Habits are acquired, relational, and give order to experience

Evidence

Most of our habits are like this. They aren’t instinctive. Instead, they are acquired in the context of a shared life with others—in our dealings with family and friends, in the particular places where we experience life. Habits reflect our general tendencies and dispositions, our sensitivities and predilections. These only matter in relation to other people. We also depend on them for a sense of continuity in our lives and a sense of control. Habits give the flood of our experiences some semblance of order in that they enable us to move about, with regard to some aspects of our lives, unreflectively. They become an intimate part of who we are, and once rooted, they take hold of us. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 164

Categorization

• DEFINE: Glaude’s working definition of habit here distinguishes it from instinct — required to understand what a specifically racial habit is and why it resists simple prejudice-correction.
• XREF: connects to: Habit transforms contingent acts into essential determinations of being. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 601