A THOUGHT FOR NOW - THE FLY AT THE WINDOW PARADOX

I suspect that one of our biggest failings or weaknesses, as sentient humans, is our tendency to respond to external, and probably internal stimuli in a predictable manner. I say tendency, because there are times when the reaction or response is not what we would normally expect, which suggest that our worldviews and our perceptual filters which we use to make sense of what seems to be the 'same' or 'similar' stimuli, can sometimes differ as a result of individualistic, cultural and other attributes. 

We are, as it were, still the product or outcomes of our societal and genetic conditioning.

This is why two people can suffer traumatic experiences, such as a death of a loved one, or substantial abuse in childhood, but it affects their functioning and life chances differential. For example, one might demonstrate signs of heightened and still acute vulnerability in adulthood, whereas the other will be able to mitigate and accommodate his/her traumatic experienced and succeed in living a reasonably normal and even highly successful life. 

Our individual and personal experiences, and their impact on our living, can be significantly influenced by their 'social significance' in the societies in which we live

This ability for us humans to rise above our negative and traumatic experiences, is necessary in order for us to make progress and not be defined or restricted by those experiences. It is the reason why a nation which has had to fight a war to liberate itself from another which occupied it, or one which has been defeated after a terrible war, is able to rise from the ashes and build a better nation.

Well, you might be thinking, we know that already, but how does it relate to this little matter of "the fly at the window paradox."

So, this is it. Have you ever noticed how a fly at a glass window inside a building behaves, in its attempt to escape from the building? Yes, it buzzes at the window and flutters about in its attempt to get out the quickest way it believes it can; namely, straight through the glass pane. Of course it is impossible for it to do so.  

We can understand its behaviour only in the sense that it does not have an intellect to analyse the situation properly and choose the most or even one of a number of ways it could get out into the open world. Which it can clearly see through the window and which is reinforcing its desire to find a way through the pane of glass. It has to rely on its instinct; its tendency to respond to such situations in a predictable way. 

And so, you open the windows next to this pane of glass, in the hope that this fly would respond to the changes in the air pressure in the room and pickup the airstream coming through them and fly towards one of them. But no, the fly remains transfixed to the pane of glass, probably occasionally haphazardly flying to other parts of the room and then returning to the window; if it can find its way back there. Of course, there are occasions when a fly will find its way through the open window, but this is unlikely to be their tendency to do so.

And so it seems to me that we humans, do have a tendency to respond to things in a predictable way, instead of being more analytical in our approach.  Would the fly be more annoying and probably more of a threat to us humans, if, like some lower order creature, it had more of a functional 'intelligence'? That I do not know, but it would have a greater success rate in getting out through the open window.

Endeavour to enjoy your living to the optimum level, by reducing your tendency to reactively responds to problematic and threatening situations with which you are confronted, and consider how best you could respond, by appraising yourself of the different options you have or could have, if you were minded to take them. This is not to say that you should over-analysis everything in life and avoid spontaneity, which has its rightful place in our journey of life.