Human Motivation as a Constant Self-Deceiving
We humans are placed in a precarious spot at almost every moment of the day. By this I mean that we have to deceive ourselves that what we are doing is meaningful, or is something worth doing, or is just what must be done in our role as (place arbitrary role here- citizen, learner, responsible adult, employee, etc.). Beyond the aversion to discomforts like hunger, heat/cold, and no shelter, we are in a constant state of having to believe that any move or decision is one even worth making.
We put arbitrary, fiat-like value on a goal to keep our minds at peace and impose stability. If we are to truly look at what we are doing, we are constantly thinking of ways to make sure we have something to work towards. However, with any prolonged reflection, these goals are just placeholders for a void. Other animals, let's say a bird, has no need for self-deception. It doesn't fill voids of meaning. It eats its seeds, it makes its nest, it chirps in the morning, it finds mates, and repeats. The human is one that must self-deceive at all moments that there is something to do, somewhere to go, and something to be.
Sartre talked about radical freedom and authenticity. However, he didn't get to the root of the root. Yes, if we make a choice in full freedom that we choose to do it, you may call this "radical freedom" and "authenticity", but he does not emphasize as much that even our preferences for what we choose is a sort of deception. We think we have a preference. We move towards that preference, but even having a preference is its own con game of sorts. The free man is respectable in this schema, as long as he follows his preferences. But preferences are something we conjure too, because to be truly devoid of preferences is to lack all motivating factors. There must be a deception first, "I have a preference", something we are encultured to make choices about. Then we make the second move to be motivated by these preferences.
We put arbitrary, fiat-like value on a goal to keep our minds at peace and impose stability. If we are to truly look at what we are doing, we are constantly thinking of ways to make sure we have something to work towards. However, with any prolonged reflection, these goals are just placeholders for a void. Other animals, let's say a bird, has no need for self-deception. It doesn't fill voids of meaning. It eats its seeds, it makes its nest, it chirps in the morning, it finds mates, and repeats. The human is one that must self-deceive at all moments that there is something to do, somewhere to go, and something to be.
Sartre talked about radical freedom and authenticity. However, he didn't get to the root of the root. Yes, if we make a choice in full freedom that we choose to do it, you may call this "radical freedom" and "authenticity", but he does not emphasize as much that even our preferences for what we choose is a sort of deception. We think we have a preference. We move towards that preference, but even having a preference is its own con game of sorts. The free man is respectable in this schema, as long as he follows his preferences. But preferences are something we conjure too, because to be truly devoid of preferences is to lack all motivating factors. There must be a deception first, "I have a preference", something we are encultured to make choices about. Then we make the second move to be motivated by these preferences.
Comments (81)
There is nothing actually good or bad; objects are neutral and the values associated with them are projection of subjects. Every pairing of perceptual object and associated affectivity is entirely arbitrary. Every feeling is coercive, because without them, nothing would happen. Nobody would do anything at all, because there would not be any reason to.
To be free of feeling, then, is to be free of this enslavement, to no longer care, and no longer care that one does not care. Indifference is the "highest" form of consciousness because the subject is quite literally free of the world itself. They have "woken up" from the nightmare.
Good points. The problem is the subject's relation to the world "demands" certain things by subtle social programming. Survival is had by the subject's relations to an organization that provides the means for goods and services. This engenders a sort of "de facto" preference for at least doing enough to stay employed. On the other end, boredom is the feeling of the restless monkey mind. Preference for any non-negative interaction with the world is then undertaken. Thus the pendulum between survival and boredom creates its own demands that "get our preferences worked out". Thus, while there are no intrinsic goods and bads, there is strong social programming to have preferences for what is perceived as socially acceptable ways to maintain work and entertainment options.
But this gets to the heart of what I'm talking about. Even the preferences we have for the things we "like" comes from somewhere. I mentioned the monkey mind in my last post. We are enculturated to cultivate our preferences so we have something to work towards in the first place.
You bring up a good point though. That is to say, daily, we are always putting some sort of deception of meaning on what we do.
Part of the fallacy here is that we are never truly satisfied with anything we do or get in return for our efforts. This is not true because we do feel satisfied after eating a good meal or attaining something like money for example. You have an idealized fictitious concept of a man or woman who never really feels satisfied with whatever they do or get, and I'm just pointing this out.
