I’ve wrestled with this disparity myself, the distance between my goals and my actions. I’m quite emotional and when my goals and my emotions are aligned I’m capable of rapid and tireless productivity. At the same time my passions are fickle and frequently fail to match what I might reason out. Over the years I’ve tried to exert my will over them, developing emotionally powerful personal stories and habits to try and control them. But every time I have done so it tends to cause more problems that it fixes. I experience a lot of stress fighting with myself in this way and quickly lose the ability to maintain perspective or, more importantly, to prioritise. My reason becomes a tunnel visioned rationalisation, and rather than being a tool for appropriate action becomes a tool to reinforce an unwise initial judgement of my priorities.
More recently, I’ve come to accept that my conscious reasoning self is, to an extent, a passenger in an emotional mind. What’s more, that that emotional mind often has a much more sophisticated understanding of what will lead to a satisfying future than my own reasoning can provide. If I have the patience to listen (and occasionally offer it suggestions) I seem to get much closer to solving creative and technical problems, and more importantly, much closer to contentment, than if I try to force myself to follow an existing plan.
I think there is a real risk of having ones culture and community define goals for ourselves that are not actually what we want. Causing us to feel a sense of duty towards values that deep down, we don’t share. Is our reasoning flawed or do we just not understand our utility function?
I’ve had the same experiences re: passion and productivity. On your last comment:
“I think there is a real risk of having ones culture and community define goals for ourselves that are not actually what we want.”
It’s not clear to me what your concern is. You draw a distinction between cultural goals and values, and personal goals and values, but how would you be able to draw the line between the two? (What does it mean to feel something “deep down”?) And even if you could draw that distinction, why is it automatically bad to acquire cultural goals? What would be the consequences of pursuing these “incorrect” goals or values?
The most eye-opening article I’ve read recently, of possible relation to the subject, is a series on hunter-gatherer tribes by Peter Gray (see http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/school-isnt-about-learning.html). While I’m skeptical of Gray’s seemingly oversimplified depiction of hunter-gatherer tribes, the salient point of his argument is that there is a strong anti-authority norm in typical hunter-gather tribes. This leads me to think that the “natural” human psyche is resistant to authority, and conformity has to be “beaten in.” Some of my own emotional conflicts have been due to a conflictedness about obeying authority; it seems to me that the “emotional mind” is more in line with these primal psychologies, which are exhibited more strongly in hunter-gatherer tribes than in modern society.
Certainly I would argue that following the emotional mind is not something everyone should do; it seems like there are a few niches in our society for the totally “free”, who have the luxury of being able to make a living while largely ignoring the demand for individuals to find and conform to a specific externally-rewarded role in society. The positive and negative feedback individuals receive for following or ignoring their emotional minds, I would hypothesize, plays a large part in determining how much they ultimately listen to their emotional minds.
You make a good point about the lack of a clear distinction, and at a fundamental level I believe that our genes and external environment determine our behaviour (I am a determinist, i.e. I don’t believe in free will). However, I think that it is also possible to be highly motivated about different things which can cause a lot of mental stress and conflict. I think this occurs because we have a number of distinct evolved motivations which can drive us in opposing ways (e.g. the desire to eat, the status desire of being thin, the moral desire to eat healthily etc.). What I mean by “deep down” is the result of balancing these motivations to provide a satisfying compromise. The reason I emphasise culture is because I feel that society has developed powerful means of manipulating our motivations. This is good to the extent that it can make our sense of motivation (and enjoyment) more intense but can also lead to these strong internal conflicts, which, at least for myself, are not enjoyable.
I am fascinated by how these manipulations of our motivation occur and like yourself experience a strong resistance towards authority. I think the strength of these feelings is a reflection of my personality. On a Myers Briggs assessment I am an ENTP and descriptions of this type indicate a common resistance to authority. In part I suspect this is because I don’t find arguments not based on reason to be that legitimate. I’m not sure whether this personality is ‘more natural’ or is merely one form of survival strategy reflected by the interaction of my genes with the environment.
I do feel a strong disparity between the world as it is and how I think it could (should?) be. In particular I think there is a great difference between peoples internal stories of why they act as they do and the true dynamics of how they have been influenced. For example, I find the ideas of Adam Curtis, John Taylor Gatto and Alain de Botton very interesting. I recognise that the society we currently have may well require the kind of values and conditioning described by these authors but I think it would be preferable to have a society with less of it, or at least have it performed much more openly and explicitly. I also feel that a stable society is possible with a much greater degree of emotional ‘freedom’ than we currently experience. Particularly through the use of technology. For example, by providing comfortable technologically based self sufficiency so that a competitive externally rewarded role is viewed as a lifestyle option rather than a necessity.
