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How many of our actions are necessary?

  
 
Andrue
21:13 / 16.02.06
I was thinking about this while reading Cages by Dave McKean -- Just as an example, I was thinking I'd really like to take a sledge-hammer to the walls of my apartment and break them all down. As an act of art as much as destruction, or something to that extent. Now, obviously I'm not going to do that, but it made me consider what caused the urge. My current position is that it is because I have walls built up in my mind/psyche that I'd like to break down, and it would be much easier and physically relieving to act it out in the real world. This got me then wondering how many of our desires, artistic expressions, and world-changing effecting actions are merely us expressing something that could be handled entirely internally. I've come to the conclusion that a good portion, if not all, of the non-life sustaining urges we have may be merely metaphorical manifestations of our internal, mental needs. What do you all think?
 
 
Dr. Tom
23:07 / 16.02.06
As a philisophical issue, Freud tackled these very issues.
He's actually worth reading on such topics.
 
 
Andrue
23:11 / 16.02.06
Freud wrote it all off to inherent sex and domination drives, though, rather than other types of psychological needs. Freud's general ideas were also based on unhealthy minds, but I'm proposing even healthy minds have this kind of a need for maintainance. I was just wondering what other people on here might think about simply constructing/deconstructing your mental world rather than the physical, and what kind of lives we'd lead if we adopted that idea set.
 
 
the permuted man
11:50 / 17.02.06
I don't think any action is necessary, I guess in context that makes me ultra-repressed. The problem is tricking yourself, i.e. you can hardly appease yourself with a thought motivated by desire to do just that.
 
 
Saltation
12:50 / 17.02.06
%-light-hearted tone, not mocking, just fooltalk-%

>I've come to the conclusion that a good portion, if not all, of the non-life sustaining urges [to Act] we have may be merely metaphorical manifestations of our internal, mental needs.

if you're right, that fits very neatly with the usual depictions of buddhas being fat.
 
 
Dr. Tom
01:02 / 19.02.06
So you have no sx and dominaton drives?

Perhaps you've acepted your status as a beta dog?

While I am not a Freudian per se, I do not believe his theories were just describing pathology, but also of normal psychological development.

So you want to destroy your apartment but are happy to argue the finer points of the philosophy of psychology...

Hmmm....
Yes. Understanding yourself may be of help.
 
 
Dr. Tom
01:27 / 19.02.06
I've come to the conclusion that a good portion, if not all, of the non-life sustaining urges we have may be merely metaphorical manifestations of our internal, mental needs. What do you all think?

Let's not make this more complicaed than need be.

Insofar as our brains map reality correctly, we do well. When our models are over-simplified, (or when simple, off track)things will not go well.

If you can understand reality as it actualy is and act accordingly you will be extremely successful.

And you want to destroy you apartment why?

Who will that benefit? Who will lose? To succeeed, you must benefit. And it also pays not to piss off those who can come back to harm you.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:03 / 19.02.06
If you can understand reality as it actualy is and act accordingly you will be extremely successful.

That makes some rather large assumptions both about how reality is understood and how successis measured, Dr. T. Would you care to explain a little further?
 
 
Andrue
15:15 / 19.02.06
Let's not make this more complicaed than need be.

Insofar as our brains map reality correctly, we do well. When our models are over-simplified, (or when simple, off track)things will not go well.

If you can understand reality as it actualy is and act accordingly you will be extremely successful.

And you want to destroy you apartment why?

Who will that benefit? Who will lose? To succeeed, you must benefit. And it also pays not to piss off those who can come back to harm you.

I think you're missing the point here. You skimmed right over the most important part in saying "insofar as our brains map reality correctly." That's a huge "insofar." People all see reality differently...in fact, I think that "sane" people see only about a 70% shared reality, the rest being up for debate because of the way our minds function.

And again, you missed my point -- I don't actually want to destroy my apartment. I had the mental urge, questioned it, and came up with a rationale for the urge as being a metaphor for a mental process I needed to perform, rather than a physical process.

so you have no sx and dominaton drives?

Perhaps you've acepted your status as a beta dog?


I never said I have no sex and domination drives. What I did say, was that Freud based his theories around these two drives being the ONLY human drives. I'm merely stating they are only two parts of a much greater whole.
 
 
astrojax69
19:48 / 19.02.06
People all see reality differently...

ne'er truer words spoken, andrue. unless we is infants, real small... then we don't have any of what we would call 'understanding' of reality. [look at the fourth and fifth papers on this site if you feel inclined - on idea generation and concept formation] we superimpose what we already expect, derived from our experience, and map it onto the mappings the brain makes of the body and its sensations of 'the real world'.

it is a fascinating process to investigate such mental states so closely. i understand what you mean about simply 'having the urge' and then wondering how that came about from your previous states. and so much healthier and non-piss-offing than actually doing it, huh! but seriously, i sometimes have what to me consciously would be outrageous thoughts and simply note them; never voicing them and often as not never really trying to find their source. but sometimes.

how many of the negative ramifications of our actions could be alleviated through self-awareness? probably many, but it is not bilogically plausible to expect the situatiuon to change much. because we have imposed the world on what we see, and because - cliche used advisedly - we don't expect what we don't expect, it is hard to remove ourselves from patterns of behaviour, and even to question that this behaviour might be different.

how do we do global psychotherapy and make everyone all at once understand this? probably be as fucked up a place just in a different way, so is it worth it? or just worth putting the effort into understanding ourselves first? hmmm...
 
 
werwolf
07:39 / 20.02.06
maybe i am blatantly pointing out the obvious, but since i am good at that (call me "exposition-wolf") i might just as well:

self-awareness is no easy feat. especially considering the ever so often recurring barbelith statement (one that i fully agree with) that there is no one reality and that perception and reception varies from individual to individual.
that stated, i'd suggest to view these physical urges as catalysts, promoting insights and/or letting go of repressive structures. just as in psycho-therapy we are being drawn through dialogue, music or whatever other methods are being applied to let the awareness arise and become more clear - good therapy will never suggest a solution but merely push you ahead towards the awareness that you already seek out - these physical manifestations can act as "enzymatic" ways of therapy.

i don't think that everything can be solved "in our heads", because we cannot be aware of everything that happens "in our heads" on all levels. for instance, you first had the urge to destroy the walls of your apartment, before you considered the reason for it. there was already something bubbling up. some individuals will be able to go into "self-therapy" before the physical act needs to manifest itself, some will not.

just like saying what you already know only to finally convince yourself of it.
 
 
Olulabelle
08:09 / 20.02.06
Is the urge to destroy an apartment the same kind as the urge that comes to stand too close to the platform on the tube, or too close to the edge of a cliff?

In both cases the urge is telling you to jump, but generally you never do actually jump because you know it would be foolish and fairly unfulfilling; the outcome likely being death.

It's an interesting question.

Sometimes urges to destroy or act out are internal self-destructive urges about specific behaviours in ourselves which manifest as physical destruction or foolhardy behaviour, but I'm not sure about the urge to jump in front of trains or off cliffs. I just can't see how the end result would benefit or satisfy the mind.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:03 / 20.02.06
a good portion, if not all, of the non-life sustaining urges we have may be merely metaphorical manifestations of our internal, mental needs

I think that you need to go one step back and look at what creates those needs, which is possibly where Dr Tom was going when he linked to Freud. That Freud focuses on certain drives, the id, ego etc. is hardly relevant here, in order to understand psychoanalysis, which lays down the fundamental principle of the creation of those needs, you need to consult Freud. Alternatively you can simply seek therapy in which case you wouldn't need to examine any theory but could go through the practical process instead.

Freud's general ideas were also based on unhealthy minds, but I'm proposing even healthy minds have this kind of a need for maintainance.

What is a healthy mind? I very much doubt that there is such a thing in the psychoanalytic sense. I don't know a single person who doesn't have a hair trigger in response to one particular issue and that indicates that their mind is unhealthy.

If you can understand reality as it actualy is and act accordingly you will be extremely successful.

Every individual understands the concept of reality within their experiences, which very much supports the statements here about how it is understood. Generally even siblings don't have the same perception of reality. What precisely did you mean by this, are you working with the notion that a person who is not delusional, is not obsessive-compulsive, is not... has a basic understanding of reality as it is?
 
 
astrojax69
20:56 / 20.02.06
immanuel kant had a go at trying to posit reality as it is in his opus 'critique of pure reason' and the history of western philosophy since is probably pretty much agreed that, while a laudable effort, it is close, but never close enough when pushed.

seems we are stuck with some kind of 'make it up as you trundle along' element to whatever reality 'really' is [the size of this compartment of a thesis on reality will vary from doctrine to doctrine]

success, i would go on to suggest, is also a relative thing, so a deep understanding of 'your' reality, then the exploiting of the benefits you envisage obtaining to that version of reality - ie maximising your potential through being 'really' you - is likely to correspond to a definition for you of 'success'... and that's about as far as you can choose to go.

the rest is up to the socially constructed 'reality' around you...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:12 / 21.02.06
Astrojax - and if your idea of reality is soocially constructed, is it reasonable to say that your idea of success within that world is also socially constructed? I think probably yes, which comes back to the question of how you can (quote-unquote) honestly/realistically measure success. The original post in this thread drew a distinction between internal and external - so, that many external actions may be manifestations of internal desires and, if the desire is understood, the need for the external action goes away. As Dr. Tom very adroitly pointed out, there's a lot of the talking cure in this idea - that our destructive desires can be avoided by realising what they are expressions of. Having said which, something which always struck me as odd about Freudian psychoanalysis was the primacy of ratiocination - that coming to understand this would remove the desire. Some instinct suggested that there muast be some darker impulse than that. On t'other hand, I'm manifestly not a psychiatrist. Dr. T, could you possibly give us a quick run-down.

Back to the original post, then - is the proof of whether desired actiion or outcome is neurotic whether it goes away when its motivation is understood, and is it then necessary to apply an elenchus to every desire? Or do we concede to the consensus view of what is and is not desirable, and use that as a guideline to set boundaries as to what should be examined. If so, and I certainly think I do, how much trust do we place in this consensus to guide the actions we identify as requiring examination? I'm wondering about play, and about art, as actions which may not fit with success-oriented reality, necessarily, but may also not be the manifestation of inner needs, or at least not the manifestation of inner needs that need to be examined and criticised...
 
 
astrojax69
04:11 / 22.02.06
sure i think success is socially constructed, to some extent. to another extent, as i said, you can 'choose' what success is to you. mebbe getting in a lift, or being in a room with a spider, is success if you had experienced a phobia of these things, etc. how many studies of measures of happiness do we find telling us that money and fame and 'worldly goods' in any excess don't seem to have the capacity of making us happy, and i guess i am tying 'success' at a personal level in with striving for self-fulfillment, so happiness, at one measure.

all intricate this, innit? as i proffered, depending on your etiology, reality means different strokes for different folks. i can't see an easy way to disentangle that from the brute fact that it can cause angst and unrest if we have doubts as to the veracity and 'moral standing' of our thoughts and subsequent actions. there has to be a social norm from which we guauge ourselves, but is that social norm constructed by us or by society?
 
 
Andrue
04:22 / 22.02.06
there has to be a social norm from which we guauge ourselves, but is that social norm constructed by us or by society?
My original question was based on the assumption that those reading this would go with the former of those choices. I guess the question in itself could even be phrased "to what level do we have to concede to societal norms of funciton and action to maintain happiness" or "can achieve contentment through dealing exclusively with our personal realities, rather than societal realities?"
 
 
werwolf
07:33 / 22.02.06
[quote Andrue] My original question was based on the assumption that those reading this would go with the former of those choices. I guess the question in itself could even be phrased "to what level do we have to concede to societal norms of funciton and action to maintain happiness" or "can achieve contentment through dealing exclusively with our personal realities, rather than societal realities?" [/quote]

if we assume that, whatever personal and inner maladies are haunting us, we can work those issues out by and with ourselves only, then i'd think it's clear that "dealing exclusively with our personal realities" will definitely resolve into a much higher level of satisfaction and contentment.

the problem here is that the human animal is a social one and does not live in its unique personal reality alone but shares the realities of many other individuals in its close environment as well as the realities of groups and the reality (realities?) of the entire human population one way or the other. this, i think, means that any one individual reality will more often than not be at odds with any other individual reality and/or "super-reality" (using "super" here only to state that it overrides personal realities, not that it is "superior" in any way). clearly there will be conflict at these points/areas of interjection and these may have detrimental effects on the individual.

a simple example: i might feel a lot better if i would start screaming and yelling and letting of steam. doing this in a public transport could get me (worst case) into psychiatric observation, which would not suit me at all.

on the other hand i believe that many "super-realities" are keeping personal realities too much under wraps, forcing certain unnecessary expectations and template behaviour upon individuals. when we're being brought up with repressive guidelines like "a man doesn't cry.", "a woman must be sweet and gentle.", "you have to start a family.", "you have to earn a lot of money.", "you have to buy." and so on and so forth (here, again, it is a matter of personal perception as to what makes sense or doesn't - the list of examples is long and can be extended in all directions), we might be pushed into spots where we might have a harder time coming to terms with our lives and find a reasonable level of satisfaction, while at the same time physical actions that might have a therapeutic value to some are deemed undesirable by society at large.
 
  
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