Yes, indifference is important; but, one cannot be indifferent towards needs; but, mostly wants. If that's the case then the logical thing to do is to restrain oneself from the attainment of these wants. It's idiotic (no offense) to constantly be indifferent towards wants and never be able to attain them without realizing that they have no inherent value to an individual. This is my conception of ancient stoicism, that reverts back to cynicism. Just my two pennies.
Of course it is possible for somebody to deceive themself about their feelings. It often happens that someone is angry yet tells themselves and others that they are not. But only that person themself can ultimately know whether they were self-deceiving in that way. Any belief by a person about whether another person has the feelings they say they do can only ever be a guess.
The deception is that there is any determined reason we are doing anything. Rather we conjure preferences and build goals around this to impose stability on a dissatisfied initial state
I am also don't see any reason to suppose that people conjure preferences. At least in my case, a preference is something that I just become aware of, rather than setting out to manufacture one. I don't know what it is like for others.
Look at the bird example in my first post. What is the difference between what motivates a bird and a human?
It’s not about lying to yourself about feelings. Its lying to yourself that there’s anything more meaningful to pursue other than the value we conjure upon a goal.
Your post assumes that everyone else feels the same way. They might not; it might be a matter of perspective.
Au contraire. Given the endless and thankless effort which birds must expend on their instinctive egg-hatching natalism and olympic level migrations twice a year just to lay more eggs and exhaust themselves feeding another batch of ungrateful chicks -- I'd say they have maximum reasons for self-deception. Those songs they sing? All lies. Bright colors? Deceptions. Mating for life? A hoax.
Are worms really worth getting up early for? Another lie.
In any case, I doubt that many people do say to themselves that there is something more meaningful to their goals than the value they place upon them. I can't know what other people say in their heads, but it seems to me that would be a strange thing to say.
I agree. Much of what we do is out of emotions like boredom and loneliness (akin to boredom). Only after the fact, we justify with something like, "to pursue higher goals of accomplishment and esteem".
The fact that we need perspective at all is telling.
But it doesn't have the ability to know otherwise. THAT is the difference. We know we don't have to conjure up meaning, but we do. Or perhaps, we cannot help it, but we know our situation, including that we can't help it. As I wrote to andrewk: It's that they place value on goals in the first place. Nothing is really determined. We don't have to be motivated by anything, but we CHOOSE to. we conjure goals to work towards, but unlike other animals, we have no determined reason to work towards anything. A bird cannot help but do its thing, we can. We choose to conjure up motivation.
It's that they place value on goals in the first place. Nothing is really determined. We don't have to be motivated by anything, but we CHOOSE to. we conjure goals to work towards, but unlike other animals, we have no determined reason to work towards anything. A bird cannot help but do its thing, we can.
How could it be otherwise? We're intelligent rational beings who are required to interpret the meaning of things. It's simply that your post is pervaded by the conviction that life is inherently meaningless; I'm simply questioning that, I don't think it is true at all. I think it is simply characteristic of some perspectives.
[quote]“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.”
? Sengstan, Hsin Hsin Ming
I think you should only argue this way after you've explored the evolutionary theory of perception.
For a start, how did you come to the conclusion that beyond satisfying our hunger and the need for proper temperature and shelter, that human actions are nothing more than self-deception or pretending to do something meaningful? That we have a propensity for 'hope', or an urge to explore what's beyond, or even philosophize could be very well be on par with satisfying our biological need for food.
I refuse to believe that human efforts and activities are, at best, a bullshit refinery that runs twenty-four hours a day to keep our mind at peace.
Are you suggesting that people tell themselves they value a particular goal, when they don't really? That would be a self-deception, but how could we ever guess whether somebody was doing that?
https://youtu.be/E_qvy82U4RE
I'm a nihilist. I believe nothing is intrinsically meaningful, that free will doesn't exist, that value is as malleable as air and that there is ultimately no point to doing anything ever. Yay
I don't think that your position as a nihilist is inconsistent with the idea that life is meaningful, that we dwell in the meaning and make life meaningful through our shared practices. Believing that nothing is intrinsically meaningful is different to believing that nothing is meaningful. The former seems like a common sense philosophical position, the latter sounds more like depression than a philosophical position, I think.
