What Makes a Person Tick?: Psychology, Choice, War, Music, and the Human Spirit

We Are Not Lab Rats — We Are Human

I was chatting with a friend the other day about the psychology of people — what makes a person tick? At some point, that question stops being academic and becomes deeply personal. I found myself saying, I’m tired of questioning how people are what they are. I’m tired of being the guinea pig. The lab rat. Life, like psychology, strips you down through trial and error — especially when you’re raising kids, navigating divorce, learning to rebuild, and testing whether compassion or cruelty defines you.

Modern psychology teaches that humans are shaped by patterns, attachments, conditioning, and fear — but also by choice. Sigmund Freud described how people often repeat painful experiences not because they want to suffer, but because the familiar feels safe, even when it’s destructive. Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Awareness is the first act of freedom, and choice is the engine that propels healing. Healing isn’t quick; it’s a daily decision to face fear rather than repeat trauma.

The Trials of Parenting and Divorce

Raising children often feels like running experiments none of us were trained for. Everyone learns through trial and error. You try, you fail, you adapt. Divorce accelerates this process brutally. It dismantles identity, security, and future plans all at once. Yet even there, psychology offers a truth that religion and philosophy echo: when everything collapses, choice remains.

When you go through something as raw as divorce, you learn that you can choose to hurt the people who hurt you — or you can choose to heal, grow, love, and rebuild. You can build up a person, or you can tear them down. That ongoing decision — often made quietly, daily, unseen — is the core of what makes a person tick.

Sacred Texts and the Freedom to Choose

Long before psychology had language for trauma, conditioning, or cognition, sacred texts addressed the same internal struggle. The Torah states plainly: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). This is not metaphorical. It’s a demand for agency in a world that constantly pressures people toward despair.

The King James Version of the Bible reinforces the psychological power of thought: “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7, KJV). Cognitive psychology would later echo this idea — our internal narratives shape our external behaviors, and repeated behaviors solidify identity.

The Qur’an offers a parallel truth: “Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (Qur’an 13:11). Transformation begins internally. No government, institution, or ideology can substitute for inner awareness and responsibility.

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, articulated this shared truth across psychology and spirituality: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” That space — narrow, fragile, and often painful — is where dignity survives even under oppression.

What is out there?

Death, War, and the End-of-the-World Question

End-of-the-world films resonate because they compress life into urgency. In Armageddon (1998), Bruce Willis’s character, Harry Stamper, chooses self-sacrifice so humanity can survive. The film isn’t really about an asteroid — it’s about who people become when time runs out. “I know the president’s chief science adviser. He said the Earth is going to be destroyed.” That line is existential, not cinematic. It forces the question: What matters when nothing else does?

Other films like The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Deep Impact, and Don’t Look Up explore denial, fear, collective panic, and moral reckoning. Psychology shows that mortality awareness strips away performative behavior. When death feels close, values surface.

Last Holiday (2006), starring Queen Latifah, presents the same question without explosions. When her character believes she has only weeks to live, she stops shrinking. She lives honestly, generously, joyfully. The psychology is clear: most people do not fear death as much as they fear never having lived. Ernest Becker called this the “denial of death” — the quiet avoidance that keeps people from fully inhabiting their lives.

So the question becomes unavoidable: What would you do if you were told you had weeks? Days? What goes through someone’s mind before a car wreck, before a robbery, before an irreversible decision? Psychology suggests it’s rarely logic — it’s fear, desperation, unresolved pain, or the longing to be seen. Psychology, choice, war, music, and the human spirit are all keywords forming the very foundation of current events, no matter what platform, political spectrum, or era.

Current Events: Iran, Israel, Protest, and Human Dignity

Right now, these questions are not theoretical. Across Iran, protests have erupted in response to economic hardship, political repression, and the ongoing denial of personal freedom. Demonstrators — many of them young — have faced arrests, violence, and death. Slogans like “Woman, Life, Freedom” (“Zan, Zendegi, Azadi”) reflect demands not only for political change but for psychological dignity: autonomy, identity, and choice.

Women have been at the center of this movement. Campaigns such as My Stealthy Freedom, founded by journalist Masih Alinejad, challenged compulsory hijab laws and asserted that a woman’s body is not state property. Protest songs like “Baraye” by Shervin Hajipour became emotional anchors for millions, transforming individual grief into collective meaning.

Free Women

At the same time, international cultural solidarity has emerged. In Israel, artists and organizations have created murals and public art honoring Woman, Life, Freedom, written in Farsi, Hebrew, and English. These acts are not governmental policy; they are human gestures. They say: we see you. They recognize that Israel’s “Never Again” — a vow not to die, not to disappear — resonates with Iran’s “Never Again” — a refusal to let the spirit be crushed.

Despite geopolitical hostility, culture continues to build bridges where politics cannot. Understanding psychology and allowing individuals the freedom of choice seems to always be at the foundation of war. Perhaps music, art, and culture can tame the human spirit.

