Heyheyhey!! So sorry for the long hiatus. Did you think I'd forgotten to reply to the tagboard messages? Haha don't worry, I'll always reply it, just that I've been tied down with meetings and going overseas for holidays (yep, the next post will be about my trip to Sarawak!!). Since that post generated so many messages (yay!), I figure tagging on the tagboard wouldn't really satisfy everything.
I think everyone's born a good person, really, like we are born clean slates, and have to be taught about what goes on in the the world and how to react and cope with it. These reactions and coping strategies may not be the best choices some of the time, and may not seem like behaviour befitting good people, but I think, at the end of the day, these reactions and behaviours are really just the methods that we adopt in order to survive. Some people may find being mean an easier method of getting what they want than being nice, so they just adopt it, and pretty soon, it kinda becomes second nature to be mean.
But another question arises. What makes people adopt the various methods that they adopt? Perhaps it's the environment? But some might also question how some people manage to grow up unaffected by their environments. Genetics? How would you explain some people with good genes to turn out bad? Perhaps, like what the textbook always says, there's a balance between the two. And personally, I agree, but I also think relying only on genetics and the environment seems to mean that the person is really just a product of other factors which he or she has no control over. I don't like to think of people having no control over what they are and who they can be. I think there's gotta be something unique inside everyone, that 3rd elusive factor that decides which types of methods and behaviours we adopt when we confront various situations. And this is where individual differences come in. There's gotta be different types of that something in each person. Genes and the environment are perhaps superficial explanations of everything.
We could look at the world in various ways, and that makes each of us unique. But what makes us able to click with each other, and people who perceive the world in different ways? Well I'm not sure either, but perhaps it's the dominance of the 3rd factor. The 3rd factor could coexist with other types of 3rd factor, which enable some people who seem very different to be actually be similar in some ways. Like how sometimes we feel like we are a mess of contradictory personalities, such as wanting to be alone yet wanting to be with someone but outwardly showing wanting to be alone? The dominant 3rd factor could be wanting to be alone, but it coexists with the factor that likes to be around people. Am I making sense here?
People are interesting, aren't they? And so mysterious that they can be darn irritating.