How do you see motivation working once you start abandoning the concept of goals?
It’s not really that one abandons the concept of goals. It’s that doing serves being, so goals arise and fade within a larger context.
What’s your motivation for continuing to live? If presented with two buttons, one of which will let you leave the button situation & continue your life while the other one has you die right on the spot, I imagine you have little difficulty choosing the first one. You might be able to justify your choice afterwards as “survival instinct” or “net positive expected global utility from your remaining life” or whatever… but I’m guessing the clear knowing of the choice comes before all that. Your choice probably wouldn’t change whatsoever if you spent a while meditating and calming your reactions, for instance.
(Said differently: the clarity arises from the Void.)
The word “motivation” has a common linguistic root with “motor”. It’s that which causes movement. So the “motivation” of a stone rolling downhill is gravity. The motivation of a high school student attending college is (often) a whole social atmosphere that acts something like a gravitational field (what I’ve occasionally heard termed “an incentive landscape” in rationalist circles). There’s something very mechanical about the whole thing.
But when we talk about “being motivated” or epic feats like “shut up and do the impossible”, particularly when there’s any hint of “should” attached to them (like “I should shut up & do the impossible”), there’s usually an implication of free will. As though beyond all causes is some kind of power of choice. It’s obviously a bit batty when said that way, but we mostly agree not to pay attention to that.
…with the result that we have bizarre statements like “We should end racism.” What exactly is that as a choice? It’s not at all of the same type as “We should turn off the stove.” In practice it’s an application of a social force meant to shift the incentive landscape (usually via Drama Triangle dynamics, I’ll parenthetically add). But what’s causing that force to be applied? If you start tabooing the concept of free will, most statements about social movements and public policy start looking patently insane. If you finish tabooing it, they appear as they are: manifestations of a kind of collective mental software glitch that keeps human minds distant from reality. Stones rolling downhill.
Same for statements like “I should lose weight.” With what magical power? By the power of research and effort? If so, can you notice the element of magic being added wherein you somehow mysteriously can make yourself do the research and put in effort as though your choice is beyond all cause?
(The fact that the motivations often aren’t beyond experienced causes is part of why shame and inadequacy enter the picture. “I failed, and that means I suck” doesn’t make any more sense than “The stone rolled all the way to the bottom of the hill, and that means I suck.” Of course, the judgment isn’t causeless either.)
Intellectually solving the reductionist puzzle of free will is not at all the same as integrating the insight into your being and perception.
I’m pretty sure this is part of what the Void stuff is getting you into contact with.
The place from which you choose to move your fingers is void of experience. It’s a kind of empty. Once you make the choice, there’s a cascade of experience and the result is basically predetermined by the mechanisms of reality. But the choice itself feels on the inside like it’s causeless.
Goals are in the realm of causes. Within sensation. They’re part of the machinery of the world.
When you see this clearly and stop pretending that getting somewhere is what existence is about, then your “motivation” emerges from the causeless realm of emptiness. You just do what you want.
Of course, within physics this is still mechanical. The reductionist lens sees that “causeless choice” is basically just how we experience a type of ignorance.
But at least the machinery stops being confused in practice about what the “free will” function is actually doing. And our narratives about ourselves and others stop trying to rely on these magical forces that don’t actually exist.
…though that’s still described from the outside.
On the inside, it feels silent.
I do because I want to.
“Where does the desire come from?” becomes a koan. The act of looking for the answer points back to the silence.
Which means that the carnival of sensation is much, much less able to control what I choose to do.
Does this answer your question?
(I’ll answer your second question in a separate reply since the topics are different. I don’t see this done often here… but I think it makes more sense given the nature of upvoting/downvoting, so I’ll try it and see what happens.)
This definitely helps clarify, thank you very much. I suspect it will take me some time to fully understand your ideas, but my current best stab at a (probably overcompressed) summary would be:
Our usual state of mind consists of experiencing a profusion of thoughts and inner sensations. These thoughts interact with each other, and generate further thoughts. We may experience a causal connection between thoughts, leading to the experience of “trains of thought”. This experience of causal connection may or may not accurately reflect the causal process giving rise to the thoughts. Individual thoughts or trains of thought compete for attention. It is this welter of activity that is Noise.
The absence of Noise is experienced as an inner silence, the Void. This differs from what we experience after suppressing Noise: it’s the difference between throwing a blanket over a loud radio, and switching the radio off. Being (as contrasted with doing) ultimately resides in the Void.
