UKC

Choice is a popular word. We choose our friends, we choose how and where we work, we choose to take or not take drugs, we choose what political drives to support. But how deep does our choice go? Can we choose our moods? Can we choose to be happy or sad? And if not why?
I believe to a certain extent we can gain control over our emotions. We can manipulate how good or bad we feel. But it is not easy and it may have limits.

For myself I know that I have that control. For a lot of my life I was depressed and on occasions suicidally depressed. I changed that and I have not been depressed for over 12 years. I found a system that worked for me. I get angry, I get irritated, I get worried but I don’t get depressed. But my question is was I just fortunate to find myself in a particular set of circumstances that enabled me to slough off my depression and change the chemical make up of my brain or was the choice mine? Would someone faced with the same set of circumstances arrive at the same place? Is it a permanent thing or not? In some ways I feel it is permanent I have ben in stressful situations and not gone down the roads I would have gone down in the past. I can pick out the decisions made that lead me to the calm I now have but I wonder is that choice is that freewill or just the inevitable consequence of physics?

The Buddha said “We are what we think”. Do we shape the world or does the world shape us?

In reply to Duncan Bourne:
Yes we can. We are responsible for how we think. It is not easy. But we can make a concious choice to be happy.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:


Both.

In reply to Lenin:

Making a conscious decision to be happy can work to a point. But if a person has serious depression or even psychosis then outside intervention can be necessary. Like if the clutch has gone in your car, no amount of positive thinking is going to repair it, you have to take it to see a professional.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

I've never learnt much from being happy.........

In reply to broken spectre:

I don't think one can always make a concious decision to be happy. But I think one can work on remaining calm and that is the key. If you are calm it is easier to be happy but also easier to deal with life even if you don't like it.

In reply to Removed UserDeleted bagger:

Conflict is the way we learn? Interesting. Would we have achieved as much without all our world conflicts?

In reply to Duncan Bourne:


Possibly, think of all the inventors, teachers, doctors etc. who died pointlessly in conflict.
But then equally, maybe we'd have used up all the oil by now and the world would be a fiery wasteland because of all the extra people who survived.

Back to your original point, I do think some people have that control, and people probably can learn it. However there are definitely physical changes that can occur in the brain that can lead to depression, chemical imbalances, injuries etc. So probably not everyone has a choice.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

In my view the question doesn't make sense. What is the "me" that could choose "my feelings". The self, the feeling that there is a single, unchanging "I" sitting midway behind the eyes and steering the body around is an illusion. It's a trick the brain plays to help us negotiate our environment, and once you start to dig around the concept it soon starts to unravel.

Bruce Hood's book The Self Illusion goes into a lot more detail, but here he gives a good summary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIDWcWn21gg&t=287s

Once you see the brain as just part of the body, and a thing that takes in lots of information from its environment to learn how to navigate the social world (chiefly by imitation) the concept of free will no longer makes sense. What we think and feel is a result of antecedent causes that we have no control over. The neurons in the brain wire up in response to our genes and our experiences; and we think, feel and behave as a consequence of how the neurons fire. Where is the room for a magic "me" that takes control of all of this, acting unlike everything else in the universe outside of the laws of cause and effect?

It's a neat trick, making us feel like we are the authors of our thoughts, but under scrutiny, it makes no sense without invoking something supernatural. The brain does a lot of neat tricks, consciousness itself for one. While we can decide to practice certain ways of thinking to make us think that way more (e.g. meditation, CBT, etc), if we do this then we could not have done otherwise. It was all part of the workings of the nature, a series of changes through the laws of cause and effect. The fact that we felt like we made that decision and chose to change our thoughts is just a part of the rich illusion created by our brain. And the illusion is created for pragmatic reasons, to make our behaviour successful, evolutionarily speaking.

Does this do away with moral responsibility? 'Fraid so. Does that mean you should go around raping and murdering? Of course not.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

What conflict?????

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

To a point, war has always been the mother of invention (and lazyness the father!).

I give you

youtube.com/watch?v=21h0G_gU9Tw&

(from 2.30 onwards)

CB


edit: WAR, not was....

In reply to Oliver Houston:

When you start to think about this in detail, there is no differentiation between mental states that aren't a choice due to a brain tumour, or a chemical imbalance, or other neurologically identifiable physical cause and mental states that are a choice (or that we have responsibility for). Look in enough detail and every mental state has a neurological physical cause. You might categorise them as 'normal' and 'abnormal' but 'responsible' and 'not responsible' do not have any meaning when you're talking about the neurological 'facts on the ground'.

