The Commanding Self

luka

Well-known member
i know, dissensus is probably the worst place in the world to try and instigate a discussion of this nature, but fuck it, its worth a try. k-punk knows a little nietzsche and spinoza, meme knows some majick, sufi is called sufi,cornelius says hes a spiritual master. i been thinking about this a lot today becasue yesterday i started my not smoking phase and to be able to stop smoking requires a degree of self mastery and i'm feeling quite proud of myself. also, by coincidence, as my will was wavering, in walked a friend i haven't spoken to for years. he's just given up cocaine,weed and tobacco and kept talking about how he was in control of himself again and thats how he was as a child, and now hes got it back. will over everything.
i said, i don't think its that eas, as easy as just saying it. he disagreed. he thought that it was.
so yeah, the commanding self, well interesting, read about it in zarathrustra, sufi litereature,idries shah, 'majickal' literature, zen liteereature spinoza, k.punk archives etc etc

i think the control or lack of control you have over your actions is fascinating. but my brain isn't working that well at the moment so i was hoping to just join the discussion later on when you make it intersting. although you probably won't.
 
D

droid

Guest
Its an interesting point - as I get older I find that Im defining myself more and more by what I dont do rather than waht I do, er.. do. I dont drink, dont smoke (other than high grade), Dont really do any drugs (cant be arsed), practically given up caffeine (and as a result I cant think clearly before lunchtime!)

Ill get back to you If I come up with any real insight :eek:
 

Troy

31 Seconds
Don't know no filahsofee, but....

I've seen it in myself and lots of my friends... It is very hard to quit smoking or drinking or gambling... whatever. It's not just a matter of saying "I promise to quit", because most of the time you just go back to the same old habit. In fact I'd say it's darn near impossible to just 'change' with just the intention to.

So sincere Good Luck to you. Because Luck may just be the only thing that allows you to succeed in your quest to quit smoking....
 

bruno

est malade
this subject is sensitive to me because there was a window at age 20-23 in which i could read people's minds, express myself lucidly, get to the heart of matters in conversation, and at the same time create selflessly, shape reality, all with tremedous will but with no conscience of it. i ingested drugs a bit after or overlapping this period and it definitely created a gulf between thought and action. the avenues that were patiently being cemented suddenly stretched into infinity and i was faced with them consciously, with the impossibility of conciliating them with immediate reality, with the realisation that the tools weren't there for the undertaking (they still aren't, which is why i am exercising my english on this forum).

the problem with self-awareness is that you can also become a caricature, a shadow of yourself. i used to think that as soon as an idea materialised in your head it was dead, in the sense that it had crystalised and so all the life that it had when it had no name, when it had no form, was ready to seep away. like when a musical genre is defined, things reach a point where they can be measured, compared with other things and eventually shelved. don't let this happen to you, luka!

returning to the subject of your post, i have gone through long periods of abstinence, most notably of sex, and it's true that you are more self-commanding/godlike in this state, at least initially. after that prepare to become a dictator, a neurotic, stupid, dull..

off to sleep now.
 

luka

Well-known member
i am terribly bad at expressing myself. this is not a thread about abstinence of any kind.
 

luka

Well-known member
its about obeying yourself.

for example, do thoughts go round your head that you don't want in there? do you end up wasting the day doing nothing when you intended to do things? are there things,like embaressment or fear that stop you doing things you would like todo? thats what i'm talking about.
 

sherief

Generic Human
Tangential perhaps, but it is interesting to note how all of the philosophies/knowledges mentioned above presume the very existence of a coherent subject, one which on the one hand exists to be commanded, and on the other can be commanded. I think that the benefits of anti-humanism have showed us that there isn't always a self there, or that it isn't always all 'ours' to begin with. The struggle arises because, speaking ambiguously, you are not you, you are a composite of many different influences, discourses, environmental fac tors, social determinants, and desires to say the least. This isn't to encourage passivity or shift responsibility off the individual, but I think it speaks to the difficulty of any task we would undertake
 

bruno

est malade
i think, sherief, that the whole command-obedience thing is something these methods latch onto because it has been proven to work, more or less, not because it explains the inner workings of identity or whatever. people just want to take control of their lives. and they need you to come up with a mechanism to do it (which isn't very difficult, by the looks of it).
 

