(03-10-2023, 06:42 AM)Mearms_race's lazy guest post Wrote: [ -> ] (02-28-2023, 06:12 AM)anthony Wrote: [ -> ]You're more or less saying that will gets stronger when denied and neglected. Does that not sound wrong to you? Like you're maybe talking about two different things when you say that denial of "will"steels "willpower"? Yes you say "in pursuit of something higher" but doesn't that just mean it's what you want, or what you "will"?
You are either missing my point or think that you cannot overexert or weaken your will. I shall put it like this: You have finite resources of energy. You can choose how to spend those energy resources. You could choose to waste your energy resources on debauchery, you could choose to waste them on something worthwhile. If you sit all day in your room consuming powerful dopamine releasers like vidya, it is very likely you will lack energy to do something else the same day, even ignoring the wasted time. At the same time choosing certain easy pleasures that give you quick dose of dopamine again and again will over time reduce your willingness to do anything else while also widdling down the effectiveness of dopamine on your brain, leaving you more unsatisfied. Please note that this is not arguing for asceticism as an end to itself or saying that indulging in these pleasures from time to time is harmful. I think life can be enjoyed more deeply if you set rules for yourself as long as those rules are not self-denying (and many nowadays, especially among the self-help gurus are). I merely am saying you should avoid certain behaviours that "break your willpower". If you are used to the quick dopamine rush of let's say vigorously masturbating all day and then face something that demands a greater extension of will to receive the same dopamine rush, your monkey-brain is more likely to prefer just masturbating. You can counteract that by limiting your daily exposure to dopamine sinks.
"Dopamine" is another one of those totemic anti-concepts that I think destroys thought by impersonating it and filling vital space where ideas should be in peoples' understandings of certain issues. First I don't think the function is as simple as the internet says (dopamine is the happy chemical and you can overdose and become insensitive), I believe that that was always masochistic meme-stoics trying to build a science totem.
But that's not really vital, I can just read your post and wherever you say dopamine I can figure you just mean pleasure. From there, I'll answer you.
I
really get the impression that this kind of thought is
well past its prime, and I have to wonder if you even know what pleasure feels like or if you're capable of reflecting upon your own experiences if you're capable of writing this. Think of the kinds of video games people play forever. Do these people look pleasure addicted? These people aren't media cokeheads, these people are media heroin junkies. Long term repetitive media burnout is not a hyperstimulation issue, it's people embracing an anaesthetic buzz.
The "consoomer" meme completely obliterates the nuance in consumption. That aesthetes and anaesthetes exist and are having completely different experiences. You say that there's room for tolerating consumption "from time to time". It's not a question of amount, it's a question of kind. You're talking about sensory pleasure like alcohol. Maybe justifiable if we can control it just to get ourselves through the day. These things can have positive value. They can be ends. Willpower is not broken by aesthetic pursuits. And it's not a question of work. I don't choose to read a book and then post about it here rather than play League of Legends for that entire time because I believe in the value of
work and understand that if I work for my pleasure it'll feel better eventually. I absolutely hate League of Legends. It's boring, ugly, and unpleasant.
Taste is how you resist
supersensorium. Not willpower. And you cultivate taste via leisure and self-indulgence, not self denial and asceticism. I am better equipped than most of the human race to resist tiktok because I am more in touch with what I want and more inclined to seek my own pleasure.
Quote:Hitler also likely never masturbated from what is known about him. Everyone extends their will to certain domains. Some have more willpower than others and can extend it to more domains but all can only do so much in a day. I am saying: What are you wasting your will on today? How many goals are pursuing? How many of those goals are sensible? How many goals are a waste of time, if considered in the grander scheme of things?
In addition, how do you think Hitler, that notoriously lazy homeless painter of postcards from Vienna, who ineffectively wallowed in his own misery and impotent fantasies of power, turned into the Hitler everyone remembers? It was World War One. What did World War One do to him? It denied his will for the daily pleasantries of personal ineffectivity in favor of what he considered the greater good. And when he came back from the trenches he continued that on his own terms, he merged his own will with what he considered to be the greater good.
As has already been said, Hitler didn't masturbate because of an aesthetic aversion. People who met and knew him did not describe him as spartan. Terms like "virginal" and "feminine, bordering on effeminate" stick out in my memory.
You're talking about willpower like a "spoony" if you've heard of those crazy kids. Like people have bigger or smaller tanks and distribute what they've got across different things according to desire and self control.
What am I wasting my will on? I think that framing just doesn't apply to human beings. That's now how we work.
What do I feel like doing today? That's a real question. You're talking about us like we're dysfunctional and distracted epicurean robots, rather than complex organic beings.
And your reading of Hitler's war experience just feels self evidently wrong. Hitler was lazy and then hardened by the denials and strains of WW1. But
he went out of his way to enlist. This is a microcosm of how you're wrong about everything. Hitler the lazy painter was the latent Hitler the minor war hero and Hitler the Fuhrer. He was not all of these things despite or after being lazy. The traits which made him
lazy in pre war peacetime made him the rest as circumstances changed. The same essential traits made it all possible. His sense of romance, desire for perfection, the intensity of his wilful desire to please himself, he never lost the traits which made him the
lazy homeless painter you speak of so derisively.
Quote:All people that post on here are not leaders but followers. I admire the arrogance though.
You should be careful making comments like this.
What if you're wrong?