no mystery:
the sum total of our experiences and
acquired conditionings
(emotional values stored with memories
of experiences),
stored in long-term memory and naturally
too complex
to be conscious or, more technically put, to be managed
by our limited RAM.
free will and moral behavior
a recent study has shown that individuals tend to act
as if relieved from the duty of moral behavior (such as they usually
accept)
if told that neuroscience has shown
that our will is indeed far from free.
which fortifies the point that society
needs certain technically incorrect concepts in order to uphold peace
and stability...
(similar: "we must intend
the impossible to achieve the possible")
sad, but true. we don't act from
conviction, but from fear of being held responsible.
the same is deducible from looking
how we, priding ourselves on being civilized and having outgrown
cannibalism,
do not extend the same courtesy
we, as a culture, have learned to extend to other humans
(serious competitors who could ultimately turn
the spear upon us) to the animals we raise and slaughter by the
billions -
simply because they pose no registrable threat
which would make it ultimately wiser
to assume an accord of mutual respect and let-live.
- TdW
achievement
in our culture of the ever-elusive
carrot,
more important than actual achievement
is, psychologically, to feel involved in an activity
which suggests the possibility, provides the illusion
of future achievement and satisfaction of a psychological need.
in other words, the paradox is that
we are addicts of the psychological need of feeling we're working
to fulfill a psychological need.
(hence, unemployment is experienced
not as a luxury and time to reform, but as a torment.)
if i know i could, i don't
actually have to.
if i feel i can't, no matter how hard i try,
i have hell on earth (-> learned helplessness, EFMS).
the illusionary nature at the core
of this psychological mechanism becomes especially
obvious when we consider the
certain end of the linear upward motion we're addicted to, our
ultimate demise -
the thought of which we generally evade like the plague,
suppress in order to maintain a functional EFMS.
to do otherwise would make it too
obvious to our conscious mind that our emotional math doesn't add
up,
and our entire motivational corset collapses (-> PTSD,
awakening from the 'matrix').
- TdW
on the evolutionary superiority
of political systems
why does 'liberal' capitalism have
a competitive edge over communism and the promise of equality?
because capitalism lets you play the lottery.
however slim your chances to
be the one hitting the jackpot, there is a minute but
highly psycho-active chance. it could be you.
(-> soccer world cup
germany 2006)
communism's equality is
one in which, for equality's sake, the lottery is forbidden,
since its express
purpose is to make a few winners better than all the
rest.
in communism
you're to have no path to making yourself better
than the rest
(unless of course you choose
the road of manager of the others' equality
which gives you an edge or two).
because in a chronically discontent culture, noone
wants equality.
everybody wants, before all,
to improve their own lot.
in the same way, chronic discontent
is, unfortunately, an evolutionarily superior trait.
it produces a greater urgency to pursue progress, a
greater degree of aggression and readiness to go try to take
what is the neighbor's* as it might
soothe the ever discontent and stressed animal within us
(-> source of addictions of
all sorts, illegal or legal, dependencies deemed excessive or perfectly
normal / -> EFMS).
- TdW
[* or the neighbor tribe, neighbor country, neighbor
continent's]
on the pursuit of happiness
(1)
as granted by the US constitution...
see above.
the pursuit of happiness
(however misguided), not happiness itself, dummy.
(the more desperately you need to
pursue it, the more elusive it becomes...)
on the pursuit of happiness
(2)
the aim of Zen (and like attempts to
alleviate suffering) is based on the notion that we're all born afflicted
by a brain which produces thoughts and concepts which
in turn produce suffering.
this is not entirely accurate.
the connection between thought
and stress is acquired
(-> ATAR / acquired threat avoiding reflexes).
stress disorders are merely a maladjustment of the
same process which ideally produces 'social intelligence'
(i.e. the ability to or better the degree to which
an individual can perceive the emotional state of another).
as long as we never face a serious problem, never receive
a conditioning of helplessness in the pursuit of essential needs,
our thoughts are not connected to
or trigger a sensation of stress,
do not produce the suffering connected to fear of a
negative expectation becoming reality
(-> paratactical thought).
the emotional immune system
and depression, stress disorders
obsessive thought (see above):
a symptom of the emotional immune system at work.
the same way that the familiar immune
system relentlessly works to solve physical problems,
our emotional immune system goes
to work in attempting to resolve any troubling problem, perceived
threat -
which leads to the simple conclusion
that when a problem, a perceived threat *
cannot be resolved - as subjectively
as perception of threat and its emotionally satisfactory resolution
may be -,
.this emotional immune system
does not come to a halt, incessant stress-loaded thought and calculation
is the subjective experience thereof.
.* (conditioned to widely differing
degrees in different individuals,
a consequence of -> ATAR,
-> EFMS, status of hierarchic adaption,
i.e. degree of self-confidence resulting in degree
of willingness to engage in risks, etc.)
contemporary psychology / introduction
to EFMS
is today where allopathic medicine
was before Koch and Pasteur:
conferences of specialists convene
where to draw lines of definition between various "diseases"
(really: collections of symptoms),
helplessly guessing at the underlying
mechanics.
although the necessary data exists and only a bit of
interdisciplinary study would be needed to get the entire picture,
psychologists still claim "we
do not yet understand the root causes and mechanisms".
(a humble suggestion: to arrive at
something like a unified field theory of the human condition,
study the culture of the ever-elusive
carrot, the theory of economic cycles,
the discoveries of recent neurobiology,
learned helplessness.
you'll arrive at something like
an image of an emotional fuel tank, which allows to predict behavior
nearly as precisely as how
a car will behave with a full or empty tank.
"fuel" is produced
by
1) positive self-image and
confidence ("can-do"),
2) functional social interaction
suggesting assistance in our pursuits of having our needs
met,
3) projecting a positive
future result and "borrowing" from the fuel the
projected result is expected to provide -
in straight analogy to
taking up credit from a bank to fund a business idea.
but when the business
fails, you experience emotional pain from the necessary
downward adjustment
of your expectation,
and if you have no reserves to tolerate the failure
and accompanying loss, you may face chronic depression.
(this explains, among many other
things, one form of bipolar disorder, mid-life crisis,
fear of death, why we must
intend the impossible to achieve the possible, etc. etc.)
decision making
in healthy individuals,
a projection of the options followed by comparison
of the emotional values of the feedback.
normally so rapidly that the individual
never gains consciousness of this process.
when affected by emotional or physical
trauma
(e.g. PTSD cases = awakening
from the "matrix" of the fairly tales our culture
raises us with providing for Ur-confidence,
or the famous 19th
cent. case of the person with a frontal lobe injury,
respectively),
this mechanism
can come to a complete halt, rendering the individual
incapable of functioning effectively
(more depression
and stress disorders to follow).
this, by the way,
is the practical evidence for my claim that a fully
rational decision is impossible,
that any decision
making must be based on conscious or, more frequently,
unconscious and emotionally stored value axioms.
if you try
to make a fully rational decision and/or if
you have too many contradictory facts and values
to consider,
the computer
which is your brain will freeze, just like
any computer we're used to having in front
of us.