Psychology of Resistance, Culture, and Meaning

Psychology helps explain why people resist even when the cost is high. Concepts like identity fusion show that when personal identity aligns with collective meaning, people are willing to risk everything. Music, dance, art, and protest chants are not decoration — they are survival mechanisms. They regulate emotion, reinforce belonging, and preserve hope.

This is why authoritarian systems fear art and music. Culture keeps the psyche alive. Songs like Baraye or murals celebrating women’s freedom are not just expressions — they are psychological acts of defiance.

In times of war and repression, the human mind reorganizes priorities. Safety becomes secondary to meaning. Survival without dignity is not enough. This is what makes a person tick when everything else is stripped away.

Personal Reflection: Dance, Choice, and the Right to Be Human

Head piece

I love dance and music, language and culture. I have a deep fascination with Persia — its poetry, rhythm, history, and soul. I would love to dance with the women of Iran, to celebrate life through movement, not fear.

I’ve worn a headpiece in respect and celebration, and I believe fiercely in a woman’s right to choose — to wear a hijab or refuse it. Choice is not rebellion; it is humanity. Clothing should never be coercion. Identity should never be enforced at gunpoint.

Culture is not a threat. Dance is not defiance. Music is not criminal. These are expressions of a living soul.

Psychology, Choice, War, Music, and the Human Spirit

When life is stripped down to its raw essentials — war, loss, divorce, protest, death — what makes a person tick is no longer abstract psychology. It’s choice under pressure. It’s identity revealed when comfort disappears. It’s the moment fear, love, and meaning collide, and a person decides whether they will collapse inward or stand upright.

War exposes this brutally. Israel’s “Never Again” is a refusal to vanish, a refusal to let annihilation define the future. Iran’s “Never Again” — voiced through women, music, protest, and resilience — is a refusal to let the human spirit be owned or erased. These are not opposites. They are reflections of the same psychological truth: people will endure extraordinary suffering rather than surrender their humanity.

Psychology confirms what history shows: people do not break simply because they suffer — they break when suffering becomes meaningless. When pain is connected to dignity, purpose, and love, the human psyche becomes astonishingly resilient. This is why revolutions sing. This is why people dance in defiance. This is why art survives, while dictators and empires do not.

I can’t change the past. I can’t fix every wound. I can’t make people see me without hatred if hatred is what they carry. But I can refuse to let bitterness decide my future. I can choose culture over cruelty, healing over destruction, life over despair.

We are not lab rats condemned to repeat cycles of violence and control. We are meaning-makers. Builders and destroyers — and always, choosers. Each day we decide whether we will live as if the world is ending or as if life itself is sacred enough to protect.

Life is precious. People are precious. Culture is precious. The soul is not collateral damage.

And when everything else is taken away, what makes a person tick is this final, terrifying, beautiful truth: the choice to destroy — or the courage to love anyway.

Should women have the freedom to choose a hijab?

• Change Image

  Yes
• Change Image

  No

Works Cited (MLA Style)

Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. Free Press, 1973. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Denial-of-Death/Ernest-Becker/9780684832401

Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, 2006. https://www.beacon.org/Mans-Search-for-Meaning-P754.aspx

Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. W. W. Norton, 1989. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Beyond-the-Pleasure-Principle

Jung, Carl G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton University Press, 1981. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691018331

Swann, William B., et al. “Identity Fusion.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 96, no. 5, 2009. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-06371-006

The Torah (Tanakh). Deuteronomy 30:19. https://www.sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.30.19

The Holy Bible. King James Version. Proverbs 23:7. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Proverbs-23-7/

The Holy Qur’an. Surah Ar-Ra’d 13:11. https://quran.com/13/11

Alinejad, Masih. My Stealthy Freedom. https://www.my-stealthy-freedom.net/

Hajipour, Shervin. “Baraye.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraye

Cole, Juan. “‘Neither Gaza nor Lebanon’: Iranian Protest Slogans.” Informed Comment, 2026. https://www.juancole.com/2026/01/neither-lebanon-iranian.html

The Guardian. “Iranian Student Killed During Protests.” Jan. 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/11/iranian-student-rubina-aminian-killed-during-protests-shot-in-head-from-close-range

Algemeiner Journal. “Murals Across Israel Show Solidarity with Iranian Women.” https://www.algemeiner.com/2023/05/05/murals-across-israel-show-solidarity-with-women-life-freedom-protesters-in-iran/

Jewish News Syndicate (JNS). “Iranian-American Artist Unveils ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ Mural in Israel.” https://www.jns.org/iranian-american-unveils-mural-honoring-jewish-and-iranian-women/

Armageddon. Dir. Michael Bay. Touchstone Pictures, 1998. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120591/

Last Holiday. Dir. Wayne Wang. Paramount Pictures, 2006. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408985/

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