Referring to a famous story of a guy with a tumour the sizer of a gold ball pressing up against his amygdala who shot his wife and a bunch of strangers, Sam Harris coined the phrase "it's brain tumours all the way down". I just can't see the way out of this argument.

Great podcast on it here:

https://verybadwizards.fireside.fm/59

In reply to Jon Stewart:

A very interesting answer which I will try and deal with in full when I more time.
For the moment though I feel that it doesn't do away with moral responsibility as without the benefit of hindsight we are compelled to act as if we have freewill and our decisions, however arrived at, continue to be our responsibility. Even if that is an illusion.

I am with you in that i don't believe in an unchanging "I". I know that I do not have the same outlook or thought processes as the me at 25 etc.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:
Well, according to the plethora of quasi-qualified NLP practioners which my various employers have foisted on me over the years, you can choose to be happy if you want. Its all about deciding to feel happy, man.

For me, who has suffered bouts of viciously suicidal depression over the years, I call bollocks.

One of the most tragic things was trying to explain my complex feelings to a NLP 'black belt' after a session and watching her squirm. She did ask.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

Well after a long career in mental health and pondering such questions for many years I'm non the wiser!

There are no universal truth's, what may help one person doesn't help another...

The notion that changing ones thoughts having a positive impact on ones internal States is disputable....again it works for some....some of the time.

Choosing to be happy? Or choosing to believe one is happy!?

As pointed out by another poster....variance of mood can impact on this in a fundamental way...

Who knows.....

I have a trainee with me at the moment at work, she is full of certainties, research and peddling notions of evidence. I'm irritated by her and her drive to seek universal truth's.

Individual experiences for people take time to understand properly....a lifetime in fact and then what? Was all that thought worth it!?

I once worked with a great old fella. He was ? Depressed and ? Early dementia. He'd been an anxious guy all of his life and had come to the realisation that all the worry had been a waste of his precious time....I'm not sure we tend to see how precious it is until the end is in sight...

In reply to Oliver Houston:


There also lies the nub of part of my thinking. Physical changes to the brain (or even the body or environment) can lead to mental changes. I don't dispute it. But is it a one way street? There is some evidence that "acts of will" if you like cause chemical changes in the brain. So if you ruminate on things that might go wrong it makes you more depressed, if you smile, even if you don't feel happy, it releases endorphines. How we think affects changes in how we percieve the world. The real question is if I smile to make my self feel good is that me doing it or a whole series of external events causually conected that led up to that decision to smile?

In reply to Jon Stewart:


Translation: once you eat some little paper squares

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

Great question. I think it's very much both. Can I ask what choices you made to stop being depressed? Totally understand if you'd prefer not to share.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

What if the world smelled of smoke, all day long - and those who could smell it were driven mad - and those who couldn't smell it, were none the wiser? This smoke was in every town, every street and every house. If you went inside or outside it did not matter - it was always there. A momentary reprieve in a forest or high on a mountain. But you can't stay there. Soon you have to go back, there is no escape. It would be maddening wouldn't it? Even worse would be the fact that many people would never believe you could smell it - even if you could prove there was some fine particles in the air!

Well what if it wasn't smoke, but something else? What if some people can 'see' that the environment is getting destroyed, they 'know' that people are getting killed all over the world, they can 'feel' people are in totally unnecessary pain, that no matter what they did, this terrible background surrounds everything. Normal every day life has no mention of this at all - as if nothing was wrong at all.

We however say the sane person is the one willing to spend hours traveling to and from work, trading their life essence for almost the rest of their life, for the right to live in a tiny box, eat processed food, watch banal, mind dulling entertainment and occasionally get new shiny toys. Meanwhile the environment is being destroyed - people are being killed, and injustices are carrying on, but it's okay - because this person got something shiny from the previous sentence. This person is extremely happy in some sense, and pretty much nothing that happens externally can change that.

In short, I think some people are born very sensitive / highly perceptual / highly empathetic, into a world which is "too much". We have created a brutal society - it's not as coarse as it was in years past, but we have lost other things for this gain (privacy, human interaction is at the lowest in all of history, meaningful chances of employment are also at an all time low for many people who are not highly skilled). The meaninglessness (not in the absolute sense) - but the relative sense, where you can't do anything 'good' and meaningful to the rest of the world, is deeply troubling to many people.

