Don't count your blessings

[Sajainta]

Now I'm only a teenager, so my brain can't handle everything you guys are saying, so I'm just going to go strait to the point

Don't sell yourself short.  There are many highly intelligent teenagers, just as there are many unintelligent adults.  Age has very little to do with maturity or intelligence.

[Asafigow]

I ment it as to say, I couldn't read the whole thread and still keep a clear mind about the subject. That's all.

[Sajainta]

I ment it as to say, I couldn't read the whole thread and still keep a clear mind about the subject. That's all.

That makes sense, but I still don't think it has a lot to do with your age.  That's just my opinion, though.

[Eske]

One should just be steady and lucid.

That's not how the human condition works, Z.

That statement bothered me for some reason so I looked up some info to see what someone else thinks about that and this is what I found. http://www.condition.org/humcon.htm

1 - What is meant by 'the human condition'?

'The human condition' is a phrase typically used with respect the generality of situations that humans face in 'getting along with each other and the world', situations that are difficult to encompass in some way because of hang-ups or predispositions of one kind or another or just simple ignorance -"What did I do to wrong her?", "Why can't we get along with each other?" and "The beauty of a flower, isn't that proof of God"? -illnesses of a sort, mental and real, our own or society's, mental or real, and how they weigh upon us and society about us. The human condition is, for example, the material of poetry in general and the lyrics of most music ('rap' included) and various other 'secular' or even religious situations -lovers in warring religions, for example, and the irony in the contemporaneity of both most abject and most excessive 'lifestyle and quality of life'

2 - Why does it always seems to have a sorrowful or 'negative' cast to it?

'Discomfiture', in general -mental or physical, is antithetical to our evolutionary nature which is, more correctly (and genetically), 'the pursuit of best well-being and viability', so when we come up against anything that is 'troublesome' to that pursuit in some way, we tend to linger on its 'resolution' -or at least wonder "Why can't we -" and "If only -". When there is no such problem, on the other hand, we automatically get on with the routine of life.

The above seems to relate to the issue in this thread.

The irony in one's 'once being aware of the human condition' (most sophisticated sense implicit) is that he will probably also see how 'noise in the system due to those who don't understand it' impinges and intrudes upon 'the well-being and quality of life of those that do'. A further peculiarity of the 'neonate ignorance and pecking order' underlying the human condition then, is that knowledge of those two properties and their implications eventually drives the  life-form to 'optimizing the nature and course of the life-form and its geological time-frame' -'the minimization of pejorative consequences of the present upon the well-being and viability of the continuing life-form'. Worse still then, those that do understand must, eventually, inevitably and 'justifiably', find themselves 'pecking upon those that do not understand' -more 'evolutionary aristocratization' therein. 

So, defending Z, he is simply expressing his understanding of the human condition and using this knowledge to escape some of it's pitfalls.
According to this article, Z's judgements DO reflect how the human condition works....for those that are properly aware of it, at least.
He says that one should be steady and lucid, traits not consistently found in humans still trapped deep within the human condition.  But that is the point:  We are born in ignorance as the article above states.  A consistently (but not perfectly, of course) "steady and lucid" mind can only exist once someone understands and chooses to break free of some of the negative aspects of the human condition.

[Lord J Esq]

That's very thoughtful, Eske. After reading the webpage you provided, I see that the sense of the "human condition" that you are using is different from mine. I simply don't have the time tonight to write out my take on the concept, but I checked the dictionary and it turns out that their definition provides an adequate stand-in until we can revisit the question later. My comment to ZeaLitY regarding the human condition could be rephrased as "People cannot just be steady and lucid (as ZeaLitY put it) without exercising any self-control, as human emotion is too variable in both degree and form." In his charge that people should be a certain way--"steady and lucid"--but should not perform the emotional rationalization which is frequently necessary to achieve that way--such as counting one's fortunes, or "blessings" if you like (and indeed going so far as to describe that healthy coping mechanism as a "death rattle")--ZeaLitY has taken a position which borders on the far side of sensical and nonsensical. Somewhere in there is a good point about recognizing one's failures, but it becomes lost in his conceptualization of emotional self-discipline.

