The True Human: Instinct

The Webster dictionary defined Instinct as, “An innate, automatic impulse in humans and animals, to satisfy basic biological needs, leading to a behavior that is purposeful and directive,” and I couldn’t agree more. Another school of thought also referred to Instinct as “An involuntary tendency or drive to act in a specific way under given conditions – a natural aptitude or gift for something.”

There are natural instincts, and no one exhibits this better than babies and animals – without these instincts, they might not survive. They must learn how to breathe immediately after they are born… a baby must breathe or die. But babies must not breathe in the womb, or they would drown in the amniotic fluid, they instead make use of the placenta for gaseous exchange. Then comes the sucking impulse, babies suck right after birth without being taught. They suck anything handy and available, unlike the adult scene where it now becomes a decision whether to suck from a straw or drink from a glass cup. The instinct of drinking is not present in babies. It is noteworthy that as children grow, they lose the instinct of sucking if it is stopped for a long time. And have to learn it again though which is then no longer instinctive.

There are quite a lot of instinctive behavior from babies and animals: the yelling, foraging for food, defense mechanisms (blinking in babies after a few hours), and much more. All these are natural instincts. As we humans mature, we gain acquired instincts from learning and experience, which is sometimes dependent on the frequency of the event. Since instinct is solely operated from the subconscious and all instinctive actions being impulsive – our mind clearly establishes the fact that some decisions and actions are to be taken without thinking at all, so the mind forages for details without our consciousness and judgment. There might be a discussion by some persons in a restaurant about African snakes, how poisonous most are. You were with your girlfriend and not concentrating one minute on what they were saying. However, your ears picked every information in the room, but due to the auditory lobe filtering under noisy conditions, one has the ability to concentrate on what the subject you need to hear is saying. “The brain hears everything,” but will pick out only your girlfriends words and yours out for processing, that’s the conscious brain. The unconscious brain, on the other hand, picks every single voice and processes them at high speeds and a discussion like that of African snakes and the dangers involved (security) will do no more than spark up unconscious processing. The unconscious immediately picks up the discussion without wasting time, make deductions, “African snakes dangerous!” and wires the information into the necessary circuitry.

You would leave the restaurant that day without any significant feeling of snakes or thought, but you might dream a little about snakes or just a trace of Africa. Someday, you had to visit Africa. And perhaps had to work in a garden, and suddenly there was a monitor lizard! There was one response, flight! You could even yell snake! And feel a little unsettled. You would know that, yes, African snakes are dangerous, you have heard it somewhere, but couldn’t remember where or how.

Some people have a crunch of determining a scenario where deception or falsehood is present because their unconscious now seems to have some basic logical ideas that it computes mathematically and can deduce the result. However, most people always give in to the conscious which apply reason to the situation.

As man becomes used to or acquires an instinct, the body operates in reflex to a stimulus without thinking; this is common in the way people do their job. There are many professionals, but there are born professionals! The question is, are they really born? Most parents – “good parents” tend to know which occupation or personality their child might end up acquiring – why? When watched closely, a child’s obsession most times usually turns out to be what the child will perform better at and with ease when they finally grow up. This fact is easily portrayed in celebrities, and people successful in their enterprise, they have a childhood version to tell.

Consider sports for example. The footballers, basketball players, baseball players and so on, always start their sports exploits from a tender age. Same applies to music, though music can still come up to teenage. However, the best musicians are those who started early… in short in all forms of career, people perform better when it is their field. Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Bill Gates, and more are all examples.

For the sportsmen, it is easy to relate – their muscles have toned up, capable of fast responses and reactions, they know where to play without looking up. Their performances are by far better at the subconscious level than the conscious – which is why fast games like basketball, tennis, soccer where moves have to be taken fast and sharp, and very swift for the conscious to coordinate – the subconscious takes over. And of course, only those who are genuinely good; those whom the subconscious have collected enough data from the years of playing can control the speed of play. It has successfully been proven that the tennis ball moves so fast that for about two meters to the player, the conscious cannot see the ball. However, the player picks it right on time and not just that, sends it to the appropriate place, and we say, “the player is good!” You ask the player how he goes about his tactics; he tells you one story or the other. However, the detail, most players can hardly establish their coordination speed and mental speed in correlation to the game. This is absolutely a reflex, a subconscious action. Another amazing thing is how soccer goalkeepers manage to catch the ball. The speed of football can be terrible especially from the feet of the adrenaline fuelled shooter!

