Control

It is a very basic instinct to desire to control our situation. Humans are not alone in this, animals share this desire as well. Take an animal, say a lab rat, remove him from his accustomed environment and place him somewhere completely different - say you transfer the rat to a new cage. He runs around in agitation at first. Where will he find water? He finds the water bottle and checks it, runs off and then comes back to check it again. Where will he sleep? He rustles around in the litter of the cage, seeking material and a place for a nest. Are there other rats in the cage? If so, what will his status be? Where's the food? The rat is seeking to control the basics of his survival. When he finds that these needs will be met in his new environment, he calms down.

It is a very deep, intrinsic need to feel that we are in control of a situation. We want to know that if we do "A" then "B" will result, and we want this outcome to be consistent. Bottom line, the world is a tragic place. Our spouse or lover may leave us or die, we may become ill with some awful disease, we are assured that one day we will die. We don't want these things to happen to us. These are things that happen to OTHER people. Or at the very least, if they DO happen to us, its for some discernable reason.

Something bad may happen to one person and he responds by thinking, "Well, what's new? Always was a fuck-up." Another person may respond by thinking, "This is God's punishment because I didn't throw enough virgins in the volcano." Yet a third person may think, "This is all the fault of the conservatives (liberals). If it weren't for their policies this would never have happened."

What all three have in common is that they are assigning cause and effect, trying to make sense of the universe. Where we run into trouble is when we follow these beliefs blindly, in the face of all reason, because its too frightening to relinguish that sense of control. Even the thought, "I've always been a fuck-up" assigns a reason for what may simply be arbitrary fate.

We have both less and more control over our lives than we may believe we do. The trick is discerning where the difference lies.

[Catwoman]

Tomas is the only 'rite I know who quotes himself in his posts.

Beestie - To just drill to the core, I'd say the answer to your question is highly correlated with one's "self-importance." Enlightened folk distance themselves from the self and take responsibility for disappointment while those who cannot (or choose not to) escape the self greet unfulfilled expectations as a "problem" with reality. After all, it's all about ME, right?!?!? :-)

I agree. And I am very self-important. But that's because I am an extremely important person. (Just haven't found out why yet.) I am too scared to distance 'my' from 'self' - it seems empty and void of human experience, which, for all it's glitches, is a fascinating phenomena that I don't really want to miss while sitting on a higher plane viewing from a safe distance.

So, on one level, your question appears to be about expectations and how they got there in the first place. Funny question coming from you

Meaning...?!!!

sm - We rarely desire bad things – most people desire good things. We desire peace, to be loved, to be of consequence in someone else’s life. The problem is, we always have incomplete and inaccurate beliefs about the world. When we seek to control our circumstances, we are operating with a complete set of true information, and so we enact intentions that are not always good or helpful.

Ironically, peace and love are possibly the only two things we will never be able to control. Yet this is what we desire the most. Do we consciously decide to null our desire, or continue in pursuit of our 'goal'?

PS. I like to consider myself a constant coruscator

Torrere - No. It's all about ME.

Would attempting to change reality to meet your expectations constitute making progress in reality (as opposed to one's self)?

If reality only exists within the self, then any impact on so-called actual reality is only an amendment to the self anyway. If you believe reality exists separate from the self (which is less arrogant but harder to accept) then to assume we can change it, as history has demonstrated, can only lead back to the issue of control. Why change anything?

Marichiko - ...they are assigning cause and effect, trying to make sense of the universe.

Yes - this is what I'm getting at. Why attempt to make sense of something that is not predictable, rational or necessarily ruled by cause and effect? Why are our brains geared towards cohesion, are we not equipped to cope with chaos? This seems to be an evolutionary flaw if you believe the world is chaotic, or to take it to its natural conclusion, random.

Marichiko - Bottom line, the world is a tragic place.

I think you've hit something here. It is our inability to accept tragedy as pure (random) phemomena (or noumena) that incites our desire for control. I wonder what would happen if we could truly accept tragedy without reason. Is this enlightenment?

[DanaC]

Does acceptance equate with enlightenment?...Interesting question. I think acceptance of certain basic realities of life is probably a good thing...otherwise we'd all be paralysed with fear most of the time...but then again, look at the advances science has made by essentially refusing to accept the limitations of flesh and lifespan.

Is acceptance the end goal? or is it the platform one must build in order to leap up higher?

[Catwoman]

True acceptance should not warrant further action, surely. If there is still a desire to move 'higher', then that is not acceptance, just acknowledgement.

[Beestie]

Originally posted by Catwoman

Originally posted by Beestie

Meaning...?!!!

Aren't you in advertising? Weren't you expressing your distaste for that very aspect of your job a few weeks ago? I couldn't escape the irony of someone who's job is to create and posit expectations into other people's minds that the products they are associated with cannot possibly fulfil (e.g., buy my client's cologne and get laid, buy a pill, lose some weight and look like [insert name of skin and bones model of the month here], etc.) is complaining about unfulfilled expectations.

I wasn't busting on you but there is no way I could reply to your question without making that observation. And you left off my smilie

[Catwoman]

Ok point taken. :p

And I didn't mean to leave off the smilie, I'm just technically inept.

[lumberjim]

catwoman,

I am going to take a shot in the dark and guess that this confusion of yours stems from the odd relationship between your 2 roomates and yourself. You are struggling with your expectations of the male? you feel dissapointed by his lack of reciprocity of your Intent?

