In the passage "Immune to Reality" Daniel Gilbert informs us about the important role of our psychological immune system (PIS) in different situation. Gilbert says, "Ignorance of our P.I.S causes us to predict incorrectly the circumstance under which we will face" (3). In other words, every day people are shocked because when they have thought a situation would make them happy, but that results to the opposite. They do not realize that before the circumstance happen. They only pay attention to their personal belief and they ignore the unconscious. In contrast, their brain plays an important role after every situation they will face to engage their P.I.S especially, when something bad happen to them. In the past few years many studies have demonstrated the role of our PIS in each situation and how it proceeds to make us have a different point of view after something happen to us, especially when it is something bad. If we understand our PIS that will help us, first to manage our emotion, second have trend less to pursuing happiness, third manage our inaction, and finally fight to survive in each situation we cannot control.
The ignorance of our P.I.S can cause us to predict incorrectly or misjudge the result of major events. In other word, if we wish to live a better life, we must think how our PIS will participate on some events that happen to us, because it is more likely to be trigged in a difficult situation. For example, a couple has decided to have a kid then the wife get pregnant. After a couple of months, they have learned by their doctor that it would be dangerous for the woman to keep the baby. At first it was very hard for them to accept the fact they may have to decide about an abortion, because when she was thinking about having this baby she was also thinking about her life and her husband would be affected from all the happiness this baby could have brought. She was thinking that everything will be fine. She did not prepare herself to that eventuality because she had never thought her pregnancy would go wrong. She had to make a choice, because if she decided to keep the baby she will lose her husband and most important her life. Finally, she decided to get an abortion even if it was not easy for her because she was thinking how she would be devastated by this situation, and it was the perfect situation for her P.I.S to help her fight through this misadventure and at the end to make her stronger because she had taken a difficult decision. Fortunately, life will start again she will have the chance to have another baby and keep her marriage and all of this will not be possible without the PIS. In the photography experiment Gilbert states, "Inescapable, inevitable, and irrevocable trigger the P.I.S" (5). In addition, she did not really have a choice, but she did it. As a result, to make her feel better the P.I.S lies to her, which mean guide her to see the situation the way it was in a positive way just to accept the fact. If she was notice that before she would not worry to take this decision because the PIS is present as a therapist to help her take that in a positive way.
Although the P.I.S is something we can't control because it is on our unconscious and the unconscious is the part of consciousness that is not currently in focal awareness. If we try to understand how the P.I.S affect our emotion face different matter that happen to us we will pay more attention when we are dreaming in what could make us happy. Sometimes we think if we have a lot of money we will be happy because we will be able to buy a big house, travel to different country and procure our self an expensive car. In addition, we will make an effort to achieve this goal, maybe by explore the talent we have such as a good singer or concentrate on our capacity to have a profession to offer our self a good opportunity in life after some year. This entire king of thinking is because we are trying to catch an idea, which we think would make us happy. In contrast, even if we achieve this goal we will feel we still miss something. The reason is because we do not predict the future with all kind of disadvantage we could also meet in this new life. For example, when we will have this money we will manage more stress because we will feel insecure, so we will need a body guard to protect us. Second of all we can develop some disease because of stress experience. The list above shows us understanding the unconscious of happiness will help us to not exaggerate on what we believe will make us happy, but is more important for us to manage the way we pursuing our happiness.
If we want to change the way we make decision we have to make an effort to understand the P.I.S. In each situation we have a different message. For example, how someone who was trying to not attempt to take a foolish decision will feel bad just because he thinks maybe if he has trying that will result for a better benefit. This is a kind of game of our unconscious, even if it's true like we will feel bad because we do not try at least, but at the moment we did not notice that the future could be better. According to the scenario, when someone own a company Gilbert says" People regrets inactions more than actions"(3). In simpler words, imagine someone who has a different number to buy a lottery ticket, but he gave up. He noticed later the numbers he was about to play are the winner numbers. For sure he will feel bad, but what happen if this money was just the exact fare to take the train to go to work? We know sometimes risk is a way to achieve some goal in life, but sometimes if we feel we will not gain any advantage why we should take that risk? The advice would be when we have received that message from the unconscious; we have to tell our self when we were living that situation the reality was not like that. So why we should worry about the result it brings us, when we knew the choice we made was for the best at that time.
Happiness is a goal in life, even though we understand its unconscious aspect that will not change the way we are pursuing it. It is impossible to manage something we do not have control; it is kind of the same when we go to sleep and we wake up the next day, and we do not know what we will have to deal with during the day. The best in this case is we have to stay aware and if something we do not notice happened we would have to deal with it in a way to put the situation under control just to keep doing what we have to do. It is the same as when the weather specialist informs us that in a couple week we will be facing a hurricane, even though we cannot control that we adapt different measure to survive, such as if we live close to the sea or our area is vulnerable when it is raining the best we will have to do is to leave the place and take every important stuff with us, and to protect the house we put some hood to block the windows. This kind of behavior is an adaptation in some situation we cannot control, but we have some strategies to protect our self from the consequences that could bring.
Work Cited
Gilbert, Daniel "Immune to Reality" The New Humanities Reader 4th ed. Ed
Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer.
Boston: Wordsworth, 2001.1-8.Print.
I want to put it in MLA format also i want to reduce in 1000 words and also please tye grammatical.