Monday, June 29, 2009

Dialogue with Addiction

C'mon. You need to test out your will. If you don't test it, how do you know how strong it is?
You're lying. I know that the flesh is weak when it comes close to the addiction. That's when you want to creep in and hijack the mind.
Well, yes. But I'm doing it for your own good. This is the only way you can get pleasure.
No. There are many other ways to get pleasure. I can learn something new. I can write a program.
All that stuff is hard. They don’t guarantee pleasure like I do.
Yea, but they also don’t guarantee self-hate like you do.
Self-hate is natural and familiar. You know how to deal with it. You’ve dealt with it for years already. You don’t have to learn something new to cope with it. It's comfortable. Besides, doesn’t it feel kinda good?
I don’t really trust you. Maybe it does feel comfortable, but that comfort could be killing me.
Look, you’re going to die anyway. Might as well go out with a lot of pleasure rather than risk failed attempts at greatness. It’s better to die comfortably.
I don’t imagine being so happy on my deathbed considering that my life had been wasted away in comfort rather than accomplishment.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Where do my desires lead me?

Where do my desires lead me?
Lust leads me to faking myself.
Jealousy leads me to hating myself.
Fear leads me to stress and worry.
Desire for freedom leads me to feel stuck.
It may be premature to say all desires are bad, but so far it seems like it.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Motivated by Shame

I envy computers. They don't stress over false beliefs and processes. Sure, bugs in software will make a computer produce results that are not very useful, but they don't suffer from self-criticism in the face of useless results. When we humans make a mistake, it is worse than a useless result; it can be experienced as shameful failure.

On the other hand, without shame or guilt, a computer has no impetus to change itself and no criterion to judge whether a change is in the right direction. But who judges the judge? How do we know shame is an appropriate motivator?