Hi, thanks for stopping by before diving in. I will say that if you would like to

support my work, which I hope now and then would consider the Venmo is

Darma Punx with an ex-nyc.

And of course all the talks are on the podcast site,

which is Darma Punx with an ex-nyc. podbean.com. And tonight we're going to be diving into the rather

ambitiously titled,

Why We Do the Things that We Do,

Tackling issues along the lines of free will and self-control why these concern matters.

Hope you'll join me.

For much of human history, we assumed that thought was essentially the

epicenter of the mind,

the director of cognition,

the originator of our behavior,

and the constituent of our sense of self.

Much like for centuries upon centuries,

people assumed that the Earth was the center of the universe,

because it seems that way.

We're standing on it.

It looks like all the stars are circling around us.

And so it seemed that thought, in her speech, was the epicenter and the driver of behavior.

Now, this illusion persisted at least until the 1890s when the famous American psychologist William James stated that our emotions aren't based on thoughts, but are the result of unconscious physiological reactions to external stimuli.

In other words, we unconsciously observe the world around us and we respond before we think and that these emotional responses are in many ways

...