We will notice that most goalkeepers can hardly hold such shots handy and that’s because the speed of the impact and the speed of rebound are in milliseconds at the least. From physics, we can easily compute this from elastic and inelastic collisions. In fact, the rebound of a ball is so fast that it is considered to be a form of elastic collision. A type of collision where the momentum before collision equals the momentum after the collision that means no energy difference occurs. Otherwise, there is no mean delay period between the collision and the rebound. However, in detail, the form of collision here is actually an inelastic collision because there is the deformation or compression time. This is the period when the ball collides with the bat or the hand. The player himself will notice the compression, though very brief. This deformation period is very short, such that the time in relation is usually ignored in computations where extreme accuracy is not to be considered. We can roughly use this as a yardstick for determining the speed of the unconscious mind, its milliseconds!

The conscious is too slow to get the keeper in flight so spontaneously. Find a goalkeeper and ask how they go about it. The actions are sort of robotic – automatic. This is a responsibility he owns up to! It’s, however, amazing how some sportsmen and women perform so well sometimes and bad sometimes too. The subconscious is easily and actively gets involved when emergencies are present – usually due to the presence of Adrenaline in the blood stream which activates reflex response with ease. Perhaps this is why a keeper will tend to concede more goals when the challenge or attack is lower on his side or half. The emergency activation needed to keep him at subconscious level alertness is lower. It explains why when there occurs a counter or a quick attack, two things may happen – the arousal of the subconscious reflexes may not be fast enough, or it becomes too fast leading to pressure and anxiety instead of confidence, that is, panic. On the other hand, a goalie whose opponents have terrible attackers and shot crazy forwards. Watch the goalie’s eyes, they are randomly darting around – very alert, only the subconscious can move the eyes so fast collecting and computing data from the visual. The conscious hardly darts eyes around, it’s calmer and observant, while the mind does the job. These goalies under challenge and pressure from a continual barrage of shots tend to perform better – save more goals relatively. In fact, he would save some surprising goals he would have otherwise conceded.

Actions at impulse always seem better, more co-ordinated and most of all accurate. Combat soldiers are other significant manipulations of the subconscious when in a fire zone, massive combats and rapid fire – soldiers are no different from beasts. The reptilian brain is immediately activated. The reptilian brain is the core brain of most animals. It is the underlying conditional brain. It needs just three pre-requisites before the other parts of the brain can function. The pre-requisites are hunger satisfaction, (food), thirst elimination (water) and security. In simple terms, survival instincts. Once survival is guaranteed, other functions of the brain such as sex, play, learning and so on are activated. For a soldier, he would defend himself and in the process, defend his country on the battlefield. His instinct to survive makes him work at extreme unconscious levels, which combines knowledge from the conscious together with data from the unconscious making soldiers act in very spontaneous ways in combat.

The managements of companies have to note the importance of the subconscious and the instincts that need to be in their staffs, especially when accuracy and precision are required for the job or project. Employing a computer scientist who is more of a cook because that is the person’s personal hobby from childhood. S/he spends more time in the kitchen and enjoys it more than every other may not be advisable if there is an availability of a person whose hobby, life and labor have been with the computer. It is important that employers check-up the hobbies of their applicants before employment in other to determine the above.

If for example, you need someone to work on a project on marine actions on paints or colors – a resume where the following is available might perform:

Field Interests Hobby

Chemical Engineering Artistry Painting, Nature gazing and Studying

A chemical engineer or Industrialist can be excellent, possess outstanding academic knowledge and certifications but may not treat the job with interest but as a job which it is called. You may need to think twice before employing this engineer.

For example, a resume like this will not be the best for your project:

Chemical engineering Music Horse-racing, watching movies.

He will be better in the acoustics material metallurgy research and another related field.

Though some persons have great adaptable features and a will to learn – we can call them “made” in their fields, but to be realistic, a “born” always have an edge. When ideas, thorough understanding, and intuition are needed, the born is better off.

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