I'm quite interested in trying to delineate the difference between philosophical pessimism and depression as a feature of that philosophical position. It would seem contradictory to state that one is a philosophical pessimist and yet happy, cheerful, and productive. It just seems too much like a cognitive dissonance of sorts.
Well said. In some sense, I feel that philosophy need trip sitters to quell the angst derived from many of it's professed beliefs.
But look at what we can do. We can even have ideations of suicide. We can look at life and say, "I do not have to do anything. I can sit here and starve to death". What motivates us to do anything in the first place? Well, we usually have to have, at the last, a short-term/temporary goal in mind, and move towards that. Where does this goal originate? Well, that is where we put our fiat-value on something, to make us feel the impulse to move towards it. Further, this derives from preferences that we have cultivated over time. Hope is in the equation, perhaps for evolutionary reasons. It could just be a coping mechanism we happened to have developed in order to keep the goal-factory moving along. Unlike other animals, that simply move along, we move along in terms of goals. Some people are less aware of the very self-imposed nature of most of our goals... in other words, they believe they are THE goals that they are driven by, rather than what they have imposed on themselves as motivating factors. The deception would be to forget this fiat-like way we GENERATE goals.
I do have to ask. Do you live your life in accordance with your philosophy of life? How do you cope with so much pessimism and inherent angst that you seem to profess on these forums? Just asking out of curiosity, as I am deeply influenced by Schopenhauer myself, given that he was my first introduction to the art of philosophy. I have embedded some of his maxims into my own way of life. Such as the desire for solitude and contemplation. I find most of his philosophy derived from a particularly narcissistic conception of himself; but, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I just try and distance myself from such fantasies that I am special or my solitude will contribute to my welfare, as it seemingly does.
Yet, after all the angst and strife and coping is over with, I still feel some urge to be happy and content with my meager life. How about you?
Just keeping it real.
The deception is believing the goals are anything but self-imposed. Sure, sometimes we are hyper aware of our own choice to be motivated in the first place, but often we go through the motions, letting our (also self-imposed) preferences drive us along. We don't have to do anything. A bird cannot say that.
The difference between human beings and other animals in relation to this matter, is not that we place value on goals, but that we identify value, and we name it. So all the animals you describe in their activities act accordingly because they place value on the various things and so carry out those acts because they value them. Human beings recognize this as holding "values", and name it as such. Some of us, like you, want to create an artificial separation between human beings acting because they value something, and animals acting because they value something. That is self-deception.
I'll give you that. I just feel in the mood for chocolate ice cream, for example. I'm proposing that we let things that are pleasing to us drive our motives, but it is still a choice to choose what is pleasing. It is the excuse leftover for why we are motivated, but we still choose to go for preferences. A more radical position is, that even preferences that seem pleasing to us, are something that we simply instilled in ourselves that we like due to habit. But that is a much more complicated position with a lot of psychological research to present in order to support it, I'm guessing.
I think you are playing with terms here. If we delineate the term goal properly, this issue goes away. A goal, in the way I'm using it, is one where it is indeed something we identify and name. Animals have perhaps ends that it is achieving, but it is unidentified by the animal itself, and not intentional. It doesn't know it is following goals. Basically, it didn't CHOOSE its goals. It just follows its own directives. If there is a choice, it would be so binary as to be improper to conflate with human goals which are linguistically based and with a much higher degree of freedom of choice.
Is it? It may be culturally-derived. The role of father, and caring about a particular preference, but ultimately it is a choice. There is no if/then behavior like a bird might have. There are plenty of examples of fathers who chose not to play that role.
You can only speak for yourself here. Maybe you feel you are deceiving yourself, but you can have no idea whether others are. Neither can I or anybody else.
My opinion is that a young person who loves animals, dreams of being a vet and studies really hard to qualify to enter the vet degree at uni, then works really hard in the aim of getting into a really good vet practice, is not deceiving themself at all. They dearly want something, and they strive to achieve that something.
Maybe your mistake is to misunderstand the level at which language-based thinking, choosing and willing finds its natural meaning. You presume it is at the psychological level of the individual, and yet it actually happens at the organismic level of a culture and society.
So sure, a worker ant granted some kind of self-awareness might suddenly question what it is all for. But an ant colony has a clearly evolved reason for whatever the worker ant generally does, or is.
So your philosophical misstep is to fail to recognise the nature of meaning. The reasons for actions aren't ever to be found in the "self" when we are talking biology. That psychological self is always a biological or social construction. It arises embedded in a living context that determines its nature.
