After my last blog “In Pursuit”, I received some interesting comments. This is one of the comments submitted by “Danny.” If you will allow me, I would like to interject a few comments to his well thought out response…
Danny: In the end it is only the pursuit of what feels good. Ask any man or woman why she does something and the end result will always be "because it feels good". At least that is what Dr. Krebbs my philosophy professor told me in his class.
Kelly: “Because it feels good.” While I concur with this statement, I would also propose that this is the very problem with modern day society. We now live in an immediate gratification society.
You may ask, “Haven’t we always been this way?”…and I would argue no...Not to the extent we see in modernity. I know when I was a kid; (1970-1980) I would get my ass beat (literally) when I did things that were not in my best interest. Having said that, I am not proposing we start “beating asses” to fix this problem, but what I am saying is that there was a bad association with me seeking and embarking on things that “made me feel good”…when I had been told otherwise. The Frontal Lobe of our brain (the executor of our behavior) doesn’t fully mature until the age of twenty five…so as a parent, it is our responsibility to govern the desires of our youth so that our children can understand the consequences of “because it feels good.”
Danny: It makes sense. What we have to achieve to become better human beings is not to try to deny our compulsion for that good feeling but to temper which ones we pursue in order to achieve it. We want the hedons (the measurement of what is good). In order to function well in society a human should try to find ways of feeling good that don't interfere with another person’s pursuit of the same.
Kelly: So true Danny…we have to discern between the pleasures that are not worth having because they lead to greater pains (affairs, drugs, unhealthy eating)… and acknowledge some pains that are worthwhile when they lead to greater pleasures. (Studying, exercising, cleaning the house)
My strategy/plan for attaining a maximal amount of pleasure overall is being disciplined and intentional in the path leading toward my goal, while not seeking instant gratification of the moment or doing things just to feed the ego.
Danny: Ironic, that is one of the best ways to gratify ourselves is the dopamine triggering mechanism that occurs when you gratify others. This is empathy and it allows for greater success as a species. You see it in humans and some other societal animals like wolves in a wolf pack. An incredibly effective internal drive that allows a species to thrive.
Kelly: How great is the paradox of helping others to help ourselves. I would propose this is one of the greatest virtues, and flaws, within mankind. Here we are…helping each other…almost completely unaware of the crippling effect that occurs while doing so. As part of the greatest species that has ever walked the earth, we seem completely blind to the interference of natural selection. Even within the wolf pack you mentioned, the mothers will sometimes eat their young or not allow their cubs to suckle their breast when there is no hope for a normal life. Now I’m not suggesting we should kill our infants when there is a birth defect; I’m speaking more on the later stages of human development. (Our teens and young adults) When is helping hurting?
There is a story of a young man wanting to become a Buddhist monk…he is waking down a long winding road with an elder monk. The boy and the monk come upon an old man working on his broken down wagon. The boy wants to run to the old man and help, but the monk grabs his hand and says, “Keep walking.” The boy is perplexed by the monk’s response. About a mile down the road the boy turns to the monk and asked, “Why didn’t we help that poor man?”…the monk replies, “We just did.”
The obvious message is, don’t let your "self serving dopamine responses" (i.e. helping others so that you feel good...at the expense of growth for that person) interfere with the maturing benefits of "doing it yourself."
Serve when service is "truly" needed.
Serve when service is "truly" needed.
Thanks for your response...if anyone is having a difficult time responding to this post, please respond to khfitness@aol.com. I will post for you.
3 comments:
That is it. The other part of why we do the things we do. It is not only to attain pleasure but to avoid pain. I say that in response to the social norming your parents were inflicting (the whoopins). That act is effective at teaching young people that sometimes the happiness derived from an action is sometimes not worth the pain that coincides. When I work out there is always an internal struggle before that first set. I realize that it will take effort and some struggle as well as a certain amount of time out of my day. This initial realization can sway you away from exercising if you consider it too seriously for too long. Although this is true, any committed exerciser also knows that ultimately this short term non-avoidance of pain can lead to a large net-gain of pleasure, ie: the very numerous health benefits that manifest in physical and mental well-being from carrying it out. Society at large doesn't think this way. They are thinking short term and you can hear it for their excuses for doing things like over-eating and in not doing things like exercising. They are just thinking too short term. These people either haven't experienced the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle well enough to know that it is worth the short term pain of achieving it, or they are too weak-willed to overcome the negative feelings that occur when they are considering the pain it takes to achieve it. Living this way is not better because although you avoid a negligible amount of pain and find a negligible amount of pleasure in the short term, you never achieve the greater height of net pleasure that you could achieve from delayed gratification. In being such short term thinkers they have actually tricked themselves out of being efficient at what try are reaching for (that which feels good). This is not just true in managing a healthy lifestyle through diet and exercise. It occurs in things like managing finances or relationships or pretty much anything else for that matter.
Hey Kelly, I understand the point of the story about the monk and novice, but I would offer an alternative. Certainly it is not an ideal situation for one group of people always to help another group of people. However, this need not be the case. A society where independence is valued and expected will produce strong individuals, but a society where assistance of others is universally valued and expected will create strong individuals and strong community.
For example. If you fix your wagon when it is breaks and I fix my wagon when it breaks, we will both learn to fix wagons. This is also the case if I help you fix your wagon and you help me fix my wagon. However, this time there is the added bonus that the community has been strengthened by the social connection between you and me.
Yes Danny...people are usually consistant in their behaviors. If you seek gratification...gratification is what you will find...for the moment anyway :)
Hi Jack,
I really love your optimistic view..."I help you...you help me." Our tribes sits down at the end of the day...shares a meal... then we start the next day all over again... helping each other.
The problem occurs when someone within in our tribe decides not to help...he/she is tired. (maybe chronic fatigue syndrome?) One of our tribe members who is better off (higher status) than the other tired member feels guilty about her privileged position. She feels compelled to help this "tired" person who is not as blessed as she is. When she helps this person, dopamine floods her pleasure center....it makes her feel better. (this situation could be a mother helping the baby in the family... because he cant do what his older siblings can do...you older siblings know what I'm talking about) This type of "help" is misguided.
The person that is "helped" (enabled/crippled) now develops an entitlement mentality... and so it goes.
I have sadly come to the conclusion that there are only a few people in my life that I can truly depend on. To achieve peace of mind, I have had to literally lower my expectations of others so that I am pleasantly surprised when reciprocity occurs.
When you do find people in your life that will help with your wagon wheel...hold on to them. You will build a strong social group, but im not sure it will be enough people to be called a community.
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