sherief

Generic Human
of course you're right, it's like 'folk psychology,' how we can describe or denote our mental states and volitions without having any actual knowledge of how they work or even if we have the free will we're speaking about. I didn't mean to degract from the conversation or belittle the efforts of those who would quit smoking or drinking, but it's an interesting nuance to the whole deal, no?
 

bruno

est malade
well you know how the intellect can see, divide, view from different angles, categorise then forget to put the parts back together again, to lose sight of the whole. so it's a double-edged sword. but it's terrible to think that something as simple as a set of orders (like this, don't like that, do this, be this, etc) embedded deep into you determines your success in going about your life, that a simple method can rectify this to any extent is depressing. i've never tried any method except direct experience and reflection and it's a right pain in arse i can tell you!
 
luka said:
its about obeying yourself.

a)for example, do thoughts go round your head that you don't want in there?
b)do you end up wasting the day doing nothing when you intended to do things?
c) are there things,like embaressment or fear that stop you doing things you would like todo?

thats what i'm talking about.

a) yes, mostly sexual
b) yes, but generally nothing is so important that it can't be put off til tomorrow
c) not really, except maybe dancing with gay abandon in public

distilled my philosophy or whatever down to this

accept nothing as fact
question everything
determine your own truth
define your own reality

nothing is perfect
in the space where nothing exists
will one fine perfection
the perfect nothing
 

shudder

Well-known member
thread is particularly pertinent to me, I suppose, since I'm in the middle of finals for my very last semester of undergrad... I have three essays due tomorrow, and I've just been procrastinating so badly. Basically, when I have a task like this, and am working on a computer connected to the internet, self-control is near nil. In fact, this posting is a testament to that.
 

bruno

est malade
it seems you can have control over your actions, as luka puts it, but you can't have conscious control over the ruleset that moulds these actions, at least not the foundation orders which make you who you are. but then you have the example of psychological torture, apparently very simple techniques that allow you to break down a human being to the core. and for this to be possible there have to be basic guidelines that any half-wit can follow.

what is not impossible is to change more superfical orders, the structure built over the foundations. there you have dale carnegie and every self-help school, and they do seem to work. come to think of it maybe this is where the zombie-like quality of these converts comes from, from this contradiction between the superficial and foundation orders.
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
sherief said:
Tangential perhaps, but it is interesting to note how all of the philosophies/knowledges mentioned above presume the very existence of a coherent subject, one which on the one hand exists to be commanded, and on the other can be commanded.
I interpret it quite differently... desire to command arises via the ego, not the abiding self or "coherent subject". The ego may override the spirit but cannot command it.

I remember reading some buddhist thing that was talking about modifying patterns of ingrained behaviour - the writer gave a specific number of times that you have to consciously choose to do something before it becomes automatic - can't remember the exact number but it was 28 or 42 - something fruity :)
 

luka

Well-known member
sherief said:
Tangential perhaps, but it is interesting to note how all of the philosophies/knowledges mentioned above presume the very existence of a coherent subject, one which on the one hand exists to be commanded, and on the other can be commanded. I think that the benefits of anti-humanism have showed us that there isn't always a self there, or that it isn't always all 'ours' to begin with. The struggle arises because, speaking ambiguously, you are not you, you are a composite of many different influences, discourses, environmental fac tors, social determinants, and desires to say the least. This isn't to encourage passivity or shift responsibility off the individual, but I think it speaks to the difficulty of any task we would undertake


thats what i would have said 5, 6 years ago. and theres some truth in it too, but as you say, its not a productive beleif,and not only isit it unproductive its also no closer to the truth than the belief that there is a single true coherent self.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
bruno said:
you can't have conscious control over the ruleset that moulds these actions, at least not the foundation orders which make you who you are.

Isn't this exactly what G.I. Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, John Lilly et al contend you can do?
 
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