8/8/2019 Who Am I- Stephen Gislason

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8/8/2019 Who Am I- Stephen Gislason

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independent agent acting only on his or her ideas and intentions. The more closely you look at any

individual, the more you find group activity and the more you recognize that individuals seldom act

alone. Even when humans do act alone, each person is an agent of a common understanding both

innate and learned. Each person has the sense of others watching. A human tendency is to suffer

loneliness and to become despondent or suspicious and hostile when alone for extended periods.

Humans are social animals and generally depend on each other to provide rules of conduct,

information, context and meaning. Mostly, humans are free to conform to the norms and expectations

of the local group. Human’s copy what other humans do and are limited to repeating the speech and

behaviors of others. Innovations are usually small modifications to an existing method, idea or belief.

While there are a great variety of social organizations and diverse expressions of social interactions,

there are a limited number of root tendencies that give rise to the many variations. Paradoxically, the

path to enlightenment involves going beyond the need for others, to pass though states of declining

dependency toward a healthy and sane independence. Enlightenment is an improbable path and is,

arguably, a rare accomplishment.