Systems of self control
Where do you spiral once emancipated?
Note: Read this post first or this won’t make much sense.
Given that more than 24 hours have passed since my last blog post, I’m sure most of my readers are now fully emancipated from the systems of control.1 The obvious next question is: what now?
So in this post, I’ll do some speculative work2 where I connect the systems of control with coercive vs non-coercive motivational schemas, procrastination, etc. I’m not sure if all of this is blindingly obvious to everyone that read the last post, but I’ll type it out anyway in case it helps.3
Let’s start by defining coercive motivation.
Start: Defining Coercive motivation
(Defn. Coerce =“persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats”)
Sometimes there are parts of yourself that pull in different directions.4 You might have one part of yourself that wants to stay in bed and be comfortable, and one part of yourself that wants to get up and go to work.
A common way to “resolve” this conflict is by stepping into an authoritative stance and mentally wrestling the sleep-in part into submission. This is the essence of self-coercion. Self-coercion is usually performed in the spirit of stage 2/3 control, using guilt or shame to force a certain action path.5
This involves thoughts like “I really should go up right now” or “I must get up”. If you have self-blaming thoughts, “force” yourself to do things or similar, there’s a high chance your motivational system is coercive.
Downsides to self-coercion
I walked away from self-coercion because I found it unstable. I could force myself to go to the gym regularly, but I usually dropped out after a few months.6 Things got particularly hard during winter. Energy levels dropped and I lacked the brain juice to force myself to do things.
I’ve also come to realize that self-coercion is not very fun. There’s a lot more mental resistance when parts of you are repeatedly overruled and forced to tag along. This creates resentment and resistance. Overcoming this resistance was energy draining and unpleasant.
And furthermore, I think shaming and guilt-tripping yourself impacts the way the systems of control shape your life. This is just conjecture on my part7, but it makes sense that running on shame internally leaves you vulnerable to external shame-based influences. So if this conjecture holds, then running on self-coercion will hinder your emancipation.
Finally: if you stop being ruled by external shame/guilt-based control, what will happen to your shame/guilt-based motivational system? Might you drop into limbo, unable to get shit done? And what’s the deal with all of the procrastination? Is this the reason why hippies are unreliable?8 Stand by for more speculation!
On procrastination
I see procrastination as the logical consequence of coercive motivational systems. Parts of you get tired of being pressured and respond by going on a strike. Most dedicated procrastinators use things like deadlines to force themselves to get going, getting shit done by inducing panic in themselves. This creates an arms race with ever more stubborn internal parts and ever more pressure.
But even people with “well-functioning” coercive motivational systems risk running into procrastination as they get emancipated at level 2-3 (guilt & shame), and enter stage 4 (jante).
What happens when you feel less shame and guilt, and instead start worrying about succeeding too much? Your guilt- & shame-based motivation will weaken, as the parts of yourself that are afraid of success grow stronger. And as this happens, you will start going into a contradictory relationship with success, being afraid of failure, while also being afraid of (the social repercussions of) success.
This risks putting you into a state where you want to succeed, don’t want to succeed, feel ashamed for wanting to succeed, are afraid of failing, and feel ashamed of being afraid of failing.9 All while your coercive motivational systems break down under emancipatory pressure.
The end result= goofing around, never really getting started, and being stuck in procrastination limbo.10
Building a non-coercive motivational system
Once you get some distance to the systems of control, coercive motivation stops working. Guilt and shame lose their teeth, and you stop getting external input about what to do, what is good, and what is bad.
You will be left to find your own path, see your own potentialities, and create your own meaning. There are attentional dangers lurking all around you, superstimuli looking to drag you spiralling down into a brave new world.11
In order to escape the dangers of freedom, you need to find another way of directing your actions. Besides Stoicism, I recommend self-love, avoiding superstimuli, and developing a non-coercive motivational system.
Loving yourself will make your life happier. When you are happy, you need to exert less effort to get things done. Highly efficient. You're also less likely to fall back into coercive patterns. It feels unnatural to threaten and coerce someone you love.
