Tok ‘Habit Is Stronger Than Reason’ to What Extent Is This Tru in 2 Aoks

‘Habit is stronger than reason. ’ To what extent is this true in two areas of knowledge? Habit could be referred to as a tradition people have. Many people have habits that they are unaware of, for example, when people put their socks on, some people do the right first and some people do the left first. Habit is a factor that is present all through a person’s daily life. Habit represents the way in which we do things because we do it every day continuously. Habit is particularly important because learning something doesn’t make you better at it unless you practice it enough times.

An old kung fu saying is “I’m not afraid of the man that known 1000 moves and practiced them all once, I’m afraid of the man that knows one move and practiced it 1000 times. ” This quote means that when someone has a habit of doing something, the habit keeps getting stronger and stronger also meaning that it could become much harder to stop. When a person learns something new, there are a few stages which the brain as to go through. The first one being where you don’t know about it and you don’t know how to do it.

Then there are a couple of steps where your brain learns to adapt to it and where you can practice something enough times but you still have to think about every step you are doing. The last step to this is where the all of it becomes automatic and that is when habit overpowers reason. An area of knowing where habit is much stronger than reason is in Ethics. My uncle who is a heavy smoker and knows all the consequences of smoking has obviously developed a habit of smoking and cannot stop it. My uncle comes home from work every day and the first thing he does is smoke a few cigarettes before eating or sleeping.

Sometimes a habit can lead to an addiction where it can become dangerous showing how strong a habit can get. My uncle is aware that the habit has become too strong to stop it. He is aware of everything that he is putting himself into but refuses to stop smoking. He had told me last year that he feels that every part of his body is telling him to stop smoking and everyone around him tells him to stop smoking, but he said that it is something that helps him calm down even though he is causing harm to his body.

This shows that when a habit has developed, it is hard to stop and you feel incomplete without it, as if something is not right. This is also another way in which we can say that habit is stronger than reason. Another way in which ethics shows that habit is stronger than reason is; when someone drops their books in front of you, a person’s instant response would be to help them pick the books up because it is the right thing to do and there is no harm in picking up someone’s books.

However, if you had known that the person whose books just fell was a murderer, would you still pick up the books? Reason would indicate that you should run away from the murderer. Most people though would never think that the person whose books just dropped would be a murderer (because of how good ethics and morals teach you that everyone is good on the inside and I someone needs help, the right thing to do would be to help them) which is why you would help the person pick up the books because no one would ever think of it being a murderer.

This shows that people with good ethics and good morals never need a reason for doing the right thing, it can become a habit to be a ‘good person’, this includes opening the door for someone or helping an old lady cross the road. Moreover, another area of knowing where habit has been shown to be stronger than reason is in the Arts. In the arts, say theatre arts, dance and photography, habit can be a lot stronger than reason. They say practice makes perfect, like mentioned before. This does not mean that reason is no longer important. What it means is that habit takes priority.

In movies for example when actors are practicing their acting or musicians are practicing their instruments or when dancers are practicing their dancing, they would need to practice over and over again until the performance becomes a habit. Until the actors become their character and everything comes out natural and fluent and until the musicians practice their music enough times that they don’t need to read their notes because they remember every note of every song and it becomes unlikely that they will forget it and until the dance becomes something that becomes automatic and there is no need to think about when you are doing.

This is an example of how a habit can be adapted on purpose and the person is fully aware that they have adapted this habit but they are still able to stop this habit without reasoning. There are cases where habits are shown to be much stronger than reason but there are some cases where reason is more powerful than habit. Where no matter what habit you have adopted, your reason is stronger and the habit becomes nothing. An example of this would be in Mathematics where reason is generally more important than habit. In math you would learn many different equations and finding the correct way to solve a problem.

To approach a problem in mathematics, you would need to use reasoning to find out how to approach the answer. Even though you may need some form of habit to help you layout your answer, reason is much more important than habit in this case. Many answers in math require you to evaluate the question and understand a lot more than what the question is asking you to do and there can me a lot of information and many questions may require different processing skills so habit is not an important factor compared to reason in this case.

Humans by design are creatures of habit. Every day we tend to go through the same ritual if daily life. It may be the same routine every morning (i. e: wake up, shower, change cloths, pack bag, put on shoes, etc) or it could be sitting in the same seat as you do every day even when you can move if you want to. Sometimes however, you can break out of your habit easily and sometimes it can be very difficult because it becomes a way of life.