How we Value...

Motivation is in some part of how we value the goods be it physical or moral. If we value eating, the pleasure of eating, the warn comfortable feeling that comes with eating, the satisfaction of high insulin/high blood glucose, the taste of good food, or the time with others at the table more than having a svelte body, then we could be a candidate for overeating. It is the personal value we place on an action or physical object that makes all the difference.

How we personally view and value and object or career that can have a big impact on life. Some of us feel that salesmen tend to be lairs, or stretchers of the truth to the point that we do not value anything that comes from their mouths, Trump comes to mind as an example. If we do not value the work of a profession, we should not be part of that profession. If we do not value the work product, we should not do it. What other people value a product at is a different problem. If we enjoy producing a product and can monetize that product, then we have a business, if not we could have a hobby.

Along the way we can remind ourselves that everything has a cost or two, food beyond the cost has a calorie cost and a calorie satiety number, that is some foods should not be eaten by any humans, or by any trying to maintain a weight loss. What value we place on specific foods can impact our decisions by the values we place on them.

But the value we place on anything is a personal value, not that dictated by others. Fresh potatoes this fall had no value. Even the food bank did not want them, nor beets either. Oh well, they make compost. I do not value ego cars, only reliable transportation. So fancy cars. or the desire for a fancy car is not a motivation. They are just a liability, a bait for vandals and thieves. Anyone who has one and it gets stole is partly to blame. Oh well.

Unpacking Motivation

Motivation is key to any diet control, and yet we, the people, seem to know so little about what makes us motivated to do something, and others not motivated. When we read about motivation, intrinsic vs extrinsic, and business discussions, the person is either motivated or not, there is very little about understanding what causes it or what removes it.

A bit more digging in we find interest has a lot or something to do with it. There are stimulus to motivation and blocks to motivation. For business inadequate or unfair wages, as seen by the employee, it is a deal breaker. If the employee, employer, or client does not value the product or service, motivation and integrity is hard to maintain. When the employee does not see the value of what they are doing, motivation becomes uncertain. So our own values and beliefs are a big part of motivation.

Meaning and purpose of our life, and how these beliefs and values align with work and endeavor we are undertaking, and how our commitment, attachment to the actions, our engagement with all this comes into play. Where are values and beliefs are stored in our mind is also important. Are these values and beliefs instincts (primitive), or early trained in beliefs (limbic) or in the conscious brain. In order to change our beliefs or values to modify our motivations, we must become aware of our beliefs and values and bring them into the conscious. We must then use the new conscious way of thinking or acting until these become automatic, that is upgrade into the limbic system. This is what physical trained in muscle memory is all about.

So what does all this have to do with overeating? Our old appetites were trained in and must be replaced with new reduced eating pattern. Our old values need to be excavated, and examined. Do we enjoy eating more than we enjoy a normal size body? Are we treating eating or food as a reward rather than as energy to often? Do we value a full feeling more that we do the thought of a normal sized body? |Do we find ourselves looking in the refrigerator and it is not meal time? Do we need to create a kitchen closed policy between meals? Do we understand the motivation for eating, overeating or is all of eating just automatic, and we are always in a "could eat" state.     

the reset button

Do humans have a "reset button" or equivalent?

Now it would appear the AA/OA think so, for those programs try to change the core beliefs of those who come around, and for it's members. The core value it tries to change is the meaning in life and purpose in life setting, and to encourage attachment and engagement to those new values.

When, in the case of drugs or excessive alcohol use, the setting have gone to blank, apathy, or boredom, this is appropriate. I, personally think that resetting to a god is bullshit, for the dueling hypothesis approach to this issue indicates there is no god, but back in the 1930, most believed in one. The better approach would to intentionally develop meaning, purpose in life, and attachment to those purpose, meaning and engagement with the same. Cleaning up the past and sorting out relationships, as well as growth of purpose and meaning are all needed anyway.

The positive cycle starts with positive emotion, clear meaning and purpose, attachment and engagement with developing those meanings and purpose, continual consistent action on the attachment and engagement, action being the operative word in all this.

