Learning to Steer

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves
after a journey than no one can take for us, nor spare us

- Marcel Proust

In George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, the Devil asks Don Juan why he bothers learning about himself and what he really wants (his core motivation), and Don Juan responds:

"Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift, to be in heaven is to steer."

If you do not steer, your actions will be dependent upon the cause-and-effect principles that influence the Psyche rather than upon your interests and principles.  For example, the Problem of Immediate Gratification [the PIG] is a cute name for the disturbing principle that a small but immediate payoff has a much greater influence on behavior than a larger but delayed payoff.  The PIG influences good people to knowingly trade what is dear to them [health, wealth, relationships] for the trivial but immediate payoff of using an addictive incentive.

This course is about learning to steer.  It is designed to help high functioning individuals develop the skills and faculties to enable them to mindfully operate the creature they inhabit, even through crises that would cause others to relapse.

Animals do not consciously steer; they react to local conditions.  What steers the mouse is not its best interests, but the cheese that baits the trap.  Humans who appreciate how the mousetrap works are not taken in by it. To exercise your will in the fast moving world of real time, you will have to appreciate more subtle traps. For example, those trying to lose weight by restricting cheese intake may not appreciate the perverse motivational consequences of restricting access to an incentive. Counter Regulatory Motivation is one of 6 addictive traps described in the next section.

The Nature of Your Challenge

The idea that humans have willpower is a controversial topic.  Most everyone caught in an addictive trap has tried what they call willpower—"white knuckling it"—without success. (The "brute force" method may, perversely, provoke counter-regulatory motivation). However, if willpower is defined as acting as you intend to act, despite the influence of local conditions, then you do have it to some extent— you can perform as intended in some situations. Our task is to strengthen it. .

To exercise will you must become familiar with cause-and-effect principles that govern your reactions, especially those related to stress and temptation. An understanding of how the creature you inhabit reacts to certain provocations is particularly important to those who will have to cope with them.

Much of the text that follows describes the biological, psychological, and social principles that make escape from an addictive trap so difficult. To actually escape your addictive trap, you will have to go a step beyond intellectual understanding to developing the procedural skills to exercise your will.

This capability emerges gradually as you develop an appreciation of what it means to exercise your will. The first thing you must understand is that things are not always as they appear.

 

Taken in by an illusion > >
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