[Arakial]

I ment it as to say, I couldn't read the whole thread and still keep a clear mind about the subject. That's all.

That makes sense, but I still don't think it has a lot to do with your age.  That's just my opinion, though.

In a probabilistic sense, age and intelligence are quite connected insofar that it is accepted as fact. Consider, the modern IQ assessment; what do you think are the two factors in determining a number? That varying intelligences among different people at different ages exist is distracting at best. The obvious and intuitive fact is that, independent of age, intelligence (in this sense, ie not IQ) does increase over time.

[Eske]

That's very thoughtful, Eske. After reading the webpage you provided, I see that the sense of the "human condition" that you are using is different from mine. I simply don't have the time tonight to write out my take on the concept, but I checked the dictionary and it turns out that their definition provides an adequate stand-in until we can revisit the question later.

I see what you mean.  Perhaps giving an example of the thought process would be more productive than just describing the ideal final emotional form when faced with a problem.

The following kind of thinking is the cause of the problem this thread is about(forgive me if I'm slightly off Z):

(Attempts Project C) ---> (Fails at completing Project C) ---> (Feels sad, frustrated, hopeless, etc.) ---> (Recalls that Projects A and B were a great success) --->
(Feels better, more sure of self, wants to get back in the game) ---> (Forms a new process) ---> (Attempts Project C again) --->
(Repeat until Project C is completed, improbability of its completion is acknowledged or hopelessness takes over and C is abandoned)

This seems okay at first glance, but there are just too many steps.  The extra steps, no matter how natural they seem, are never needed.
The problem is that the person in the example above has an inefficient view of failure.  He becomes sad because he feels as though failure is a sign of weakness, inadequacy, stupidity, or other possible negative feelings.

He is almost right; failure IS a sign of weakness or inadequacy, but one that is necessary. The person above appears to not understand this:  Failure does not make you weak, you are already weak!  Failure simply shows that your attempt to become stronger or more adequate was not efficient or correct.  But with this failure, you can come to understand your mistakes and grow. Therefore, your next attempt may have a greater chance of success.  Your growth from your failures has allowed you to reach the next level, congratulations - now keep pushing!

So, think of "counting your blessings" as a crutch, first used when we are still making the transition beyond some of the more negative aspects of the human condition.  Discarding this crutch is a learned behavior, it is difficult and may take a lot of practice for some, but the benefits in efficiency (and possibly mental health) are there.
The process should look more like this:

(Attempts Project C) ---> (Fails at completing Project C) --> (Forms a new process) --> (Attempts Project C again) ---> (Repeat until Project C is completed or improbability of its completion is acknowledged)

Lengthy emotional "build-me-ups" not required if you have the right perception of failure, growth, and success.  And no, acknowledging growth from failure does not count as "counting your blessings" because that understanding becomes intrinsic over time, not constantly reviewed after each failure.

My comment to ZeaLitY regarding the human condition could be rephrased as "People cannot just be steady and lucid (as ZeaLitY put it) without exercising any self-control, as human emotion is too variable in both degree and form." In his charge that people should be a certain way--"steady and lucid"--but should not perform the emotional rationalization which is frequently necessary to achieve that way--such as counting one's fortunes, or "blessings" if you like

You may be right about Zeality's view of it - I can't really say.  But my view of it is as follows:

You said that people need to perform the emotional rationalization to achieve "steady and lucid" status, but you didn't say when.
That, I believe, is a big issue here.  Yay analogy:

A village, while making attempts to cultivate their land and improve its way of life, was constantly being raided by a large group of bandits.  During each attack, the villagers had to band together and expend a great deal of time and valuable resources to fight off the bandits.  Afterwards, they needed to repair damage to the village.  Only when all of that was complete could they resume their cultivation.
One day, a villager had an idea.  He asked the villagers to build a wall around the village with a very durable gate serving as the entrance.  They agreed and built the wall.  It took a great deal of time and discipline for them to master the building of the wall, for they made many structural errors along the way and bandits still came through from time to time.
Eventually, the wall and gate were complete, and all attempts made by the bandits to foil the villagers plans were thwarted.  The villagers were able to continue cultivation undisturbed.

