The Wrong Lesson

Generalization is a powerful method that the mind uses to simplify your protection, but it can be limiting, and I already touched upon phobias when it comes to dogs as an example of that helpful limitation; but it does serve us in many other ways. For instance, when you encountered a door for the first time in your life, and learned how to open it, your mind generalized that learning to include all doors. Now imagine having to learn how to open doors and walk in and out of rooms every single time you were in front of one. That wouldn't be convenient, would it? So in this case, the mind is still generalizing to simplify the lessons we learn in order to implement them; but with learning to open a door, it is optimizing our interaction with the world around us, and with learning to fear something, it is optimizing our protection from the dangers that surround us.