The human animal mind is often untamed and untrained in many areas. We, as a culture, often do not want to tamper with the beliefs of others, for what ever reasons. Some of us needed tampering, or training, which is sadly not available. Once we realize this, and seek suitable help, it can be found, but it is not readily available. The Stoics once had such a system, but the christians and god concepts ended that. But it is back.
Training of desire control and impulse control is one such area. In relation to food....
It is not a event or object that effect us but rather what we think of that event.
Our mind, or soul, or self, are all equal concepts of the same thing. The Greeks and modern authors do not like to repeat words, so they have several for the same thing, so ye got a dozen words for one concept. Duh.
Nothing can enter the soul, what our senses report cannot heart us. Senses here may include our mind. We first form an impression, and to that, the untrained mind adds judgements. If we stop before those judgements, that is to say withhold judgement, long enough to analyze what our senses have observed, and consider our values, our reaction to the situation can change. We have control, complete control, over our judgements. We can chose our reaction through our judgements. We can change our values, thereby gain complete control over our opinions, our desires, and our impulses.
Once we realize that there is the space between the impression and a judgement, we can use our values to control our desires and impulses. It is a learned process, a teachable process, and the key to tranquility, virtue, joy, caution, and utility. In Stoic logic, utility trumps pretty.
Some thing are up to us and some things are not. Up to us are our judgements, our desires, our impulses, and away we go. Until we can recognize the space between event and judgements, we are untrained human animals. Those few seconds, and the time to relearn correct actions can produce tranquility, all else flows from that.
There is not reason to get mad at things or ignorant people. What ever they did or did not do, be, or whatever is not there fault. They do not know better, or are too distracted to care. We can extend this to unthinking human action, for they are untrained human animals, at least unskilled in that specific area of life. Food science, human food requirements, social responsibility, normal food environments, driving, parking, auto safety, traffic safety are big areas where much public work need to be done to teach the population to a much high skill level for public safety.
More later.
1 comment:
Good idea.
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