Get it?      The village represents you, the bandits represent unproductive negative emotions, the wall reprents the emotional and logical devices put in place to deter those emotions from having such a strong, delaying effect on your attempts at success.

[Lord J Esq]

My, my, my! All the interesting replies come in on the evenings when I have the least time to address them.

If you are interpreting ZeaLitY correctly, and I would venture that you mostly are, then you are correct in a very narrow sense but also guilty of the same error in reasoning that he is. Putting ZeaLitY out of the picture for the moment and focusing just on you:

(Attempts Project C) ---> (Fails at completing Project C) ---> (Feels sad, frustrated, hopeless, etc.) ---> (Recalls that Projects A and B were a great success) --->
(Feels better, more sure of self, wants to get back in the game) ---> (Forms a new process) ---> (Attempts Project C again) --->
(Repeat until Project C is completed, improbability of its completion is acknowledged or hopelessness takes over and C is abandoned)

This seems okay at first glance, but there are just too many steps. ... So, think of "counting your blessings" as a crutch.... The process should look more like this:

(Attempts Project C) ---> (Fails at completing Project C) --> (Forms a new process) --> (Attempts Project C again) ---> (Repeat until Project C is completed or improbability of its completion is acknowledged)

To perform the above task without regard for one's own emotions would require one of two things: 1) the power to arbitrarily declare what emotions one will experience; 2) the power to completely ignore one's emotions. For practical purposes, both are out of the question.

I'll tell you something about myself which I have not previously made sufficiently clear. I think MsBlack and ZeaLitY in particular would both appreciate this, since they follow my journal and are interested in my opinion on many matters. I am both a strongly emotional person, and a strongly self-disciplined person where emotion is concerned. Now, that's not the surprise. The "surprise," as it were, is in how I control my emotions. What ZeaLitY is talking about in this thread, and what you're talking about, is emulating Mr. Spock, the Vulcan whose blood hums with the passions of his ancestors even as he constructs a facade of total stoicism. (I would note that in ZeaLitY's case he is only interested in suppressing emotions which he deems unproductive.) In reality, this is a terrible way to control one's emotions, because it is premised upon denial and deprivation. It is mentally very wearying, particularly for highly emotional people.

The fact of the matter is that you're gonna have whatever emotions your brain sends you. That's very hard to change voluntarily. One could do it through chemicals, and that is the practice of psychiatry. One could do it through environmental changes and self-analysis, and that is the practice of psychology. But those forms of "control" are really more like changing the rules of a game, rather than playing better within an established ruleset. If you keep your brain the same, and keep your circumstances the same, but still want to change your emotions, that's just very hard to do. For most people some of the time, and some people most of the time, it is outright impossible. Why? Because volition and emotion are two completely different areas of intelligence. The parts of your brain that send emotions to you are often partially or mostly outside the direct influence of your willpower, which itself comes from its own parts of the brain. Indirect influence is your only choice, and there is as yet no exact science for it. Religions and snake-oil salespeople will tell you otherwise, but don't listen to them.

Thus, when I talk about controlling emotions, I'm not talking about controlling the actual occurrence of emotions, because that's really way too hard to be practical. For the most part, in a given situation you're gonna get whatever emotions your brain sends to you. No, what I'm talking about is controlling the influence of emotions on one's frame of mind and behavior. The Mr. Spock model is based on one of austerity and suppression. My model is totally different: I acknowledge every emotion I experience, as fully as I can, in real-time. I try to understand where my emotions are coming from. I think about how worthy they are, and how important they are. Based on these judgments, I will encourage or discourage them internally, by directing my train of thought accordingly. And I do this all the time. It's called thinking. From there, I will express my emotions, or not express them, as I see fit.