In reply to sebastian dangerfield:

Will share but I am on my way out now. Catch you later

In reply to Duncan Bourne:


It's certainly true that we feel as though we have free will, and can't not feel this way. But I don't see how that rescues moral responsibility. If everything we do is a consequence of things we had no control over, where does this responsibility come from? Feeling that we could have done otherwise (when in fact that's an illusion) isn't enough. This has profound implications for criminal justice, for example, but they're useful implications when you work them through.


Go a step further and think about how much your behaviour varies over a single day. How you say different things, even speak in different voices, to different people. How you do things that don't really align with what you consider to be your values - everyone's a hypocrite. Bruce Hood argues that you're doing all this stuff, the brain is churning out all this behaviour, and then adding feelings of agency and conjuring self-justifying narratives to knit the whole conscious experience together into something that makes sense to the central character, "I". A neat trick, for sure.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

cheers

In reply to SenzuBean:


In all seriousness, why do we lose the sense of self in the psychedelic experience (or through meditation)? Because there's not much to it, it's just a certain way the brain cells fire that's interrupted if certain chemicals are clogging up the synapses. If the "you" that you're so used to existing is something real and fundamental, it would be a lot harder to make it disappear than just dropping some acid.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

Can we choose to be happy? I'd say no, but...

...you can choose to be cheerful. Greet the world with a smile, know that somewhere - possibly directly above you, above all that cloud - the sun shines from a sky of the purest blue, that there's no problem that will face you today that you can't grin about later and that you have the chance today to be you, and nobody else in the world has that blessed opportunity.

Happiness should come as a side effect.

T.

In reply to Jon Stewart:


Do you mean the sense of self that one would use for everyday life is lost? Then yes, I agree that one is temporarily lost, but I would say a sense of self still remains - it diffuses to a fine mist and envelopes everything else.


Well to play devil's advocate - it doesn't take a lot of ricin to make it disappear forever!

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

I'd say its hard to just decided you're happy when you're clearly not. But what you can do is make real choices in your life to help increase the chances of happiness being enabled. Choices such as going out and doing things, exposing yourself to situations where you're more likely to meet people, doing what needs to be done to increase the likleyhood of employment / better employment so you can have the extra money to have and do many new things, live in a better place, do more stuff etc. All those sorts of things increase the likelihood of success both in life and wealth and freedoms.

It would for example be easy to maintain being depressed if you had a crap life, failed at everything and lived alone with no friends in a crappy damp flat with nothing to do all day. But you wouldn't have gotten their by chance, its a result of the choices one has made. Equally if you found yourself there and decided you'd be happier elsewhere then you have to start making choices which will change your lifestyle, happiness will follow along afterwards.

In reply to SenzuBean:


I can't say I've really experienced it, but on a full-on dose of psychedelics, people report "ego loss". Ask anyone who's done DMT about it... Generally recognised as essentially the same experience of "transcendence" from years of practice of meditation.

In reply to SenzuBean:

I've had this discussion about happiness and choice a thousand times and, every time, I end up at the same conclusion: one can choose to be happy but that choice demands a cost and that cost is the cost of acceptance.

In your parable, someone who chose to accept the fact that they would never escape the smell of smoke may be able to learn to ignore it.

In my own story, the choice demanded of me was to accept the life in London for what it was, to choose to enjoy what London offered instead of what I truly wanted.

I could have done it, I think. But, after the instant of that choice, would I still be me?

I could choose not to care about what is happening in the world. What if I pride myself in the fact that I care? What if I consider it a requirement of educated adults to hold opinions about current affairs and politics? The cost of acceptance would be denial of my own morales - more than being anti-Trump, pro-peace and a remainer, I am anti-ambivalence!

(I remain a member of only one forum and that's this one. I know the abusive words that get flung around, here, but I consider them to be a minor annoyance (and, sometimes, a huge amusement) because UKC has something special: threads like these! Here, people have opinions and because the cross-section of society is defined by thrutching, snow-sliding and mound-trudging and not by religion or politics or viral marketing dons, it's a pretty safe place to swap the chant.)

