Reflex Action Quotes

A scream pierced the sky, a child’s, so loud he dropped his cup, his right hand ready to reach for a weapon that wasn’t there. A survival reflex from another city, another part of the world. He tried to relax, but the scream had been real. Not like the whining wail he loathed, not even the shocked cry of a kid who’d just hurt himself. This scream had mortal fear in it. After three tours in Afghanistan, he knew the difference.

You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned, and you're down to your reflexes - that means your [preparation:]. That's where your roadwork shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning, well, you're going to get found out now, under the bright lights.

Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system. Our eyelid closes before we are aware that the fly is about to enter our eye.

Real reading is reflex action; the born reader reads as unconsciously as he breathes; and, to carry the analogy a degree farther, reading is no more a virtue than breathing.

Revenge is the thinking man’s reflex, a complex blend of action and consistency no other animal species has so far succeeded in evolving. Evolutionary speaking, the practice of taking revenge has shown itself to the so effective that only the most vengeful of us have survived.

If you choose to do the right thing, it's a conscious decision at first. Then it becomes second nature. You don't have to think about what is right because doing the right thing becomes who you are, like a reflex. Your actions with time become your character

Bei einem Volk von der Art des unsrigen”, trug ich vor, “ist das Seelische immer das Primäre und eigentlich Motivierende; die politische Aktion ist zweiter Ordnung, Reflex, Ausdruck, Instrument.

In the past, we had objects to believe in—objects of belief. These have disappeared. But we also had objects not to believe in, which is just as vital a function. Transitional objects, ironic ones, so to speak, objects of our indifference, …Ideologies played this role reasonably well. These, too, have disappeared. And we survive only by a reflex action of collective credulity, which consists not only in absorbing everything put about under the heading of news or information, but in believing in the principal and transcendence of information.

Repentance always brings a person to the point of saying, “I have sinned.” The surest sign that God is at work in his life is when he says that and means it. Anything less is simply sorrow for having made foolish mistakes—a reflex action caused by self-disgust.

For several thousand years man has been in contact with animals whose character and habits have been deformed by domestication. He has ended by believing that he understands them. All he means by this is that he is able to rely on certain reflex actions which he himself has implanted in them. He will flatter himself at times on the grasp of animal psychology which has brought him the love of the dog and the purr of the cat; and on the strength of such assumptions he approaches the beasts of the jungle. The old tag about nature being an open book is just not true. What nature offers on a first examination may appear to be simple but it is never as simple as it appears.

Dr. Bone Specialist came in, made me stand up and hobble across the room, checked my reflexes, and then made me lie down on the table. He bent my right knee this way and that, up and down, all the way out to the side and in. Then he did the same with my left leg. He ordered X rays then started to leave the room. I panicked. I MUST GET DRUGS. "What can I take for the pain?" I asked him before he got out the door. "You can take some over the counter ibuprofen," he suggested. "But I wouldn't take more than nine a day." I choked. Nine a day? I'd been popping forty. Nine a day? Like hell. I couldn't even go to the bathroom on my own, I hadn't slept in three weeks, and my normally sunny cheery disposition had turned into that of a very rabid dog. If I didn't get good drugs and get them now, it was straight to Shooter's World and then Walgreens pharmacy for me. "I don't think you understand," I explained. "I can't go to work. I have spent the last four days with my mother who is addicted to QVC, watching jewelry shows, doll shows and make-up shows. I almost ordered a beef-jerky maker! Give me something, or I'm going to use your calf muscles to make the first batch!" Without further ado, he hastily scribbled out a prescription for some codeine and was gone. I was happy. My mother, however, had lost the ability to speak.

Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.

Pleasure and pain are co-located. In addition to the discovery of dopamine, neuro-scientists have determined that pleasure and pain are processed in overlapping brain regions, and work via an opponent processing mechanism. Another way to say this is pleasure and pain work like a balance. Imagine our brains contains a balance, a scale with a fulcrum in the centre. When nothing is on the balance it's level with the ground. When we experience pleasure, dopamine is released in our reward pathway and the balance tips to the side of pleasure. The more our balance tips and the faster it tips, the more pleasure we feel. But here's the important thing about the balance. It wants to remain level! that is, in equilibrium. It does not want to be tipped for very long, to one side or another. Hence, everytime the balance tips towards pleasure, powerful self-regulating mechanisms kick into action to bring it level again. These self-regulating mechanisms do not require conscious thought or an act of will, they just happen like a reflex.

Tears that are driven by white guilt are self-indulgent. When we are mired in guilt, we are narcissistic and ineffective; guilt functions as an excuse for inaction. Further, because we so seldom have authentic and sustained cross-racial relationships, our tears do not feel like solidarity to people of color we have not previously supported. Instead, our tears function as impotent reflexes that don’t lead to constructive action. We need to reflect on when we cry and when we don’t, and why. In other words, what does it take to move us? Since many of us have not learned how racism works and our role in it, our tears may come from shock and distress about what we didn’t know or recognize. For people of color, our tears demonstrate our racial insulation and privilege.

There is no time for hesitation. This sense of the imminence of death energizes the man accessing the Warrior energy to take decisive action. This means that he engages life. He never withdraws from it. He doesn’t “think too much,” because thinking too much can lead to doubt, and doubt to hesitation, and hesitation to inaction. Inaction can lead to losing the battle. The man who is a Warrior avoids self-consciousness, as we usually define it. His actions become second nature. They become unconscious reflex actions. But they are actions he has trained for through the exercise of enormous self-discipline.

In a moment of crisis we don't act out of reasoned judgment but on our conditioned reflexes. We may be able to send men to the moon, but we'd better remember we're still closely related to Pavlov's dog. Think about driving a car: only the beginning driver thinks as he performs each action; the seasoned driver's body works kinesthetically . . .A driver prevents an accident because of his conditioned reflexes; hands and feet respond more quickly than thought. I'm convinced the same thing is true in all other kinds of crisis, too. We react to our conditioning built up of every single decision we've made all our lives; who we have used as our mirrors, as our points of reference. If our slow and reasoned decisions are generally wise, those which have to be made quickly are apt to be wise, too. If our reasoned decisions are foolish, so will be those of the sudden situation.

Watch Shawshank Redemption. ‘Expertly done’ would be the review. Not a foot wrong. Classy. I just wish this had not extended even to the immaculate hairdos of all the inmates. When will a director tell a hair person to STOP tidying everyone up—it’s an awful reflex action.

If the emergence of an archetype is not immediately followed by an instinctive reflex action, so much the better for conscious development, because the effect of the emotional-dynamic components is to disturb, or even prevent, objective knowledge, whether this be of the external world or of the psychic world of the collective unconscious.

Propaganda may be defined as opposed to rational argument; argument based upon facts. Argument based on facts aims at producing an intellectual conviction; propaganda aims, above all, at producing reflex action. It is aimed at bypassing the rational choice based upon knowledge of facts and getting directly at the solar plexus, so to speak, and affecting the subconscious.

But lions are wild animals. And boys are people, they have minds, live in a society with laws. Groping others was not a natural reflex, biologically built in. It was a cognitive action they were capable of controlling.

The Tower of the Spirit The Spirit has an impregnable tower Which no danger can disturb As long as the tower is guarded By the invisible Protector Who acts unconsciously, and whose actions Go astray when they become deliberate, Reflexive, and intentional. The unconscious And entire sincerity of Tao Are disturbed by any effort At self-conscious demonstration. All such demonstrations Are lies. When one displays himself In this ambiguous way The world storms in and imprisons him. He is no longer protected by the sincerity of Tao. Each new act Is a new failure. If his acts are done in public, In broad daylight, He will be punished by men. If they are done in private And in secret, He will be punished By spirits. Let each one understand The meaning of sincerity and guard against display. He will be at peace with men and spirits and will act rightly, unseen, in his own solitude, in the tower of his spirit.

