نتائج العادة .. العادة .. كتاب علم النَّفس جميل صَليبا

The results of habit...habit

Habit results

Habit has a great impact on the life of the individual and society, because it is the substance that makes up human behavior. It preserves the individual’s feelings, thoughts, and actions. It also regulates the life of society and protects its conditions from sudden change. The results of the habit are limited to two basic things:

A - Habit leads to (automaticity).
The first result of the habit is the mechanism of action, in which a person’s feeling diminishes, his awareness and attention decrease, and his emotional states diminish little by little. The more a person is able to do the work, masters it, and becomes proficient in it, the less he feels about it and pays attention to it. He is not accustomed to smelling a scent or tolerating it. A certain degree of temperature, except the cessation of feeling the stimulus, as well as the habit of walking, writing, playing a musical instrument, or riding a bicycle, is nothing but distracting attention and voluntary effort from the partial movements that make up the overall action, and not feeling them. So that the action then stabilizes in the lower nervous centers, and the higher nervous centers stop working with it. Matter, whether passive or active, leads to the unconscious. Scientists have even said that it reduces the severity of allergies. It prevents the interference of feeling in (automatic) actions because its interference obstructs them and disturbs its automatic system.

This law also applies to sensations, such as the sensations of touch, temperature, smell, and taste. Usually, our feelings of touch, heat, humidity, salinity, sweetness, or the scent that we apply perfume often diminish, but these results are not apparent. Not only this, but it also results from the law of relativity that we talked about previously.

In addition, habit often enhances the feeling of something rather than diminishing it. For example, it increases the power of tasting wines for a donkey, the power of distinguishing melodies for a musician, colors for a photographer, and scents for a chemist. Therefore, it does not decrease feeling, but rather decreases attention. Yes, the villager does not hear the noise of the city after living there for several days. But if he paid attention to it, he would hear it again. (Aghajar) said: Habit does not weaken the feeling when a stimulus is repeated, but rather it weakens the perception that is composed of images associated with the feeling. If the repetition is accompanied by attention, it is correct. This attention counteracts the negative repetition effect, and maintains the feeling of the effect. Because one of the results of attention is that. Increases the clarity of perceived phenomena. Repetition accompanied by weak feeling generates a negative habit, while repetition accompanied by increased feeling and attention effort generates a positive habit. What this means is that habit does not weaken the feeling, but rather removes the images that join the feeling and turn it into perception. The richer the images that attention gives to the thing, the clearer the comparative feeling of repeating the action.

We also add to this that all habits, whether motor, psychological, or vital, lead to one result. The motor habit weakens attention, reduces effort, and reduces the contemplative feeling. An example of this is that when a child begins to learn to write, ride a bicycle, swim, read musical symbols, dance, or play a musical instrument, he feels that he is collecting all the movements that constitute the action, so he pays attention to them, and feels the effort he is making in learning every part of the word. He performs its parts, but after acquiring the habit, he performs the action without effort. His attention to it decreases, his speed increases, his mistakes decrease, his fatigue decreases, and his movements become automatic.

This is true with regard to motor habits and is also true with regard to psychological habits, because mental actions initially require effort and contemplative attention, but after habituation they become mechanical actions. For example: an athlete who has practiced physical exercises for a long period of time does not feel conscious when solving problems. With the constitutions that he writes and applies, the processes come to his mind directly without him realizing the steps he took to achieve their memorization. He is like a skilled writer in writing on a typewriter, for he feels the text he writes and the instrument whose letters he strikes with his fingers, without being a poet at all. How to read the text, not with movements. His sequential hands, or the parts of those rapid movements. If he paid attention to all of that, he would fall into error and confusion.

If motor habits lead to the unconscious, then vital habits satiate needs, reduce our feeling of external influences, and make these influences a part of our life, so we demand them, and feel empty when we do not get them (1). But the influence that generates the need is the appropriate influence, that is, the influence that matches the previous preparations. Therefore, matter does not create need, but rather gives it a specific form, strengthens it, and makes it automatic and independent. About will. The secret to generating a need is not due to the influence, but rather to previous preparation, whether biological, psychological, or motor. He said (Largue der Bancel) (2): Habit does not create a new natural tendency, but rather regulates the predispositions that previously existed in the soul. If it were not for a person’s readiness to act, he would not have done anything. Whenever he acquires a new habit, he uses his previous tendencies, bringing them together, organizing them, organizing them, and strengthening them through training and exercise.