In reply to Duncan Bourne:
Why, then, 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison. Well, then it isn't one to you, since nothing is really good or bad in itself—it's all what a person thinks about it. And to me, Denmark is a prison."
No Fear Shakespeare: Hamlet: Act 2, Scene 2, Page 11


There is such a thing as 'endogenous" depression, which no matter how much "attitudinal change" you try is very difficult, if not impossible to shift.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_depression

See also "depressive personality disorder".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_personality_disorder

In reply to Xharlie:


What I didn't go on to say, was that the way I see it - is that I (me) could only choose to accept 'the smoke', if I knew I was doing something meaningful to stop it - even if it was microscopic, drops into the ocean type stuff. And I am doing some stuff, and I will do a lot more. Without that knowledge that I'm doing something meaningful - I would not be able to carry on indefinitely.
To speak of this in terms of a hypothetical person - if they asked me for advice, it wouldn't be to "just accept your surroundings", but find some way to work towards fixing your surroundings - and this they might require help with. Whether this advice is bunkum for other people, I don't know. I know some people as well as myself follow something more or less along those lines.
In short, I'm saying that the problem is not in some people's heads - it's spread all around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism_in_science


What I was suggesting was that maybe you have to. You couldn't not - it would be lying to yourself, and lies are sour and bitter.

Don't answer that or we'll cover the thread a month back about this stuff

In reply to Jon Stewart:


Err well, yes there's that. But I have it on good terms that it's not really a 'ego death', but the boundary between self and non-self that disappears. So in some sense there is no self, but in another sense there is no non-self either - which sort of makes the whole distinction mu. Or so I've been told.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

If we could choose to be happy, why isn't everyone happy?

On a recent long car journey, I was listening to an In Our Time podcast about free will which brought up the subject of determinism. I was heading to SCNL to break in a new pair of boots despite knowing the snow would probably be too soft, and determinism meant I couldn't have chosen to lie in bed (or do anything else) instead given nature/nurture, good weather, new boots etc. Which means we don't have free will so we can't freely choose to be anything. On the other hand we can happily realise that we aren't really responsible for any of our actions, and blame everything on Melvyn Bragg.

In reply to GrantM:


This is pretty much the sole philosophical point at the end of War and Peace. I think the wording is something like: "No action is borne purely out of choice, or necessity, but a mixture of choice and necessity" (add oldy-woldy words and a dose of russian sexism for full effect). If it had been the opening line, rather than the last line of the epilogue, a lot more people might have got the message.

In reply to sebastian dangerfield:

You asked so here it is.
My story is I used to get depressed, you know the sort, really black debilitating black holes that suck you down till you can't function. And now I don't. But how I got from there to here wasn't easy, I have learned certain things that are "tricks" if you like to help but I will come to them later.
First off for me I reached a point where I had gone down as far as I could go, very suicidal but, if I am honest, not wanting to take that final step. My life was shit and I was stuck. I really hated myself and all the things about me but didn't quite have it in me to pull the plug. So I took a sideways jump and stopped being me. I moved out of my house to stay with a friend, I cut my hair, had an eye test and was delighted to be told I needed specs, refused to answer to my old nickname. I took 6 months off work in the end and tried to build a new personality. But of course you can't escape from yourself and no matter how I dressed it up I was still the person I had always been. Still depressed but pretending to be someone else and having arguments in my head. But the really important thing was that I was fed up of being depressed. I really didn't want to be depressed anymore, not in the old way of being depressed and wishing that if only X, Y or Z would happen then I would be happy but of really not wanting to be depressed ever! No matter what. But of course I was still depressed, depression was something you just had. You could struggle with it but you could never completely win, that was how I felt.
In a way I was primed for change, I was looking for my "get out of jail free" card and I found it in two simple comments made to me. "Each person is responsible for their own emotional well being, you can not make anyone else happy if they don't want to be" and "You are responsible for your own well being". Two comments which in themselves are nothing, but on the back of everything else laid the final pieces in the jigsaw. I knew I could change I just had to embrace it and work on it. Well the eventual outcome was that I don't get depressed. I get annoyed, I get pissed off I even feel out of sorts if things are not going well but none of it sticks. But one can't be too complacent so I wrote down the main points to remind myself for when I forget.
1. Each person is responsible for their own emotional well being. You can not make someone else happy if they don't want to be.
2. You are responsible for your own well being. No one can help you as much as you help yourself and no one can harm you as much as you can harm yourself.
3. Don't try to be happy. It is better to work on being calm and not just in meditation but at all times, especially stressful ones. Calm will help you cope with problems and extend happiness by default.
4. Slow down. If you feel yourself rushed and you don't want to be then stop and take stock. calm decisions are better than stressed ones.
5. It is impossible to be happy all the time. We have illnesses, accidents and other troubles which come to bother us. The trick is to seperate the wheat from the chaff, not waste time on the imagined problems and deal calmly and systematically with the real.
6. Melodrama NEVER helps a situation.
7. Sometimes emotions and feelings that are uncomfortable take hold of us. Roll with them and don't give them purchase. Stand back and view them as mere "things" that come and go like leaves on the wind. Observe them, watch them and let them go. If you fear in your mind that you will fall then fall and embrace the falling (we are talking metaphorically here in case folk are too literal), when you have fallen as far as you can go you will still be there.
8.Think to yourself "I am lucky". Look for the good in all situations. 90% of our situation is down to outlook and attitude. Look for the bad and you will surely find it look for the good and it will be there.
9. Know your strengths and acknowledge them. Have realistic and achievable aims but don't under sell yourself. Work on one thing at a time.
10 Be honest with yourself and others.