At high school I was never comfortable for a minute. I did not know about Lonnie. Before an exam, she got icy hands and palpitations, but I was close to despair at all times. When I was asked a question in class, any simple little question at all, my voice was apt to come out squeaky, or else hoarse and trembling. When I had to go to the blackboard I was sure—even at a time of the month when this could not be true—that I had blood on my skirt. My hands became slippery with sweat when they were required to work the blackboard compass. I could not hit the ball in volleyball; being called upon to perform an action in front of others made all my reflexes come undone. I hated Business Practice because you had to rule pages for an account book, using a straight pen, and when the teacher looked over my shoulder all the delicate lines wobbled and ran together. I hated Science; we perched on stools under harsh lights behind tables of unfamiliar, fragile equipment, and were taught by the principal of the school, a man with a cold, self-relishing voice—he read the Scriptures every morning—and a great talent for inflicting humiliation. I hated English because the boys played bingo at the back of the room while the teacher, a stout, gentle girl, slightly cross-eyed, read Wordsworth at the front. She threatened them, she begged them, her face red and her voice as unreliable as mine. They offered burlesqued apologies and when she started to read again they took up rapt postures, made swooning faces, crossed their eyes, flung their hands over their hearts. Sometimes she would burst into tears, there was no help for it, she had to run out into the hall. Then the boys made loud mooing noises; our hungry laughter—oh, mine too—pursued her. There was a carnival atmosphere of brutality in the room at such times, scaring weak and suspect people like me.

The doctor looked shifty. “He’s still breathing,” he said. “Look, his pulse is nearly humming and he’s got a temperature you could fry eggs on.” He hesitated, aware that this was probably too straightforward and easily understood; medicine was a new art on the Disc, and wasn’t going to get anywhere if people could understand it. “Pyrocerebrum ouerf culinaire,” he said, after working it out in his head. “Well, what can you do about it?” said Arthur. “Nothing. He’s dead. All the medical tests prove it. So, er…bury him, keep him nice and cool, and tell him to come and see me next week. In daylight, for preference." "But he’s still breathing!” “These are just reflex actions that might easily confuse the layman,” said the doctor airily. Chidder sighed. He suspected that the Guild, who after all had an unrivalled experience of sharp knives and complex organic compounds, was much better at elementary diagnostics than were the doctors. The Guild might kill people, but at least it didn’t expect them to be grateful for it.

Poor Fa'a," I said, although my answer was more reflexive than anything else. He was a good, kind person, and although I thought he was being melodramatic, I appreciated his compassion. In the absence of action, Poor Fa'a seemed to be the only thing to say.

System 2 (the controlled system) is our slower process of conscious analysis and reasoning. It’s the part of thinking that considers choices, makes decisions, and exerts self-control. We also use it to train System 1 to recognize and respond to particular situations that demand reflexive action. The running back is using System 2 when he walks through the moves in his playbook. The cop is using it when he practices taking a gun from a shooter. The neurosurgeon is using it when he rehearses his repair of the torn sinus.

To will, in the fullest sense of the word, is to be unaware that one wills, is to refuse to loiter over the phenomenon of the will. The man of action weighs neither his impulses nor his motives, still less does he consult his reflexes: he obeys them without reflecting upon them, without hampering them.

You tend to be perfectionistic. Never feeling you have achieved enough or are enough can cause you to over-function. Over-functioning signals to other people that they can use you. All it takes is for someone to make you feel imperfect, and you reflexively jump into action. There’s a saying: Perfection is trauma all dressed up.

There was another line of argument that nagged at me: the suggestion that boys simply could not help themselves. As if he never had a choice. I have told each of my girls heading off to college: If you walk in front of a semi truck expect to get hit. Don't walk in front of a semi. If you go to a frat party expect to get drunk, drugged and raped. Don't go to a frat party. You went to a frat and got assaulted? What did you expect? I'd heard this in college, freshman girls in frats compared to sheep in a slaughterhouse. I understand you are not supposed to walk into a lion's den because you could be mauled. But lions are wild animals. And boys are people, they have minds, live in a society with laws. Groping others was not a natural reflex, biologically built in. It was a cognitive action they were capable of controlling. It seemed once you submitted to walking through fraternity doors, all laws and regulation ceased. They were not asked to adhere to the same rules, yet there were countless guidelines women had to follow: cover your drink, stick close to others, don't wear short skirts. Their behavior was the constant, while we were the variable expected to change. When did it become our job to do all the preventing and managing? And if houses existed where many young girls were getting hurt, shouldn't we hold the guys in these houses to a higher standard, instead of reprimanding the girls? Why was passing out considered more reprehensible than fingering the passed-out person?

Arousing an active and mythical belief" The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action. It is no longer to lead to a choice, but to loosen the reflexes. It is no longer to transform an opinion, but to arouse an active and mythical belief.

I CAN STATE THE CORE IDEA in two relatively simple propositions. One is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants’ view of the world is always partial and distorted. That is the principle of fallibility. The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate because false views lead to inappropriate actions. That is the principle of reflexivity.

It’s one thing for Russians to act the way they do. Their society is so harsh and unforgiving that in order to get through life, most people are either getting screwed or screwing someone else—and often both. There are few rewards for doing what is right. It takes exceptional individuals like Sergei Magnitsky, Boris Nemtsov, and Vladimir Kara-Murza not to descend reflexively into nihilism, dishonesty, and corruption. In the West, and especially in America, it’s different. There’s no question we have our own issues, but Americans like John Moscow, Mark Cymrot, Chris Cooper, and Glenn Simpson have led charmed lives. They went to the best universities, associated with the highest-caliber people, lived in comfortable homes, and operated in a society that at least aspires to honor good conduct and ethical behavior. Everyone is entitled to a legal defense, but this wasn’t about the law—it was an active Russian disinformation campaign. For these people to use their considerable knowledge, contacts, and skills to assist Putin’s cronies in exchange for nothing more than money was even more contemptible than the actions of the Russians themselves. Many Russians can’t help what they do. But Americans like these can, and they act with full cognizance.

I’ll let you in on a secret. There are actually three kinds of “Yes”: Counterfeit, Confirmation, and Commitment. A counterfeit “yes” is one in which your counterpart plans on saying “no” but either feels “yes” is an easier escape route or just wants to disingenuously keep the conversation going to obtain more information or some other kind of edge. A confirmation “yes” is generally innocent, a reflexive response to a black-or-white question; it’s sometimes used to lay a trap but mostly it’s just simple affirmation with no promise of action. And a commitment “yes” is the real deal; it’s a true agreement that leads to action, a “yes” at the table that ends with a signature on the contract. The commitment “yes” is what you want, but the three types sound almost the same so you have to learn how to recognize which one is being used. Human

Persons in their most developed form are conscious, reflexive, embodied, self-transcending centers of subjective experience, durable identity, moral commitment, and social communication who—as the efficient cause of their own responsible actions and interactions—exercise complex capacities for agency and inter-subjectivity in order to sustain their own incommunicable selves in loving relationships with other personal selves and with the non-personal world.

We live in a world that has a cognitive bias and assumes that our actions are voluntary. We are confronted with questions related to motivation and outcome. We are asked about costs, risks, and benefits. However, state shifts in the neural regulation of the autonomic nervous system are usually not voluntary, although the state shifts have profound impact on behavior. The state shifts occur in a more reflexive manner when we are confronted by specific cues in the environment.

In a way, it makes sense that white feminism reflexively protects white women from the consequences of their actions. A movement that wants equal rights to oppress has a vested interest in not cleaning house. But the innately abusive nature of white supremacy has shaped white feminism, seen to it that investment in white supremacy is easier than investment in actual equality for themselves with all women. White feminism has to move past any idea of being an ally and into being an accomplice in order for it to be meaningful. Accomplice feminists will actively and directly challenge white supremacist people, policies, instiutions, and cultural norms. They would know they do not need to have to have the same stake in the fight to work with marginalized communities. They would put aside their egos and their need to be centered in our struggles in favor of following our instructions because they would internalize the reality that their privilege doesn't make them experts on our oppression.

