Personal Responsibility, Mental Responsibilty Part 2

Posted 12/25/06 (By Travis)

Personal Responsibility, Mental Responsibility Part II

This post is an update to the 10/27 post 'Personal Responsibility, Mental Responsibility'.

What does it means to 'take mental responsibility' for our life experiences? If we simply try harder can we easily change the way we think and feel? Are we are all capable of self change simply by 'toughening up'? And, most importantly, do successfully happy people attain their happiness entirely by virtue of their free will and vice versa? Part I did not intend to answer any of the above in the affirmative. In fact, the conclusion reached is the opposite; free will, despite its apparent existence, is most often an illusionary phenomena, we perceive we possess it, but this apparent ownership is often only superficial.

For example, someone who is addicted to cigarettes will smoke a cigarette. They may 'choose' what store they buy their pack at, and when, where, and the manner in which they light up. While it is semantically correct to label these other actions 'choices', they are unimportant and interpreted only to retain some semblance of false dignity. Yet, this makes all the difference to the mind. Governments do the same thing, totalitarian governments such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and many others hold elections, but all the candidates are chosen by the government. The people are given the perception of freedom even whilst they languish in chains. The definition of Fascism is that government allows private industry to exist, but mandates what must be done with it, giving the illusion of private ownership and property protection.

So, the central thesis is not that we are strong, but that we are weak. We are slaves, held in bondage by our desires, insecurities, anxieties, and lower thought processes, which all arise and influence our thoughts and actions without any volitional choice of our own. However, the fear of exposing our utter weakness, the risk of total demolition of our false self image, the humility of shattering any vestige of pride, and the pain inherent in the realization of our fragility and insecurity of our true mental state all contrive to keep us blind to the very nature of ourselves.

It was in this same spirit that Harry Browne said, "If government had taken over the auto industry in 1920, today we'd all be driving Model-T cars -- and saying, 'If it weren't for the government, we'd have no cars at all.'" We look at government projects and think, "Thank God government was there to fulfill our great needs; we have water, electricity, roads, all thanks to Government." Of course, we would be more than perfectly capable of fashioning these things for ourselves and doing it better and cheaper than government. All we have to do is look around us; we live and tolerate amazing incompetence, beat down daily by the corruption, the regulation, the taxes, yet we never dare shake our worldview by questioning common assumptions. We prefer the security of bondage rather than risk the challenges and responsibilities of freedom. So it is with the mind as well.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. -- Samuel Adams 1776

However, this canvas of pessimism is misleading as the background colors of life are bright, not dark. We are still surrounded by humming commerce. Raw capitalism, brought about by the free choices of individuals, delivers the highest living standard in the world. Immigrants flock to the United States and even our most ardently critical citizens, interestingly, remain in country. This 'voting with your feet' phenomena occurs, even though the reasons behind the migrations may not be fully understood by the participants themselves. So too, the mind is self-aware; our higher thinking processes are dimly aware of our bondage. Our true self, the part with volition and morality, grasps that our higher mind is being overruled and overrun by our lower animalistic nature. How can we be sure? Because, upon questioning, every single person can list their own faults off like a laundry list. We are, and what a gift it is, aware, on some level, of the contradictions in what we think and what we feel. Just like people are quite good at making economic choices for themselves, people are remarkably good at understanding themselves, on an intellectual level.

So wherin lies the problem? The problem is that the master, the lower mind, works to keep the slave, the higher mind and our true self (the part that chooses), in bondage. Thus, while we may be somewhat aware of many of our faults, vices, desires, and erroneous thoughts and feelings, we lack the urgency to deal with them. We do not feel a sense of acute emergency despite the continual suffering our cognitive dissonance, internal conflicts, generates. We think, "sure, I tend to be an anxious person", or, "yea, I'm often sad", or "I probably drink too much", but it often doesn't bother us to the point that we find it totally unacceptable to remain in these recurrent cycles of suffering.

Worse, and most destructively, we blame our feelings on outside influences. I used to work at an HIV/Aids hotline and we had significant numbers of persons with anxiety disorders repeatedly call, who had been repeatedly tested for HIV and/or did not have an exposure, but their anxiety prevented them from believing the tests, results, or us counselors. The problem was not the outside event, their exposure, or the existence of HIV, their problem stemmed from their internal processing of outside events. The problem was within them and upon questioning, they nearly always revealed past spates of intense anxiety, fear over various self-created stressors. If the focus remains on the outside events, inner reflection and positive change is not possible. The cycles and patterns must be broken.

Is this not reminiscent of politicians? They focus on superficial political winners like prayer in school and the so-called 'banning of Christmas' rather than on the deeper socialization of public schools. They focus on new aid programs for poorer persons, without the realization that existing aid programs and expansive government policies are the cause of the very poverty they seek to alleviate. The root causes are ignored in the place of more politically viable and emotional swatting of symptoms and symbols.

Will an individual who has achieved (more on possible approaches to this in the coming essay 'In Pursuit of Happiness') a level of control over the mind and experiences a diminishing of negative thoughts and emotions never appear angry or frustrated? Of course not, first because of the difficulty in bringing about change to the point where an individual truly has freedom and has taken full responsibility over their own mental state and secondly, because the battle is entirely internal, external expressions of anger or even the use of violence may be appropriate, moral, and necessary in some situations. Yet, even while the person is appearing outwardly enraged or violent, they remain perfectly calm and loving inside. So, in a sense, an outside event can cause a reaction, yet the reaction is volitional and physical rather than mental and the event should not disrupt inner peace. This discrepancy is important to understand because misconceptions can lead to derision of the idea that negative emotions come from only within us and are not caused by external events.

See also, 'Personal Responsibility, Mental Responsibility' (Part I)