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Need or Desire in Free Will
I've always taken the path of least resistance, in the sense that I do what's expected of me and don't get hasseled too much. It's worked out pretty well. Living this way, I could ever be a Bill and Hillary, but I don't want to be.
Re exercise, I've been doing it the hard way, actually going to the gym and joining in with others to push ourselves to our limits. It's a first in my life and I am surprised at all the long term benefits it has given. Endorphins, more energy, better mood, more strength so that my livestock responsibilities are now easer to do , even making the bed is easier. Sometimes doing things the hard way makes life easier.
What is the phrase Carl likes to quote? Short term pain, long term pleasure?
Re exercise, I've been doing it the hard way, actually going to the gym and joining in with others to push ourselves to our limits. It's a first in my life and I am surprised at all the long term benefits it has given. Endorphins, more energy, better mood, more strength so that my livestock responsibilities are now easer to do , even making the bed is easier. Sometimes doing things the hard way makes life easier.
What is the phrase Carl likes to quote? Short term pain, long term pleasure?
Comments
In Carl's post of 27 August, 2005 he says:
"So, if I ever do something that I don't feel I need to do, then I'm using free will, eh? But, I have never esperienced that phenomenon. "
There is no need to eat chocolate, but a lot of people choose to. So this is not based in need, it is based on a desire. The desire can be changed at the snap of a finger, at the point of awareness that the chocolate can be physically damaging.
There are a few ways to consider this. First, aren’t desires just thoughts driven by the emotional needs we feel? If I feel hungry I will desire to eat, and start thinking... “I want to eat”. Feeling drives thought. So, if I feel angry, I will think angry thoughts. Sure, there is feedback in the other direction, but that is minor by comparison, and even then, the thoughts are usually rekindling past emotional experiences.
Now think about how thirst works. All animals feel that need when dehydrated, but only humans 'desire' to drink, i.e., think about getting a drink. Thirst in other animals just drives them to go find something drink. Thirst in us drives us to think about drinking, what to drink, if we only drank sooner, how hot or cold the drink should be,.. etc., as we head off to find something to drink. We make a lot of extra noise in the natural process of satiating need.
Desire is the shadow which the blazing glare of need makes in our mind's eye. And it is the balance of needs we feel at each moment that determine what action we take. In the case of chocolate, for example, if my need to eat chocolate is stronger than my need to avoid chocolate's 'damaging effects' I’ll eat chocolate. If the need for health is stronger I won't. If both needs are about equal I will feel conflicted and may even become neurotic. Perhaps I will binge and diet, or just have a few beers. Nothing like a glass of alcohol to feel all is well... usually... for awhile.
Finally, consider the pejorative 'unnatural' quality we attribute to desire and the 'natural' quality we attribute to need. The needs we don't support (i.e., dislike), either in ourselves or in others, we look 'down on' as being troublesome or frivolous desires. The emotional imperatives (needs) we are in sync with and favor we call 'true, justifiable and natural need'. Animals don't think (or [chref=56]speak[/chref]) and so know nothing of this [chref=18]great hypocritical[/chref] mind game in which we indulge ourselves. :oops:
"So, if I ever do something that I don't feel I need to do, then I'm using free will, eh? But, I have never experienced that phenomenon". This is just a sarcastic way of saying that need is the core from which all action or inaction originates. 'Desires' are simply a figment of our imagination bubbling up from the visceral needs we feel. Oh my word, so many words to say something so simple. But, I felt I needed to use that many words... or did I just desire to write until I got sick of hearing myself [chref=56]speak[/chref]?
Pardon me if I'm being sarcastic. I could have avoided it because the need to be sarcastic wasn't that great. Although, because I'm leaving it be, I guess the need to be sarcastic outweighs the need to be more mature now. :? Oh well, I'm be more mature tomorrow.
I think you are saying is that instinct is the core from which all action or inaction orginates. If that is true, than there is no difference between men and animals. But man does things that animals do not, like abstain from sex, some live in caves depriving themselves of their senses to connect with the one. I don't see an animal doing these things....in essence, deliberately choosing to deny basic instincts of sex and senses. Is this not free will?
If the need to eat chocolate is stronger than the need to avoid chocolate's "damaging effects" . Can we say instead, If the instinct to eat chocolate is stronger than the instinct to avoid chocolate's "damaging effects"
This brings a point home to me that in fact, we have lost our instinct to choose the best foods for our health, and what is left is an animal without the ability to make natural choices.
By the way, I am enjoying the free will thread very much. I appreciate the feedback.
Our big brains conjure up desires/needs. I am hungry is one thing. I want chocolate is something else.
In your examples, we could say that for some, the need to live in a cave is stronger than the need to live in a city, the need to abstain is stronger than the need to have sex. Like a recovering alcoholic, the need to stop drinking exceeds the need to drink...only then does an alcoholic stop drinking.
Regarding humans having an instinct to select the best foods, that's an interesting thought. There have been times when I crave a food and later find out a physical reason for it (like when my thyroid was not working all I wanted to eat was fish and spinach and brown rice...ugh!) so I guess we haven't lost it.
Thanks for your thought provoking posting.
Comment #1 I think you are agreeing with me. We are animals but we have thoughts and that makes us different. Tell me if or how I am wrong.
