The Science of Unique Personalities---Introduction
Two subjects have attracted my attention the past few months—human evolution and what determines our unique personalities. Frequently I am asked if I just sit down and write musings from off the top of my head via some kind of spontaneous combustion. Of course not. My hobbies and career, by their nature, have given me a broad background on many of the areas I write musings.
I have read over 3000 books, non of them fiction—and many of them biographies or science or nature, or politics, or religion. In addition to this I have taken 99 DVD courses from the Great Courses Company who have assembled some of the most knowledgeable (and best lecturers) Professors from quality Colleges and Universities. This adds 2,596 course lectures from that source. Now add my long time habit of wondering around on solo walks in nature and select urban areas. Finally I have had thousands of college students from all sorts of background and personalities over my productive years, and it was my nature to interact with many of them on a personal basis even though that kept me on campus far more hours than is typical for a Professor. Unfortunately I do not have a keen memory retention like Lincoln, so a good deal of info from these above hobbies gets lost over time. Fortunately, many of these experiences get reinforced or expanded over time from the sources above. Finally, the existence of Google enables anyone to get immediate stats on any topic, person, or quotes from any particular person. Plus, in my earlier productive years I saved quotes on endless subjects so I have a library of quotes from that source and many books that are nothing but quotes on various subjects. Many people think people who need a lot of personal space in their lives tend to sit around and vegetate. It is often the opposite: I have tremendous difficulty keeping up with all these activities above and am always behind. During my productive years keeping up with all these activities was simply impossible, but that was okay since in younger days we tend to have so much more energy and are receptive to career challenges. But that energy and receptiveness can burn out as the years go by. Then it is time to retire.
My career as a physiologist did not do much to develop any noteworthy skills as a writer, so whatever my musings may be, they are not literary masterpieces. Knowing my own limitations, I never have felt anything I write is the last word on anything. These musings are food for thought, nothing more. I have never made any attempt to promote these musings and therefore any readership is limited to those who somehow find the URL for my storage site for these musings. There are over 20,000 hits which is nothing these days, but suffices for my ego as I certainly am under no illusion that my thoughts on anything are going to change the evolutionary process one iota. I have said many times that if Lincoln had not engineered the end of slavery in the United States, someone else would have down the line. The evolutionary process has no set time lines, just set directions for progress, and no species, including the human species, can alter the laws God created to run the evolutionary process. We think, with all of our human creations that we run the show now. We do not.
My recent interest in human evolution and what determines our unique personalities has led me to select and isolated conclusions but the unique personality thing requires psychological insights that I cannot possibly provide. Thus, I have been searching some time now for the right psychologist to shed more accurate light on this topic. So what follows now is taken from “Investigations into Human Personality” by Professor Mark Leary (Duke University). Thus, this musing is simply my attempt to condense his knowledge into a form which I can personally retain as a guide to my understanding of my own personality. I reckon this might help anyone understand their own unique personality better, and even more important, generate some tolerance for human diversity.
Given the length of this introduction to the topic and the abundance of info on the topic, I think I will end this introduction and make a series of shorter musings on the various components that come together to give us our unique personality. So, I will begin putting all this together and will start posting probably within a week.