Not been depressed for 12 years and counting but I don't like to get complacent

In reply to Oliver Houston:


This is the nub of the question. There are studies which suggest that we can influence our brain chemicals. If we smile (even if we aren't happy) it releases endorphins, if we ruminate on how bad things are it makes us feel bad, if we change our focus we alter patterns in our brains. Now if there is no freewill we are simply reacting to a series of conditions which set us up to do the things which change our head. I find it hard to untangle which came first

In reply to abr1966:


I agree there. My way would not suit everyone. Some situations are a lot harder than others


All I know is that I did it but it wasn't easy (see longer post below)


could amount to the samething but I don't believe in choosing to be happy, I believe in working to create a mental state where you can be happy


Agreed



May be she's right may be she isn't . Nothing is certain


I suppose it depends on where that thought takes you


I am glad I found out when I did!

In reply to Duncan Bourne:


We *are* our brain chemicals.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Have you read "The man who mistook his wife for a hat"? Facinating reading

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Well exactly. I wouldn't dispute that but how they work to arrive at "the glass is half full" or "the glass is half empty" is facinating. Conciousness may be an illusion but it is a bloody good one!

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

thanks, really appreciate your taking the time

In reply to Jon Stewart:


On this point. Think of it as this. If I perform a criminal act (say murder) it could be argued that I am slave to a series of physical events that were set up when the universe first came into being. My actions were preordained and I could not stop them. But then the same applies to the police, the judges and even the executioner. They were predestined to try me and find me guilty and there was nothing they could do to change that.

In reply to Xharlie:

will try and reply to this later too. Alas I don't type fast and I am off to bed

In reply to Jon Stewart:


I'm not sure I believe this is the case, it is possible, but research in the area has been dubious. Large areas of Biological Sciences and Psychology are in the midst of a reproducibility crisis: http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility...

Sorry, I can't listen to the podcast, it's too late and the podcast is too long and American.
A lot of the (notably American-led) research appears to look for problems that can then be "medicated". (sorry gross generalisation).
I'll note here this comes from a PhD in Neuroscience and a realisation that in science (at least it's current state), the researcher who wins the pot of gold is the one who shouts the loudest with the most convincing answer.

I prefer to think of every brain as different, sitting in a multi-dimensional axis' of several spectrums, a fragile balance of external influences and intrinsic factors maintain it in a given state. Sometimes that state will shift, either fast, or slowly over long periods. Possibly due to internal/external factors.

As has been commented, there is no magical cure, we can't all think our way to happiness, but then we won't all respond well to a given medicine.
I knew a guy who had been given anti-depressants from the age of 15 and by the time he was 18, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He blamed the drugs, but no one can really know if they helped/made it worse.

In reply to SenzuBean:
I really want to reply to you on this sort of thing. I will have a go tomorrow

In reply to GrantM:


Good point! In my experience most people don't feel that they have any choice in the matter

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

Thanks for taking the time to write these down, while I have never been depressed, they are variations on thoughts that have helped keep me happy. Always nice to see a positive reminder.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:


I agree. Not quite sure what you mean by preordained though: although events follow from antecedent causes, the laws of nature make things unpredictable. While we don't control what happens next, it can't be predicted either, which makes all of this less of a crisis.

Moral responsibility isn't much use anyway. If I commit a murder, it's still bad, since it has bad consequences. I should still be locked up to stop me killing others and to demonstrate to the the rest of society that if you kill people there are consequences. Ditching the concept of moral responsibility means actually thinking about what the right response is to bad (or indeed good) behaviour to achieve the best outcome rather than relying on gut instincts like revenge.

I would say that while free will and the self are illusions (an illusion being something that isn't what it seems, rather than something that doesn't actually exist), I don't think this is true of consciousness (the self is a specific aspect of consciousness the way I look at it). It's probably fair to say that the only thing that definitely *isn't* an illusion is consciousness - the wonderful John Searle goes through this argument here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxX6pYrvGy4&index=23&list=FLdWC6Y_A...