Degan struck the wall with the back of his head, bounced off, and fell to his knees. Hadrian felt the pain in his knuckles and only then realized he had hit him. Gaunt glared up, his eyes watering, his hands cupping his face. “Crazy fool! Are you mad?” “What’s going on?” Arista called back down the line. “This idiot just punched me in the face! My nose is bleeding!” “Hadrian did?” the princess said, stunned. “It was… an accident,” Hadrian replied, knowing it sounded feeble, but not knowing how else to describe his actions. He had not meant to hit Gaunt; it had just happened. “You accidentally punched him?” Wyatt asked, suppressing a chuckle. “I’m not sure you have a full understanding of the whole bodyguard thing.” “Hadrian!” Royce called. “What?” he shouted back, irritated that even Royce was going to join in this embarrassing moment. “Come up here. I need you to look at something.” Degan was still on his knees in a pool of water. “Um—sorry ’bout that.” “Get away from me!” Hadrian moved up the line as Wyatt, Elden, and Myron pressed themselves against the walls to let him pass, each one looking at him curiously. “What did he do?” Arista whispered as he reached her. “Nothing, really.” Her eyebrows rose. “You punched him for no reason?” “Well, no, but—it’s complicated. I’m not even sure I understand it. It was sort of like a reflex, I guess.” “A… reflex?” she said. “I told him I was sorry.” “Anytime today would be nice,” Royce said. Arista stepped aside, looking at him suspiciously as he passed. “What was all that about?” Alric asked as he approached. “I, ah—I punched Gaunt in the face.” “Good for you,” Alric told him. “About time someone did,” Mauvin said. “I’m just sorry you beat me to it.

The injured person’s reaction to the trauma only exercises a completely ‘cathartic’ effect if it is an adequate reaction - as, for instance, revenge. But language serves as a substitute for action; by its help, an affect can be ‘abreacted’ almost as effectively. In other cases speaking is itself the adequate reflex, when, for instance, it is a lamentation or giving utterance to a tormenting secret, e.g. a confession. If there is no such reaction, whether in deeds or words, or in the mildest cases in tears, any recollection of the event retains its affective tone to begin with.

The word psychogeography, suggested by an illiterate Kabyle as a general term for the phenomena a few of us were investigating around the summer of 1953, is not too inappropriate. It does not contradict the materialist perspective of the conditioning of life and thought by objective nature. Geography, for example, deals with the determinant action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic conditions, on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conception that such a society can have of the world. Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, whether consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The charmingly vague adjective psychogeographicalcan be applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery. It has long been said that the desert is monotheistic. Is it illogical or devoid of interest to observe that the district in Paris between Place de la Contrescarpe and Rue de l’Arbalète conduces rather to atheism, to oblivion and to the disorientation of habitual reflexes?

A counterfeit “yes” is one in which your counterpart plans on saying “no” but either feels “yes” is an easier escape route or just wants to disingenuously keep the conversation going to obtain more information or some other kind of edge. A confirmation “yes” is generally innocent, a reflexive response to a black-or-white question; it’s sometimes used to lay a trap but mostly it’s just simple affirmation with no promise of action. And a commitment “yes” is the real deal; it’s a true agreement that leads to action, a “yes” at the table that ends with a signature on the contract. The commitment “yes” is what you want, but the three types sound almost the same so you have to learn how to recognize which one is being used.

The world pullulates with profoundly unrespectable people, views and actions, at all levels and in all neighbourhoods, and PC's reflex tendency to attack most of those who attack many of them makes matters worse. True discrimination - careful and fair-minded separation of worth from dross - is bundled by PC with all discrimination, and banned; hence the trouble. What began as a movement to rectify relationships has become a minefield of suspicion and anxiety. Much of the anger that has made it so is understandable; none of the humourlessness and puritanism that keeps it so is acceptable. It is particularly a pity that its excesses have stained left-liberal thinking, of which it is a strand; but not, thankfully, the whole.

Pinch the foot of a mouse (or naked mole-rat) and it will pull its limb away, and probably lick and groom it. Offer painkillers and it will accept. These actions resemble what a hurt human might do, and since a rodent’s brain is similar enough to ours, we can reasonably guess that its nociceptive reflex is accompanied by pain. But such arguments by analogy are always fraught, especially when it comes to animals with very different bodies and nervous systems. A leech will writhe when pinched, but are those movements analogous to human suffering, or to an arm unconsciously pulling away from a hot pan? Other animals may hide their pain. Social creatures can call for help by whining when they’re injured, but an anguished antelope would likely keep quiet lest its distress calls convey weakness to a lion. The signs of pain vary from one species to another. How, then, do you tell if an animal is experiencing it?

Six or seven minutes past 2 P.M. on September 11, 1973, an infiltration patrol of the San Bemardo Infantry School commanded by Captain Roberto Garrido burst into the second floor of the Chilean Presidential Palace, Santiago's Palacio de La Moneda. Charging up the main staircase and covering themselves with spurts from their FAL machine guns, the patrol advanced to the entrance of the Salon Rojo, the state reception hall. Inside, through dense smoke coming from fires elsewhere in the building and from the explosion of tear gas bombs, grenades, and shells from Sherman tank cannons, the patrol captain saw a band of civilians braced to defend themselves with submachine guns. In a reflex action, Captain Garrido loosed a short burst from his weapon. One of his three bullets struck a civilian in the stomach. A soldier in Garrido's patrol imitated his commander, wounding the same man in the abdomen. As the man writhed on the floor in agony, Garrido suddenly realized who he was: Salvador Allende. "We shit on the President!" he shouted. There was more machine-gun fire from Garrido's patrol. Allende was riddled with bullets. As he slumped back dead, a second group of civilian defenders broke into the Salon Rojo from a side door. Their gunfire drove back Garrido and his patrol, who fled down the main staircase to the safety of the first floor, which the rebel troops had occupied.
 Some of the civilians returned to the Salon Rojo to see what could be done. Among them was Dr. Enrique Paris, a psychiatrist and President Allende's personal doctor. He leaned over the body, which showed the points of impact of at least six shots in the abdomen and lower stomach region. After taking Allende's pulse, he signaled that the President was dead. Someone, out of nowhere, appeared with a Chilean flag, and Enrique Paris covered the body with it.

If I had to characterize my work in two words, that is, as is the fashion these days, to label it, I would speak of constructivist structuralism or of structuralist constructivism, taking the word structuralism in a sense very different from the one it has acquired in the Saussurean or Lévi-Straussian tradition. By structuralism or structuralist, I mean that there exist, within the social world itself and not only within symbolic systems (language, myths, etc.), objective structures independent of the consciousness and will of agents, which are capable of guiding and constraining their practices or their representation. By constructivism, I mean that there is a twofold social genesis, on the one hand of the schemes of perception, thought, and action which are constitutive of what I call habitus, and on the other hand of social structures and particularly of what I call fields and of groups, notable those we ordinarily call social classes.

It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of legislative authority," the Federalist tell us. And modern commanders in chief tend to reflexively invoke the war metaphor when the public demands that they take action to solve the emergency of the month, real or imagined. "War is the health of the state," Randolph Bourne's famous aphorism has it, but Bourne could just as easily written that "war is the health of the presidency." Throughout American history, virtually every major advance in executive power has come during a war or warlike crisis. Convince the public that we are at war, and constitutional barriers to actions fall, as power flows to the commander in chief. Little wonder, then, that confronted with impossible expectations, the modern president tends to recast social and economic problems in military terms: war on crime, war on drugs, war on poverty. Martial rhetoric often ushers in domestic militarism, as presidents push to employ standing armies at home, to fight drug trafficking, terrorism, or natural disasters. And when the president raises the battle cry, he can usually count on substantial numbers of American opinion leaders to cheer him on.

It seems the primary breeding group for what might, in the widest possible sense of the word, be understood as an opposition in the post-totalitarian system is living within the truth. The confrontation between these opposition forces and the powers that be, of course, will obviously take a form essentially different from that typical of an open society or a classical dictatorship. Initially, this confrontation does not take place on the level of real, institutionalized, quantifiable power which relies on the various instruments of power, but on a different level altogether: the level of human consciousness and conscience, the existential level. The effective range of this special power cannot be measured in terms of disciples, voters, or soldiers, because it lies spread out in the fifth column of social consciousness, in the hidden aims of life, in human beings' repressed longing for dignity and fundamental rights, for the realization of their real social and political interests. Its power, therefore does not reside in the strength of definable political or social groups, but chiefly in the strength of a potential, which is hidden throughout the whole of society, including the official power structures of that society. Therefore this power does not rely on soldiers of its own, but on the soldiers of the enemy as it were—that is to say, on everyone who is living within the lie and who may be struck at any moment (in theory, at least) by the force of truth (or who, out of an instinctive desire to protect their position, may at least adapt to that force). It is a bacteriological weapon, so to speak, utilized when conditions are ripe by a single civilian to disarm an entire division. This power does not participate in any direct struggle for power; rather, it makes its influence felt in the obscure arena of being itself. The hidden movements it gives rise to there, however, can issue forth (when, where, under what circumstances, and to what extent are difficult to predict) in something visible: a real political act or event, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest, a sharp conflict inside an apparently monolithic power structure, or simply an irrepressible transformation in the social and intellectual climate. And since all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a think crust of lies, it is never quite clear when the proverbial last straw will fall, or what that straw will be. This, too, is why the regime prosecutes, almost as a reflex action preventatively, even the most modest attempts to live within the truth.

