All Work & No Play

Like any substance that directly alters your brain chemistry, caffeine is a drug, and as such, it has the same essential drawback; namely, it favors some brains states over others, and is addictive. Thus, the chronic caffeine user has a limited set of mental states available to him, a set defined by the drug. In this way, the drug limits our will.

In some instances, this limitation of will is useful. The chronically depressed person, for example, is caught in a self-sustaining, undesirable state – feeling depressed is demotivating, thus the person does not do the things which might take them out of the depressed state. The necessary solution would be to make recognizing the depressed state and becoming motivated to change it easier, thus requiring less raw motivation. By artificially placing the person in a more energetic, positive state through the use of a drug, we create the opportunity for the person to create anchors to those experiences. So, when they reenter the depressed stat, as when they are removed from or become accustomed to the drug, they can access those states more easily. (See Anchors.)

It is an evil of our current methodology that depression is viewed as “physical,” which is taken to be different than (and mutually exclusive with) “psychological,” or “willful.” In fact, this failure of understanding is pervasive in the public mind, and, seemingly, in the scientific community as well. That which is psychological is physical, period. To access a motivated state through anchoring accomplishes (if successful) the same physical result as is intended with administering a drug. The difference is that anchoring empowers the subject – he may choose to enter that state, or not. The drug takes away the choice. With a chronic depressive, temporarily removing that choice is good – the subject either does not know how to choose otherwise, or lacks the motivation to make the choice. Give him no choice, and you provide him with the opportunity to learn about other states. Permanently removing the option, however, seems an inferior solution.

Today, a quote from the Found Book of Truths:

Pride is the poison of our present society. Think you of the power one can gain by a show of submission. Allow the enemy to indulge his pride, and you shift his focus onto his own reflection, and away from the reality of his circumstances. What then might you accomplish?

Concerning this passage, the Considerative Commentaries has this to say:

Our movements for what is called “equality” – what have they gained? Where was their focus? Pride, of course. Through the ages, women have maintained control over the course of human societies through their authority over the creation and upbringing of children. How have they done this? By a simple superficial acquiescence; yet, look how quickly that power has been surrendered. Not men, but politics and institutions control our lives – the individual has lost all control. How has this occurred? By the deemphasis of individual empowerment.

I think we could also gain something by considering the following, from elsewhere in the Commentaries:

Consider that reason is the single greatest servant of individual empowerment. An individual who obtains both reason and a belief that he can learn needs for no knowledge; all necessary information will be his, as easily as a whale consumes plankton. In all attempts to educate, train, or instruct, make this the center of your efforts, and remember: reason is not achieved through knowledge, but always the other way around.