Help Dealing with the civil war. (Thoughts, scribbles, rant, vent, whatever you want to call it.)

[262653]

I see three ways:
Loosely defined stuff:
Ego = sense of self within a Sense of Self. It's a sub-sense of self that takes a life on its own. Think of tulpa went rogue, refusing to submit oneself to its creator. The way I see it: there is a Sense of Self intrinsic to all sentient life forms. (Which might as well be all the life forms, who knows.)
Creatures seem to recognize what to eat, what not to eat, what to run away from, what to copulate with, stuff like that.

1. Ego surrenders, accepts the OG Sense of Self as its sole master. Body needs are unequiocally treated as dogmas. The unified country recieves better chances for flourishing, now that the internal disputes have been solved.
2. Suicide. Ego, not wishing to bow to anyone, including the despotic SoS, destroys both of them, ending the civil war for good (with its participants).
3. Focus on the present moment. Nurture the body, and keep the brain busy with non-survival tasks, like studying things for fun, or reading books, or whatever takes all the processing power (PP), absorbing Ego into the present moment. (Ego feels offended when survival tasks are performed, and sabotages the activity.)
There will be occasional triggers, when SoS' demands are unsatisfied, or when free PP allows Ego to think for itself and come back to antagonistic ideas. Ego has to be denied of PP while the basic needs (of SoS) have to be fulfilled.

*(I decided to add the poll because it makes every thread better. Like pizza, or the sounds of rain.)

**(Anything is welcomed as long as you stay civil. Thoughts and questions on topic. Thoughts and questions off-topic. Witty remarks. Meme pics. Whatever.)

 

[Makko]

1 is the best outcome but it's not something you can force. Ego is dug into its trenches too well. It's something you may arrive at after a long line of life experiences. Experiences that weaken ego and strenghten the non-ego side little by little.

 

[GenesAndEnvironment]

Depends on what the goal is. I think they all sound pretty good. If I was facing large amounts of physical pain, I'd always go with 2.

 

[WornOutLife]

Depends on what the goal is. I think they all sound pretty good. If I was facing large amounts of physical pain, I'd always go with 2.

Same here. If the pain is unbearable, number 2 sounds nice!

 

[262653]

*

3:25-3:50 Wise words from criminal overlords.
I drank it. I fucking drank it. I could barely breathe for a few secs. Still have issues. But it's better. As long as I breathe through the nose... I can keep it inside. And keep my head up...

 

[Imaginos]

Number 2 is the most preferable option. However, failing that, option number 3 is what I'm most realistically forced to grapple with. In a romantic sense, I consider this on par with denying what Schopenhauer referred to as the "will", by doing whatever I can to frustrate its hold on me. In a much uglier sense, it simply means constant internal turmoil in a perpetual tug of war between what I consider to be my higher self and the much lower needs of the body/will. On the list of Zapffe's four main coping mechanisms, I'd consider myself firmly in the categories of isolation and distraction, not that I do a very good job at embodying them to the extent that they actually allow me some meaningful peace from myself.

Zapffe's view is that humans are born with an overdeveloped skill (understanding, self-knowledge) which does not fit into nature's design. The human craving for justification on matters such as life and death cannot be satisfied, hence humanity has a need that nature cannot satisfy. The tragedy, following this theory, is that humans spend all their time trying not to be human. The human being, therefore, is a paradox.

In "The Last Messiah", Zapffe described four principal defense mechanisms that humankind uses to avoid facing this paradox:

• Isolation is "a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling".[4]
• Anchoring is the "fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness".[4] The anchoring mechanism provides individuals with a value or an ideal to consistently focus their attention on. Zapffe also applied the anchoring principle to society and stated that "God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future"[4] are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments.
• Distraction is when "one limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions".[4] Distraction focuses all of one's energy on a task or idea to prevent the mind from turning in on itself.
• Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets, toward positive ones. The individuals distance themselves and look at their existence from an aesthetic point of view (e.g., writers, poets, painters). Zapffe himself pointed out that his produced works were the product of sublimation.