[...]Telecomputer Man is assigned to an apparatus, just as the apparatus is assigned to him, by virtue of an involution of each into the other, a refraction of each by the other. The machine does what the human wants it to do, but by the same token the human puts into execution only what the machine has been programmed to do. The operator is working with virtuality: only apparently is the aim to obtain information or to communicate; the real purpose is to explore all the possibilities of a program, rather as a gambler seeks to exhaust the permutations in a game of chance. Consider the way the camera is used now. Its possibilities are no longer those of a subject who ' 'reflects' the world according to his personal vision; rather, they are the possibilities of the lens, as exploited by the object. The camera is thus a machine that vitiates all will, erases all intentionality and leaves nothing but the pure reflex needed to take pictures. Looking itself disappears without trace, replaced by a lens now in collusion with the object - and hence with an inversion of vision. The magic lies precisely in the subject's retroversion to a camera obscura - the reduction of his vision to the impersonal vision of a mechanical device. In a mirror, it is the subject who gives free rein to the realm of the imaginary. In the camera lens, and on-screen in general, it is the object, potentially, that unburdens itself - to the benefit of all media and telecommunications techniques. This is why images of anything are now a possibility. This is why everything is translatable into computer terms, commutable into digital form, just as each individual is commutable into his own particular genetic code. (The whole object, in fact, is to exhaust all the virtualities of such analogues of the genetic code: this is one of artificial intelligence's most fundamental aspects.) What this means on a more concrete level is that there is no longer any such thing as an act or event which is not refracted into a technical image or onto a screen, any such thing as an action which does not in some sense want to be photographed, filmed or tape-recorded, does not desire to be stored in memory so as to become reproducible for all eternity. No such thing as an action which does not aspire to self-transcendence into a virtual eternity - not, now, the durable eternity that follows death, but rather the ephemeral eternity of ever-ramifying artificial memory. The compulsion of the virtual is the compulsion to exist in potentia on all screens, to be embedded in all programs, and it acquires a magical force: the Siren call of the black box.

Well, it’s the inevitable “Coke versus Pepsi” dichotomy as to which is more important, which influences the other more in terms of our actions. And of course it turns out that, as with most dichotomies of behavior, it’s a false one. They’re utterly intertwined, and intertwined on a neurobiological level. For example, if you think of something terrifying that happened to you long ago, emotional parts of your brain activate and you secrete stress hormones. Or if you have an aroused emotion—you’re in an agitated, frightened state—and suddenly you think and reason in a way that’s imprudent and ridiculous. We often make terrible decisions when we’re aroused. The two parts are equally intertwined. We assume that as creatures with big cortexes, reason is at the core of most of our decision making. And an awful lot of work has shown that far more often than we’d like to think, we make our decisions based on implicit emotional, automatic reflexes. We make them within milliseconds. Parts of the brain that are marinated in emotion and hormones are activating long, long before the more cortical rational parts activate. And often what we believe is rational thinking is, instead, our cognitive selves playing catch-up, trying to rationalize the notion that our emotional instincts are perfectly logical and make wonderful sense. We can manipulate the emotional, the automatic, the implicit, the subterranean aspects of our brains unawares, and it changes our decisions, and then we come up with highfalutin explanations—that I did what I just did because of some philosopher I read freshman year. No, actually it’s because of this manipulation that just occurred.

We may need to consider a little abstinence from our automatic, reflexive responses of being helpful to others. For some of us, doing this may feel very threatening; to identify our addictions of helpfulness is to challenge the ways we habitually express love – it comes close to challenging our love itself. . . . Let us go back for a moment and look at that tiny, perhaps almost nonexistent space between feeling a person’s pain and doing something in response to it. It is not easy to just be with the pain of another, to feel it as your own. No wonder we are likely to jump into our habitual responses so quickly. As soon as we start doing something for or to the suffering person, we can minimize the bare agony of feeling that person’s pain. It is like that everywhere; our addicted doings act as minor anaesthesia. . . . Sometimes, perhaps often, taking the space will feel like an absence of response. We may fear the person will think we don’t care because we are not immediately hopping like popcorn to do something helpful. And sometimes the response that is authentically invited will never appear overtly helpful. Perhaps we are just invited to pray, silently in the background, or just to be present without saying a word or offering even a touch. Sometimes love even invites us to leave a person alone. Such responses are not too good for our egos; the suffering person is unlikely to come and thank us for our lack of involvement. But love does not ask for credit, nor does it permit ego-gratification as the motive for response. Authentic loving responsiveness calls for a kind of fasting from being helpful. Real helpfulness requires a relinquishment of our caretaking reflexes. It demands not only that we stay present with the un-anaesthetized pain of the person or situation, but that we also risk appearing to be uncaring. It further asks us to be unknowing. Right there in the centre of a situation that screams for action, we must admit that we really don’t know what to do. Finally, it invites us to turn our consciousness toward the exact point where our hearts are already looking: to the source of love. There, and only there, is the wellspring of authentic responsiveness found.

The blinking of eyes is an involuntary reflex action, provided they eyes are not watching your beauty.

You just got caught by surprise. Sooner or later you'll figure out love's just a reflex action some of us have.

But the action of the tendon organ’s synapse onto its corresponding motor neuron is not the same as that of the spindle; it is its complimentary opposite, The action of the anulospiral receptor upon its motor nerve is excitatory: When the spindle is suddenly stretched beyond a pre-determined “normal” resting length—as in the knee jerk reflex test—it excites the alpha motor nerve so that a contraction immediately follows which quickly re-establishes the desired “normal” resting length. 7-14: A Golgi reflex arc. In the spinal cord, its effect upon the alpha motor neurons is the opposite of that of the spindles: The Golgi afferent impulse inhibits the muscle fibers associated with it, and excites antagonists. The two kinds of arcs form complementary reflex devices. The tendon organ, on the other hand, has an inhibitory effect upon its alpha motor nerve: When the tension developed upon a tendon exceeds a pre-set “normal” limit, the Golgi inhibits the motor nerve, reducing its level of stimulatory firing and thus relaxing the tension back down to its “normal” resting value. The simplest and most basic function of this inhibitory reflex arc is to prevent the contractile power of the muscles from damaging the tendons and the bones. Many of our muscles are capable of generating enough pull to rip themselves loose from their own moorings, and even the smaller ones which do not have such brute power are in danger of being torn by the uncontrolled pulling of the larger muscles around them. When the Golgi organ senses, due to the increasing tensional distortion of the tendon’s fibers, that a strain or a tear is imminent, its signal becomes powerful enough to inhibit the alpha motor neurons that are stimulating the contraction. Tension is reduced instantly, and the damage is avoided.

First of all, the tone of my muscle cells must hold my skeleton together so that it neither collapses in upon my organs nor dislocates at its joints. It is tone, just as much as it is connective tissues or bone, that is responsible for my basic structural shape and integrity. Secondly, my muscle tone must superimpose upon its own stability the steady, rhythmical expansion and contraction of respiration. Third, it must support my overall structure in one position or another—lying, sitting standing, and so on. Finally, it must be able to brace and release any part of the body in relation to the whole, and to do this with spontaneity and split-second timing, so that graceful, purposeful action may be added to my stability, my posture, and my rhythmic respiration. It is no wonder we find that such large portions of our nervous systems are so continually engaged in controlling the maintenance and adjustments of this tone. The entire system of spindle cells, with both their contractile parts and their anulospiral receptors, the Golgi tendon organs, the reflex arcs, much of the internuncial circuitry of the spinal column, and most of the oldest portion of our brains—including the reticular formation and the basal ganglia—all work together to orchestrate this complex phenomenon. We have, as it were, a brain within our brain and a muscle system within our muscle system to monitor the constantly shifting values of background tonus, to provide a stable yet flexible framework which we are free to use how we will. Nor is it a wonder that these elements and processes are normally controlled below my level of consciousness—if this were not the case, walking across the room to get a glass of water would require more diversified and minute attention than my conscious awareness could possibly muster. It is the old brain, along with the even more ancient spinal cord, that are given the bulk of this task, because they have had so many more generations in which to grapple with the problems and refine the solutions. Millions upon millions of trials and errors have resulted in genetically constant motor circuits and sensory feedback loops which handle the fundamental life-supporting jobs of muscle tone for me automatically. Firm structure, posture, respiratory rhythms, swallowing, elimination, grasping, withdrawing, tracking with the eyes—all these intact and fully functional activities and more are given to each of us as new-born infants, the legacy of the development of our ancestors.