As has been said before, your angst about the meaninglessness of life arises only because you vault that embeddedness in a social context to consider the human condition in the context of a random and purposeless Cosmos. You jump scales of being.
But the irony is that that image of the human condition is itself a social construction - a product of a particular time in the development of the theories of physics, coupled to the romantic reaction that image of nature engendered.
So your pessimistic lament is anachronistic - out of date with our understandings of nature and humans as socially-constructed creatures. Time to change the tune?
Because fathering does not matter to them. They are what we call bad fathers. Also, it's not merely a role, but a self-understanding, which is different to a role in that it is existential.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Whether it is culturally derived or not is irrelevant as far as mattering is concerned. You never choose mattering. Think about it phenomenologically.
Again, the motivation is not given, it is created. It need not be a long-term goal. It can be very mundane goals.
So when we make decisions, we are making it on a species level? I don't compute. Sure, the goals are linguistic, thus derived socially via linguistic construction of meaning. However, who actually MAKES the choice? It is not the species, but the individual, who may be doing it in the backdrop of linguistically derived decision-making abilities.
Quoting apokrisis
But how are the individuals not responsible for choices of motivation? At the end of the day, no matter how much social programming is at play, and I HAVE acknowledged the power of this in the thread (read back to the first few posts), it is still the individual who takes upon whatever role or goal to work towards.
I contend that we do choose mattering. We choose to care. I will say that the baseline factors on our choices are the pendulum swing of de facto conditions of survival (culturally-based), and boredom. This makes us choose something that matters, perhaps.
We have to eat every day.
We have to sleep every day.
We have to go to the bathroom every day.
The brain is just another mechanical apparatus of the body with it's own maintenance requirements.
If we want to have a healthy life, we have to take care of business.
Why complicate it beyond that?
Yes as I said in the OP: Beyond the aversion to discomforts like hunger, heat/cold, and no shelter, we are in a constant state of having to believe that any move or decision is one even worth making.
I think this sums up the fundamental difference between Heidegger and Sartre. You're on the side of Sartre and radical freedom, and I don't think it's a good side to be on. :wink:
I'd like to think it's more nuanced phenomenologically. Rather, the substrate of all motivations are boredom and survival (mediated through cultural landscape). However, how we then go ahead and motivate ourselves to flee these two extremes is the radical freedom part. So its both.
Social communities are smaller than the biological species. And "we" are the product of multiple levels of community. So let's not be simplistic. You have a family heritage, a peer group, a neighbourhood, a national, religious or ethnic identity.
But the point remains. Language gains its meanings at a social level of development. And these meanings are what shape "us" in terms of some psychological set of habits of action. You can't analyse the individual abstracted from the social context as the social level is where the meanings are arising on the whole.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Do individuals actually make all their own choices? You are presuming a level of independent mindedness that is much talked about - in a particular cultural tradition at least - yet rarely enough exhibited even within that culture.
Of course, people could call their physiological drives their own. Biology has its needs. And those are meaningful at that organismic level.
But mostly folk are not making real choices - not about reasons, anyway. They are seeking to apply existing social meanings to the lives they happen to be living. So they might have to plan or make choices about how to achieve some purpose. But the purposes are readily to hand as part of their cultural environment.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Nope. Why would you argue the unscientific and unnatural view that motivations should be a matter of individual choice. You are starting with a bogus model of psychology and so all your consequent philosophising is for naught.
Quoting schopenhauer1
We can always recognise the fact that we are only responding intelligently and creatively to the embedded demands of our cultural millieu. And that - theoretically at least - raises the possibility of dissent.
But you are ignoring the corollary. If we also recognise the fact that "we" are a social construction, then we can't claim there is some other "us" that exists free and independent of that cultural millieu.
Now we can imagine cutting ourselves off from our fellow humanity so entirely that we become your atomistic individual, alone in its cosmic sea of burden and futility. Indeed, there is whole genre of culture where you can learn to take precisely that attitude. You can find "yourself" among the like-minded by sharing the right texts and manuals.
But at the end of the day, you can't escape the reality that being socially constructed comes first. If you want to construct some absolute kind of psychological individualism, that is going to come after the fact. And considered sanely, what could be the point?