As you might have guessed, I love this stuff and have spent a bit of time deciding where I sit on it. Very much with Searle and Harris, very much not with Dan Dennet. I can't discuss any more though, I'm leaving on a trip (climbing, not psychedelic) in a few hours.

Best wishes,
Jon

In reply to Oliver Houston:


I don't think that this hinges on the reproducibility of specific bits of research. It's an overarching concept that mental states are caused by physical states in the brain, and this is now just obvious unless you start adding in supernatural guff. We're only just starting to sketch out the actual details of what physical states correlate to what mental states, and I agree this research is all cutting edge and fluid (to mix metaphors, again) - but that doesn't impinge on the idea that it's "tumours all the way down".


No doubt, and I'm not supportive of this approach. All I'm saying is that mental states result from physical, neurobiological processes, and you can't say that a person is responsible for some of these process but not others. How would you divide up processes into these categories?


Totally agree. I think there's something in Dan Ariely's book I'm reading about why "deciding to be happy" doesn't work. But I don't think the answer is medicine - I view the medicalisation of emotions and bahviours as a last resort which can be useful to achieve a desired outcome of less suffering.


Drugs are pretty blunt tools, eh? Bathing the entire brain in chemicals which rattle around the synapses might be a laugh sometimes, but it's not something I'd take lightly if it was a matter of getting by from day to day. Although of course sometimes it' the best option.

In reply to GrantM:



Because they have not chosen to be happy, maybe because they do not know they can chose to be happy.
Top tip, visit a Buddhist monastery, and look at the people, their faces.

In reply to Oliver Houston:


AFAIK its more likely that the schizophrenia was underlying than it being caused by the anti-depressants.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:





Very similar to my story. I am still work in progress.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

In many ways I agree, there are many "diseases of the mind", that are caused by the underlying neurobiology. But as far as I remember, there are still some unexplained disorders that respond well to medical treatments in some patients, but not others. So I am sceptical of the "depression is always caused by an underlying neurological disorder" approach. However I am also sceptical of having to diagnose such complex diseases with specific labels and terms, I guess I'd prefer a more considered approach, where each patient is treated as a unique case.

Leaving aside depression, I do think there are people who choose to be stressed about stuff that really doesn't matter. I had a colleague who often complained about money and how little we were paid, yet went out for Starbucks most days. I'm sure this is common, that people think they should worry about money, possibly due to influences from society, therefore they worry about money.

In reply to SenzuBean:


If find this similar to a mind experiment I came up with regarding "demons". It runs what if everyone had a brain condition that caused them to hallucinate demons? Those without the condition would find it hard to convince the majority that demons were not real and might even be thought of as "damaged" or "demon blind".


I think the issue here is not that people can see the destruction you describe but whether they have an emotional response towards it.
For me I just think that the world is what it is. Neither good nor bad. The good things that happen and the bad things that happen are subject to interpretation and importance to the interpreter. It has been happening for millions of years and will continue until the day the earth is destroyed. Bad will rise and fall, good will rise and fall. I know people you describe. Who do not think deeply on anything and live their lives quite happily. Others still think about it and work towards making the world a better place but are able to stand back from it and so the emotional side barely touches them.


I think there are some people who's empathy switch is constantly open, like a radio that you can't turn off or down. For others it may be off altogether or they can adjust it at will. I think that there are evolutionary reasons for both but it is a case for some of too much or too little.

>We have created a brutal society - it's not as coarse as it was in years past, but we have lost other things for this gain (privacy, human interaction is at the lowest in all of history, meaningful chances of employment are also at an all time low for many people who are not highly skilled). The meaninglessness (not in the absolute sense) - but the relative sense, where you can't do anything 'good' and meaningful to the rest of the world, is deeply troubling to many people.

I would disagree somewhat here. I don't see our society (and by this I mean the UK) as particularly brutal. If anything it is less brutal but the spread of media means that we are more likely to here of what goes on. I still feel that one can do good in the world and that things are worth fighting for.
For myself I do what I can and don't trouble about what I can not affect. I deal with problems as they arise and take reasonable steps to mitigate future ones. I will write to MPs, protest where I feel it is due and praise those who work to make the world a tolerable place to be. Because at the end of the day if we don't try to make this world a good place to live in no one will. But it doesn't trouble me because I don't see any advantage in being troubled by it. Which I hasten to add is not the same as ignoring things

In reply to Duncan Bourne:
I think choice can play a large part, but there's some things which will always make an individual less happy, or leave them with less potential for happiness in their life.

