There’s one sense in which self-coercion is impossible because you cannot make yourself do something that at least some part of yourself doesn’t endorse. There’s another sense in which self-coercion is an inescapable inevitability because some particular part of you will always dis-endorse any given action.
It’s definitely worth it to seek to understand yourself well enough that you can negotiate between dissatisfied parts of yourself, pre-emptively or on-the-fly. This helps you generate plans that aren’t so self-coercive that they’re preordained to fail.
In my framing, the effective approach isn’t to find a non-coercive plan, but rather a minimally-coercive plan that still achieves the goal. This turns it from an exercise of willpower to an exercise of strategy. Plus, the only way you can really learn where plans sit on the coerciveness landscape is to attempt to execute them.
There’s one sense in which self-coercion is impossible because you cannot make yourself do something that at least some part of yourself doesn’t endorse. There’s another sense in which self-coercion is an inescapable inevitability because some particular part of you will always dis-endorse any given action.
Yeah, I think aiming for 100% endorsement in every situation is impossible. But endorsement is different from “acceptance”. I think it’s definitely possible to get either endorsement or acceptance from every part for, many actions and goals.
I think feeling this for EVERY action in every area of your life is fairly hard (is this what enlightenment is?) but certainly for a given task or goal it’s achievable.
In my framing, the effective approach isn’t to find a non-coercive plan, but rather a minimally-coercive plan that still achieves the goal.
That seems like a decent framing! One of the things I mentioned in my last post is that coercion can BUILD over time, so if that’s your goal you’ll want to check that you’re not consistently ignoring the same part or value.
Plus, the only way you can really learn where plans sit on the coerciveness landscape is to attempt to execute them.
There are definitely introspective strategies here that can help without doing the action. I especially recommend these for bigger goals or visions, because you may not run into the resistance for a bit. For smaller actions I agree it often makes sense to just start and deal with resistance if and when it occurs.
There’s one sense in which self-coercion is impossible because you cannot make yourself do something that at least some part of yourself doesn’t endorse. There’s another sense in which self-coercion is an inescapable inevitability because some particular part of you will always dis-endorse any given action.
It’s definitely worth it to seek to understand yourself well enough that you can negotiate between dissatisfied parts of yourself, pre-emptively or on-the-fly. This helps you generate plans that aren’t so self-coercive that they’re preordained to fail.
In my framing, the effective approach isn’t to find a non-coercive plan, but rather a minimally-coercive plan that still achieves the goal. This turns it from an exercise of willpower to an exercise of strategy. Plus, the only way you can really learn where plans sit on the coerciveness landscape is to attempt to execute them.
Yeah, I think aiming for 100% endorsement in every situation is impossible. But endorsement is different from “acceptance”. I think it’s definitely possible to get either endorsement or acceptance from every part for, many actions and goals.
I think feeling this for EVERY action in every area of your life is fairly hard (is this what enlightenment is?) but certainly for a given task or goal it’s achievable.
That seems like a decent framing! One of the things I mentioned in my last post is that coercion can BUILD over time, so if that’s your goal you’ll want to check that you’re not consistently ignoring the same part or value.
There are definitely introspective strategies here that can help without doing the action. I especially recommend these for bigger goals or visions, because you may not run into the resistance for a bit. For smaller actions I agree it often makes sense to just start and deal with resistance if and when it occurs.