Might the power lie in the urge?
Just a thought, incomplete and useless at best…
While discussing “365″ projects someone said that she didn’t have the willpower to take on such a task where she would have to make one photo every day for 365 days. She had tried it for a few years running but never got past 60 or so days. Apparently, her partner who was starting his third “365″ projects had the kind of willpower it takes to do something like this.
Why is it that willpower is always discussed in relative terms? She has less than him, he has more than them and so on.
Take two people trying to lose weight. One says no to an extra serving of dessert while the other has two more helpings. In this case the first is said to have more willpower.
Take two people wanting to go out and catch a sunrise on camera. One hits the snooze button on the alarm the other gets up and gets the shot. The first is said to have less willpower.
But willpower is about controlling urges isn’t it? The urge to eat, the urge to stay in bed, whatever. So does a person have stronger willpower or simply weaker urges? Might the power lie in the urge itself? Is there such a thing as willpower or are there just urges of different intensities? I mean if we are to compare willpower in relative terms, between people, then we have to assume that the urges being controlled are equal in strength. Is that a fair assumption? That would be unlikely would it not?
Speaking for myself I could say that with certain things I have strong willpower and yet with other matters of equal importance I feel I have little or no willpower. How can that be? If I had willpower, should it not be consistent?
So… willpower… might it be an illusion? Are we fooling ourselves? And if so, then… what about… morality?!?
Nuh! That’s just crazy talk! Crazy talk I tell you!
My apologies for wasting your time.
As you were.
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About this useless blog
This blog is, for want of a better word, a journal. It’s a place to dump thoughts that pop-up uninvited. It’s a map of a journey to nowhere. A diary about nothing… or everything… same thing. It’s about life but nothing specific. It’s about photography but for no particular reason. It’s about answering a question that keeps nagging. It’s about seeing rather than looking.
It’s quite a useless site really and you don’t need to be here but if you decide to stick around then welcome.
~∞~
All images by Cedric Canard
(unless credit otherwise given)
Beautiful photo. Looks like you did not hit the snooze button.
I was never one for the self-imposed daily projects. Everyday brings a new set of challenges and to add to that stress seems like torture to me. I understand if your profession has daily demands that can’t be denied. Musicians have to practice and rehearse every day or at least most days. Photography is the thing I love to do most, and I give that love a lot of freedom.
Thanks Ken. I didn’t need to hit the snooze button. I made this image in Ringwood Forest in England back in December when the sun probably didn’t rise before 9am :)
I’m with you on self-imposed daily projects but I do think there is potential for some great gains/learnings to be made from such undertakings. Not just in the chosen craft but also in the process of self-discovery.
I’m pretty sure you’re spot on with this one. I’m in the category of those trying to lose weight, and some days I can control the urge to eat something sweet, other days I can’t. So does that mean I have willpower or not?
I’m with you on thinking that it might be all depending on the urges.
Hey Kelly, thanks for dropping by. The only trouble with placing the power with the urges is that it has far reaching consequences which most people prefer not to deal with. Willpower on the other hand allows people to believe that they have some control over the total randomness of life. Most of us generally prefer to go with the path of least resistance even if it means beating ourselves up with guilt.
A thought from yours truly, just as incomplete and certainly just as useless….
After thinking about this for a day, I would say that “willpower” and “urges” are simply two sides of the same coin. A better word for both, I think, is “appetite”. If you have an “appetite” to make a picture a day for a year, and you fail to get past 60 days, it just means that your appetite to do something else on day 61 was stronger. That is, the urge to stay in bed or to stay out of the snow or rain or to go shopping with a friend trumped the urge to take a picture.
If we’re talking about not eating or drinking so much or about not taking drugs, it again comes down to competing “appetites”. If I want to stay slim, the urge to eat is competing with the urge, or appetite, to not have to buy bigger clothes. It’s not “willpower” versus “urges”. That makes it sound as if it’s “good” versus “evil”. That there are two diametrically opposed forces dueling it out. I don’t think it’s that complicated (or that moralistic).
Beautifully backlit image, by the way.
Hi Paul, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Appetite is a good word here and you are right, it’s not willpower versus urge so much as urge versus urge or want versus want. However at any given point in time one shall win over the other and at that point a person is said to have made a choice. It is generally understood that in making that choice the person has exerted will and depending on the choice which was made the person is judged (self-judged maybe) to have strong willpower (5k walk instead of doughnuts) or weak willpower (doughnuts and a shake).
And perhaps it’s not complicated but probably only because I am over-simplifying it. But even so, if we are to place the power with the urge/appetite instead of will then I must question your thought that this is not a moralistic issue.
I have never had an urge/appetite to steal or to kill someone. Does the fact that I have never done either make me a person of strong willpower. I would say no since there was never any urge to control or a choice to be made in the first place. But what about the man who does have the urge to steal or kill, how do we know that this urge is at all controllable? Let’s assume for now in this over-simplified model that there is at least a possibility that it isn’t controllable then what does that say about morality? Am I morally superior to a thief or murderer simply because I’ve never been weighed by an urge to do something so bad?
But as I said, I am over-simplifying it. There are other concepts at play here (choice, free will, compassion etc). Still I do find this an interesting topic to ponder even if I don’t have any answers to these useless thoughts. But the more I ponder it the more grateful I am that I am not often bothered by urges.
Glad you liked the image btw.
Interesting thoughts, Cedric. My problem with words like “willpower”, “free will”, “morality”, “sin”, or even “good” and “evil” is that they’re front-loaded with religious connotations. And for me, that makes the whole thing far more complicated tha it needs to be. It forces us to constantly measure our own actions against some set of arbitrary rules of behavior that somebody else invented.
It doesn’t have to be that hard. Robert Heinlein once said that “Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other ‘sins’ are invented nonsense”.
In other words, “do no harm”. It works for me. Keep the religious voodoo out of it. I’m not saying that life is always that simple. In fact, it rarely is. Sometimes choices mean picking the option that does the least harm. Most of the time, the universe runs a zero sum game. Win – win situations don’t happen very often. It’s like believing in unicorns.
Morality? I honestly don’t know what that means. My mother (who was very religious) was always talking about the “moral” thing to do. My question to her was always: “Would you still do the same thing if you knew that there was no God?”. What if no one, no deity is paying attention to the choices you make? Would it change your behavior? Would you still be “good” if you knew there was no reward at the end of your life?
Arthur Miller said that “the moral highground is wreathed in fog”. I like that. I’m not sure that he meant it in the way that I interpret it, but what the heck.
So I refuse to let notions of “morality” or “willpower” get in the way of rational thought. I refuse to entertain the idea that there is even such a thing as “moral superiority”.
Just “do no harm”. To others or to myself or to the universe. I know that’s not possible, of course. We all do “harm”. Even if we have no urges or appetites to do so. Crap happens.
I didn’t have a religious upbringing though it did get pretty philosophical. Interestingly the language is much the same minus the gods and angels and demons. True it does’t have to be complicated but I can tell you that I know people who will talk and argue for hours over something as simple as “do no harm”. Like you I’m not sure what morality really is but then again I’m not sure what “rational thought” is either. But I do get “crap happens”… LOL!
Urgepower versus willpower? Yin versus yang? Is this a zero sum game? Is there another ingredient in that vessel? Wuddabout the “bodies in motion tend to stay in motion” thermodynamic thingee? Wuddabout the entropy theory? Hmmmm…. maybe that’s it? Maybe some of us are glued into place by entropypower?
Or not… I seem to lack the will to think it all through. Besides, it’s making my head hurt… :-)