I can bring a glass of water smoothly to my lips because practice has taught me just how much contractile effort and speed is necessary to lift it and carry it through the air without either dropping it or throwing the water towards the ceiling. This familiar feel for the resistance of the glass of water, and for the appropriate muscular effort to both overcome that resistance and remain in constant control, are functions of the variable settings of the inhibitory response of the Golgi tendon organs. And I use this reflex mechanism every time I use a screwdriver or a wrench, row a boat, push a car, do a push-up or a deep knee bend, pick up an object—in short, every time I need a specific amount of effort delivered in order to accomplish a specific task—any time “too much” is just as mistaken as “too little.” This includes, of course, almost all the controlled uses to which I put my muscles. Now in order to be helpful in all situations, this variable setting of the tension values which trigger the reflex must be capable of both a wide range of adjustment and rapid shifts. Objects that we need to manipulate with carefully controlled efforts may be small or large, light or heavy. Building a rock wall can require just as much finesse and balance as building a house of playing cards, but the levels of tension which require equally sensitive monitoring are very different in each case. Since these relative tension values can be altered rapidly at will, and are refined with practice, it seems evident that they can be controlled by higher brain centers. This is presumably done through descending neural pathways which can generate impulses that either facilitate or inhibit the action of the Golgi/motor neuron synapses. In this way, control signals from higher nervous centers could automatically set the level of tension at which the muscle would be maintained. If the required tension is high, then the muscle tension would be set by the servo-feedback mechanism to this high level of tension. On the other hand, if the desired tension level is low, the muscle tension would be set this level.9

In the early days of genetics, a gene could be 'dominant' or 'recessive', and that was about all there was to it; but gradually more and more terms had to be added to the vocabulary: repressors, apo-repressors, co-repressors, inducers, modifier genes, switch genes, operator genes which activate other genes, and even genes which regulate the rate of mutations in genes. Thus the action of the gene-complex was originally conceived as the unfolding of a simple linear sequence like that on a tape-recorder or the Behaviourist's conditioned-reflex chain; whereas it is now gradually becoming apparent that the genetic controls operate as a self-regulating micro-hierarchy, equipped with feedback devices which guide their flexible strategies. This not only protects the growing embryo against the hazards of ontogeny; it would also protect it against the evolutionary hazards of phylogeny, or random mutations in its own hereditary materials-the blind antics of the monkey at the typewriter.

To summarize, the movements we make are a bit more complicated than they might seem at first glance; they involve complex conversions between sensory predictions and motor actions. And the conversions themselves are constantly being tweaked as we learn more about ourselves and our environment. This learning is triggered by sensory prediction errors, or mismatches between what we expected to feel after moving and what we actually feel. Here we have explored this process of learning and culminated with the idea that to improve our future movements, our brain likely seeks advice from teaching systems embedded within our brain and spinal cord—namely, our reflexes.

If you choose to do the right thing, it's a conscious decision at first. Then it becomes second nature. You don't have to think about what is right because doing the right thing becomes who you are, like a reflex. Your actions with time become your character.

Television's ability to evoke the fear response is especially significant because Americans spend so much of their lives watching TV. An important explanation for why we spend so much time motionless in front of the screen is that television constantly triggers the "orienting response" in our brains. As I noted in the introduction, the purpose of the orienting response is to immediately establish in the present moment whether or not fear is appropriate by determining whether or not the sudden movement that has attracted attention is evidence of a legitimate threat. (The orienting response also serves to immediately focus attention on potential prey or on individuals of the opposite sex). When there is a sudden movement in our field of vision, somewhere deep below the conscious brain a message is sent: LOOK! So we do. When our ancestors saw the leaves move, their emotional response was different from and more subtle than fear. The response might be described as "Red Alert! Pay attention!". Now, television commercials and many action sequences on television routinely activate that orienting reflex once per second. And since we in this country, on average, watch television more than four and a half hours per day, those circuits of the brain are constantly being activated. The constant and repetitive triggering of the orienting response induces a quasi-hypnotic state. It partially immobilizes viewers and creates an addiction to the constant stimulation of two areas of the brain: the amygdala and the hippocampus (part of the brain's memory and contextualizing system). It's almost as though we have a "receptor" for television in our brains.

Every novelist of serious pretensions adopts an ironic attitude towards his upper-class characters. Indeed when a novelist has to put a definitely upper-class person--a duke or a baronet or whatnot--into one of his stories he guys him more or less instinctively. There is an important subsidiary cause of this in the poverty of the modern upper-class dialect. The speech of 'educated' people is now so lifeless and characterless that a novelist can do nothing with it. By far the easiest way of making it amusing is to burlesque it, which means pretending that every upper-class person is an ineffectual ass. The trick is imitated from novelist to novelist, and in the end becomes almost a reflex action.

Post-hoc rationalization The action-reflex obtained by propaganda is only a beginning, a point of departure; it will develop harmoniously only if there is an organization in which (and thanks to which) the proselyte becomes militant. Without organization, psychological incitement leads to excesses and deviation of action in the very course of its development. Through organization, the proselyte receives an overwhelming impulse that makes him act with the whole of his being. He is actually transformed into a religious man in the psycho-sociological sense of the term; justice enters into the action he performs because of the organization of which he is a part. Thus his action is integrated into a group of conforming actions. Not only does such integration seem to be the principal aim of all propaganda today; it Is also what makes the effect of propaganda endure. For action makes propaganda's effect irreversible. He who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is now obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable. He is obliged to continue to advance in the direction indicated by propaganda, for action demands more action. He is what one calls "committed" — which is certainly what the Communist party anticipates, for example, and what the Nazis accomplished. The man who has acted in accordance with the existing propaganda has taken his place in society. From then on he has enemies. Often he has broken with his milieu or his family; he may be compromised. He is forced to accept the new milieu and the new friends that propaganda makes for him. Often he has committed an act reprehensible by traditional moral standards and has disturbed a certain urder. He needs a justification for this — and he gets more deeply involved by repeating the act in order to prove that it was just.

The Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (ATNR) also influences the coordination of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and the development of one-side dominance (think right- or left-handedness). One-side dominance is critical for motor learning and the ability to take actions without concentrating on them (called “automaticity”). Without automaticity, movements must be consciously executed making them cumbersome and tiring.

Well, I think that this is just a question for linguists and lexicographers. Although, as previously mentioned, a person needs to sense another person and needs to think about the person to behave in a certain way, which requires conscious thought, is it possible for a programmed reaction, or a programmed way of behaving, to be defined as behavior? Let me elaborate: if a normal human being is slapped in the face, the person would sense the slap and reflexively think of things such as how painful, unexpected, or annoying it was. Then, the person would say “ow” or maybe try to slap the person back. However, a p-zombie would react by saying “ow,” or by slapping the person back, but it is not doing any of this out of its own will, because without conscious thought, it doesn’t have a will. Something in the p-zombie could cause it to react without having to think, like with a robot; if I were to say “hi” to a robot, it could be programmed to say “hi” back, but it would only do it because it was programmed to do it, not because it senses that a person is saying “hi” and thinks of it as a friendly greeting. If it is possible for a being to be programmed like that, it could do such things, but determining whether or not actions like this are forms of behavior still depends on how society defines behavior. When a person behaves a certain way, he/she provides a reaction for a person. When a robot says “hi” to a person who just said “hi”, it is reacting to that person, so this could be viewed as a behavior, but the dictionary definition is a bit ambiguous, because it doesn’t specify whether the way one acts has to be conscious (like with a normal human being) or unconscious (like with a robot), so linguists and lexicographers need to establish that parameter to define behavior. If linguists and lexicographers were to say that behavior, by definition, does not have to be conscious, then a p-zombie could be conceivable.

