So, I suggested that there is some substance to the idea of human nature, even if by looking at human nature we can't expect to learn everything we might want to know about ourselves. Nevertheless, at least the theory of emotions gives us some guidance as to what we're like. If you know about human emotions, you know not just about how they behave inside of you, you know about how they behave inside of others. You know that for example, someone who's angry is likely to be dangerous either verbally or physically. You know that somebody who's very sad is likely to not have a whole lot of energy, for instance. Somebody who's very afraid is likely to try to go away or in some other respect, shroud themselves from something they take to be a threat. This is what's known as folk psychology, psychology that we have by virtue of just growing up normally in a society and being reasonably attentive to what things happen, how things happen around us. But also, it's been reasonably well borne out by large swaths of experimental psychology and social psychology. In particular, is that we can look to experiments to help us confirm the idea that there's certain particular ways, distinctive and characteristic ways that people behave when they're in the grip of one of the basic emotions. You might also think about some of the so-called non-basic emotions, I've mentioned pride already in my discussion of Plato's tripartition. One question is, are there emotions that are distinctive of a particular society? Do you experience emotions that you think are distinctive of the society that you occupy, either full or part-time? So, my sources tell me that for example, in Japanese the word that we pronounce in English is Amae, refers to the experience that people have, a kind of state of bliss that a person has when they're lost in a large crowd of people. That's an experience that I have when I'm lost a large crowd of people. Bliss is not the first kind of feeling that I have, it's usually something more negative. But other people might feel differently. Now, if that's right, then, I may as something that's distinctive of at least the Japanese society. If so, that's something we want to see as building on top of a basic emotions substructure. A thing that is something that perhaps you learn by virtue of being a member of Japanese society or other societies that value that kind of experience. Likewise, I'm told that in Portugal, people have the word Saudade, which refers to that feeling of longing and nostalgia for the last days of the Portuguese empire. Now, again, I'm not part of a society that has much by way of a lost empire and so, it's not an experience that I have much direct access to, but those of you who are involved in the chorus might have something to contribute by way of, whether you've experienced that, perhaps you remember Portuguese society, or whether you know people who are from, or you're from a different society that experiences that. So, if we think about non-basic emotions, there might be specific to a particular culture or there might be something that is still fairly pancultural, but that depends upon a fair bit of cognitive apparatus. So, it might be that every culture this is one that's capable of having its members experienced pride. But pride for one person might be based on something very different from what makes somebody else proud. What is it to be proud? One question you might ask is, if our nature is such as to have the capacity for pride, or shame, guilt, what role do these emotions have in, for example, social life? Does being part of a society in which one person is capable of pride and other person is capable of shame, or guilt, does that tell us anything about how the society operates and is it something that should be promoted, demoted, gotten rid off, taught, cultivated et cetera? So that's one set of questions and I think it's good to discuss, and other one is the follower. Even if there's a substratum of basic emotions and even if on top of that there is some non-basic emotions such as, amae on the one hand and pride on the other, we might also ask, have we mentioned the notion of second nature? Those things that are second nature to you are, as I said, by the time you're an adult, they might seem by introspective means to be as much part of nature is anything else. Your capacity to ride a bicycle might seem as basic and fundamental as your capacity to feel anger if you've been riding a bicycle for many, many years. Both might seem fundamental in the appropriate respect. Nevertheless, the bicycle riding was learned whereas the capacity for anger was not. I want to suggest then, that it's part of our nature that we have a lot of plasticity. Our nature is such as to be malleable. Our nature is such as to be shapable, but only shapable to a certain degree and up to a certain limit. Just as many of our organs have a degree of plasticity, a degree of flexibility up to a certain time, and then lose that flexibility over time, such as the lenses in your eyes. Lenses in your eyes are quite labile and malleable early on in life, and as you get older, those lenses become less capable of focusing easily. So, two aspects of yourself, your nature might be highly plastic early on, as you grow older, as you become more set, habituated, some that you might even say ossified. What in the past might have seen plastic isn't perhaps no longer. So the idea of plasticity is something that is ephemeral. You can be even if it's part of our nature to be plastic and something that we lose over time, after a certain age, after certain number of sunsets and seasons and so forth, that plasticity tends to go away. Which suggests that, especially when you're relatively young, thinking about those aspects of yourself that can be changed, that can be modified, is part of what it is to be a person I want to suggest. It's one's very nature, it's precisely to address that degree of plasticity, work within it and hopefully, to improve upon the basic material that you've got to make yourself into the kind of person that you want to be. So, if there's a big picture here, it might be as follows. Human nature is not something that we should think of as there to be discerned by a very powerful internal telescope or a microscope but rather, there's something there to be discerned, but a great deal of our nature is precisely that plasticity, precisely that openness to malleability. If we acknowledge that, then I think we'll be likely to see that it's our responsibility and our opportunity to do something with that plasticity and malleability, and make ourselves into the kind of people that we want to be. I'm hoping that as we move into the later parts of this course, the second and third mini-MOOC, we'll get more materials to work with, to help us think about the kinds of people that we want to be as we introspect, as we learn more about ourselves, in order to have a good set of guideposts to that self-creation, self shaping, self-cultivation. I'll see you soon.