This sounds like about what happens though the 12 step process, but without knowing what is actually happening, and bringing in a stone age, hand tool aged, or horse and oxen age belief system.

Note that the first step is to beat ourselves down to where we can accept the system, which can work if we can accept a false belief. It takes the believers through necessary processes without understanding why it works, and without developing a clear purpose and meaning in our lives. The program is a blind reset to a false meaning and purpose, god, but the reset includes improvements which are required. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway.

The End of Tradition

Tradition is dyeing slowly and in many different ways. In the day of Confucius, tradition was a virtue, in fact the highest virtue. It was the way of life. One son took over the rice paddy. The other sons helped or left home to wander, be merchants, some to the military, government service. Later the military became a separate class, as did the merchants. Their sons became the next generation of their class. Tradition was supreme.  Not any more. Many recent authors have pointed this out: Diamond, Dennett, Frankl, Graying, Tennesen, Dawkins. I am going to take that hypothesis as true.

The trades were inherited, for the most part, from the father to the sons. The son likely started after school at about age seven, and by the time there were young adults, were competent at the routine work.  It was common for a middle aged man to find himself in the trade of his father, teaching his sons, as his farther had him, perhaps even living in the house he grew up in, married to a second cousin, or a neighbor, having hardly made a decision for himself.  It was all tradition.

In my maternal family history, there is a story of the third and fourth son of a blacksmith/iron worker to being trade to the neighbor for two daughters, to become wives of the Two older boys. That third and fourth son took up the neighbors trade, and became a harness maker/shoe maker, and the fourth later immigrated to the new world, and begat a huge family, none of which were iron workers or shoe/harness makers but farmers, many of which blacksmithed or worked leather to some extent, supplementing farming. But one turned the farm over to a son when the son married, and set up a saddle shop (or went full time), which made saddles for years. A new tradition of nearly self-sufficient farmers was established... until the tractor removed horses as the source of power. That family gave up the traditions, unlike the Amish and Mennonites, which thrive today. 

I have very little in common with my parents life style, except a big garden, a tendency toward self-sufficiency, packratism, frugal or cheap, and all those other learned characteristics like people avoidance. Our method of earning a living were far different, but on the otherhand, much of what I learned about working, not being afraid of dirt, allowed me to make a living. When I look at the fear of my replacements of getting their hands dirty, I wonder where the industry will end up at. It is impossible to classify soil without getting your hands dirty, and through plastic gloves just does not work. Oh well, it is not my problem.

Yesterday the US elected a total radical as a president elect. Oh well, the GOP through the houses will soften the effect, until he gets a political schooling, but also he is impulsive. It will be a shakeup of the political system for sure. Oh well. The Canadian government has announced a plan to allow in some 400,000 immigrants next year. Was Trump anticipated, or was this all by chance? Cape Breton, the little island that thinks of it's self as a province, has offered properties  cheap, ( patent filings on crown land ( patches of barren rock), no services, ) if anyone wants them but they must build a house to prove up the land. There are some properties that have been previously developed, but the whole towns were abandoned. Oh well. Over population comes in many forms. 

     

twin pillers, freedom and responsibility

With freedom come responsibility. These are linked. We may be free, but we have the responsibility to make good rational decisions, and allow others to be free, also. That is also known of not forcing our opinions onto others. Churches are control freaks, that try to control adults. Controlling children is one thing, but when we try to control adults and those approaching adulthood, we become control freaks. I am talking normal adults, not those who are not gifted with say more than 1.5 standard deviation below average intelligence; that is to say the people with obvious mental issues. Even those must be allowed to fail, or flounder. Striking back against the oppressors should be expected, and freeing ourselves from the oppressors should be expected.

Are we a potential danger to ourselves or others? That is the test of the government being able to hold people on mental health holds. That must then apply to healthy people as well.