I’ve wrestled with this disparity myself, the distance between my goals and my actions. I’m quite emotional and when my goals and my emotions are aligned I’m capable of rapid and tireless productivity. At the same time my passions are fickle and frequently fail to match what I might reason out. Over the years I’ve tried to exert my will over them, developing emotionally powerful personal stories and habits to try and control them. But every time I have done so it tends to cause more problems that it fixes. I experience a lot of stress fighting with myself in this way and quickly lose the ability to maintain perspective or, more importantly, to prioritise. My reason becomes a tunnel visioned rationalisation, and rather than being a tool for appropriate action becomes a tool to reinforce an unwise initial judgement of my priorities.
More recently, I’ve come to accept that my conscious reasoning self is, to an extent, a passenger in an emotional mind. What’s more, that that emotional mind often has a much more sophisticated understanding of what will lead to a satisfying future than my own reasoning can provide. If I have the patience to listen (and occasionally offer it suggestions) I seem to get much closer to solving creative and technical problems, and more importantly, much closer to contentment, than if I try to force myself to follow an existing plan.
I think there is a real risk of having ones culture and community define goals for ourselves that are not actually what we want. Causing us to feel a sense of duty towards values that deep down, we don’t share. Is our reasoning flawed or do we just not understand our utility function?
I’ve had the same experiences re: passion and productivity. On your last comment:
“I think there is a real risk of having ones culture and community define goals for ourselves that are not actually what we want.”
It’s not clear to me what your concern is. You draw a distinction between cultural goals and values, and personal goals and values, but how would you be able to draw the line between the two? (What does it mean to feel something “deep down”?) And even if you could draw that distinction, why is it automatically bad to acquire cultural goals? What would be the consequences of pursuing these “incorrect” goals or values?
The most eye-opening article I’ve read recently, of possible relation to the subject, is a series on hunter-gatherer tribes by Peter Gray (see http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/school-isnt-about-learning.html). While I’m skeptical of Gray’s seemingly oversimplified depiction of hunter-gatherer tribes, the salient point of his argument is that there is a strong anti-authority norm in typical hunter-gather tribes. This leads me to think that the “natural” human psyche is resistant to authority, and conformity has to be “beaten in.” Some of my own emotional conflicts have been due to a conflictedness about obeying authority; it seems to me that the “emotional mind” is more in line with these primal psychologies, which are exhibited more strongly in hunter-gatherer tribes than in modern society.
Certainly I would argue that following the emotional mind is not something everyone should do; it seems like there are a few niches in our society for the totally “free”, who have the luxury of being able to make a living while largely ignoring the demand for individuals to find and conform to a specific externally-rewarded role in society. The positive and negative feedback individuals receive for following or ignoring their emotional minds, I would hypothesize, plays a large part in determining how much they ultimately listen to their emotional minds.
Thanks for the link.
You make a good point about the lack of a clear distinction, and at a fundamental level I believe that our genes and external environment determine our behaviour (I am a determinist, i.e. I don’t believe in free will). However, I think that it is also possible to be highly motivated about different things which can cause a lot of mental stress and conflict. I think this occurs because we have a number of distinct evolved motivations which can drive us in opposing ways (e.g. the desire to eat, the status desire of being thin, the moral desire to eat healthily etc.). What I mean by “deep down” is the result of balancing these motivations to provide a satisfying compromise. The reason I emphasise culture is because I feel that society has developed powerful means of manipulating our motivations. This is good to the extent that it can make our sense of motivation (and enjoyment) more intense but can also lead to these strong internal conflicts, which, at least for myself, are not enjoyable.
I am fascinated by how these manipulations of our motivation occur and like yourself experience a strong resistance towards authority. I think the strength of these feelings is a reflection of my personality. On a Myers Briggs assessment I am an ENTP and descriptions of this type indicate a common resistance to authority. In part I suspect this is because I don’t find arguments not based on reason to be that legitimate. I’m not sure whether this personality is ‘more natural’ or is merely one form of survival strategy reflected by the interaction of my genes with the environment.
I do feel a strong disparity between the world as it is and how I think it could (should?) be. In particular I think there is a great difference between peoples internal stories of why they act as they do and the true dynamics of how they have been influenced. For example, I find the ideas of Adam Curtis, John Taylor Gatto and Alain de Botton very interesting. I recognise that the society we currently have may well require the kind of values and conditioning described by these authors but I think it would be preferable to have a society with less of it, or at least have it performed much more openly and explicitly. I also feel that a stable society is possible with a much greater degree of emotional ‘freedom’ than we currently experience. Particularly through the use of technology. For example, by providing comfortable technologically based self sufficiency so that a competitive externally rewarded role is viewed as a lifestyle option rather than a necessity.