The conscious human mind does nothing but separate and categorize.
This is an example of mental laziness/efficiency. The first time we experience something we create a mental cubbyhole for that item. We then file every subsequent similar item or experience in the same, predefined category. For instance, most people have a large category for men and one for women. There are then subcategories for friends, family, co-workers, employers, customers, etc. The more familiar we are with a subject the narrower the category is. Most people probably have close friends who have their own category all to themselves. Casual acquaintances and strangers we are often quick to dismiss, especially if their tastes don't obviously match our own.
The sub-conscious retains every experience of our lives.
I hypothesize that our emotions are the way our sub-conscious communicates with our conscious mind. Every person has a unique accumulation of life experiences; every experience teaches us something about the world around us. Our sub-conscious mind can instantly review our entire life experience and then feed that information to our conscious mind as a combination of emotions. Our conscious mind then picks which feeling is the strongest, or most logical, based on current short-term conditions and represses or denies the rest. The ability to repress thoughts we perceive as socially unacceptable or without obvious value is what we commonly refer to as "self-control". Like most things, once we get into the habit of denying certain types of thoughts, it becomes effortless. The only problem is these repressed thoughts still manifest themselves as emotions. Our conscious mind can deny they exist but our sub-conscious is like a computer. It cannot forget anything. Our conscious mind only retains the information we believe is relevant at the moment. Part of the job of the conscious mind is to separate the relevant from the irrelevant. The conscious mind names and categorizes things and sets limits. It separates good from evil, rich from poor, husband from wife, normal from abnormal.
Every decision we make is based on our unique combination of accumulated life experiences.
Every day, every minute, we are adding to and shaping our ability to make decisions. Our conscious mind has a set system of beliefs that we base our conscious decisions on but these conscious decisions are influenced by our "emotions" that are the complex communication of our accumulated life experiences held in our sub-conscious mind. Every previous experience of our lives is a factor in every decision we make and will ever make. Our conscious mind simplifies our experience and forms our ideals. We seek to confirm our ideals by talking to people who agree with them and watching entertainment that confirms them. Good conquers evil etc. Everything we say, everything we do, everything we wear, everything we own expresses some aspect of our life’s experience and consequently our personality and belief system, since the two are inexorably intertwined. The better an object or idea reflects our conscious mind’s picture of how the world should be, the more we like it. This explains why people like certain music, movies, TV shows, clothing, people, stores, restaurants etc. Everything a person desires, does, and has is part of a complex reflection of their unique accumulated life experience.
Theory of Human Behavior Part 1
Theory of Human Behavior Part 2
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