You have to have whatever emotions your brain sends you. And you have to let them influence your frame of mind (i.e., "sentient will," for those of you familiar with my philosophy), because emotions are not intrusions upon the intelligence. They are expressions of it. But you don't have to let emotions dominate your frame of mind. By nurturing and practicing self-awareness, you can frequently check in on your mood (i.e., sum of emotions at a given time), and manage your frame of mind from there. This is the "emotional rationalization" that I mentioned earlier. By analyzing your emotions, you can make some determinations about their appropriateness, and, if you know yourself well, you can open yourself to lines of thought which may influence which emotions you will experience subsequently, thereby adjusting your mood to better support your preferred frame of mind. And all of this is internal. Externally, when you have emotions, you certainly don't have to act on them. To make these determinations of behavior is a measure of responsibility, which is a criterion of character integrity.

The difference here is that I'm not at war with my emotions like Mr. Spock. They are a welcome and colorful part of my life. I make them work for me, more like Captain Kirk. =P The surprise (remember the surprise?) is that I'm more emotional that I act. (And if you perceive me as being emotional to begin with, then your perception is probably based on faulty interpretations. (From this rebuke, perhaps I can except some of those of you who know me a little better.))

All of this is simply to say that one cannot cut out the part of human life which involves the experience of emotion. Given that, one should not cut out the part of life concerned with tempering the effects of emotion. "Counting your fortunes" is one way, of many, to rationalize your emotions so that you can exercise some control over their influence on your mind. It's not a bad thing. It's not weak. It's sure as hell not a "death rattle." It's good, honest self-discipline. ZeaLitY either confused it with something completely different--denial; the use of propaganda to ignore or marginalize one's own failures in life--or...

Well, I'm not sure I want to get into "or" here. ZeaLitY has been dealing with tough personal issues lately that have caused him emotional distress, and I suspect he is feeling frustrated. This thread strikes me as an understandable result of that frustration, but the position he takes here does not strike me as healthy.

Lengthy emotional "build-me-ups" not required if you have the right perception of failure, growth, and success.

Technically correct, but also contextually wrong by virtue of being a profound oversimplification from which I hope the preceding has relieved you.

[ZeaLitY]

Counting one's blessings is usually being thankful for the results of chance. Random fate shouldn't be personified, nor thanked. One's own accomplishments can be cherished, yeah, but thankfulness for products of happenstance is useless and bunk. There is no objective scale of "fortune" for chance. A person born into poverty may "count their blessings" when all the things fall into place for a middle class job, but if fate had truly smiled, they wouldn't have been born into poverty in the ifrst place. A person born into riches may "count their blessings" when medical technology allows expensive procedures they can afford to live several years longer than normal life expectancy, but if fate had truly smiled, they would have been born into a civilization that had already mastered biological immortality. There is no foundation or relative measure for fortune. It's useless to be thankful for those things, as 1) you're thanking no one, and 2) you have no way of knowing if you're truly fortunate. Better to invest in one's own will and achievements.

[Thought]

A person born into poverty may "count their blessings" when all the things fall into place for a middle class job, but if fate had truly smiled, they wouldn't have been born into poverty in the ifrst place.

That's a false assumption. You seem to be arguing that if Fate were a conscious entity that was capable of showing favor to an individual, then it would show high levels of favor by definition. You take a relatively a small "favor" (if favor it be) as indication that favor itself doesn't exist.

Let us compare this to something that we can agree is an independent, thinking, acting agent: a human.

Imagine, if you will, a child. The child goes about her life with no books. Then, she is given a book. By your estimation, being given a book couldn't be the result of the favor of something beyond the child since if the child had truly been favored, she would have been given a library instead (or would have been born in a library, I suppose). Because a library is not present, the favor is not all it could be and therefore the agent providing it (in this case, a parent) must not exist.

This isn't to say that fate, the divine, etc exists and can bless people. Rather, it is to say that your stated reason for rejecting it is flawed.

It's useless to be thankful for those things, as 1) you're thanking no one, and 2) you have no way of knowing if you're truly fortunate. Better to invest in one's own will and achievements.

That makes two false assumptions: One, it falsely assumes that being thankful is entirely about the one you are thanking and two, it falsely assumes that objective fortune is the only measure of fortune (thus discounting subjective fortune).

EDIT: As a random side note, you might enjoy the book Scroogenomics by Joel Waldfogel. It sounds like you would probably enjoy his analysis of gift giving.