Comment #2: Lynn says:
"I guess I haven't lost it" (instinct for right food)
I agree that this is possible and your experience is notable, but I think rare, especially for you to have identified it correctly as instinct. When I see the grossly overweight, sick and drugged population in such large numbers, I can't help but think their instinct is gone or deeply buried. So many people out of balance reflect our age which I feel must include a loss of instinct, out of control desires, out of control free will and an alienation of nature. This is some kind of chocolate, popcorn, and fast food nirvana for the overworked, stressed and lonely. It was in such an age of decay that Lao Tzu felt compelled to write the great wisdom.
At no other time in history has the need for studying the tao been greater. The need is so great we even see it on national television in primetime with Dr. Dyer there to reach people with it. A Lao Tzu rebirth?
Our big brains cause us more suffering than we would have without them; not that big brains are bad. Buddhism is dedicated to teaching us how to live with big brains without torturing ourselves. Pain + clinging = suffering.
Regarding our diet, we needn't blame ourselves. Our bodies haven't adjusted to the quantity of rich food available to us. If we were eating twigs and berries we would have to eat a lot to get the nutrition we need, and the feeling of fullness is based on that. Now that we eat hamburgers and shakes, we get full at the same point, but we have taken in way more calories than we need. We just need to evolve, digestively speaking. Until then, we have to make conscious food choices.
I think you're right that we are more stressed and lonely in the post-industrial era. Families are separated, there's no sense of community or belonging. It's sad. I also think you're right that food is used to comfort that feeling of insecurity. But guess what! There is no security in this life. I keep telling myself to get used to it, but I still seek comfort.
Must be instinctive!
:roll:
No!
I think not. Our current instinctive drive to find the tastiest food, if it played itself out in the wild, would lead us to healthy food. This same drive, or course, has led to us making natural food as tasty as possible, i.e., grinding grain, squeezing out oil, evaporating sugar cane juice, not to mention all the yummy ways to boil, bake, and fry it. Simply put, our [chref=18]cleverness[/chref] is culturally passed on over millennia, while wisdom has to be relearned with each generation. See the natural and inevitable imbalance? Wisdom is personal inner knowing. Sure, words of wisdom and wise advice abound, but like the saying goes, 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink'. To 'hear' wisdom requires an 'ear' for wisdom.
Well I am too. Although, I feel like Don Quixote tilting at windmills at times. I keep on it because I suspect that our species will never reach 'self' understanding as long as it hangs on to this illusion. And we'll just keep bumping into the live's furniture.
It actually has little to do with our brain. Certainly our big brain, and perhaps even more importantly our hands, gave us the ability to refine food and make it as tasty as possible. Our taste buds zoom in on the rich food all by themselves. I recall taking baby son Luke to McDonalds when he was less than two. He zoomed right in on the fries. Was it the smell, the color, or both that pulled him? Not experience! We'd never given him any up to that time. Animals are the same. We had chickens who did the same thing.
Perhaps recounting some personal experience with free will can help clarify.
( Beside, my kids keep asking me to write an autobiography, so this can be a first step.)
I was as staunch an advocate of free will for 40 years as you could find anywhere. I even proved it to myself when I turned 21. A year or so before 21 I decided that I would quite smoking on my 21st birthday. I did without a hitch. A few years later I took it up again when living among the hill tribe people in Laos. They had such good tobacco and cool pipes to smoke it in. Leaving S.E. Asia some years later I quite smoking again, rather than smoke normal tobacco. But, began again later on anyway... and stopped and began... and stopped. All the while certain of my free will and ability to choose. Although, choosing to quite smoking proved to drag itself out for a few decades.
Not until my run in with correlations did a crack in my faith in free will appear. For the next decade or so I tried to find evidence of its reality. So far, all the evidence I've seen actually point the other direction. Of course, it all depends on what we mean by 'free'. If by 'free' we mean 'free as the wind blows', then I'd say we have free will. However, if by 'free' we mean that humans (unlike other animals) can choose without life's biological fetters, I see no support for that other than wishful thinking and faith.
Ah, which brings me to faith. Our belief in free will is like the belief in a religion. Indeed, all religions incorporate it either overtly as in Judeo Christian Islamic theologies, or as some version of implied free will ( 'enlightenment' for example) in other religions,... even Taoism ('groan'). On matters of belief, I have found that we can never ever convince a believer of anything otherwise - not with logic, evidence, reason,... nothing! Belief can only crumble from the inside through personal experience and self questioning. Being the antithesis of belief, questioning is the best antidote.
Do I believe there is no free will then? No. Not believing isn't the same as believing not. Believing not is what an atheist does. He believes there is 'No God'. Not believing is an absence of belief. There is no emotion connected to it. Basically it is returning to be simply a 'dumb animal' like those ants, rate, spiders, dogs, birds, etc.
The fact that we believe in stuff, whether free will, God, 'I', capitalism, communism, or Taoism, etc., makes us different in the animal kingdom, but not superior in any natural sense. That we feel, and thus think, we are superior and special is simply a symptom of the survival instinct - the integrity of being. If you could ask a rabbit if it was 'superior and special' it would say yes if it could talk. The unique ability of imagination makes us profoundly [chref=3]clever[/chref]. Alas, we know the other side of that [chref=65]clever[/chref] coin... profound stupidity. The consequences are predictable: [chref=16]Woe to him who wilfully innovates while ignorant of the constant[/chref]... and do we ever innovate! That's the main thing we pride ourselves on, our cleverness and creativity. Oh, the irony!
My word, what a 'clever' roll I'm on. Sorry for too many words. I just don't [chref=44]know when to stop[/chref] :oops: