Obsession, a natural characteristic

Obsession, is a natural characteristic.
Now, do I want to keep practicing this
or let the whole characteristic
fall to the ground, to cast it off,
like an old coat?

There is a space between
stimulus and response.
I can add to the Epictetus filter
that I have slipped into that space,
but then, nothing get through.

Without obsession,
will anything get done?
My life has been driven
by a series of obsessions.
There never has been a reason
to do any of the thing I have done
beyond the need, desire,
obsession for money,
and the things money provides.

I never wanted,
beyond the potential for money,
to do engineering,
to dig holes,
to solve problem others created,
to provide solutions
before others knew they had a problem.

Lack of desire, or what?
Is obsession just a fixation on a issue,
without a reason.
Or with a reason?
A solution must be found.
Just supply the problem.
This sounds like obsession.

Perhaps the Epictetus filter
need a few holes in it.
To allow engineering like problems in.

But for today, with family,
I am just a mushroom:
kept in the dark,
fed shit.
It is none of my concern.

Warning: Direction Change

This blog is going
off course for a while,
to drift where the mind blows it.
While I consider
the possibility that
this problem that I have
has nothing to do with compulsive overeating
and has everything to do obsession,
only obsession.

Obsession is a natural characteristic
of some portion of the human population.
Now what if that natural characteristic
gets itself pointed at food and/or eating?
How would we treat this?
It may be easier to treat
and measure the success
 of the treatment
than determine if
one has an obsession.

So here what the treatment would look like.
Every time I get the urge to eat
more than my prescribed amount of food
or outside of meal time,
feeding time at the zoo,
I will leave and do something else,
walk, read about or study this problem,
or something else.

Now what about the
black box(s) concept of the mind?
We receive a stimulus,
that thought, impulse or image
passes through a conversion matrix
in the mind and a reaction direction comes out.
That output may also be zero, the null solution.
The conversion matrix is under my control,
some thing are up to us and some are not.
Now I need to watch
for a while
and see what happens.

Obesity, the Cause of Isolation

Step eight of today
drove home the realization
that I differ from the common order
of the development of this overeating issue.

My order is obesity as an infant, small child,
before I had reason, control.
The harassment followed,
and then self imposed isolation
as self defence of from harassment.
Self protection is a basic human characteristic.

This suggest a chemical/physiological problem,
chemical food addiction to milk, dairy products,
grain and sugar came first.
Separate and treat the chemical addiction with
total abstinence from those chemicals.

The behavioral addiction of overeating
is a separate issue.
This can be handled through choice,
the power of choice, of stewardship,
separation of me from my meal.
The steward in me prepares the meal,
and puts the food away, and serves the meal.
The other me show up and eats
and runs.

Intentional living limits my time at the dining table.
On to other things. Life.
Intentional action to displace the 
habitual unwanted behavior.

We have the natural faculty of choice
and reason among the available
alternatives. Walking away is a alternative.
So is the zero choice, do nothing; or write.
No people needed. But in a crowd,
isolation is easy.
Noise causes isolation, naturally.
  

Emotional to Rational

The human population is seldom either emotional or rational, but rather a mix of the two extremes. If we could truly measure this characteristic, what would we find?

I expect we would find something that looks like a normal distribution folded in half. A few high emotional, and a few high rational, and most of us in the middle.

What difference does this make? Well, if we were rationally driven, we could follow a diet without issue. But we cannot, therefore we are emotionally driven, when we fail. Add physiological in with the emotional, and we are in good shape. The model behaves as people.

Now the problem is that it is rational to set up a diet, and then say those that are unable to follow it have a philosophical, psychological, or physiological problem, but never accepting the issue that 50% of the people are not predominantly rational. So the diet industry is based on a non-understanding of people, so the failure rate will be high. Yes, exactly as we see.

Now how does one get hold of directing the emotional part of oneself? Adopt a god is one method. Adopt a philosophy, and convince the emotional part that it should be followed. Not so easy.
But we can also lever off our beliefs, bend behavior. Some things are just not food works. But that alone may not be enough. Perhaps we need a purpose bigger than ourselves, that we become obsessed with, regardless of what that purpose is. Perhaps it is understanding this disease, and understanding a solution, and describing that solution without resorting to a god for a solution.

