Can individual humans change? Or are they stuck being who they are forever? Do humans have a personality equilibrium? Is it that they can make short-term changes only and then gravitate back to their original personalities?

It is pretty clear that humans can at least make short-term changes in themselves. The question is whether they can make long-term changes which in effect make them into different people.

Do human personalities travel a steady line in which changes in personality are only short interruptions - always tending back towards a base personality? Or do human personalities travel in a branch-like way in which they travel down different branches away from the original personality?

It seems that long-term changes in individual humans are difficult. Once a change is made there is a tendency to relapse to the previous behavior. And in order to keep a change for the long term it looks like constant maintenance is required in order to keep that change.

If the change brought about positive conditions, the maintenance might be very low to none though. This is because the resulting positive enforcement maintains the change itself. If on the other hand, you don't see much benefit from the change, it may be difficult to impossible to maintain.

Another question is whether the human really changed if rigorous maintenance is required to keep the change. If given the chance, he/she would go right back to their previous behavior - so is that change?

In summation, it at least looks like humans can change if they see the change as positive and it brings about positive reinforcement.

We don't love people, we love our imagined images of people.

Who said that longevity should be a desirable goal? Aren't "brave heroes" the people that die for a "noble" cause? Isn't it villains that are more commonly depicted as ones seeking eternal life?

Is it better to go out in the prime of life, charging into the thick of things, living life fully than as a drooling, scared, physically weak old person with dementia? As with most things, it probably comes down to a middle point. Don't hide in a cave in fear of dying your entire life and don't give way to reckless abandon.

Old age comes with many ills. Both physical and mental weakness eventually afflict the old human. And to many humans, life on earth is a tough existence and a release from that struggle would be welcome.

Death is inevitable so what is the point of trying to escape it? Why go above and beyond to try and maintain a breathing body if the particular human is barely alive? It might be reasonable to patch a wound, but it may not be reasonable to go to extreme measures to heal the extremely sick. It is typically not for the sake of the extremely sick since it only makes them suffer longer. It is more to fulfill the emotional needs of those around them. This could be seen as cruel and selfish. Make the sick person suffer longer so that you can fulfill a need in yourself.

Death is not a "bad" thing. It is as much a part of us as birth. You can't run from it, and doing so has caused a lot of suffering. Humans think of death as something that causes them to "lose" their loved ones. Mental illness, long-term-kidnapping, long-term-arguments, and ending of relationships can do that too. Is death all that special, should it get such a negative stigma? At least with death, there is at least one person not crying, feeling sad, or suffering.

It is immature for humans to try and cling onto "life". Keep yourself healthy and tend to your wounds. Let the extremely sick live out their lives in comfort without prolonging their suffering and without extreme measures. Learn to deal with loss since it could come from other places besides death and it will be something you have to deal with eventually anyway.

It is easy of course to look at the alleged faults of others. Or rather, what in others is different from ourselves that we do not like. Sometimes things are only faults when we do not appreciate them when in fact there is nothing faulty about those things.

What has always been difficult though is to see our own faults. I more than most am aware of my own faults. I know of them because of a deeper introspection that I practice. I have been examining myself for many years. I had learned that people are very similar and learned that I could learn about people by learning about myself and learning how and why I act and think. It has proven effective in being able to apply what I learn about myself to the population at large.

Where there could be errors and possibly large errors is where I might be different than the population at large. I never thought that it would be an issue but it certainly could be. So, I have to be aware in instances where I may behave different than an average person. That is why it is better to examine the fundamental thoughts and actions instead of too detailed ones that may vary by personality. For example, we should all pretty much be similar in our tendency for self-centeredness and our concept of fairness. So, it is important to examine the larger broader scope than the finer everyday details of choosing chocolate or vanilla ice cream.

The other way that I am aware of my faults beyond using introspection, is by comparing myself to idealized figures that are without fault. One might compare themselves to what Jesus of Nazareth taught or to what Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha taught. It is easy to know something is a fault if you have something to judge it against.