Thoughts may arise from the Void. These will be experienced as without cause. For example, choices or desires arising from the Void feel uncaused, resulting in the experience of free will. This contrasts with goals, which are experienced as both caused by thoughts, and causing thoughts: they are an integral part of Noise.
By starting from the Void, we decrease the extent to which our thoughts arise from spurious interactions due to Noise, and instead flow directly from our being. This allows our thoughts and our doing to serve our being. Goals then cease to define or control us, and instead are tools to be dropped once they cease to be useful.
Hopefully I’m not totally misunderstanding you here.
I’m glad to hear it. :-)
It’s not really that one abandons the concept of goals. It’s that doing serves being, so goals arise and fade within a larger context.
What’s your motivation for continuing to live? If presented with two buttons, one of which will let you leave the button situation & continue your life while the other one has you die right on the spot, I imagine you have little difficulty choosing the first one. You might be able to justify your choice afterwards as “survival instinct” or “net positive expected global utility from your remaining life” or whatever… but I’m guessing the clear knowing of the choice comes before all that. Your choice probably wouldn’t change whatsoever if you spent a while meditating and calming your reactions, for instance.
(Said differently: the clarity arises from the Void.)
The word “motivation” has a common linguistic root with “motor”. It’s that which causes movement. So the “motivation” of a stone rolling downhill is gravity. The motivation of a high school student attending college is (often) a whole social atmosphere that acts something like a gravitational field (what I’ve occasionally heard termed “an incentive landscape” in rationalist circles). There’s something very mechanical about the whole thing.
But when we talk about “being motivated” or epic feats like “shut up and do the impossible”, particularly when there’s any hint of “should” attached to them (like “I should shut up & do the impossible”), there’s usually an implication of free will. As though beyond all causes is some kind of power of choice. It’s obviously a bit batty when said that way, but we mostly agree not to pay attention to that.
…with the result that we have bizarre statements like “We should end racism.” What exactly is that as a choice? It’s not at all of the same type as “We should turn off the stove.” In practice it’s an application of a social force meant to shift the incentive landscape (usually via Drama Triangle dynamics, I’ll parenthetically add). But what’s causing that force to be applied? If you start tabooing the concept of free will, most statements about social movements and public policy start looking patently insane. If you finish tabooing it, they appear as they are: manifestations of a kind of collective mental software glitch that keeps human minds distant from reality. Stones rolling downhill.
Same for statements like “I should lose weight.” With what magical power? By the power of research and effort? If so, can you notice the element of magic being added wherein you somehow mysteriously can make yourself do the research and put in effort as though your choice is beyond all cause?
(The fact that the motivations often aren’t beyond experienced causes is part of why shame and inadequacy enter the picture. “I failed, and that means I suck” doesn’t make any more sense than “The stone rolled all the way to the bottom of the hill, and that means I suck.” Of course, the judgment isn’t causeless either.)
Intellectually solving the reductionist puzzle of free will is not at all the same as integrating the insight into your being and perception.
So, what does it feel like on the inside to end all distortions about free will?
I’m pretty sure this is part of what the Void stuff is getting you into contact with.
The place from which you choose to move your fingers is void of experience. It’s a kind of empty. Once you make the choice, there’s a cascade of experience and the result is basically predetermined by the mechanisms of reality. But the choice itself feels on the inside like it’s causeless.
Goals are in the realm of causes. Within sensation. They’re part of the machinery of the world.
When you see this clearly and stop pretending that getting somewhere is what existence is about, then your “motivation” emerges from the causeless realm of emptiness. You just do what you want.
Of course, within physics this is still mechanical. The reductionist lens sees that “causeless choice” is basically just how we experience a type of ignorance.
But at least the machinery stops being confused in practice about what the “free will” function is actually doing. And our narratives about ourselves and others stop trying to rely on these magical forces that don’t actually exist.
…though that’s still described from the outside.
On the inside, it feels silent.
I do because I want to.
“Where does the desire come from?” becomes a koan. The act of looking for the answer points back to the silence.
Which means that the carnival of sensation is much, much less able to control what I choose to do.
Does this answer your question?
(I’ll answer your second question in a separate reply since the topics are different. I don’t see this done often here… but I think it makes more sense given the nature of upvoting/downvoting, so I’ll try it and see what happens.)
This definitely helps clarify, thank you very much. I suspect it will take me some time to fully understand your ideas, but my current best stab at a (probably overcompressed) summary would be:
Hopefully I’m not totally misunderstanding you here.
That seems pretty darn good to me!