Assignment 5: Thoreau sees bravery, intelligence and spiritual depth in the instinctual behavior of animals. Can it be that some of the character traits we most admire in other persons are also matters of instinct, as with the animals in this passage? If character is a matter of insouciant instinct, can we condemn those who don't have it? Cf. Menand, “We think that sucking it up, mastering our fears is a sign of character. But do we think that people who are naturally fearless lack character? We usually think the opposite. Yet those people are just born lucky.”

The perception of character is difficult to investigate because it is something that most people do subconsciously rather than being aware of it. It takes a specific hint or request to make someone notice, how much they really analyze other people’s behaviors in their everyday lives. And it is often not in a positive way. Humans like to gossip and make fun of others, you just have to turn on the TV to realize that is what 80 % of the entertainment consists of and therefore sells. So when talking about character, there is no way around digging deep into people’s minds to reveal what is truly underneath the surface. However, this is quite difficult and even if you get people to answer your questions, you can never be sure whether they are telling the truth instead of embellishing themselves in order to appear as a good person.

                Why do we surround ourselves with certain people in our lives? Is it because we have much in common? Or maybe because we can benefit from them? Or is it because we sincerely like their character? Whether it is love or friendship, it should be the first and the latter in order to maintain a long-lasting relationship. Still, there is this one question to answer. What makes us like the other person’s character, while we think other people are just stupid and therefore do not become friends with them? Several reasons can be listed here, because obviously everybody’s priorities are different. Nevertheless, there are some traits that are generally considered desirable, like politeness, helpfulness, altruism and a few more. Apart from these, opinions differ on this question. The ones just mentioned are things we get taught within the frame of education, whether it was from our parents or at school. There is no special skill that we need in order to acquire these. A person, who has internalized all of these, may be likeable but are they also admirable? Most people would probably answer this with a “no”, because it takes something extraordinary to be admired.     “Charisma” is one of the expressions that people use frequently, when they come across such an extraordinary individual. Other admirable personality traits that not everybody has are – amongst others – persistence, sincerity, mental strength, and the discipline to pull oneself together when it is necessary. The interesting thing about this is that even though it often seems as if people who have these traits were just born lucky – which is sometimes indeed the case – it is more often accounted for by imitational learning. This “learning by watching” principle begins in early childhood and in the best case never stops. This, of course, is a highly discussed topic in psychology and child development (nature vs. nurture), which has evoked much commotion. I personally believe that it is a mixture of the two. Sometimes, people are just gifted and other times they subconsciously imitate the actions of their parents and other family members. The important thing is that due to all the reasons above, it would be audacious to judge people by their strength of character, because we can never know, how this behavior has been acquired and how much input the person had in it.

Being judgmental is commonly known as an undesirable trait.