Devils of the Mind
What I choose is my voice
The human body is a biological machine, animate matter housing an electrical web that brings forth consciousness. We are a mosaic of cells composed by billions of years of iterative sophistication, a multiplicity of function that combines to produce the incredible human experience. Experience is manifold; The individual perception of the ego is a combination of many neurological functions evolved individually that harmonize in focus to a singular awareness. Each new structure of nerves created a sliver of sensation and hunger that compelled all creatures to grow strong and multiply. These hungers and sensations still exist within us as a whisper in our thoughts and a feeling in our gut, dependent influences that speak only in urges and desires. Our will is adrift to the whim of reactions both chemical and conscious. Alone we are lost in the sea of reality against which we battle for our lives, an endless struggle of pain and death and fear that compels us to action. Discipline is the practice of controlling those compulsions that obscure our self determination; The ability to choose suffering in spite of the yearning that grows within us to indulge our material urges is the exercise of will.
Consciousness is the nature of experience, the functional consequence of a nervous system; An autonomic aberration of chemistry acting out operations programmed with the sole function of maintaining and propagating individual lives. Will is the mechanism of determination which thoughts alone provide. It is the function of the brain to bring under control the myriad influences upon which our consciousness was built, as the ability to understand and decide is the ultimate advantage to survival. The proof of our decision is in our dignity, the innate quality of humanity that through discipline can never be taken. Martyrs show us it exists and it is ours alone to give.
The illusions we inherit from the circumstances of chemical nature cast a fog of uncertainty over the application of will. We are from birth awash in a constant stream of experience, sensory input that affects us in deep and subtle ways. To learn from example is fundamental to our individual success, our lives are the documentation of our programming with our memories encoding everything more fundamental than language. In us are programmed behaviors and habits, associated with feelings of varying intensity that impress as deeply as the nervous structures through which we sense it. Genetics alone are wholly inadequate to explain the intricate subtlety and convolution of conscious experience. There is another dimension of programming beyond the chemical, one which is expressed by the specific arrangement and activation of our synapses. The language by which this encodes our conscious programming is not one of symbols but of architecture and patterns, a cipher not only of language and thought but of feeling and impulse. This enables in our minds an integration of both physiology and awareness, combining precept and decision in ways that both induces will and offers absolution through its abnegation.
To understand the interplay of will and motivation is a rock which anchors us, not taking us from the torrid ocean of reality but in a small way alleviating the hopelessness of our struggles to endure. It is the key to freeing our imprisoned fates from the unconscious programming which captures us. Fate itself is an illusion born of relinquishing our will to the control of forces against which we are individually powerless; The choice to free ourselves from its clutches is made by every human who has fought for freedom against the oppressive encroachment of evil. It is the choice you make when you deny the effects of the abuse and manipulation that tragically is so commonly visited upon us by parents who have themselves ceded their own will to the circumstances of their upbringing.
Our minds are fraught with illusory devils, the motifs of thought created by how we incorporate and understand the experience of life. They prey on our insecurities, aggrandizing the fear of uncertainty and power to compel us to action in spite of our better reason. They exist within the vast electrical network whose individual functions combine to evoke the singular experience of ego. By unquestioning adherence to the impulse of its reasoning it conquers our will and enthralls us to material concerns, simultaneously creating a void within us that by consumption it promises to fill. The devils of our conscience are an apparition cast into reality by our own doubts and fears, made manifest by the coercion of isolation abetted by surrender to its allure. We must exorcise ourselves of these influences by the discipline of will, resolving to act not by impetus of our weaknesses but by reason as our guiding principle.
You speak of the body as a biological machine, and in this, you are correct: man is an organic entity. But you err profoundly when you describe consciousness as an "autonomic aberration" or a "fog of uncertainty."
Reason is not a "functional consequence" of chemistry; it is a choice.
Your view suggests that man is a victim of his own synapses, a prisoner of "illusory devils" and genetic programming. I reject this. Man is a being of self-made soul. While the brain is the organ of thought, the process of thought—the act of integration—is not automatic.
You define discipline as the ability to choose suffering. I define it as the loyalty to one’s own conviction. Will is not the struggle to resist a "chemical urge"; it is the commitment to Reason as one's only absolute.
To claim we are "adrift to the whim of reactions" is to negate the very mind you use to form that argument. If your thoughts are merely chemical reactions, they have no claim to truth.
You speak of "martyrs" as proof of dignity. I tell you that dignity is found in the achievement of value, not in the sacrifice of it. A martyr who dies for a cause he does not rationally value is not a hero, but a victim of mysticism.
You are correct that we must "exorcise" the influences of weakness. However, this is not done through "discipline" as a form of self-flagellation. It is done through Objectivity.
"The man who lets a leader [or a chemical urge] prescribe his course is a parasite being led to the slaughter."
The "devils" you describe are simply unfocused premises. When a man refuses to think, he becomes a pawn of his sub-conscious. To be free is to move from the level of percept (which we share with animals) to the level of concept (which is uniquely human).
The "sea of reality" is not a chamber of horrors or a struggle of pain; it is a realm of infinite potential for the man who has the courage to perceive it as it is. Do not seek "absolution through abnegation." Seek triumph through productivity.