I am not disputing that. What I am questioning is what support you have for the belief that everybody is deceiving themself. I don't think the average animal-loving vet student has an opinion, or cares, whether their goal is given or created. They just want to achieve it. The same goes for short-term mundane goals like 'I want to go for a bike ride'.
I want to go ride my bike now for half an hour or so. And I will. Do you believe I am deceiving myself? How so?
Why is this any more interesting than being in a constant state of needing access to food?
So when a person makes a decision and choose to do something, what do you call that? That is society making the decision?
It's the implication, not the origin that I care about. The implication is that we arouse in ourselves a state of WANTING to follow a goal. We CONJURE the goal from fiat. We use goals to fill the void. Nature abhors a vacuum and so do humans. It's not that we move along unwittingly. Rather, we want to make something up to move us along.
My guess is once we have our basic needs worked out, our minds need to fill the void of something to do.
Social construction is about the informational constraints that shape the individual psychology. So it is not about society making you decide anything, it is about society being the meaningful framework within which any personal autonomy is exercised.
My model accounts for the reasons or motivations that are so lacking in your model.
You are complaining the reasons don't exist in us, and they don't exist in the cosmos, so they don't exist anywhere. You've searched high and low, and you can find no point to any particular choice.
But I am saying this is a failure of naturalism on your part. The reality is that "we" are socially constructed. So meaning was never going to be intrinsic to "us" - beyond the kind of biological motivations that are natural to just being alive. A larger purpose in life is the social purposes to be found all around us. Society is the organismic level of organisation here. It is the locus of the kind of meanings that are necessary to social creatures living a social lifestyle.
Now you can of course have all sorts of thoughts and disputes about that. No one is going to pretend that society as it stands, or ever was, is a completely perfect or rational animal.
But as a departure point for moral philosophy, that is the reality from which to start a discussion. It is not unnatural to be behaving like socially constrained creatures if it is social constraint that is constructing us as the particular creatures we are in the first place.
We are already plunged into that historical flow of existence - the human story. You may wind up appalled or delighted. But it is philosophically unreasonable of you to distort the basic facts. And that is my objection.
I mean c'mon apokrisis. Yes, I am well aware that we may have choices, but those choices are structured within our social setting. But again, WHO is making the choices within that social setting. You keep moving the goal post from who makes the decision, to what the decisions are about.
Quoting apokrisis
You miss my point. Chimps and dolphins are social creatures too. However, they don't necessarily have to purposely set goals for themselves. Yes we are embedded in a social setting. But it is the RESPONSIBILITY of the individual to make decisions, to choose, to conjure goals to pursue. It is not given that what choice has to be made. This is the radical freedom Sartre discusses. Certainly, I acknowledge that there are core foundations- the pendulum swing of survival (mediated by culture), and boredom. The actual goal-setting to flee from these is conjured by fiat, at will, by the individual though.
Quoting apokrisis
Unfortunately, you discount the choice nature of individual humans within their social structure- even the choice to want to do nothing in particular.
Nope. I keep shifting the goal posts from atomism to holism. You keep trying to shift them back.
But you need to then provide your account for how we actually do make decisions of the kind that might concern us here. Where is your psychological model? I don't see it. You simply seem to exist that "we" exist in some fashion that needs no further discussion.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Hardly on the scale of humans. We have language and so a symbolic level of cultural evolution. That makes a really big difference.
Quoting schopenhauer1
LOL. How could they even do that without a language to construct such a framework on meaning?
Quoting schopenhauer1
To say that is the RESPONSIBILITY, all shouty like, is already to take a very historically conditioned view of the human story. Check out your cultural anthropology and you will find that traditional tribal cultures don't tend to think they have some responsibility to make a personal choice about the life goals they will pursue.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But isn't my argument that on the whole, wanting to do nothing in particular is reasonably normal? It is the idea of wanting to be extraordinary which would be the source of much modern discontent.
Sometimes I wonder why talking past each other is an acceptable method of argumentation to some people.
I did not say that what we do needs to be meaningful. I was refuting Schop's assertion that we pretend that what we do is meaningful. Repeatedly pushing the button does not make the traffic light change faster, yet many people do it. Do they think it's meaningful? No. Do they do it out of sense of primal survival? No. What is being tested there, then? Patience. Not meaning. Not survival.
