Response to Dw

[lhexa]

From a discussion with Dw under the "At least an animal" entry.

Common to such solutions [to the problem of greed or power] would be that they require a certain indirect strength of being: not the strength of power or repression, but the strength of, when finding out that there are no final victories, to persevere - to keep outwitting (or redirecting, or what the solution may be) those forces, that the sum of the temporary victories keeps said forces from advancing.

That was a valuable comment, the kind to send me into several hours of prolonged, intense thought. I regret being so late in addressing it. The comment showed me a foolishness in my ideas about how I should respond to my failings. While I persist in believing that I must outwit those failings, turning their own natures against them, the very fact that I can outwit my failings indicates that I have been viewing them the wrong way. Namely, I have viewed my failings as enemies, as objects of recurrent struggle and conflict. However, to outwit or trick the same opponent multiple times is unlikely, and to trick the same opponent in the same way more than once is near impossible. More, just as there are no final victories against some aspect of myself, there are no final defeats -- even if I give in to some shortcoming this week, next week will not find me much less able to face the challenges of my life. Instead, spurred both by your comment and from related discoveries about the concept of akrasia, I have come to think: in the long run, my failings are not my enemies, but merely unworked or poorly worked material. They are the substance of myself that cannot yet accomplish the things I desire of myself, and I do not need to oppose but to shape them.

One failing that caused some grief this summer was the fact that I find it difficult to cook for myself. This failing -- I would not use such a strong word, were it not for the aforementioned grief -- generally results either in my eating cheap TV dinners and junk food, presumably making me less healthy, or in my eating out too frequently, draining the small income of a graduate student. When your comment reached me I had fallen into the habit of viewing the impulse to eat junk or eat out as a minor vice to struggle against, but in reality these impulses are only vices in some contexts. Realistically speaking, I will frequently be too tired, too distracted or too absorbed in thought to be able to cook for myself, and at such times eating out or eating cheaply (depending on what I can afford) is not only reasonable but smart. The failing is real; however, it is real not because certain impulses are inimical to me, but because I have not, to date, shaped myself wisely. I know from the testimony of friends that cooking can be a complex and rewarding activity, potentially as engrossing and enjoyable as a videogame or novel. But in my adolescence I only valued the most abstract skills and knowledge: such things as philosophy, physics, mathematics, writing, and drawing, with not a single practical skill among them. Should I develop the ability and desire to cook -- as I already have, to a small extent -- then I will rarely face a conflict between prudence and impulse, but rather a choice between impulses to cook or to eat out, to be made on grounds of prudence or expedience.

To generalize: my inner state may frequently resolve into a conflict between and impulse and some other consideration, but the fact that this is a conflict is conditional, not essential. Should I become wise, it is not that I would become stronger in this conflict; rather, it would cease to be a conflict altogether. That is not to say that all inner conflicts can (or even should) be transmuted away. I stand by the assertion that I cannot come to expect comfort or rest, that I will always have something within myself to struggle against. But if I continue to learn, grow, and improve, then exactly what I struggle against should change from year to year: I should not be forced to use tired old tricks against a canny old enemy. That would be a life of what is called resignation. Unending conflicts invariably become desperate ones.

For a less mundane example, there is apathy. This is unquestionably one of my worst failings: that I know there is something I should do, and yet do not do it. I have puzzled over apathy for years, and have not yet come to a full solution to it. But I have recently realized that apathy is only bad in the way that a blank page is bad. It is not an opponent but an emptiness, and my attempts to anthropomorphize it, to suss out its passions, reasons and nature as I successfully do with other vices, are attempts that always fail: I cannot create something out of nothing, much less something to struggle against. Instead, just as I stare at a blank line and wonder why the words do not come, I stare into an inner void and wonder why I cannot act. It is a worthwhile wondering, but the conditions needed for action are as multifarious and subtle as the conditions needed for inspiration. My body will tell me if I need food, sleep or shelter, but it will not tell me if my more abstract needs are not being met, or if one of my rarer inner resources is running low. I have often found that apathy is overcome by such a thing as companionship, reading or exploration, despite there being no clear connection between such goods and the action stymied by apathy. In both the short and the long run, viewing apathy as an enemy, even an enemy to be outwitted, is again wrong: the space that I vilify as apathy needs only to be filled, and my difficulty is the difficulty in finding the right substance to fill it.

Having mentioned the value of outwitting my failings rather than overcoming them, I should also give you an example directly demonstrating that contrast. So, here is an example that I have only recently come to articulate, involving a shortcoming that I have only recently outwitted: feeling disgusted by others -- by humanity, by strangers, and sometimes even by friends. Should I respond as had been my long habit, and attempt to address the disgust with an inner discourse on its unreasonableness and harmfulness, then the disgust would hardly be exterminated, but would instead gnaw at me for as long as the mood that unearthed it lasted. You've tried simply reasoning your way out of a failing: you know that an inner discourse does not prove effective for long. It is an example of meeting power with power, by meeting the power of an impulse or emotion with the power of an argument. In this case, I have found that disgust is instead killed by bringing it to light. Disgust simply cannot last when its object has the opportunity to address it. I call this response an outwitting because it subverts the implicit logic of disgust, namely that it should not be aired, because its object is too irrational or too unethical to handle it. If this reasoning were actually true, then bringing disgust to light would only lead to its confirmation and strengthening: the object of my disgust would disgust me further. Instead, I find that people respond in ways that require me to look at them in a new light. Granted, I have only three clear examples from my own life to support the conclusion that disgust dies when brought to light, but those plus some indirect evidence are enough for me to commit the idea to writing. By indirect evidence I mean: when the object of disgust is (as is most common) someone I don't know, say a chance encounter on the street or on a comment thread, then no such thing as bringing disgust to light can happen; still, I imagine its object taking that opportunity, I play through a little fantasy of what might happen, and find it partly as effective.