We tend to make prayer the preparation for our service, yet it is never that in the Bible. Prayer is the practice of drawing on the grace of God. Don’t say, “I will endure this until I can get away and pray.” Pray now—draw on the grace of God in your moment of need. Prayer is the most normal and useful thing; it is not simply a reflex action of your devotion to God. We are very slow to learn to draw on God’s grace through prayer.

Making decisions was for him an adaptive reflex, a coping mechanism that pressure only honed and energized, and he’d reacted to the news from Brazil as he would to any emergency, gathering whatever information was available, then digesting as much of it as circumstances allowed before settling upon a logical and systematic plan of action.

Phillip. the Dream Defenders founder, had a similar insight. For him, the experience of the Blackout had been a lesson in the varieties of power. Borrowing a concept from Joseph Nye, the political scientist, he now came to understand social media as a form of 'soft power,' a force that shapes culture through argument and story. But there was also 'hard power,' which Nye, in assessing the capacity of different nation-states, characterized as military and economic might. For movements, hard power was the ability to lobby for legislation, elect sympathetic political leaders, get resources allocated toward your cause. Social media, Phillip now saw more clearly, was good at building soft power. But when it came to hard power, it could do very little. And if for Nye every successful state needed a mix of the two, this was doubly true of social movements, which didn't stare with a store of either. The only way to built hard power was on the ground. As Rachel put it, 'You just can't shortcut organizing.' It made them want to stop the performance, the race for followers, even the reflex to always make their actions public-they would think carefully about if and when to use tactics like occupations and sit-ins.

Occultism is a reflex-action to the subjectification of all meaning, the complement of reification. If, to the living, objective reality seems deaf as never before, they try to elicit meaning from it by saying abracadabra.

I understand you are not supposed to walk into a lion’s den because you could be mauled. But lions are wild animals. And boys are people, they have minds, live in a society with laws. Groping others was not a natural reflex, biologically built in. It was a cognitive action they were capable of controlling.

can hope for it,” said the woman who had once been the chief investigator for the Office of Miracles, a scholarly and secretive branch of the Faith of the Garden. “We’ve lost so much, but hope endures. Hope is free, and we can take as much of it as we need.” “Hope is a dream,” said Helleda, dismissing the comment. “Everything begins as a dream,” said the old woman. “We need something more substantial than wishful thinking.” “We do, but actions are born of dreams. Any action we take, if not born of hope, is merely reflex. Personally, I have no intention of living what’s left of my life merely trying to survive. There is no value in that. No grace. I would rather take inspiration from hope—not vain hope, but based on what might be possible—even if at this moment all we can see is rubble in the path of the Hakkian eclipse.

Tell me you best moment, Pihu?’ ‘It’s now. Having dinner as a family,’ she said in a reflex action.

Character habits and beliefs. All of us are guided by our subconscious minds—perhaps more than we think. Character habits, acquired during our early years and modified throughout our lifetime, are a large part of our inner world, even though they operate mostly at a subconscious level. As we saw earlier, many moral actions that define and express our character are the result of automatic response patterns that bypass rational thought. These character habits often appear as our reflexive response to a given situation—the unfiltered expression of our beliefs. Character habits, in combination with a leader’s beliefs—especially his or her aspirational beliefs for the organization—directly influence the individual’s decision-making skills and other leadership activities. For that reason, a leader’s character habits and moral beliefs matter a lot when it comes to value creation and business results. (In chapter 3, “The Journey from Cradle to Corner Office,” we examine what the research has to tell us about how life experiences shape leadership character.)

In Piaget's developmental epistemology, sensorimotor intelligence serves as a bridge between biological functioning and rational thought. On the one hand, the beginning of sensorimotor intelligence, the system of reflexes, is linked to the morphological and anatomical structure of the organism. One the other hand, sensorimotor intelligence already entails a logic of action and meaning implications and thus the seeds of what later will become rational thought and necessary knowledge (OI, p. 418).

For Piaget, psychological life begins with the use of hereditary reflexes (OI, pp. 39, 223). Reflexes are general action patterns such as sucking, looking, and touching (Piaget, 1975/1985, p. 69). Each reflex constitutes an “organized totality” (OI, p. 38) that comprises perceptions, coordinated movements, and a need; it is not just a “summation of movements” (OI, p. 38).

There is no gene for genocide. Ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and our desire for social dominance are tendencies, not triggers that lead to mechanical causation or reflex action.

In describing the ways that religious and other types of communities appropriate and understand their histories, among both fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists, the sociologist Anthony Giddens utilizes the term “reflexivity” and states that it is the characteristic of “all human action.” Reflexivity takes place when individuals and/or communities utilize their perceptions of their histories as a way of guiding their present and future actions. For Giddens, tradition is a means of “handling time and space, which asserts any particular activity or experience with the community of past, present, and future, these in turn being structured by recurrent social practices.” In light of this, tradition is a set of entities which religious communities and cultures continually reconstruct within certain parameters. Religions are not completely static in that almost every new generation reinvents the religious and cultural inheritance from the generations that preceded it.

Stoic moral training depends upon the defensibility of these schematic propositions: (a) Rational deliberative power (rational agency) is a defining feature of mature human consciousness. (b) Every agent’s rational powers, whenever exercised, operate in a particular and intricate deliberative field, in Barbara Herman’s felicitous phrase, that is laden with projects, preferences, affects, and attachments. (c) Each person’s deliberative field evolves continuously. Its initial information gathering and deliberative routines are givens (as if programmed) and, together with the initial situation, yield explicable beliefs. Initial sensibilities, sensitivities, values, aims, commitments, and preferences are also givens and, together with beliefs and deliberative routines, yield normative propositions for conduct. The circumstances in which such normative propositions are acted out or abandoned (that is, the relative strength or weakness of the will) are given, and actions follow. Each process from information gathering to action then becomes information for the next process. (d) The agent’s awareness of and reflection upon these iterated processes varies. But when awareness is high, it is fair to say rational agency is a self-transformative power: over time, its reflexive, recursive operations can transform its own powers, deliberative field, and operations—hence its norms and actions. (e) Agents can thus remake their characters over time. Note, however, that no uniform, essentially human content is specified for the deliberative field

How little do we know our thoughts — our reflex actions indeed, yes; but our reflex reflections! Man, forsooth, prides himself on his consciousness! We boast that we differ from the winds and waves and falling stones and plants, which grow they know not why, and from the wandering creatures which go up and down after their prey, as we are pleased to say without the help of reason. We know so well what we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not? I fancy that there is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that it is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

Pandora, come back here!” came a new voice--Beatrix Hathaway’s voice--and Christopher’s senses sparked in recognition. He twitched uneasily at the commotion, his reflexes urging him to take some kind of action, although he wasn’t yet certain what the bloody hell was going on. A large white goat came leaping and capering and twisting through the hallway. And then Beatrix Hathaway appeared, tearing around the corner. She skidded to a halt. “You might have tried to stop her,” she exclaimed. As she glanced up at Christopher, a scowl flitted across her face. “Oh. It’s you.” “Miss Hathaway--” he began. “Hold this.” Something warm and wriggling was thrust into his grasp, and Beatrix dashed off to pursue the goat. Dumbfounded, Christopher glanced at the creature in his hands. A baby goat, cream colored, with a brown head. He fumbled to keep from dropping the creature as he glanced at Beatrix’s retreating form and realized she was wearing breeches and boots. Christopher had seen women in every imaginable state of dress or undress. But he had never seen one wearing the clothes of a stablehand. “I must be having a dream,” he told the squirming kid absently. “A very odd dream about Beatrix Hathaway and goats…

What terrified her most was the thought that staying alive had become nothing more than a habit. That was it. A reflex action without further or deeper purpose.

Our prayer is to be like a reflex action to God’s prior initiative upon the heart.