Now that we've gotten this out of the way, let me ask you, do you think our need to be busy everyday can be blamed on evolution? Answer wisely, please.
Dolphins beach themselves. What to make of this?
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's called satisfying an instinct. People naturally move towards a source of food, like the refrigerator.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Biological needs.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Nah. It takes very little to do what we do most of the time. We move towards the door when we hear knocking without thinking of meaning or value.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No. Loud sound, strange sound, or banging will make us move towards it. We didn't prefer it or prepare for it at the dawn of civilization.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So, you are willing to allow that hope is evolutionary, but in the same breath brush off our coping mechanism as something we invented? Honestly, Schop. Why do you do this? I know you from before. Early onset of imbecility is not part of your condition.
Quoting Caldwell
Yes.
I'm not talking past you. I don't understand how your traffic light example is at all relevant. The guy is saying that our belief that following our instincts and doing what we want is meaningful is baseless. All you did was add another instinct "the instinct to be patient". That does not whatsoever invalidate his statement.
Generally I agree with this. Humans tend to relate to reality through stories. The ego is a story. Meaning is a story. The past and future are stories. Religion is a story. Relationships are a story.
I agree also that we tend to use these stories to keep the void at bay, for the void is typically seen to be too scary. An experiment can reveal this to those too lost in the busyness of stories to know the fear of the void is lurking underneath the busyness.
Go somewhere in nature where you can get peace and quiet and be alone all day. Bring only a chair, water and food, nothing else. Get there at dawn and stay until sunset. Watch one day of your life unfold. Before long the busy busy busy story machine will probably start thinking of a thousand reasons why you need to be doing something else, something busy, something to feed the stories. If the reasons don't work, the story machine may start threatening you with various sadness emotions.
What seems to be missing from the Schopenhauer religion (referring to the famous philosopher, not the poster) is the understanding that if we refuse to be bullied by the story machine, if we stick to our guns and patiently wait it out, the story machine gradually gives up. Over time the mind will adapt itself to the new low stimulation environment and like the bird you referenced above, the becoming story machine experience gives away to just being, to silence. That is, our focus shifts from abstractions to the real world.
The real world has what we're looking for. And to the degree we find what we're looking for, the fear of the void fades, and the need for stories recedes.
The Schopenhauer religion is just another story being used to push away the scary void. Perhaps this story could be useful if it encourages us to turn and face the void, which would of course include saying goodbye to the Schopenhauer religion.
If the Schopenhauer story is being used to just endlessly wallow around in dreadful dank dreariness, then hopefully it's just a college sophomore dorm room hobby that will soon pass. As example...
When I was late high school - early college age I read a lot of Solzhenitsyn books about the Russian gulag. I was a sheltered little suburban white boy, and so the discovery that evil existed in the world was dreadfully fascinating. In time I got over this interest and went on to better stories.
But absurdity doesn't prevent us from choosing our own personal meaning, does it?
I once raised a question in the forum about how a life of meaning (read: purpose) would be immoral since purpose is use and using a person is immoral per Kantian terms.
So, meaninglessness is good, ethically speaking. It liberates us from being mere tools in a grand scheme devised by God or something else. We're free to choose our destinies and that is, for me, better than having something like a divine purpose.
It's not self-deception. It's wisdom.
This is a strawman. There can be several reasons for how these tribes operate. One can be that it has taken years of structures to think more like a group. For example, I remember learning that when a Bushmen hunter is actually one to kill the prey, the rest of the band downplays the achievement by emphasizing how inconsequential the kill was, and how the group did it, and not just him. That means they are quite aware of the tendency for pride and arrogance, have structures in place to downplay this trait.
Also, it may be that tribal societies perhaps haven't "discovered" the extent of human individuality and freedoms of choice. For example, technology and science were "discovered" invented in other cultures. We speak in terms of "advancement" when it comes to this, but perhaps, this can be applied to other things like, the extent of human individual choice.
At the end of the day, modern man has it that he/she makes choices on what to pursue. Sure, I do not discount the cultural background this takes place in, but it is still individuals creating fiat-like values for goals.
That's the deception- that anything is other than what we put weight on in our goals.
Quoting Caldwell
That is simply cultural conditioning. We still choose in a way to give sway to it. The consequences of not though, perhaps keep us just following the condition.
