. Left
Could AI use the CWL hypothesis to model people?
Humanities Fundamental Conflict: We Strive for Control but Know We Will Die
The Resistance to Averting Climate Change
Abortion: Understanding Both Sides
The Backlash Against Science and Experts
