The Mysteries of Human Nature

He looks disgruntled this morning, but why—I did him a big favor last night. And, look at her, she looks so happy—I wonder what she’s been up to? Wouldn’t we love to know the answer and many more!

Human nature remains a mighty mystery, in spite of the many attempts to unravel it. Neither the bumps on our head, nor the lines in our hand, nor the date of our birth have given us satisfactory insights. 
Even the art of graphology is being questioned after newspapermen misinterpreted a sheet of scribbled notes and doodles left behind at the 2005 Economic Summit meeting in Switzerland. 

They thought it belonged to Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, and joyfully analyzed it. They discovered in his handwriting the doubts he felt concerning his upcoming reelection, his struggle to keep control of a confusing world, his preference for day-dreaming and his inability to complete a task as Richard Wiseman wrote in his book “59 Seconds.” They even read a death wish toward his political career into his doodles.

Can you imagine the papers’ immense embarrassment, when it turned out that the notes and doodles did not belong to the Prime Minister, but to mightily successful Bill Gates? Perhaps they should have engaged a better graphologist.

We are told that multiple bumper stickers are a good indicator of the driver’s strong feelings of territoriality—and are urged to give that car a wide berth.

I’d give the same wide berth to a person with a vicious-looking bulldog. It’s uncanny, really, how often and how much people resemble their pets, or vice versa.

A more recent approach is to assess a person on the sliding scale of five characteristics: to what extend is he or she open, conscientious, extraverted, agreeable and neurotic (i.e., emotionally stable)? It’s an amusing device, and could be useful if people were to answer all questions truthfully. 

But how often do we admit even to ourselves that we have shortcomings? Why would we admit them to others, especially if a job may depend on our answers—of course we are agreeable, and emotionally stable, and certainly most conscientious!

Do our basic characteristics change in the course of our lifetime? I doubt it. We do adapt to our environment and our circumstances, we learn and form habits, but our basic character remains pretty much the same. Though, hopefully with persistent effort we do improve.

Rosi McIntosh