For years I treated my recurrent feelings of disgust as an enemy, where others might simply have vented it. But it, with other concurrent struggles, eventually brought me to the position of the earlier post: I should expect no final victory over these so-called enemies. The only force which will effectively undo such an enemy is its own subverted logic, as in the case of disgust: rather than come to master myself, meeting strength with strength, I should outwit myself. That path, now, brings me to the point I reached when thinking about your comment: when outwitted the enemy ceases to be an enemy, and the inner tension no longer resolves into an inner conflict. Disgust is a low, crawling emotion, often to be found a short distance beneath my conscious thoughts, and no doubt it will always remain in some quantity. But in bringing it to light, I have learned a little about judgment and criticism, and have begun to form an ethics of criticism, a set of considered standards for when and what. I have also better learned to adapt to the emotional vagaries of forthrightness, the frustration, indecision and guilt that come after I refuse to shelter disgust in secret. The feeling became a provocation to actions that would broaden my experiences, ethics and skills, as well as an indicator of a need to deepen my involvement with others, namely those others I had started to hold in contempt. The disgust proved to be good sustenance, good material for something better. I do not know, but I posit that my other internal struggles have the same reality: that they are only struggles in the short term, and if they continue to be struggles in the long term then it is because I have failed to properly work the substance at hand, the substance which in whatever way resists my efforts.

How far should I take this thought? If the clay of myself hardened into the wrong shape, then I may smash it. If the words of myself come out incoherent, then I may delete them. If a life that exists inside me is harmful, then I may introduce a better species of thought to prey on it. If I discover a better material, a better form or a better principle for the creation of myself, then I should not hesitate to dismantle, destroy or deface what came before, to reduce myself to nothing more than the idea of myself. After all, it is an idea that is most readily improved.

Comments

[baktre.livejournal.com]

'Disgust' seems like an odd word to use, but I'm not sure there's a better one, perhaps it's the best choice! I think you used it more times in that paragraph than I heard it in the preceding year. Any word gets wierd and surreal if I repeat it enough times, and I think that started happening with disgust. I wonder if that word is onamotepedic. :)

Maybe having a strong reaction to something (disgust or whatever else) and then not allowing one's self to express it--because it's negative or inappropriate--creates a lot of stress. The strong reaction implies a lot of personal investment; forcing one's self to be passive and silent isn't being true to one's self on some levels. (although it may on others, like ideas of appropriateness or politeness)

One thing that lurks over me when I'm feeling conflicted about expressing myself is that I might care too much about a subject to be able to be reasonable about it. I've probably said that before. :) When I can manage to beat my thoughts or words into something that SEEMS reasonable, though, and contains embarassing things like 'I think...' or 'I feel that...' I'm suprised to find that frequently it's a better representation of what I actually think than the first thing that would have come out of my mouth would have been. I sure hope it's true, I'd be very flattered to think I could be actually reasonable sometimes!

Interesting point on the apathy thing. Yeah, our lizard brains can tell us when we need to drink, or need more salt, but more subtle needs or wants are beyond it. :)

Apologies at not being more useful on the food angle. I'm really bad in that respect, myself. But I get a lot of joy out of my indulgence! :)

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

'Disgust' seems like an odd word to use, but I'm not sure there's a better one, perhaps it's the best choice!

I do think it's too strong a word to use, and it vied with annoyance, frustration, and contempt for the role, but I didn't find a better one. For definition's sake, I'll call disgust a certain strong, but transient emotional response to something I find unethical, a response that moreover impels me away from interacting with its object (unlike outrage or anger, say).

I wonder if that word is onamotepedic. :)

Nope, etymologically it more or less means "distaste".

Maybe having a strong reaction to something (disgust or whatever else) and then not allowing one's self to express it--because it's negative or inappropriate--creates a lot of stress.

It does, but it seems to me that more stress is caused by expressing disgust. It may be a better kind of stress, though.

...I'm suprised to find that frequently it's a better representation of what I actually think than the first thing that would have come out of my mouth would have been.

I've come across the idea that words said in passion are more telling, more informative and more honest than those said after thought, but I think this isn't true. Though there are also strange cases like mine, where the more I care about something, the more deliberate and controlled my words become.

I sure hope it's true, I'd be very flattered to think I could be actually reasonable sometimes!

I think you're fairly reasonable, though you do tend to err on the side of charity.

Interesting point on the apathy thing.

Thanks! As it happens, I'm trying to put together an inventory of those more subtle needs, so that I can compensate for deficiencies without relying on my dodgy instincts.