After tying Albert’s leash to a slender porch column, Christopher knocked at the door and waited tensely. He reared back as the portal was flung open by a frantic-faced housekeeper. “I beg your pardon, sir, we’re in the middle of--” She paused at the sound of porcelain crashing from somewhere inside the house. “Oh, merciful Lord,” she moaned, and gestured to the front parlor. “Wait there if you please, and--” “I’ve got her,” a masculine voice called. And then, “Damn it, no I don’t. She’s heading for the stairs.” “Do not let her come upstairs!” a woman screamed. A baby was crying in strident gusts. “Oh, that dratted creature has woken the baby. Where are the housemaids?” “Hiding, I expect.” Christopher hesitated in the entryway, blinking as he heard a bleating noise. He asked the housekeeper blankly, “Are they keeping farm animals in here?” “No, of course not,” she said hastily, trying to push him into the parlor. “That’s…a baby crying. Yes. A baby.” “It doesn’t sound like one,” he said. Christopher heard Albert barking from the porch. A three-legged cat came streaking through the hallway, followed by a bristling hedgehog that scuttled a great deal faster than one might have expected. The housekeeper hastened after them. “Pandora, come back here!” came a new voice--Beatrix Hathaway’s voice--and Christopher’s senses sparked in recognition. He twitched uneasily at the commotion, his reflexes urging him to take some kind of action, although he wasn’t yet certain what the bloody hell was going on. A large white goat came leaping and capering and twisting through the hallway. And then Beatrix Hathaway appeared, tearing around the corner. She skidded to a halt. “You might have tried to stop her,” she exclaimed. As she glanced up at Christopher, a scowl flitted across her face. “Oh. It’s you.

When I think of my three children it is not only their distinctive faces that appear before me, but also the quite distinct feeling they radiate. This feeling, which is constant, is what they “are” for me. And what they “are” has been present in them ever since the first day I saw them. At that time they could barely do anything, and the little bit they could do, like sucking on a breast, raising their arms as reflex actions, looking at their surroundings, imitating, they could all do that, thus what they “are” has nothing to do with qualities, has nothing to do with what they can or can’t do, but is more a kind of light that shines within them. Their

A similar criticism arose in the guise of “reflexivity,” the idea that the very act of observing another person’s actions changes those actions, making observational methods intrinsically flawed.

Meme theory is an example of the kind of prestidigitation needed to present an image of us as biologically programmed in the face of the overwhelming evidence that everyday human life is utterly different from the reflex-, tropism-, instinct-driven life of animals (although of course we rely on reflexes to perform our voluntary actions, may be in part guided by tropisms and have a general direction influenced remotely by instincts).

Yet, even focusing on this present life, disciples often queried the Buddha as to who is responsible for the habits, sufferings, and pleasures we experience. In reply, he refused to say that they are caused by a past actor with whom we have no more connection. One cannot categorically separate the “I” who experiences the result from the “I” who set it in motion; for they are not discontinuous. Yet neither are they the same. One cannot say that “one and the same person both acts and experiences the result,” for the person is different, altered. There is a continuity, but it is not the continuity of an agent as a distinct and enduring being. The continuity resides in the acts themselves that condition consciousness and feelings in dependent co-arising. It inheres in the reflexive dynamics of action, shaping that which brought it forth.

[T]he new international emphasis on morality has been characterized not only by accusing other countries of human rights abuses but also by self-examination. The leaders of the policies of a new internationalism — Clinton, Blair, Chirac, and Schröder — all have previously apologized and repented for gross historical crimes in their own countries and for policies that ignored human rights. These actions did not wipe the slate clean, nor [...] were they a total novelty or unprecedented. Yet the dramatic shift produced a new scale: Moral issues came to dominate public attention and political issues and displayed the willingness of nations to embrace their own guilt. This national self-reflexivity is the new guilt of nations [xvii].

The U.S. civilian leadership was shirking its responsibility to develop a high-level strategic approach to the most significant political and diplomatic challenge of this conflict. It was yet another example of America’s almost instinctive reflex to lead with the military in moments of international crisis. Civilian officials, as much as they may mistrust the Pentagon, are often the first to succumb. They seem remarkably adverse to exploring the panoply of tools they could bring to bear—let alone to putting in the work to develop a comprehensive strategic framework within which military action would be a component, interlocking with others. What is it, I found myself wondering, that keeps a country as powerful as the United States from employing the vast and varied nonmilitary leverage at its disposal? Why is it so easily cowed by the tantrums of weaker and often dependent allies? Why won’t it ever posture effectively itself? Bluff? Deny visas? Slow down deliveries of spare parts? Choose not to build a bridge or a hospital? Why is nuance so irretrievably beyond American officials’ grasp, leaving them a binary choice between all and nothing—between writing officials a blank check and breaking off relations? If the obstacle preventing more meaningful action against abusive corruption wasn’t active U.S. complicity, it sure looked like it.

This voice, which we call the middle voice, expresses an action that relates to the subject reflexively.

Social signals can set off the hot button of your brain as easily as physical dangers can. When photographs of fearful faces are flashed for 33 one-thousandths of a second—and immediately followed by longer exposures of emotionally neutral faces—your reflective mind has no time to become aware that you saw anything scary. But your reflexive brain will “know” it with lightning speed. The exposure to a fearful face for just a thirtieth of a second is enough to spark intense activation in the amygdala, priming your body for action just in case this subliminal threat turns out to be real.

Gandhi wrote: ‘I seem to have detected a flaw in me which is unworthy of a votary of truth and ahimsa. I am going through a process of self-introspection, the results of which I cannot foresee. I find myself for the first time during the past 50 years in a Slough of Despond.’ One wonders what readers of the press statement made of this decidedly odd interpolation. To them, the cause, manifestation and the precise nature of this flaw was left unelaborated. Gandhi’s close disciples knew the details; and the labours of the editors of his Collected Works have since made them public for us to examine it. Here is what happened. On 14 April 1938, Gandhi awoke with an erection; and despite efforts to contain his excitement, had a masturbatory experience. He was sleeping alone, and it was decades since he had been aroused in such a way. The details of the incident were kept from his ‘political’ followers such as Jawaharlal Nehru, but discussed with the spiritual followers who had stayed with him in Sabarmati and Segaon. To one Gujarati ashramite he wrote that ‘I was in such a wretched and pitiable condition that in spite of my utmost efforts I could not stop the discharge though I was fully awake.... After the event, restlessness has become acute beyond words. Where am I, where is my place, and how can a person subject to passion represent non-violence and truth?’ To Mira, Gandhi wrote in a language even more vivid in its self-abasement: ‘That dirty, degrading, torturing experience of 14th April shook me to bits and made me feel as if I was hurled by God from an imaginary paradise where I had no right to be in my uncleanliness.’ To his other close woman disciple, Amrit Kaur, Gandhi spoke of ‘an unaccountable dissatisfaction with myself’. But he had not lost faith, and was resolved to overcome the memory of his failure. ‘The sexual sense is the hardest to overcome in my case,’ he remarked. ‘It has been an incessant struggle. It is for me a miracle how I have survived it. The one I am engaged in may be, ought to be, the final struggle.’ Gandhi had taken a vow of brahmacharya, as far back as 1906. He thought sex was necessary only for procreation, and rejected the idea that sex might be pleasurable in and of itself. In his writings and speeches, he had often spoken of the importance of the preservation and husbanding of sperm, which he termed ‘the vital fluid’. After this (to him) shocking experience, how could Gandhi best control his passions, best preserve and husband that vital fluid? Several ashramites (Amrit Kaur among them) thought he should avoid close physical contact with women, especially younger women. He should abandon ashram girls as supports while walking (he rested his hands on their shoulders to propel his frail frame along), and discontinue the practice of having his nails cut or his body massaged by women disciples. Gandhi was not convinced of the sagacity of this advice. He had, he reminded one disciple, not ‘advocated total avoidance of innocent contact between the two sexes and I have had a certain measure of success in this’. To Amrit Kaur, he insisted that ‘it is not the woman who is to blame. I am the culprit. I must attain the required purity.’ Gandhi had wanted to write about the experience of 14 April in Harijan, baring to the world his failure and lack of self-control. He discussed this with Rajagopalachari, who was then in Segaon. Rajaji dissuaded him from making his experience public. Afterwards, Rajaji wrote to his son-in-law Devadas, who was also Gandhi’s son. The Mahatma, he said, was deeply worried ‘that he was still unable to overcome the reflex action of his flesh. He discovered, it seems, one day and he was so shocked and felt so unworthy that he was deceiving people and he wrote an article about it for publication in Harijan, which, thank God, I have stopped, after a very quarrelsome hour'.