Each time we go through this model, more is added, or refined. sooner or later it will all become clear. As we age, we may become more rational as well; hence, age out of the problem.

I think that we are reluctant to admit that we are emotionally based and are unable to consistently and committedly able to follow a rational plan of eating, aka a diet. We cannot be rational and still hang on to religion, so as long as we have religion, emotional govern people. This is beyond the issues of setting up and measuring food energy in a useful way.

Starting with the Bottom Line

Intentional living is any lifestyle based on an individual or group's conscious attempts to live according to their values and beliefs. These can include lifestyles based on religious or ethical values, as well as coaching, personal transformation, and leadership training. These are often expressed by living in a community with other like-minded people, claiming higher satisfaction, and more sustainable future.

Ok, so we have living by some principal. Frugal, green, self-sufficient - more or less, subsistence farming, why not Stoic, or Epicurean principles; but living with an underlying purpose. It is that purpose that provides the motivation. So how is this different from an action plan ? Or from Smart - life balance? Or really, goal setting? It is placing some emotional value on some future desired result, and then using that to lever motivation. We need to know where we want to end up at, the bottom line.

I was at a OA meeting last night and the subject was step 7. It once again struck me the negative aspects of the term "character defects". These are characteristics that I must stop practicing. I do not know whether the outcome will be negative or positive. Being overly chatty and other verbal diarrhea can be corrected by silence and walking away with a smile on my face. Practicing saying less, cutting to the bottom line, starting with the bottom line, may be a better way to live.

Negative visualization for today: Some of the drivers today will be aggressive assholes, just as the wind blows crap around. It is nothing to do with me. Just smile and let it all go.      

Do I have free will?

Considering the animal brain, emotionally driven person has free volition; there is no doubt that we have control over our judgements, opinions, beliefs, values, and the like. We have general control over our movements, up to the physical limits, although it may not be precise.

The difference between free volition and free will lies in whether we have control over our desires, delusions, and aversions. Totally rational people (Spoc like) have control over their desires, while the remainder of us have less control, but some management ability of our desires. Those of us who do not have control but only some influence over our desires are hurled along by our desires, not down a planned course but from one desire to the next. It is in satisfying those desires rather than ignoring them that this eating problem seems to arise in me and others.

Could this be one more key in understanding my problem? or just take me one step closer. Perserverence. I need to see if this worm hole goes somewhere. So next, how does one dissipate a desire once it has formed?

Now the kicker. Free will may be a learned characteristic. Can we learn to say no to all the shit on offer? All the food, drugs, bad habits, all forms of addiction, bad behavior, and learn to live a frugal and prudent life? The frugal part will be the most difficult within the cities, if we have an average income or better.

Spiritual or Philosophical Development

One thing that is absent in the steps but many of us have found necessary for continued development is a ongoing commitment and effort to develop spiritually or philosophically. Step 11 suggests that we need to work on improving contact, but nowhere is there any suggestion that ongoing development is necessary, until we read the book, or AA comes of age, and then we see that the whole program is about spiritual development. The steps are just the starting point.

For those of us who do not profess to follow a god, we must learn something of what a god would have us do and do it, because it is simply right to do right. We may subscribe to doing what it is natural for us humans to do, or what we may define as our purpose inside the greater purpose of humanity.

It may be the purpose of humanity to grow and prosper, to create and support creation, but we are also rational beings. We should accept that there is a limit to growth given finite resources, and we may be beyond sustainable, without shortages. There is likely poor, good and better ways of doing things, of relationships, of speaking, of acting, and of making a living. There are as likely wrong, better and best known ways to thinking, of knowledge, of intents, and attitudes. And to go along with this, effort, concentration and attention or mindfulness.

Some thing are up to us and some are not. Our judgements, opinions, volitions, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, values and the like are up to us. If we are a highly rational person, our desires, expectations, delusions, aversions and like are up to us. That which is not up to us is beyond our control and is therefore none of our concern. Our bodies are beyond our control, but we do have influence over what we put into them, but not over physiological cravings. We can use our volitions to leave the scene of eating when necessary, and hide out elsewhere, as a last resort to eating, while learning other methods of handling the problems.