So do religions have the rights to hold adult children to church standards. The legal answer is no, but they do have the right to place conditions on continued support. That is the problem, if you want me to support you through school, university, into a trade, you must comply with my demands. People with nothing are therefor more free that the wealthy, where money is the carrot dangled in front of adherence to a belief system, be in religion or greed, faith or capitalism, farming or business, or junior partners following senior partners in questionable businesses "for a share of the profits" even if that is only wages.  

So what are the wages of sin, or of questionable practices really better than clean wages. In slack times, extreme measures may be required for survival. Think Volkswagen Diesel. vs government standards. Can any diesel actually meet those standards, and be efficient? The ones that meet the standard blow air into the exhaust, to complete the burning and reduce nitrogen compounds. They are less efficient than slightly dirtier stripped engine's. So is what VW did really wrong or just against the regulations? It is against the government control freaks requirements, but is it worse for the environment? The short answer is no, but nitrogen oxide is nasty smelling stuff, and is hard on people. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway   

is it the triune brain's fault?

We may need to understand the triune brain to understand why programs like OA and TOPS sort of work, some of the time.

Triune brain primer:   http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_05/d_05_cr/d_05_cr_her/d_05_cr_her.html

Working the reptilian part:   http://www.eruptingmind.com/beating-the-reptilian-brain/

So the level of the urge to eat, especially when we see, smell food, or even graphical images of food, may be at the same depth as our belief system. I expect that the urge to eat is reptilian or deep limbic. Could our belief system be this deep? How deep can learned response or learned automatic behaviors be stored?

I was a engineer before retiring and live on a acreage with an oversized garden. I grew up on a farm, and worked an 1948 Case SC RC tractor. I learned that if it rears grab the clutch. It never happened other than for demonstration but I learned that as an automatic reaction. I was plowing the garden with my little Ford and it reared a bit, and I grabbed for where the hand clutch would have been. How deep would that memory be, after probably 50 years of not thinking about that? Are beliefs that deep?

Is that why OA and TOPS work a little bit. Then work on the same level as our belief system, even if the beliefs OA tries to train in are wrong?

failing to produce a descendant tree

In every generation there are some who do not reproduce, some by choice, others by chance, some are willing, other object to nature's choice. This produce terminal branches in our ancestral tree/ descendant tree. All the many fossil species have gone that way, actually more than exist now. So what is there to be concerned about; we sapiens are just one more animal species. So far somewhere between 100 to 120 x 10^9 have gone by, compared to our 7 x 10^9 alive today.
 
In the current times, those who object to natures choice can make some efforts to "correct" natures ways. It does not matter, for we are too good at reproduction, and have overpopulated. Some people have a tremendous cultural based need to reproduce. That is a cultural problem which can be addressed by cultural engineering or social engineering. Others have no need to reproduce, and must retain that right.

Those something like 80% of the population who do reproduce are saddled with the added responsibility of raising children, even though a big portion of those fail in that responsibility, intentionally or by accident. Some people just do not have the temperament or the skills to raise children. It is a sad fact. Those may destroy the child's desire to reproduce, or to work, or to value life, there's or others. Some of those do overcome, but most just propagate the misfortune.

The ones who do not reproduce... or do so without conviction, may be some of those who's nature does not aline with there natural sex. Oh well. It happens in all generations. The culture may not permit nature's true expression, but that is cultural issue. Oh, well, you can change your culture if you wish. That is a open choice. Culture, tradition, are not fixed, and bad culture behavior should not be honored nor continued. Bad culture should be just abandoned, just like bad behaviors. One is singular behavior, the other is collective behavior. All cultures are the result of collective traditions propagated over time. As time goes on, the value of a tradition reduces from a need of survival to an artifact of history, to an artifact of culture, and may become just a note in the history books.

The biggest single missing element from our modern life is community based on our living location. We may have other forms of community, work based, or activity based. Many of us do not know our neighbors to any extent, some of them we may not even recognize. Oh well, such is my personality and modern times.

I guess, what I am saying is it does not mater if we reproduce or not, the species will survive until it does not. No one has the right to enforce their values on others, even family, not community, nor nation. Am I right in this or out to lunch?