I recall a moment of clarity from my single days, when I realized that if I seperated my expectations of what would come from a relationship I was in, I would enjoy the ride for what it was, and not compare it to what I wanted it to be. Can this be called enlightenment? I dunno. don't really care. It made me feel better. It is good to have expectations, but not good to beat yourself up over a dissapointment. The lesson here is to NOT let the dissapointment you felt in the past effect your expectation of the future. If you can seperate in your mind what is from what you want, and still work toward what you want ( keeping in mind that it does not always work) you may find it to be an easier road to travel.

am i way off? or is this one of those moments of occasional wisdom?

[lumberjim]

Originally posted by Torrere


Learning English.

yeah, and apparently he's learning it from spivey

[Catwoman]

Damn am I that obvious?

Yes, LJ, wisdom indeed. You are quite right. Probably.

I will try to reorder my expectations and enjoy things for what they are.

But be warned, now you are my psychologist, I will come to you for advice more often...

[lumberjim]

well, that's the thing with the cellar. someone is bound to say something that fits right, or makes you think of the answer on your own. won't always be me, but i am pretty fucking smart sometimes. just ask sycamore.

Originally posted by Catwoman


Marichiko - Bottom line, the world is a tragic place.

I think you've hit something here. It is our inability to accept tragedy as pure (random) phemomena (or noumena) that incites our desire for control. I wonder what would happen if we could truly accept tragedy without reason. Is this enlightenment? [/b]

Yes, the ability to accept life as it is (including life's tragedies) is one aspect of enlightenment. But let's be real here, the vast majority of us have difficulty with the disappointments and set-backs of life. We are not enlightened beings. As master of the obvious, I have noticed this fact.

It is not a bad thing to search for cause and effect in what happens to us if we can do this with an open mind. For example, if you keep getting fired from jobs, it doesn't hurt to sit down and reflect upon this to attempt to discover the reason. We may decide that its because the "boss is always fucked" (in the immortal words of one of my friends) or we may notice that we have a habit of always coming in to work an hour late, so we decide that we'll start showing up on time, and, by golly, we don't get fired from our next job!

When it comes to relationships with other people, everyone seems to run into real difficulties with this "acceptance" issue. We want people to respond in ways that are favorable to us. We want everyone to like us, the teacher to give us an "A", te boss to give us a promotion, and the girl or guy of our dreams, not only to love us, but to be exactly the person we want them to be. Up to a point we CAN influence these things. If we are friendly and act with integrity, we'll have a better chance of having friends. If we work or study hard, we'll have a better chance of getting that "A" or promotion. But we can't force someone to love us and no one can change another human being.

When people get "stuck" in these areas, all too often they waste a lot of time and energy blaming the other person. A person stays on in a job where there's no chance of advancement because the boss's nephew is going to be given all the advances. Well you can stay in that job for years, bitterly complaining of favoratism or you can ask yourself why you seem to have a need to remain in a no win situation. You can go out with a guy for years even after he's told you he's not the "marrying kind" and hope you'll change his mind. You're refusing to accept the person for who they are in this case, and growing more bitter by the day, as your every attempt to bring him around fails. The mistake is in not accepting the person for who he is, and looking at yourself and asking why you have this need to chase after impossible dreams and tilt at windmills.

In situations like the examples above, acceptance is the first step toward taking personal responsibility for our own lives. Yeah, its too bad the boss plays favorates and its too bad the guy is a player, but after a certain point, we need to understand that we are signing on for these things by sticking around and refusing to accept the situation for what it is.

One of the biggest challenges of all is to accept the true tragedies that happen in our lives - a friend is senselessly murdered, our child is killed by a drunk driver, our spouse dies, we are diagnosed with incurable cancer. We can rail against fate and become bitter and shut down or we can redeem our suffering by allowing our broken heart to become an open one. We UNDERSTAND the suffering of others on its most intimate level, because we, too, have suffered. On one level we must accept the tragedies of our lives, and stop asking "Why me?" and ask "Why NOT me?"

Out of our suffering we may campaign for stricter enforcement of drunk driving laws and thereby save hundreds of other lives. We may become a bereavement councelor and help others with the pain of loosing a loved one; we can leave a trust fund dedicated to cancer research, so that one day others may not have to die of the disease.

But we won't be abe to do any of these things if we don't first accept the tragedy. The choice is ours.

[Catwoman]

Jeez marich are you running for President? Nice post.

It's an odd paradox (and one of the oldest martial arts rules) that to fight something you must first align with it - accept it, make frends with it. The irony of this is, once you choose to completely accept something, you can no longer carry negative feelings towards it, and thus will never be able to fight it, at least in terms that we recognise. Ergo it no longer becomes a fight, but a discussion. This is perhaps why people cannot let go - they know if they do there will be no fight, and they confuse this with losing, or 'giving up'. Perhaps what we need to recognise is that continuing to force a path in life (esp. relationships) is the weakest route of all.

As LJ so kindly pointed out, this debate was more than likely spurred on by unresolved feelings concerning a certain romantic situation I am currently involved in (for those that are interested) I am struggling with what I think is right and what is actually happening, and the obvious conflict between the two. I am learning to accept the situation, and find making this simple change within myself alters my entire view of the situation - it's amazing, the power of the mind to completely distort perception. It's always the first step that's the hardest, but once you can break out of a pattern it's hard to remember what the problem was in the first place.

edited for usual syntax problems

[Carbonated_Brains]

I just want to state that I have absolutely no idea what's going on, and I'm fairly certain the lot of you are robots.

[Catwoman]

Damn it, you guessed. Visit me on my home page for a private conversation.

[Carbonated_Brains]

Ah, very interesting. But the conversation falters in the same way most advanced AI programs do...when you say something structurally correct, but philosophically impossible.

We talked just fine, until this:

AI: Where do you want to meet?
CB: On the surface of an apple.

It's possible to program a robot to speak, but can you program it to recognize absurd situations?