Control

It is a very basic instinct to desire to control our situation. Humans are not alone in this, animals share this desire as well. Take an animal, say a lab rat, remove him from his accustomed environment and place him somewhere completely different - say you transfer the rat to a new cage. He runs around in agitation at first. Where will he find water? He finds the water bottle and checks it, runs off and then comes back to check it again. Where will he sleep? He rustles around in the litter of the cage, seeking material and a place for a nest. Are there other rats in the cage? If so, what will his status be? Where's the food? The rat is seeking to control the basics of his survival. When he finds that these needs will be met in his new environment, he calms down.

It is a very deep, intrinsic need to feel that we are in control of a situation. We want to know that if we do "A" then "B" will result, and we want this outcome to be consistent. Bottom line, the world is a tragic place. Our spouse or lover may leave us or die, we may become ill with some awful disease, we are assured that one day we will die. We don't want these things to happen to us. These are things that happen to OTHER people. Or at the very least, if they DO happen to us, its for some discernable reason.

Something bad may happen to one person and he responds by thinking, "Well, what's new? Always was a fuck-up." Another person may respond by thinking, "This is God's punishment because I didn't throw enough virgins in the volcano." Yet a third person may think, "This is all the fault of the conservatives (liberals). If it weren't for their policies this would never have happened."

What all three have in common is that they are assigning cause and effect, trying to make sense of the universe. Where we run into trouble is when we follow these beliefs blindly, in the face of all reason, because its too frightening to relinguish that sense of control. Even the thought, "I've always been a fuck-up" assigns a reason for what may simply be arbitrary fate.

We have both less and more control over our lives than we may believe we do. The trick is discerning where the difference lies.