There are certain types of event where the subject’s emotional reaction seems fairly universal: physical harm, breach of sexual integrity, physical illness, deprivation of basic physical necessities, certain threats to security, or loss of loved ones. Other events (societal, social, personal, and abstract, etc.) seem much more susceptible to variation between individuals and cultures. I have reacted to the same stimulus on different occasions in different ways. I have reacted to the same stimulus differently than the people around me. Some events I have moved past swiftly; others, less so. The reaction depends on my cultural conditioning, my individual temperament and disposition, my personal circumstances, and timing. This is no less true for physical phenomena than for social and other phenomena. Physical pain itself may be measurably constant, but my reaction to it, my experience, is subject to many other factors.
When I read about other cultures, it is striking how certain events that seem frivolous to me are taken very seriously there. The converse is true: when I have lived in other cultures and returned to my home country, I have been shocked on being re-exposed after a break to people’s concern with matters likewise seen as trivial by the foreign culture.
At individual level, there is huge variation in how I have responded to loss, setback, and physical suffering at different times and compared to other people.
A distinction is furthermore to be made between reaction in the moment and long-term reaction.
The reaction in the moment to an event is largely outside my control: in principle, how I react to events is within my control, in that my beliefs, values, attitudes, habits, etc., which are the chief drivers of my reaction, are within my control. However, once the system is set up to respond in a particular way, by the time the trigger activates the reaction, the best I can do is mop up the reaction and then look at making more fundamental changes to beliefs, values, attitudes etc. so that I am less vulnerable emotionally to external events in the future. If you are speeding and brake suddenly, you have set yourself up for a particular experience. You can slow down and drive more prudently in the future, but you'll have to take this present experience as it comes.
The reaction after the event is much more down to me: again, the process of reaction is activated automatically based on underlying beliefs, values, attitudes, habits etc., but since the reaction is occurring in real time, there is greater opportunity to adjust the beliefs, values, attitudes, and habits, also in real time, to redirect the reaction. For instance, dwelling on the injustice of a particular wrongful act by another will certainly increase emotional pain. Acquiring perspective and spiritual understanding will promptly relieve it. Although I was raised to react in certain ways, and the programming may run deep, changing the attitude and changing the real-time mental narrative is possible. Emotional responses can loop indefinitely or can be remodelled and cleansed.
It is important to point out that I am not responsible for my genetic predisposition towards certain reactions, nor for the environmental factors that took those building blocks and constructed algorithmic systems governing how I would react to what was happening around me. I am responsible, however, for whether I simply let those systems run or stop and ask myself: Are my reactions helpful? Are they desirable? Are they functional? Are they rational? I am entitled to feel as upset as I want about what happens to me. But do I want to feel that way? Do I want my emotions to be controlled by others' misconduct?
The events that have occurred to me in my life have come increasingly under control. I had little control as a child, although, certainly from my teenage years onwards, a great deal of agency started to develop. As an adult, pretty much every circumstance is fully or partly dependent on the choices I have made and continue to make. Any event that occurs to me therefore lies somewhere on the spectrum between 'entirely not my fault' to 'I contributed greatly or entirely to this.' This means that very many 'bad events' have actually turned out to be avoidable structurally by living differently, by making different choices, and by consorting with different people in different environments. Relatively few circumstances and events are genuinely 'thrust upon me' without some contribution or assent on my part. This is not to detract from the wrongdoing of others. When I have been physically harassed or attacked, recognising that I on occasion unnecessarily placed myself in dangerous situations does not reduce the aggressor’s culpability.
The question, therefore, of the extent to which I am responsible for how I feel is one of multiple spectra, which change over time.
To sum up: although physical stimuli will automatically produce certain physical responses, my experience of those physical responses is indeed governed by my internal set-up. With everything else: the experience is entirely governed by that set-up. Genetics and environment may have generated the programming I entered adulthood with, but that programming is mutable. Reactions in the moment cannot be controlled in the moment, but the underlying programming can be revised over time. Longer term reactions are certainly much more amenable both to programming adjustments and to real-time management. All in all, how I feel is now largely down to me. I am entitled to any emotional experience I like. The question is more: what emotional experience do I want?