react vs. respond.

Though technically these words are synonyms, I am going to use them to designate between two general modes of human operation. I am going to set up a spectrum. On one end is the term react on the other end is the term respond. Although these ideas seem applicable to any action, what I am talking about more specifically is what goes into the way a person acts according to an event.

In the mode that I am calling react the way an event impacts the person's impulses and reflexes almost completely controls the person's actions. A good example of this is when on child hits another child and this second child cries out and hits back.

What I am calling respond is when an event merely informs a person's actions. Here the person has beliefs, philosophies, and purposes that also strongly inform the person's chosen actions. Two quintessential examples of this are when Jesus over turned the money changer's table and when he was silent before his accusers. The actions of people in the temple, the scripture he quotes at the time, his being God among other things informed his response. And in regards to the later example, though human experience would make one think that the tendency to shout at one's accusers would be great, Jesus fulfills prophesy by remaining silent. (I wrote another blog about this check it out it is titled: A serious post posted on: September 10, 2008)

The reason that I describe this as a spectrum is that I find it rare when adults act with extremes. It is usually in subtle and culturally accepted ways that people act more on the react end of the spectrum. One example of tending toward the react side is a proclivity toward doing what is easiest. Another example that I find my self drawn to is the pull and lies of consumerism, or the impulse buy. Consumerism tells me to be dissatisfied with what I have and to desire and seek other things. (It also encourages me to become addicted to, I think it is, the dopamine rush that occurs when I get something new.)

It seems to me that as a person matures their actions are more and more governed by responses. When a person's actions tend toward the react side of the spectrum, this might be a sign of subtle immaturity in the area of those actions.