The other related thing I see here is my attempts at controlling life. When I look at just what it means to ‘be in control of my life’ I see that essentially I am trying to hold the entirety of my life in the mind’s eye.
In order to even do this in the first place, life as it actually happens has to be reduced and translated in line with ‘my’ predilections. Then from this blinkered version of the actual ‘I’ can build the structure of ‘my life’.
This is where it gets completely ridiculous though, it’s something I have been observing for a while now. Because at this point the structure becomes the absolute, it is the primary concern. When a friend is late to meet me and ‘my’ plans come crashing down, I do not give a shit about the actual events.
The emotions that I am experiencing are entirely because ‘my structure’ is under attack. Somewhere in there ‘I’ confuse the integrity of the structure for actual safety/danger.
And this mode of operating can never work, because life as it actually happens is infinitely intricate and forever dynamic, then there is the ‘structure of my life’ which is a static construct and an artificial one at that. It needs constant effort to uphold and update, and this is painful effort for ‘my’ very security is intertwined with it’s structure. Every time a part of the structure is threatened, ‘I’ feel threatened, confusing this for actual danger.
I am not sure how to stop this just yet though, it seems to be a feature of the instinctual programming, this propensity to see through a tunnel vision (‘my life’) and passionately hold onto it’s objects in an attempt at gaining safety.
An interesting thought has come to me on this, what if the danger was never actual? Wouldn’t that entire house of cards topple in light of this? All of those activities that ‘I’ engage in, what if they are all for nothing? For that fundamental feeling of ‘danger’ is as much of an illusion as the rest of it.
I can see this in operation, the entire affective faculty is a mechanism for motivation, it drives an organism to move towards/away from X by utilising essentially phantoms - this instinctual sense of ‘danger’ is one such phantom, as well as ‘safety’.
I can somewhat see how silly it all is, ‘I’ detect ‘danger’ all the time, in situations where there is no actual danger to account for. And then when an actually dangerous situation happens such as the other day when someone almost crashed into me on the motorway, the body responds before ‘I’ get to be fearful anyways lol.
So it makes sense that the instinctual passions are indeed outdated. There are still automatic responses e.g touch hot plate and pull away, these keep the body safe by utilising speed of response and are necessary.
But the instinctual passions (fear, aggression, nurture, desire) were never utilised for this. The purpose of the passions was to motivate organisms to act in general ways which were likely to increase the chances of survival and reproduction. They were more like ‘general directives’ implanted by blind nature, some ‘tenets’ that organisms would blindly follow before intelligence could operate.
OMG I’ve never seen this before, finally it makes sense! Somehow in the past I’ve always confused rapid automatic responses (hot plate) with instictual passions. So then it made no sense that if fear is meant to help me deal with threats why does it only come after the threat has been dealt with lol.
So if I see a car swerve into me, there is a rapid automatic response (this is the actual threat response) and then there is the fear (a general directive) that comes later and motivates me to ‘go seek safety’. This is why I respond first and then later on find myself overcome by fear, the purpose of the fear was never to make me swerve away. The purpose of the fear is to get me into a state where I will hide from all cars now.
So now that humans have evolved intelligence there is still very much a need for rapid automatic responses but there is no longer a need for those general directives, we have intelligence for that now.
Damn if this is correct then alot of science is barking up the wrong tree, with regards to how/why emotions operate. Because the general consensus seems that fear aids in threat resolution. Eg you see a tiger and you get fearful, which primes the body to respond by escaping. I don’t think this is correct, 1 because it’s too slow and 2 because it actually gets in the way.
The actual threat response is primary and then the emotion floods the organism in order to direct it towards ‘safety’, as a general direction.
So affect works by creating a state within an organism where certain behaviours are more likely to be exhibited over others, the organism is ‘primed’ in a certain direction.
So for example the feeling of fear is there to slant an organism toward taking risk averse actions - as a general strategy.
It’s got nothing to do with responding to an actual threat in the moment.
This is slowly getting away from practical but man do I find it fascinating
This reminds me of Richard’s descriptions of identities being as if demons in possession of the flesh and blood bodies. Is this not exactly what I am saying too?
OK some more observations here, I notice that a big feature of the danger/safety dilemma and also of the feeling of control is the known/unknown.
For example I just took on a new company that I will be doing hen parties for, they have slightly different demands for the kind of service they provide, I am due to do my first job this Saturday.
So I notice there is a feeling of fear, it’s very much what I described yesterday - on one hand there is the ‘known’, the stuff I already hold within that ‘tunnel vision’, stuff that is already integrated into ‘my life’.
Then there is the ‘unknown’, I experience it just on the outskirts of the ‘tunnel vision’, somehow I feel like I cannot account for it because I cannot passionately clamp on it just yet, I feel like I am not in control, there is ‘danger’.
The cool benefit of these explorations is that just outlining the process begins to reveal how silly it is. Because once more it’s nothing to do with actual risk, the ‘known’ might lead me to carry out behaviours that are actually risky or damaging whilst feeling ‘safe’, say drug addiction, remaining with an abusive partner or remaining a ‘self’ . It’s always “better the devil that you know”, anything but that fear of the ‘unknown’, no matter how rotten the ‘known’ is.
But then again ‘I’ am not really to be blamed for this being the case to begin with, it’s silly in the current world but it makes sense in the evolutionary sense.
I can see this is simply a crude piece of programming, a general ‘code of behaviour’ that statistically will make it more likely for an organism (which lacks intelligence) to remain alive.
A rat can’t step back and consider the facts of the situation, so it is implanted with the drive to seek the familiar (equating it with safety) and to be averse to the unknown (equating it with danger), unless desire or some other passion overrides this consideration, but the mechanism would remain the same.
So I am beginning so see some chinks in the armour here, that the feeling of danger/safety via the known/unknown has got nothing to do with facts.