A more difficult method of determining whether a trait is a faulty one is by seeing if it harms you or helps you. Typically, being quick to anger harms you and would usually be considered a fault because of this. Being wasteful would typically harm you and could be considered a fault. The problem with this method is knowing what is going to be harmful or helpful. Typically, helpful things occur more in the long term which is hard to see. A quick lie can help you in the short term but harm you in the long term. It takes a lot of historic knowledge to be able to apply this method of fault determination effectively. You have no idea what the long term effects of something is so you have to use historic data to guide you.

And of course, once you learn about your faults and that you have them your question becomes what should you do with that knowledge. One course of action would be to try and minimize or remove those faults in oneself. This of course is not easy due to the ingrained nature of these traits. Some of them are learned and some of them sit hardwired into the base of our brain. You basically have to actively train and practice to overcome these natural tendencies. You have to constantly monitor your thoughts and actions and stop your thoughts from running away from you. You have to actively control your thoughts all the time. You have to learn to recognize undesirable thoughts and stop them in their place and replace them with the types of thoughts that do not lead to faulty behavior. It is a lot of effort and not many people want to work that hard and are willing to live with their faults.

Is it even worth it? We are not guaranteed a long and fruitful life on this planet. Is it worth the time and effort of trying to remove our own faults? Living without faults has a potential advantage of keeping you out of trouble and possibly making you someone to be admired and could potentially make you into a calm and peaceful entity full of love for all mankind living in blissful quiet contemplation. But would it? Might other humans think that you think you are better than they are? Might they be jealous of you? Would anyone listen to you? Would they understand you? Might all that effort not be worth the short time that we are alive? Might the outside world and its constant struggle come knocking on your door and bring chaos and temptation with it. Is something like removing your faults only available to you if you live in the woods alone and away from all humans? Will they eventually find you?

What seems to the typical solution to things is to balance the opposites and arrive somewhere in the middle. So by this framework, we would not try and remove all of our faults since the effort and outside influence are too great to make it worthwhile. But neither would we live by our whims and let loose our passions as this would cause us a lot of problems. We should then try and learn what our faults are and reduce their potency. We will still get angry but it will be controlled quicker. We will still be selfish but at times we will give more. And by striking this balance we will make our lives easier so that the effort to achieve it pays for itself.

Over 200 years ago British soldiers marched from Boston to the towns of Lexington and Concord in order to seize weapons that were stored there by the citizens of Massachusetts. The British commander stationed in Boston feared an armed rebellion and wanted to make sure one could not occur and so he sent his troops to take the supply of weapons from the citizens of Massachusetts.

The citizens of Massachusetts thought the British government did not have a right to tell them what to do. The British government was willing to use a large force of professional soldiers in order to make sure the citizens of Massachusetts did what they were told. The citizens of Massachusetts thought that the only way to prevent their rights from being trampled on by a brutal dictator was to take up arms against this occupational force living amongst them.

So when the British soldiers arrived in Lexington on their way to Concord in order to seize the weapons of the Massachusetts citizenry, they were fired upon by citizens of Massachusetts that were willing to fight for freedom from the British government. The battles at Lexington and Concord are the first of the American Revolution.

The proper role of the human female is to remain chaste until guaranteed a secure and stable relationship from a human male.

Human females that deviate from this role will be considered "spoilers" to the main group of chaste human females. These spoilers lower the bar for the main group. They are the females that engage in sexual activity without the guarantee of a secure and stable relationship. They give human males the idea that all females should engage in sexual activity when prompted. This then makes it hard for chaste females to secure a stable long-term relationship due to new found expectations about human females brought about by the spoilers.

Not only do spoilers make entering a stable long-term relationship difficult for chaste women, but they make maintaining in-progress stable long-term relationships difficult. Spoilers are the ones that engage in "cheating" with a human male that is already engaged in a long-term relationship. Without spoilers, the human male would not have a likely ability to engage in sexual relations outside his current relationship.

One can observe in human females the tendency to show anger towards the "spoilers" that engage in sexual relations with their mates. One might find it odd that in some instances more anger is shown towards the "other woman" than to the male mate when an instance of cheating is discovered. But when looked at with the idea of the "other woman" being a "spoiler", it makes sense.

Human females gain control over human males mainly through sexual gatekeeping. They have control when they are in charge of when human males can and cannot have sexual relations. Spoilers degrade this ability and put the power in the hands of human males. Spoilers thus remove power from human females as a whole and thus human females are rightfully angry at spoilers.