T - Habit leads to adaptation.
Depriving the action of attention and feeling makes our commitment to it complete, so we perform it without fatigue, and we accomplish it quickly, in a correct and consistent manner, without hesitation or error.

1 - Biological habits lead to adaptation, but this adaptation only occurs through a set of internal reactions.

2 - The adaptation of motor habits appears in the gradual integration that characterizes the action. Until it becomes easier than before, and until its partial movements are connected to each other tightly and completely. Largue (Dubancel) said: It is the acquisition of a habit. One of the movement habits is due to the creation of a series of movements linked to the rings, tightly sequential, and bound together (1). If the first ring moves, the other rings follow behind it. It is sufficient in these conditions that the first movement occurs voluntarily, and the other movements follow it automatically. The first ring often moves without will, like the movement of a smoker whose eye falls on a packet of tobacco, opens it and smokes without his will having any effect on that. Thus, a motor habit is a comprehensive action composed of simple elementary movements. If the mind sends the signal for the first movement, this movement moves from one episode to another, until it pervades all the other episodes, and the action follows an automatic sequence reminiscent of instinct. The difference between instinct and habit is that the first perception is less clear in instinct than it is in habit, and indeed it may be completely ambiguous. Thus, instinct was a state of habit, or as if it were, as was said, a second habit.

Habit is therefore connected to will, because voluntary movements are based on independent automatic movements preceded by a clear perception. We will see in the study of will that these automatic movements are necessary for the occurrence of voluntary action. It indicates that habit is not a function of memorization and following, but rather it is at the same time a factor of progress and creativity. It also indicates that mechanism is necessary for freedom, because it facilitates the performance of the action, increases its speed, reduces error and fatigue, and makes the habit perfect. It has been said that custom is preceded by destruction just as it is completed by construction. It removes from the verb many of the superfluous movements, and corrects them by adding to it the hadith. An example of this is that a child who learns to write initially produces movements that have nothing to do with performing the action, such as sticking out the tongue, furrowing the eyebrows, or tilting the head, but after he acquires the kingdom of writing, his partial movements are distributed to the specific organs, and so on. Habit frees our effectiveness from excessive restrictions, because it is a guarantee. For the most part, it refers to the mechanism, and makes us direct our attention to matters higher than it.

3 - Psychological habits also generate the same results as motor and vital habits because they constitute intellectual mechanisms (such as the ability to use algebraic constitutions, for example) and logical systems similar to the mechanisms that we talked about in motor habits. All of this leads to quick understanding and familiarity with proofs, ease of use, and avoidance of corrupt methods and difficult experiments. This familiarity is called the intoxication of correct proofs, because it makes the scientist select the best arguments, choose the most accurate results, and stay away from excessive intellectual processes. The habit of thinking is therefore a factor in progress, because it frees thought from the bondage of followers and directs it to the goal from which light emerges. This is the case of all those who have been given an abundant share of knowledge. Liebig stated that his first discoveries were due to the ease with which he used machines and carried out experiments. When speaking about the logic of invention, Le Roy said that creativity requires organizing previous practical rulings, organizing ideas, and arranging them in an order that makes it easy to refer to them. If the researcher is stripped of these obstacles and reaches the space of pure thought, he can create and invent, but if he turns to the means... Goals and objectives are far from him.

In addition, involuntary (automatic) movements are necessary for moral life. Yes, they involve some dangers, but the acquisition of habits is a great wealth necessary for all intellectual progress and moral liberation. Many of the virtues that we are proud of, and for which we are praised, are nothing but habits. What is said about the individual is also said about society, because customs. The effective factor is in maintaining social order. It is what makes every individual satisfied to some extent with what is destined for him (1). He even said (Dor Kheim) (1): Regulating behavior is a basic moral function. He also said: “Ethics requires that a person be willing to repeat the same actions.” Under the same circumstances, and to have fixed habits and an organized life (2).