The crucial thing to remember with fibromyalgia is that the nervous system is stuck in the stress response (Martínez-Lavín 2012, 1998). In fact, all symptoms of fibromyalgia, including excessive pain, are the result of a complex chain reaction set off by a hyperactive stress response. The stress response is an automatic brain reflex that is commonly referred to as the “fight or flight” instinct. It has little to do with feeling stressed out. Rather, it refers to the body’s automatic response to danger, triggered by a primal brain area whose only focus is on survival. When a potential threat is detected—a loud banging on your front door, a stranger moving quickly toward you on the street—the brain prepares the body by pumping adrenaline and tightening muscles, readying your whole system for action. This is the body’s normal response to danger—great for a short-term response, and activated only when there is an imminent threat. In fibromyalgia, however, the stress response never stops, like a smoke alarm that goes off incessantly even though there’s no fire.

To say that the Open Society is one of ever-increasing diversity and complexity is not to say that all complexity is consistent with it. We need to inquire into the conditions that facilitate the sort of bottom-up self-organization we have been analyzing. Social morality is critical in this regard. The key of ultra-social life under conditions of disagreement is reconciliation on shared rules. It has never been the case that humans were able to live together because they simply shared common goals; we are primates, not ant, and so cooperation always needs to be reconciled with sharp differences and conflicts. Socially shared moral rules, it will be recalled, allow humans to develop both the common expectations and practices of accountability on which effective cooperation depends. The moral rules of a complex society serve to dampen its complexity with some firm expectations in the midst of constant adjustments. As Hayek insisted, without shared moral rules the highly diverse reflexive actors of the Open Society could not even begin to effectively coordinate their actions. Shared moral rules allow for significant prediction of what others will do - or, more accurately, not do. Yet, at the same time, while providing expectations on which to base planning, they must also leave individuals with great latitude to adjust their actions to the constant novelty which complexity generates. These two desiderata push in opposite directions: one toward stability of expectations, the other toward freedom to change them. Successfully securing both is the main challenge of the morality of an Open Society.

We tend to assume, moreover, that instinct, even when it is clearly at work, means there can be no accompanying thought or feeling - as if a doe when she caresses her fawn, or lions when they hunt, or your cat when he or she kneads on you, can have no awareness or pleasure in that instinctive experience. We certainly don't assume that about ourselves when we feel the tug of instinct, in avoiding danger or safeguarding our young or seeking potential mates. On the contrary, the thoughts and emotions accompanying instinctive desires are usually the most vivid. The most earthy, ordinary human experiences - coupling, birthing, dying - are, in fact, the most deeply experienced. Instinctive desire and action in our own case does not always mean blind, unfeeling reflex, and there is no reason to suppose it is any different for them.

All humans discount the future. We would rather have a million dollars today than in 30 years from now. We’d rather a flimsy bridge today, rather than a sturdy, durable bridge 5 years from now. We’d rather eat all the fish in the waters tonight, than to go a little hungry and leave fish for others in the future. To delay instant gratification requires cultural training. To be convinced of the value of investing into the future requires a kind of wisdom, knowledge, patience and trust that is gained from history, elders, and system thinking. It requires collective action and collaboration on a large and long scale. It requires civilization. Civilization is a system of trust, both in the goodness of humans today, but also in the ingenuity of humans in the future. It’s a way for humans to trust the future. Civilization is a social machine accumulated over many generations and is constantly being tested by new events. American society over emphasizes the individual's self-interest, and over-relies on the marketplace to solve social problems, and so coddles the short term. Modern Americanism tends to ignore the government which can take the long view because it is inefficient. But the calculus of efficiency is shifted when taking the long view. Storing adequate supplies for a population that are only used in an emergency is inefficient in the short term and this inefficiency is not something companies can afford to do. That short-term inefficiency, however, makes total sense in the long view because it is highly efficient over time. Investing into a communal project that may not pay off until you are long gone is not a natural reflex of modern Americans, whether liberal or conservative. The antidote to this natural focus on the short term is education and a shift in norms. As we continue to civilize ourselves, we can appreciate the gifts of past long-term work, and the need in our fast-moving world today to pay the gifts forward by investing into work that will likely pay off in future generations.

All booksellers who suffered Francoist censorship, police persecution, and fascist bomb attacks were marked for ever by this period and have always believed that a bookshop is more than just a business. We picked up the torch from the last man executed by the Inquisition, a bookseller from Córdoba who was condemned in the nineteenth century for introducing books banned by the Church. And this period made it quite clear, once again, that that reflex action dictatorships have of burning books is no coincidence but the product of two incompatible realities. And it also clearly demonstrated how important independent bookshops are as instruments of democracy." - Jorge Carrión (quoting Francisco Puche), Bookshops: A Reader's History

The older man reached a hand to her. She hesitated for a moment before meeting him, taking a moment to ensure that she still wore her gloves. It was a reflexive action.

That means a complete break with all past evolution because human beings, as they currently exist with a few exceptions, are very much what the behaviorists say – we are very much like any other animal: easily conditioned, mechanically trapped in repeating reflex actions, and that includes not just our behavior but our consciousness too. We all have what Leary calls conditioned consciousness. That is, our minds have been conditioned that only some things are possible to us where as the human mind theoretically should be capable of doing anything that any other human being has ever done. But most people are very limited. With the true science of psychology, when it becomes a science, it should be possible for you to master anything that any other human being has mastered from higher mathematics, to writing symphonies, to karate, to judo, to water skiing, to being an engineer, to becoming a choreographer of ballet, to making contributions to physics equal to those of Einstein. And especially, you should be able to change any compulsive behavior that depresses you and has bothered you all your life and you don’t know how to get rid of it. All that should be possible. You should be able to reprogram your own nervous system in any way you want.

We tend to assume, moreover, that instinct, even when it is clearly at work, means there can be no accompanying thought or feeling - as if a doe when she caresses her fawn, or lions when they hunt, or your cat when he or she kneads on you, can have no awareness or pleasure in that instinctive experience. We certainly don't assume that about ourselves when we feel the tug of instinct, in avoiding danger or safeguarding our young or seeking potential mates. On the contrary, the thoughts and emotions accompanying instinctive desires are usually the most vivid. The most earthy, ordinary human experiences - coupling, birthing, dying - are, in fact, the most deeply experienced. Instinctive desire and action in our own case does not always mean blind, unfeeling reflex, and there is no reason to suppose it is any different for them.

instinctive daddy reflex, the same move that had probably saved me from breaking my neck or hurtling to my death a hundred times, only I’d never seen it in action from this angle before, and I was amazed at its speed and precision. Too bad he didn’t have an arm like that he could use to save himself.

Unexpected family shit,” he said. “That’s the text you should have sent me. Succinct. Self-explanatory. You’re not responsible for your brother’s actions.

A lot of what we may call our “ideals” is actually this kind of knee-jerk combative reaction against change. Again, this reflex is different from perceiving an injustice, articulating places where that injustice causes inequality or suffering, and agitating for change. (For example, Martin Luther King Jr. based his civil-rights agitation on an appeal to equal rights. James Earl Ray, who killed Dr. King, was under no actual threat; his actions were based on fear of change and reflexive self-righteousness.)

The elephants in our heads—our reflexive reactions—perceive anything unfamiliar as just plain wrong. Familiar things feel right, right, RIGHT! This is the sensation comedian Stephen Colbert famously dubbed “truthiness.” It’s like being drunk or high: delicious in the short term, ultimately toxic. The righteous mind can temporarily overwhelm our sense of truth, including our allegiance to justice and fairness. When our righteous mind is in control, we lose the way of integrity and become weirdly, obviously self-contradictory, like proponents of world peace who advocate war against anyone who disagrees with them. Because violence and the righteous mind are closely linked, I don’t call destructive actions sins of violence, as Dante does. I think of them as “errors of righteousness.” They are psychological mistakes we make when our irrational rejection of the unfamiliar takes over our thinking.