Nadine's Theories on Human Nature

[morning_person]

1.  At all times, people need someone they can love and someone they can hate.  The someone they can love and the someone they can hate can be the same person, the self, different people, and their identities can be fluid.  The someone they can hate is more important.  Without the someone they can hate, people are lost.
2. People generally act in a fashion that they believe to be just.  Whether or not it is actually just is subject to debate.  But people generally believes their own actions are just and they expect justice to be carried out.
3. Children have the capacity to learn what is taught to them.  If taught a foreign language, a child can learn it.  If taught more sophisticated vocabulary, a child can learn it.  If taught multiplication, a child can learn it.  You get the idea.
4. A person desperately needs to matter to other people (Actually, I totally ripped this idea of Rabbi Harold Kushner, but it's a great one)
5. Much of human behavior can be explained by cost-benefit analysis.
6. Popularity is elusive even to the people who are said to have it.
7. People do not actually want money, sex, or beauty as much as they are said to want it.
8. A person who can only absorb and process rejection is depressed, but a person who cannot process rejection at all is also prone to self-destruction.
9. The more money one has, the more money one requires.
10. Men are not as dumb as society thinks they are.  Women, in many cases, are dumber.

to be continued...

1. In the absence of problems, people create imaginary problems.  These imaginary problems serve as crutches in the presence of real problems (and I mean crutches in the positive and negative connotations; the imaginary problems lift people up to the task of solving a problem and make it impossible to walk upright if used instead of facing the actual problem)
2. This may sound contradictory with #2 from above, but I would say that people intrinsically recognize some universal standards of moral behavior.  They may prefer a moral relativism in their politics or craft a version of justice that goes against those standards, but the working against a standard is an implicit acknowledgement of its existence
3. Feelings are temporary.  Very temporary