[Arakial]

I have a couple questions, directed at ZeaLity specifically: Do you hold that "counting your blessings" and being critically receptive to one's failures are mutually exclusive activities? And, you defined "counting your blessings" as "Counting one's blessings is usually being thankful for the results of chance."--isn't this a invalid definition to argue from, considering the use of the word "usually"?

[ZeaLitY]

"There is no fate" was one of my a priori, not necessarily something I was trying to argue. It is light of fate's nonexistence that I find trying to measure and be thankful for one's fortune useless.

[qutoe]I have a couple questions, directed at ZeaLity specifically: Do you hold that "counting your blessings" and being critically receptive to one's failures are mutually exclusive activities? And, you defined "counting your blessings" as "Counting one's blessings is usually being thankful for the results of chance."--isn't this a invalid definition to argue from, considering the use of the word "usually"?[/quote]

No, I guess they aren't. They are for a lot of people in the execution, however.

[Arakial]

Ah! Are you saying "counting one's blessings"≡"trying to measure and be thankful for one's fortune"? If so, why does "counting one's blessings" necessarily imply that one is thankful? I mean I would agree if it was an inclusive "or" instead of an "and" in the definition, but as it stands it seems eerily fallacious.

[Eske]

@Lord J,

Thanks for the reply, I understand your point of view completely.   I guess we just took different paths.
I am also a very emotional person - so much so that I used to be very prone to holding long lasting grudges and brooding.  The problem with controlling my emotions even after trying to really embrace where they came from was that I would dissect them and find meaninglessness.

Easy example:

Guy likes girl.  Girl doesn't like guy.  Guy persists or stays idle.  Girl gets boyfriend.  Guy feels jealous/sad.

After being being hit by heavy emotional waves by scenarios like that and others, I began dissecting the emotions in a way similar to how you stated above.  However, I found myself, more often than not, finding rather shallow meanings behind those emotions, and found it much easier to discard them.  Relating to the above example, I would discover that my affections for the girl were derived from enjoyment of her company added with lust which came from my desire to breed.   Reviewing this and thinking, "that's it?", I was able to break free of brooding more easily.

Eventually I saw a pattern in some of the emotions that disturbed me the most and no longer needed the interpretation phase.  Which leads to the (half) Stoicism in my examples above.  I feel that if the emotion is not productive, there is no reason to linger on it for any longer than it takes for it to pass through my mind at that time.   Am I just trying to escape those feelings?  Yes.  But for the years since then I have formed much healthier relationships of all kinds.  I embrace the positive and negative emotions, but I discard specific negative ones that provide no real benefit to my situation or could be crippling to actually dealing with problems.   

So perhaps our views aren't too different, though yours embraces more the beauty of emotion, while mine is more pessimistic, which may be why I sympathized with Zeality's OP, even though I don't happen to apply that to my projects - just social situations.

[ZeaLitY]

Eventually I saw a pattern in some of the emotions that disturbed me the most and no longer needed the interpretation phase.  Which leads to the (half) Stoicism in my examples above.  I feel that if the emotion is not productive, there is no reason to linger on it for any longer than it takes for it to pass through my mind at that time.   Am I just trying to escape those feelings?  Yes.  But for the years since then I have formed much healthier relationships of all kinds.  I embrace the positive and negative emotions, but I discard specific negative ones that provide no real benefit to my situation or could be crippling to actually dealing with problems.

Yeah, you hit upon something important. There are undertones in my original post that many people did not pick up on, apparently blindsided by the audacity of challenging something so cute as the conventional wisdom of counting one's blessings. I'm starting to find more agreement with people who talk about mental conditioning; most recently, Ralph Fiennes, who spoke of rigorous determination training he underwent before attempting Everest (the program was called "beat the horse" or something like that). It's something like an internal locus of control, or continuously having a well of fighting spirit to draw on, even to deal with small frustrations that would normally upset one's mental balance. Counting one's blessings is still having attachment to the idea of some victory or safe harbor, after which no more fighting will be necessary, and one can simply lay in serene enjoyment. There are things that approach that, but if there are always greater happy times to pursue and more daring, thrilling enterprises to undertake, why should that be clung to?