Part II--You Are What You Love

Definitions

Word	Definition
Love	Your Ideas: deep caring Class Definition: an intense feeling of deep affection
Desire	Your Ideas: strongly want, crave, spend a lifetime to get it, more emotional than want Class Definition: a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen
Want	Your Ideas: more physical than a desire Class Definition: have a desire to possess or do (something); wish for.

 

What are the two central questions of your ‘wants’?

Question 1: How do I know what I actually want?	Question 2: Which factors are causing me to want that thing?
Your Response to Question 1: actions line up with what you want, something satisfying, motivation Class Answer: The habits of my life reveal my teloses (wants)!	Definition of Habit (your ideas): I think habit is the thing you spend most of your time during awake either consciously or unconsciously. Class Definition of Habit: A settled tendency or usual manner of behavior; an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary

 

Read the Text and Respond to the Question Below

“It is crucial for us to recognize that our ultimate loves, longings, desires, and cravings are learned. And because love is a habit, our hearts are calibrated through imitating exemplars and being immersed in practices that, over time, index our hearts to a certain end.

 

We learn to love, then, not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love. These sorts of practices are “pedagogies” of desire, not because they are like lectures that inform us, but because they are rituals that form and direct our affections.”

 

1. Which factors affect the habits we have? (How do our habits form?)

 

Your Ideas	I think nurturing environment like parents job matter to my habits.
Class Answer	The rituals and practices in your life. And the people who demonstrate those for you. The things you spend your time, money, and thoughts on.

 

 

 

 

 

Read the Text and Respond to the Question Below

"Why do we call things “second” nature? Our “first” nature is the hardwiring that characterizes our biological systems and operates without our thinking about it. At this very moment, you are not choosing to breathe. You are not thinking about breathing. (Well, maybe now you are. But 99.9 percent of the time, you breathe and blink and digest your breakfast without thinking about it.)

 

“Nature” simply takes care of a process that hums along under the hood of consciousness. Those habits that become “second” nature operate in the same way: they become so woven into who you are that they are as natural for you as breathing and blinking. You don’t have to think about or choose to do these things: they come naturally. When you have acquired the sorts of virtues that are second nature, it means you have become the kind of person who is inclined to the good. You will be kind and compassionate and forgiving because it’s inscribed in your very character. You don’t have to think about it; it’s who you are."

 

1. How do habits affect the way you see ‘your nature’?

 

Your Ideas	I think we learn out habits rather than naturally do it by genetic code.
Class Answer	Most of what we categorize as natural (i.e. "this is who I am") is built on learned behaviors. Don't confuse second nature (learned things) with first nature (genetic dispositions).

 

 

 Read the Text and Respond to the Question Below

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?”

 

1. Based on our discussions of habits and the fish story, what is the next question we need to ask?

What is something that I am so accustomed to that I am not aware to?