Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behavior. The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern (FAP), in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a clearly defined stimulus.
Like all animals, humans have instincts, genetically hard-wired behaviors that enhance our ability to cope with vital environmental contingencies.
Our innate fear of wild animals is an example. Other instincts, including denial, revenge, tribal loyalty, greed and our urge to procreate, now threaten our very existence. Any attempt to control human behavior is bound to meet with resistance and disapproval. Unless we can change our behavior, humans are facing the end of civilization. Our problem has several elements.
(1) We have invented economic and social systems that encourage greedy behavior, and we have actually institutionalized runaway greed.
(2) We are in a state of complete denial about the growth of human populations.
(3) Earth's finite resources simply cannot support 7 billion of us in the style to which we’d like to live.
(4) We must make a choice between quantity and quality of human life.
(5) To head off the inevitable collapse, we can no longer wait and merely react but we must become proactive.
We must find ways to control dangerous human instincts, especially denial, revenge, tribal loyalty, greed and our urge to procreate.
People have an instinctive fear of wild animals. We are afraid of wild animals because humans evolved alongside these creatures, many of which are dangerous. This fear saved the lives of our ancestors and became hard-wired innate behavior, also known as instinct. Similarly we possess many other instincts that were adaptive during most of human history. Our immense propensity for denial may have enabled prehistoric humans to cope with menacing situations, but today we use denial to avoid confronting reality, especially overpopulation (a word that has become politically incorrect). Tribal loyalty and revenge made sense when we lived in small tribes, but both these instincts now threaten our very existence.
Instincts are very natural and some are due to what we've seen before or what we have heard so literally it become our protector and and our way out of trouble.
