I can’t tell if you’re intending this as a counterargument or not, but to the extent that you are, this is pica. Listening to yourself is a skill that needs to be trained.
If you’ve been abusing a small child and then one day finally start listening to what it wants, it might say all sorts of crazy shit, but the response to that is not to continue never listening to children.
I was mostly intending it as something funny in a thread-relevant way. I agree that wanting to (in some sense of “wanting”) sit and watch TV all the time might be a pica-like symptom of some more interesting need, and therefore that “the things we feel urged or compelled to do are often obviously a really bad idea” is not a good argument against listening to one’s feelings of need/compulsion. But I feel I should draw attention to the fact that you really did say “for example, I generally don’t feel guilty about indulging the desire to watch TV” rather than, e.g., ”… about finding something to do that’s more satisfying than working”.
(Feeling guilty is probably counterproductive whether one identifies as the wanna-watch-TV agent or the wanna-get-work-done agent or both or neither; I take it the point of your comment wasn’t really about guilt as such.)
I can’t tell if you’re intending this as a counterargument or not, but to the extent that you are, this is pica. Listening to yourself is a skill that needs to be trained.
If you’ve been abusing a small child and then one day finally start listening to what it wants, it might say all sorts of crazy shit, but the response to that is not to continue never listening to children.
I was mostly intending it as something funny in a thread-relevant way. I agree that wanting to (in some sense of “wanting”) sit and watch TV all the time might be a pica-like symptom of some more interesting need, and therefore that “the things we feel urged or compelled to do are often obviously a really bad idea” is not a good argument against listening to one’s feelings of need/compulsion. But I feel I should draw attention to the fact that you really did say “for example, I generally don’t feel guilty about indulging the desire to watch TV” rather than, e.g., ”… about finding something to do that’s more satisfying than working”.
(Feeling guilty is probably counterproductive whether one identifies as the wanna-watch-TV agent or the wanna-get-work-done agent or both or neither; I take it the point of your comment wasn’t really about guilt as such.)