By this I mean I feel it's an unfairness to tell a fed up person that they're 'not choosing to be happy strongly enough'

Things like our upbringing as children, and things which have happened to us which we couldn't control during our formative years before adulthood, can affect how able we are to be happy. Once an awareness of how things like this have affected us, though, and (sometimes) difficult things have made us stronger, I think the element of choice becomes more relevant, and perhaps our ability to recognise the amount of choice we have can change too.

I get the feeling that choice and self awareness can go hand in hand, which possibly means we can and we can't choose, in that we can only chose as far as our self awareness allows us to.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:


Without going too far on a tangent - then do they really see it? It's one thing to have some knowledge of something, and quite another to have immersed each of your senses in it.


Of course - but the question is whether we want to be here to see these things happen, or to squander our chance to see the universe unfold. It's well to remember that in percentage terms, e.g. if you squashed the history of the Earth into 24 hours, human civilization has been around for about 0.2 seconds, and in that time - look what we've done to the place. Can you imagine having a 24 hour party - it's been fine for the last few hours, and at 1/5 of a second to midnight some guy busts in and trashes your whole house literally as fast as you can blink your eye? :p


I think it's an error to only look at the UK. E.g. A factory that dumps toxic waste byproducts down the storm drain. Sure, the factory is clean and spotless and no violations inside are being broken. But if you include the whole picture - it's much less clean. Bangladesh, China, Taiwan, the Pacific ocean, the Amazon, the Middle East - that's where the toxic waste (which includes not only literal toxic waste, but figurative - such as conflict) of the UK ends up. It is less brutal than before in some ways - but in others it's worse. Those who work on computers and read the news can understand how anonymity and privacy are almost totally gone (not an exaggeration) - that's pretty brutal isn't it, everything you will ever write or type (even what you never send), people who use certain apps or devices have everything they say in the background, recorded and attached to your name and face? This is used by governments and credit agencies.


Good on you

In reply to Jon Stewart:


I think that the "me" is a convenient tool, a convention that allows us to talk about certain things. I agree that it is a "trick" but one that helps us to negotiate our environment.


I think that "freewill" makes sense as another useful "trick" of our perceptions. I remember as a teenager reading "The Diceman" by Luke Rhinehart (aka George Cockcroft - no wonder he used a pen name) inwhich a psychologist uses dice to make his decisons for him. It decended into rape and murder etc. of course. But it made me realise (as I tried it) that I didn't want to live my life on the whim of a dice roll. I wanted to "make decisions" based on moral mores, social codes, risk assesment and evidence etc. In short the consequence of my actions may be the result of chemical interactions beyond my control but I still act as if they were my decisions.
leading into....


I don't think we have to invoke something supernatural.
My thoughts are that really there are two aspects of the samething and it is hard to talk about both at the same time.
By way of an example I will use Art. In Art (capitalized to encompase all art, painting, sculpture, literature, theatre, etc) there is an interaction of materials so various chemical pigments absorb or reflect light that hits our retinas and the chemicals in our brain place interpretation on what we see according to past experience. In another sense we could say that we are looking at the Mona Lisa. Additionally wood pulp pressed flat and stained with dark chemical to produce a codified series of symbols is also absorbed by our eyes which interpret the coded information as "Lord of the Rings". Now to me the scientific explanation of how a book works is not "Lord of the Rings", neither is the understanding of how it triggers emotions and memories in the brain. For me the codified words conjure up in my mind a visible place of mountains and forest, populated by creatures that do not exist in the environment around me (even though as with any work of imagination it needs to reference the physical world). Now I don't see this as supernatural. I see it as an emergent property that is more than the sum of its parts. It is a product of our predisposition to see patterns, to build on the data we receive and extrapolate it to create new scenarios. An advancement of the "tiger in the grass" scenario. where a rustling in the grass could just be the wind or it could be a tiger. We create the "tiger" story and imbue it with emotion this either wastes our time or saves us, but the waste of time is less important than the saving. This ability enables us to recognise an image on a flat surface, made of pigments as being a human face. But not only that we also recognise the image as an image and not the real thing. It fools us but it doesn't fool us. It is hugely useful. Imagine if you had to learn everything you saw anew. Say a tree. No two trees are the same. I can tell the tree in my garden from that of my neighbours even though they are the same species but I still know that they are trees. That my tree is a tree and that my neighbours tree is also a tree. I have a loose tree pattern stored in my brain that can say "yes this is a tree but it is different from that one". It is almost a quantum problem. We can talk about the way the brain constructs a book in our head or we can talk about "Lord of the RIngs" but both at the same time? emegent complexity from a simple set of rules.

