We’re all meat computers, with a little agency thrown in.

As I’ve recently written elsewhere:

Sometimes the answers don’t come to us until later in life. I had some major epiphanies (where you finally realize something or encounter the answer to a big question or problem, such as the “why” of something) at ages 42, 45, 46, 50, and 55.

Some of those answers I could have obtained if I had just been humble enough to get some professional counseling. Even things that can’t be cured or fixed can most often be managed better or worked around once you know what you’re dealing with, and obtain knowledge, or skills, or ability, or medicine to use as tools.

Trauma from our youth can’t be totally erased (well, hopefully it will be erased or totally healed in the resurrection), but finally finding out the reasons or possible reasons why God allows certain bad things to happen can give comfort and perspective in knowing that there was or is or will be some ultimate purpose or reason that contributes to some higher good in the big picture eternal view of things.

It seems to me like the institutional church was late in coming around to acknowledging mental health problems, and advocating mental health solutions to many personal and family situations. In the past, church leaders’ answers to all problems seemed to be limited to “keep the commandments, and have faith”, as if the proper application of agency by all the parties involved could resolve everything.

I have recently come to the belief that the majority of our mortal experiences and decision-making is due to each of us being more than 98% “meat computer”, and less than 2% of each person is agency. The vast majority of our decision-making (in my opinion) is due to nature and nurture: our in-born built-in wiring plus the myriad of inputs from everyone and everything around us.

That’s perhaps the major reason why we shouldn’t judge each other, because only God knows which of, or to what degree, our decisions are truely based on agency and which are due to our in-born wiring and the zillions of inputs throughout our lives.

http://www.mormonmentality.org/2012/12/29/my-christmas-prayer-of-2012.htm/comment-page-1#comment-155259