Quoting Caldwell
Why the need for ad hominem? I was just suggesting it could also be something that is sort of a byproduct rather than an adaptation. It is hard to tell with human behavior what is exactly what. It is not the same as simple reflexes, for example.
But what are your assumptions here about facing the void and the like?
Interesting points. The implication is that motivation is not really given, it is more-or-less self-conjured..perhaps with help from social conditioning as prompts as to what to conjure. However, it is an added fuel in the equation that no other animals need do. It is a little mind game where we make goals, and believe we should be following those goals.
I'm not sure I understand your question, so please feel free to expand on it. Until then...
Quoting schopenhauer1
As your sentence suggests, the story we call "meaning" typically involves a process of becoming. I am becoming richer, smarter, nicer, stronger, etc. I am traveling from here to there. I am becoming this or that. A writer might call this the "story arc".
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, kind of like the person who keeps the TV on all day because they can't face the silence of an empty house. We typically keep busy, busy, busy building the becoming story called meaning to keep the void at bay.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What I don't see in your posts, perhaps because it's not in Schopenhauer's writing, is that this statement....
... is false.
We aren't actually required to fill all moments with the search for becoming story meanings. No law of nature prevents us from taking a break from the becoming story meaning, turning to face the void, and then exploring that realm.
Yes, we hold various preferences because of what we take causal relationships between things to be, and what kind of outcomes we will imagine ourselves in.
Deeper than this though, ambitions, desires, inspirations write themselves on to your heart. We dream, we aspire. These aspiration give no worry to difficulty, logistics, you have no control of it, and just have to do it. Without doing so, a large part of you will turn its back on you forever.
You can say that there is no real reason to do them, no real motivation, but that isn't at all what those that see think. Conservative values often seem uncompassionate, and really cold about physical violence, and other high risk safety factors. This is because the worst thing to them isn't getting hurt or violated, but damaged, broken, jaded, hateful, spoiled and self-centered... being the types that espouse love of the weak and hatred of the strong. Just those blatant types of twisted -- it's being them that is the worst thing imaginable. The consequences of not following your heart are that dire.
We though, we have destinies to fulfill.
So what does exploring that realm mean?
Quoting apokrisis
No, the straw man was saying that the tribe automatically is some collective hive-mind or some such. Rather, I proposed alternative reasons for a more group-like mentality including social conditioning which has tried to tamp down individualistic tendencies or perhaps that they have not "discovered" the extent of individual freedoms of choice, the way some societies didn't "discover" the applications of science to technology.
I don't get what you're getting at really. What destinies to fill?
OK. So that was the straw man you wanted to introduce here then.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I've said a million times that the standard sociological story is that a social system is an adaptive balance of global co-operation and local competition. It is this dynamic that explains the observed facts. So yes, we would expect an appropriate degree of "tamping down", or social constraint - coupled to an appropriate encouragement of individual freedoms.
As I've said before, I agree with your lament that modern life is difficult because it has become a social constraint that we must all strive to be highly individualistic. You have that seeming paradox of being now forced by social-conditioning to be creative and different. Your entire reason for existing is something that now has to be authored by you! Or at least, that was what you've been complaining about.
So I agree that that would be a problem. That kind of modern socially conditioned expectation doesn't make a lot of sense.
Well it does if you step back far enough to recognise the hand of the thermodynamic imperative - why we are hellbent on a technological lifestyle that could heat up a whole planet. The self-actualising individual is really mostly just about being the self-centred consumer, impervious to all environmental constraints. It is a system out of balance, as will be the lesson by 2050.
But meanwhile, as we idle away the wait in amusing philosophical debate, it seems worth pointing out the fact that meanings as they would exist for humans would be learnings captured by human culture. If you don't like the current general state of the conditioning coming from our social institutions, then the answer is to help change that conditioning - not just reject conditioning in some general pessimistic fashion.
You're right. I think we should be in the know about all forms of deception, especially self-deception as it's harder to realize and avoid.
But...
After we come to realize that we're fooling ourselves what are we to do?
Imagine x realizes life is an illusion. That's a good thing to know. However, x is alive and must still live his life. His realization doesn't suddenly transport him into a different world.
After realizing a game is corrupted why can't I continue playing it?
If you should decide to explore that question I may participate.
You must keep playing it. The funny part is that we are not determined on our goals and actions yet each and every time we do anything, we must play this confidence trick.