Choose your friends and they will choose what you do

Through the years, I've come to see an idea I'd like to call the proximity theory. At its base, one can know that the thoughts one has producing action are related directly to the distance between oneself and all other things. These things include both that which can be detected by the five senses and that which is picked up at a deeper, emotional level. They also include what we term spiritual or mental.

Some examples. If someone watches (eyes and ears) a frightening movie, sitting close to the television, they may feel frightened and thoughts will be focused upon fear. If someone places a McDonald’s hamburgers close to their body the effect is not very strong, but by putting the burger into the body, thus changing the proximity, the effect is very strong. The people we choose to associate with will have varying influences based on distance; both physical distance--the proximity between bodies--and emotional distance--the closeness of the heart.

Spiritually, people usually feel peace when able to distance themselves from natural or earthly things and move closer to their power source. So you see, the proximity between you and things determines what you are thinking, and thus what you will do. When you are on vacation, your situation changes and so do your thoughts and actions.

The environment that we choose to be surrounded by includes many things that appear because of our direct choices and other things that exist because of the choices of others. In either case, that which appears in our environment which was not our choice gives us the opportunity to accept it or reject it. Thus, all things that we can change are an extension of choice. The things that we can not change are choices made indirectly because of the inability to do something to change them.

I would suggest that humanity is big bundle of needs. Choice is based on need. I sleep because if I didn’t I would die. I eat because if didn’t I would die. I work because I need money. I need money to buy food, shelter, and clothing. I make friends because I need social engagement. I need to feel needed, and wanted, and loved, and safe. I need to feel useful. I need to feel like I’m growing and learning and changing. I need to feel that I’m becoming me.

Most needs fall under physical, emotional, and mental (spiritual). Physical needs are base-needs and most closely relate humans to animals. Sexual desire, as a product of the excretion of hormone, highlights this point. Animals breed, not because of the idea of love or companionship, but because of instinct. Eating and cleaning our bodies are also necessary for healthy survival. Choices made based on physical needs need not be rational according to mentally produced ideas of morality; the boy who steals a loaf of bread; the passion of the night; killing to obtain money. Cultural norms dictate rules of moral conduct. Physical desire or survival needs transcend cultural norms when brought to extremes.

Emotional needs bring humans and animals to stand at the fork in the road. Animals seem to show signs of emotional needs. Puppy dog eyes tell us there is more than physical. To be needed by others, to be loved or appreciated. Emotional needs may move us beyond cultural norms. When an emotional need is so great, a person may choose to forfeit baser needs to achieve them. Thus, a mother feeds her children; a girl runs away with a man. Animals don’t seem to be able to make this leap. Try taking a steak away from a dog.

Mental needs bring man to his highest climb. They give man his humanity. To be able to forgo physical and emotional needs; performing some act because it has been proven to serve some greater principle through experience; to rise above hunger and feed another; to transcend depression and other emotional needs to do what is right. Summing up ones experience and leaving behind the building-block choices of the past to reach higher is the hallmark of acting in concert with mental needs.

Often people talk about finding themselves. In these situations, they make choices that may be different than what was done in the past. Action, as has been explained, is the extension of need. The desire to fulfill need produces action. But the specific action and the specific need have between them something of vital importance--assumption. I am hungry… I assume by eating this hamburger my need will be fulfilled… I eat the hamburger. After this social experiment, the assumption will either be strengthened or weakened. If my hunger-pains disappear the assumption will be strengthened. If the hunger-pains disappear, but I get a stomachache that hurts worse than the hunger-pain, the assumption that the burger relieves hunger-pain will be strengthened, but at the cost of creating a stomachache.

Emotional choices are based on the same principle. I will marry because I have a number of desires. These desires come from the chemical makeup of my humanity that came from my parents and include the physical, emotional, and mental needs previously discussed. These desires are also created by the environment that I grew up in, thus bringing us back to the original proximity theory. Who I am, or what my actions are, is created by the proximity of chemicals in the chemical structure built by my parents and the elements of the environment that I perceive. Again, as humans we are what we do. If I work in a hospital and cure people’s illnesses, I am a doctor. If I provide for the physical, emotional, and mental needs of my children, I am a good father. If I treat my friends poorly, I am a poor friend.

After our desires have been formed within us, we then spend our early-childhood years watching our parents, siblings, and family friends. We listen to teachers and try to understand the world around us. Our perception of the proximity of the elements of our environment created assumptions. These assumptions are strengthened or weakened by our choices. After years of life living, we either become a complete mess by not interpreting the result of action in a way that strengthens assumptions creating action which fulfills desire or we become well-functioning human beings that understand its desire and link them to actions with assumptions.

People that are said to never change are probably those that have found a collection of actions that fulfill basic desires. Once those desires are fulfilled through action there is no reason to change. People who change dramatically or often are probably those whose collection of actions do not seem to fulfill basic desires; and thus new, sometimes dramatic, actions are experimented with based on the assumption that desires may be fulfilled by a new set of actions.

The assumptions that people learn or create are again based on the proximity of that person and the elements of their environment. For example, if I am hungry I eat a hamburger. After eating it I don’t feel that the hunger pain has left. A friend of mine tells me that they once ate a hamburger and were not filled, but after eating a chicken-burger were filled. The person then needs to make a choice. Will he create the assumption that his friend is telling the truth and that the chicken-burger will eliminate hunger-pain, thus eating the burger?

Persuation is a process that occurs as we hear messages from friends and convince ourselves that the proposed action will fulfill desire. Persuation is the creation of assuption. Some ideas would not come to our minds if they had not been introduced by others, but the final action is simply the acception of a given action's assumption being acted upon. Time and experience, or exposure to assumption and the result of action, lead one to believe a certain line of reasoning, while disregarding others.

Cultural norms play a strong part of our assumptions. We are taught by parents and religion and society. Within our heads comes a structure of what we think we need and what we think will fulfill those needs. A person’s experience strengthens or weakens that set of assumptions and helps us understand our perceived needs. Experience is the proximity of me and all things around me set on the timeline of life.

I will make choices this day because of who I have created myself to be. I have become who I am because of the assumptions that I have accepted from the people I choose to be close to and my perception of the result of past experience.

I am what I do. I do what I am. And oh how different my choices may be if I change every thing that I place around me.