An action is an event that takes place in the world, and as people we will instinctively react to it, just like all living beings and non-living objects. Different people have different responses, though, and some react to an action instantly and instinctively, while other people respond to an action by thinking through the consequences of a reaction, and try to find the best possible reaction. As this takes time, they are often lacking in any real reaction, instead sitting around while actions rage around them, with their only reaction being inactivity.
This isn’t to say that they’re obviously worse than, or even worse at all, to the instinctive reactors, as they don’t have a thought out reaction, merely striking out blindly with their primal decision. This means that while they are quick to respond, their responses aren’t the best, and will even go directly against ones wishes.
An example of this: Someone you seriously dislike insults you, and does it well, striking a nerve. The instinctive reactor would immediately respond with something like “You’re a stinkyface!” As you can tell, this is not verbally impressive, and would be a reaction that markedly makes the situation worse. The thinker, on the other hand, might sit down and think about the insult for a while, and later, well after the dislikable person leaves, might come up with a devastating comeback that would make this poor person rethink all their life choices. This would be a wonderful response, had it been made promptly, but it’s now stale and useless.
The obvious best thing, of course, would be to use your mind like the thinker, and be quick about it like the instinctive reactor. This is often referred to as having a “quick wit” or a “ready wit” especially when talking about our example up above, though it’s important for far more than just recreational insults. When responding to things like an injury, or a fire, screaming and flailing immediately won’t help things, just make it worse. Standing silently looking at a fire raging on your shoes while you think about the nearest water source, is also clearly useless. The combination of the two, however, leads to a person immediately heading towards water and quenching the fire, which, for anyone apart from pyromaniacs, is obviously the desirable outcome.
It can be difficult to gain this ability, of course, but I believe it can be done, particularly when a thinker trains up his ability to respond quickly. This, I believe is mostly evident with people in positions like firefighters, who are trained in a specific set of skills, or responses, that they then use immediately and effectively to use in any variation of a few actions, like house fires, or stubborn cats in trees. This evidence, and my previous principle, make me think that the best way to have a proper real time response (if it isn’t natural, which would be truly impressive) is to plan things out in advance and practice those responses until they can be effective in a real time situation.
School Essays 