Interesting place I find myself in recently, it seems there is virtually none of the ‘human constitution’ left to examine in myself.
Each moment again I try to look but there is nothing but raw affect left, there is no more structure to it other than habitual emotional reactions.
Essentially I feel an emotion in a certain situation only because this is what I have always done.
And just now it clicked that at the core of it I am indeed addicted to ‘being’, addicted to suffering, this is a big one! No wonder all this Actualist stuff is such ‘hard work’ for what ‘we’ are really invested in doing is cunningly spinning around in circles, ensuring continued suffering.
Seeing this one a little clearer now, I’ve never seen it like this before and its very fascinating. The addiction is not just to the good feelings, in fact the bad feelings play a major role. This is because the bad feelings are like the bread and butter of ‘being’, they ‘set the scene’ for the good feelings to be pursued, for the drama to be played out. In short ‘I’ have to first suffer in order to temporarily escape ‘my’ suffering.
The bad feelings ensure that ‘I’ have this ongoing ‘ground of being’ to return to when the high evaporates, or a ‘ground of suffering’ in fact, as the scene is set for the drama to play out over and over again.
Ultimately what ‘I’ am addicted to is the affective cocktail stirred up by this game, this is ‘my’ very blood supply.
I experience it currently just like being a drug addict, the addiction is to ‘being’ itself and ‘being’ is suffering. The yin/yang game of the good/bad feelings is nothing but a very clever way to ‘shake up that cocktail’ and viscerally feel that ‘I’ exist.
I have this movie just pop into my head, a completely fucked up premise which really speaks volumes on the human condition. I forgot the title but essentially a bunch of nuns break into some poor woman’s home and torture her non stop, keeping her merely inches away from death so that further suffering could be inflicted.
The movie ends when just for a split second, out of the unbearable and ongoing suffering she ‘experiences god’ and then dies. The nuns note ‘contact with god for 0.1 second’ and then presumably proceed to the next victim.
But then what I am wondering is whether the addictive quality of the temporary release can be used in order to proceed towards a genuine release. So in normal mode ‘I’ set up the scene by first suffering so that ‘I’ can experience the brief moment of release from suffering. As Richard writes ‘I’ end up playing the game of always having a return ticket.
But is the desire for genuine release (actual freedom) of the same kind as the desire for the temporary release via suffering, except one takes the route of no return?
From the way you said this the path of no return looks as simple as not doing the same thing over again. This clicked for me because I never saw it that simple and easy before.
Iow, all I have to do to be af is to quit doing the same thing.
Yeah it does seem rather simple haha. I think the difficult part which is all the preparation beforehand is outlining ‘reality’ to a degree where this can be clearly seen.
It makes me think to Geoffreys report of becoming free, all of a sudden really getting the silliness of it all - ‘humanity’ spinning around in self induced suffering whilst the alternative is right under our noses, just waiting to be lived :
There was the actual world just right there in front of me, obviously existing, pure and perfect, and then there was ‘me’, ‘humanity’. The contrast was simply hilarious. I can’t describe how hilarious this contrast was. What we’ve all been doing forever and ever, on a ridiculous parade of malice and sorrow, with the greatest seriousness.
I saw something similar yesterday when the whole thing of addiction clicked, I saw just how invested we all are in our suffering, freedom is available right here but for the most part it is the last thing we are looking for.
I have been doing some reading recently on anxiety and OCD and something interesting has clicked just now. Individuals with both anxiety and OCD will perform various activities that in the immediate will ameliorate the undesirable feelings/thoughts but in the long term will solidify the pattern into something that eventually becomes a disorder.
Essentially they are using the good to overcome the bad and as such they are keeping the whole drama alive. It’s quite fun to see the similarities of some of these approaches with what we are doing with the actualism method, it’s just that actualism takes a way more ‘extreme’ approach and has a much more ‘extreme’ goal.
The thing that clicked just now though is that ‘investigation’ for an actualist can become one of those mechanisms (it certainly has become that for me).
Just like the anxious person will carry out ‘safety behaviours’ in order to temporarily ameliorate (but in the long term solidify) the emotions, for example checking that door one more time to make sure it’s locked, going over that plan one more time to ensure no detail was missed etc.
In the same way I will find myself escaping into the safety of ‘investigation’ every time there is an uncomfortable affective current going on. There is this drive to ‘make sense of it’, to build a story, to give some order to what is otherwise raw affect. This activity seems to give ‘me’ some feeling of control and therefore a transient feeling of ‘safety’.
Now someone with OCD might have to ride out those uncomfortable emotional currents without acting on them - so that they can find out for themselves that the world has not come crumbling down. In the same way I can allow myself to experience the feeling that is raging on without moving in either direction, either physically or psychically/psychologically. Initially ‘I’ am screaming, “what are you doing!?”, there is such a compulsion to go into this ‘investigation’ which right now I see as no different than the ‘safety behaviour’ mentioned above. Just like the anxious might go “just check that door one more time”, I am going “just weave another story, one more time”.
So just like when Richard sat on ‘mount doom whistling a tune’ if I can allow this thing to play out to its inevitable conclusion without moving in either direction then something inevitably gives in. I am still here, the affect raged all the way to max volume and eventually wore itself out but nothing actually took place, so what was it all about? I was safe all along, but now I know it.
The other cool thing is that if this is done persistently and diligently it will guarantee 1 outcome - I will find out for myself that it is safe to exist in the world without any layer of psychic/psychological protection. Essentially ‘I’ will realise that ‘I’ am no longer needed, not just as an intellectual understanding but as a lived experience, then ‘I’ can finally step out from control.
. It’s always “better the devil that you know”, anything but that fear of the ‘unknown’, no matter how rotten the ‘known’ is.