Public Wrong Concepts

Free Will, is it real or imaginary? Sam Harris says we have little free will, as demonstrated by testing.

Two thirds of the population is overweight. Do they want to be, do not care, or have no free will? Or is it all chemical addiction... to our current foods?

The Stoics say we have control over our aversions and desires, while the Buddhist in non-self, five aggregates say we do not have control over our desires and aversions, only influences. Yet others Stoics say that if we do not resists, our desires will drag us down and pen us into styes, like pigs or wolves. That does not sound like control.

So it is likely that we only have influence over our desires and aversions, yet when we are going with our desires, life is easy; while when we are resisting our actual desires, life is a struggle. Kinda like riding a bicycle in a stiff wind. The trick is to get our desires to align with our rational plan. That is the problem. Our emotional desires often do not align with our rational plan. We have only influence over this, even though our ego says we have control, or we would like to believe we have control. To make matters worse, some may have control, and some may not. Perhaps control is a learned skill that some have and others do not. We may not be the same, some may have more control than others, or not, they may just believe they do because there desires match their reality better. Who really knows? Perhaps Sam Harris is right. It is all fixed by biochemistry. We have no choice.

We live along the lines our desires direct us down. We are guided in our decisions by our skills and desires. We are either successful or not. but we are directed forward... by our internal drive controlled by our desire, possible modified by our logical mind, perhaps not. So how would we need to live and develop this skill? 

First we need to remove the illusion of control... fiction. Is it our diet of fiction that is fucking with our minds. Electronic media, and the fiction content of all such programming...is that what is pushing desires off course? I expect there is a relationship between the amount of fiction in our lives and our overeating. Is it like the dog tied to the cart, being dragged along, where the cart goes.

Lustig makes it clear that contentment is what we need, which come from success, producing serotonin. Anxiety and cortisol, or pleasure and dopamine; both sets are antagonist of the central position of contentment. That is the problem in general, we are trying to stay on what has become a narrow ledge, where contentment was once a wide plateau. It is tough to walk on just the line.  Now the doing is the tough part.

Added:
Lustic new book,  Mind Hacking makes clear the three mind 'states' , dopamine, serotonin, cortisol... well those are really the hormones controlling, but all things do not work the same in all states. Free will, and the control of the rational mind are reduced in the dopamine and cortisol rich stages; so we need to be in the serotonin stage to effect appetite control. Duh. What did I just say?

To have appetite control, we need to have our mind bathed in serotonin. This is the contentment, satisfied, stoic joy, endaimonia state of mind. So the trick is to maintain that state of mind under life conditions. I have never lived nor worked in such a state of mind. I would get nothing done. Oh well, I am retired now.