Problematic elasticity
âď¸ The Sovereign Mind
A short rant about how we seem to abuse the elasticity of our brain in problematic ways that many times do more harm than good.
In modern approaches to productivity and mental health, we often see a push towards fighting desires, building willpower and overcoming ones own corrosive nature. Today I will explain this approach and provide some arguments against it.
Our brains are amazing. really, you may have heard of it before but I want to really emphasize that fact before we begin. Our brains developed so extremely well around the problems it encountered that we can and did and do solve most of those in the basic sense of the word "solve". A problem we often encounter though - and I will argue that we are going to see exponentially more of it in the near and far future - is that the issues we were built to handle mismatch with the ones we now see everyday. (see Human biological evolution vs societal evolution) We don't need to hunt and forage for food, we don't need to build our own houses and we are at no real danger most (if not all) of the time.
Our approaches to work, family, friends, food, and anything else are all based on the passive assumption that as we are born we are a blank slate and should we scribe the right runes on top we will see success and happiness in life.