"addiction" beats honest to goodness "motivation" every time
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Date: December 12th, 2017 8:41 AM Author: impressive indian lodge mad cow disease
Thank you for your response.
The source of your disagreement is unclear to me. Your reference to AA suggests you think I'm proposing addiction to a SUBSTANCE is what drives greatness. Not so. My OP refers to addiction to solo practice or other self-improvement behaviors. Obsessive drive, rather than emotionally-valenced motivation.
An addiction to mastery draws on the same boom and bust mechanics as a simple chemical addiction: it requires an ebb and flow of self-loathing ("my work is shit, I must improve it"); receptivity; and self-regard, flowing back into self-loathing. There is a vital difference, though, in that in mastery behaviors you inevitably build yourself, whereas with addiction to alcohol or similar you progressively tear yourself down.
Take survey of the supreme craftsmen, true masters, in any high-skill ceiling field of endeavor you choose. You'll find obsessiveness runs through them all. Pleasure and pain simply cannot motivate like obsessiveness does. (NB: the Greatest Ones oft show an obsessive period in youth, then they "become obsessed with obsessiveness" or "master mastery" and emerge in a Zenlike state - but this is very rare).
To your other point, the twelve step method of inculcating pro-social behaviors by focusing on the needs of others seems fine and well to me. I've no doubt alcoholics and addicts are selfish, their thoughts flow into an absorbing state of immediate gratification, and training them to take the needs of others into account can be beneficial. After all, not everybody learned to do so as a kid, and many of us forget. That said, it seems to me to offer little improvement of advice, unchanged since Aristotle, to select right actions and right thoughts (i.e., ones that create the type of person you'd like to be in the community you'd like to live in) over wrong.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3825731&forum_id=2#34897006) |
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Date: December 12th, 2017 8:56 AM Author: dull gaped home
Thank you, brother, for this fascinating clarification and expansion of your premise. The MGTOW crowd likes to quote true masters (accurately? no idea) who had no time for wives because their pursuit of excellence was so all-consuming. So, returning to your reference to the anterior cingulate cortex, I assume there is some mechanism of dopamine-jizzing going on in the brain during times of breakthrough success and adulation.
Of course, taken from the psychological or "spiritual" (a loaded AA term) perspective, this can be labeled as pride. I mean pride as the most pervasive of the Seven Deadly Sins, causing us to feel at times the center of attention and at others uniquely broken and irreparable. While the pursuit of mastery may seem antithetical to alcoholism -- with one based on self-improvement and the other self-destruction -- mastery fueled by pride will quickly degrade the spirit and sever connections to other people and the world. Mastery in isolation is soul death.
Query then, brother, whether the right thought and right action of Aristotle or the Buddhists would ever support the pursuit of mastery to the exclusion of vital spiritual connections.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3825731&forum_id=2#34897108) |
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Date: December 12th, 2017 9:01 AM Author: impressive indian lodge mad cow disease
I take the point about pride - though I tend to see alcoholism as a one-two-three punch of envy, pride, and sloth, in that order.
To your question, Aristotle would advocate for a balanced life. Buddha was himself a crazed addict of spiritual practice, as his life story makes plain - but, importantly, he rounded out after learning his craft, and then began to advocate a MIDDLE WAY: one which is good in the middle, beginning, and end. Hence the two are in unity, and both would very likely disapprove of the modern obsessives who have brought the level so very high in so many zero-sum games of skill.
Truth be told, these obsessives are like candles that light the world - they burn themselves out, that we may see a bit better. It is quite sad, but the pretty little hate machine of modernity demands their sacrifice, and they all-too-willingly leap into the flames.
I would argue balance is possible, even in attaining utmost mastery. But it requires recognizing the little demon for what it is, and learning to yoke it to good ends. This is the type of practice that must be passed from old to young -- but the boomers have done all they can to break that chain.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3825731&forum_id=2#34897146) |
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