The brain does a lot of neat tricks, consciousness itself for one. While we can decide to practice certain ways of thinking to make us think that way more (e.g. meditation, CBT, etc), if we do this then we could not have done otherwise. It was all part of the workings of the nature, a series of changes through the laws of cause and effect. The fact that we felt like we made that decision and chose to change our thoughts is just a part of the rich illusion created by our brain. And the illusion is created for pragmatic reasons, to make our behaviour successful, evolutionarily speaking.

Which in effect is predestination. Even though, like clouds in a chaos experiment, if we wound back to a new starting point we would have different results, thus nothing is laid out like a book from start to finish. We can not wind back to a starting point entropy doesn't allow it. So in effect cause and effect event will unfurl exactly as they will do. A ball will still roll down hill, rain will fall as the cloud becomes full and a murderer will still pull the trigger at the precise moment the laws of cause and effect bring all past actions to fruition

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

Hi everyone. Bit late to the thread, and I haven't read everything - there's a lot of words and thoughts! In brief, I believe that for the majority, yes, we can choose to be happy. Good starting points are living in the present (avoids anxiety) and seeing silver linings in any situation. They really are there. Strangely, I get paid to do this for a living!

In reply to Timmd:

I mean 'choose'.

In reply to Timmd:


I think there are definitely situations that make it very hard to be happy. Say working with someone you don't like. And up bringing as well can leave you more or less able to make good choices. The trick is to find ways that work to lessen the impact of bad situations.


I always think that is the false thing. I don't think to can tell anybody to choose to be happy. But I think that you can supply them with a set of tools that may help. Some tools may be better than others.


Exactly. I remember reading Aron Alston saying that he was much happier after losing his arm in the canyon as the experience showed him his strengths and made him feel able to conquer adversity (or something like that). Sometime a crisis can kick start a change in us that takes us down a new path (I wouldn't recommend cutting your arm off though)


I think this is true.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

A good example is the way we say, "I hate rhubarb" or "I love chocolate" as if some personal ego had made a considered decision to have that liking or disliking. In fact, it was just decided by the person's tastebuds and early experiences. There is no real "I" in it at all. Same probably goes for everything else. "I hate my boss" -yeah because he tells you to do things you don't want to do, it's just a reaction to his actions, and his actions are in turn decided by his role. Nothing that's really decided by your ego, which you think controls everything.

In reply to blackratdog:
How would you see cultivating tolerance (towards annoying bosses) or finding a perspective which makes a certain situation more agreeable, like comparing working in a boring job to struggling to survive in the third world, how would they fit into the question of how much of what we do is governed by our egos?

Hope this makes sense, my brain is addled through tiredness.

In reply to marsbar:


Seconded. In the prodromal phase schizophrenia can present in many different ways.

In reply to Timmd:


Towards people, my thought is always; "I only have to put up with you for a limited time, in limited circumstances, you have to live with yourself 24/7."

In reply to Big Ger:
That's certainly one approach. I've found with one of my sis in laws, that I've had to seriously apply some of what's in Buddhism about regulating one's thoughts (without 'virtue signaling' about being particularly spiritual, or peaceful though I think the term 'virtue signaling is a load of rubbish probably) . She can be a personality of polar opposites, meaning that one can be grumpy about her and be 'right', or focus on the positive things and be 'right' about that. To have a more agreeable long term relationship, I've been cultivating more agreeable thinking, and switching the negative thoughts for positive ones, and it's been interesting how that can seem to change one's whole perspective and general mood about a person. It's one of those things where I know the less agreeable elements exist, but I've decided not to focus there.

I think if I took your approach, it'd make some kind of argument or falling out more likely, because I'd probably still have the negative thoughts and her less agreeable traits more in the forefront of my mind, which generally seems to make conflict more likely with whoever one is having to deal with. My other sis in law has found the newer sis in law challenging to deal with too, so it's not quite (or not entirely) a case of having bias against her because she's not a blood relative, and doesn't share the family ways etc.

As a process it's not been without merit, in having to learn how to get on with somebody I'd possibly have chosen to not have much to do with in other circumstances (my sis in laws could be around for longer than I am and be a part of my life, and it keeps my brother happy). Quite interesting, and is applicable to other situations and people. One might call it a new way of approaching life.