You can practice self-love by doing metta meditation. I’ve also heard good things about introspective meditation while under the influence of MDMA, though I don't want to be interpreted as recommending drug use.12 For more info on self-love, I recommend this post.
Avoiding superstimuli (or "dopamine detox") is a way to make yourself more sensitive. When you super-stimulate yourself repeatedly, you get desensitized and less able to appreciate life. An example of this is the way eating sugar ruins the taste of dark chocolate.13 Being desensitized to life will make it harder to find inner motivations to do things.14
And finding inner motivations is what non-coercive motivation is all about. You can go from forcing to flowing by turning shoulds into wants, finding enthusiastic consent from all of your parts. This starts by respecting the parts of you that are rebelling, figuring out what they need, and then adopting your behaviour to satisfy those needs.
You are a monkey. You have a path you want to go. What bananas can you drop along the path to tempt yourself to walk it?
For me, I started with the gym. I go to the gym because I want to keep up some basic training and because it makes me feel great afterwards. For a long time, I coerced myself to go to the gym, pressuring myself until I went. Nowadays, I try to really take my time to enjoy the feeling in my body as I do the exercises. I don’t push myself super hard, stopping at 80% maximum or so. And I always go to the sauna afterwards, enjoying some time relaxing. These changes have made going to the gym a much more pleasant experience, which has removed most of the resistance.
Final notes
I want to end with a concept I’ve been toying around with; anti-jante metta meditation. For those of you not in the know, metta meditation is also known as loving-kindness. When doing metta, you wish others and yourself well, using phrases like: “may you be safe”, and “may you be happy”. You sit down and repeat these phrases with a loving intention. The goal of this practice is to go into a strong feedback loop of love, kindness, and wishing everyone well.
For me, love (the agape kind) is the opposite of envy. Cultivating a love for that-which-excels might be a good step to stop being afraid of growth yourself.15 And I think a loving metta mediation is exactly the thing that can help with that.
Anti-Jante Metta Meditation:
“May you transcend”
“May you shine bright”
“May you succeed”
“May you be powerful”
(repeat 5-7x)
“May I transcend”
“May I shine bright”
“May I succeed”
“May I be powerful”
(repeat 5-7x)
This is a joke. It will take at least a week.
More or less informed guessing
Sometimes I mention stuff in a passing comment and people get back to me changing their lives. And sometimes I build up a mountain of analysis that amounts to “it’s important to be nice to others”. I have a sense that there might be value here, so let’s stop meta-analyzing and start analyzing instead.
The “part” language comes from internal family systems. When different parts of yourself are in conflict, I think this results in something referred to as “fragmentation”. But I struggle listening to continental philosophy so I’m not sure. Get in touch if you’re in the know.
I see stage 4 as inhibitory rather than action-inducing, seeing as it’s all about not pulling ahead from the pack. And I hope most people don’t use stage 1 (violence) to control themselves. As in “If I don’t go up now, I will hurt myself later as punishment”. Though this might just be my not-having-self-hurt privilege speaking.
I wonder if this is more common in cultures where physical punishment is a normalized form of parenting? I.e if we derive our internalized control systems from our upbringing? It does make sense, big if true. More studies are required.
Seems like most people do this after a few weeks. More efficient cycle time.
All of this is conjecture on my part. But I think I’m right. Which doesn’t say much from an outside perspective.
I think hippies are likelier-than-average to escape the systems of control.
If you try and fail, you prove that you are a failure. (note: I don’t agree with this assessment)
Now, I want to reiterate that this is all conjecture. But it seems logical, so please check in with yourself if you can relate to what’s described here. Might give a fruitful perspective if nothing else.
I’ve had about 0 positive thoughts/feelings about TikTok, the metaverse, etc. Am I old now?
If you do drugs you end up homeless mkay.
Refined sugar is for sure a superstimuli. It bumps your threshold for appreciating sweetness up a few notches, stopping you from enjoying subtle flavors.
If you shoot up heroin, you stop caring about things like the beauty of a flower. Replace heroin with social media, sugar, porn etc, and you get kind of the same dynamic (though maybe not to the same degree)
Using logic based on the echo principle