What is freewill? Is it gifted from another person, or group of people? Is freewill written on a piece of paper like the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? If I want free will, do I have to ask permission first, or is asking first the opposite of freewill?
In the military, when a soldier has been dutiful, they are granted liberty. During liberty, they have the freewill to do most anything but there is also an expectation of behavior. Their liberty is offered as a reward system, and when their time for liberty is up, they must return to active duty and operate under a stricter regimen. While on duty, soldiers are disciplined internally and externally. The internal discipline exists because the external discipline also exists. The reward for following external discipline is liberty. The disciplinary action for not following external discipline is no liberty. Therefore, the best method of avoiding external disciplinary action is acting with self-discipline. The easiest way to get to liberty is to accept that internal, or self-discipline, is the best way to comply with external discipline, and avoid extra external disciplinary action.
The military chooses this model because it works. Military organizations operate under a general concept that every person involved could be called to act as a basic soldier at any time, and therefore the discipline of a basic soldier has to be constantly reinforced. The ideas of physical fitness and hygiene, knowledge of tactics and weaponry, leading and following orders and understanding a mission are all basic soldiering skills. As a soldier increases rank, so does the responsibility level of all the fundamental soldiering skills. Whereas a Private may have a smaller set of basic responsibilities, a Lieutenant has the Private’s responsibilities, as well as the responsibilities of a whole bunch of other soldiers under their command.
The undisciplined soldier could get himself harmed or killed through negligence. They could get others harmed or killed. A mission is accomplished by having better everything in the theater – tactics, equipment and disciplined soldiers. Even the will to fight is a manipulated and developed skill. The external discipline to train and maintain the elements of battle will allow those elements to function in self-disciplined manner. When the time comes, the self-discipline of practiced knowledge and following orders will translate into a greater chance of victory. That self-discipline comes in the form of a soldier that’s physically and mentally capable of functioning efficiently individually and in a team environment.
It’s difficult to translate that type of expected and regimented discipline into civilian life. A soldier is trained this way because in order for a dangerous mission to be successful, they can’t act with freewill. A soldier has to act in concert with tactics, timing and other trained humans. But for a civilian, life is not so strenuous. People can go about their lives and for the most part do whatever. They’re not forcefully bound to any type of structure and can neglect themselves or others for a long time before an outside entity is finally called to bring external discipline and some semblance of correction.
Systems take the responsibility for self-discipline away.
A majority of people are conditioned from birth to rely on systems to fulfill their needs in exchange for their continued labor. There is safety and sanctuary in that concept. As long as I continue to work towards the benefit of the system, my own life will not fail, and along the way I may get a shiny thing or a day’s rest. You will find this relationship between the laborer and capitalism, communism or any other formation of government. The courage necessary to take life’s matters into one’s own hands is difficult because from birth we are taught otherwise. The lifetime of a human being in modern society is a gradual transfer of dependence from parent to institutionalized school, and school to “higher” education or blue-collar vocation, which then initiates the person into life-long dependence on a system or work, taxes and complicit/compliant relationships.
The primary system people rely on is government. A well-developed and maintained system of government is a great thing. It allows people to attach to the efforts of others and have a greater chance of success and fulfillment. It’s a key tactic of surviving and then thriving. But systems decay. The participants become self-serving, and ultimately a few will take an unfair share, and the majority will allow it to happen in exchange for the safety of the mass. Over time, the relationship between the privileged and those that work for the privileged becomes distant. This is not a manifesto. It’s a reveal that in systems all parties involved are reliant on the whole, and when the system crashes, the most reliant are destroyed along with it.
Being privileged in a system is a dangerous proposition. When the system decays and approaches failure, the wealthy will claim greater shares of the system as an assurance that they will survive the collapse. But the people they take from are also the people who keep them alive and prosperous. The self-discipline necessary to provide a symbiotic return of their wealth is hacked by fear of losing it all. Instead of that exchange of benefit, the wealthy man creates divisive schemes that trick the working class into providing the mental and physical labor for less value, creating the fearful circumstances of poverty. Ultimately, the balance required between the two becomes strained and catastrophic failure happens.
This situation has continually cycled for populations throughout history. The discipline that government is supposed to use to safeguard in the citizenry instead becomes a discipline to increase government power. Laws are continually created and inflated, standards of education are continually lowered, people are continually incarcerated and punished, wages are unable to keep up with costs of living, and the systems that should be there to enhance the lives of individuals become systems of self-service.
The reason I bring soldiering and governments into a blog about recovery is that people operate within governmental systems. Governmental is a compound word. The two parts are govern, meaning to control, and mental, meaning the mind. A system of government is a system of mind control. If an external source is controlling the mind, the internal mind becomes undisciplined.
Governmental systems are notorious for offering a peaceful and safe existence at the surface level, while delivering an indentured existence on the substance level. Notions of independence are in fact dependent on the system providing freewill. That dependence could be on any number of governmental systems, including but not limited to religion, science, education, food, healthcare, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, sex etc. Yes, sex and drugs are governmental systems, and oftentimes they are used as tools by unseen, higher level governmental systems.
The freedom to imagine and then create is limited by the external things that human beings have reliance on and are governed by. Self-awareness is the foundation of freewill.
A greater purpose of this blog is to bring awareness to the things we have reliance on, discern what reliance has a negative impact, and then provide a process to gain control of and possibly eliminate that reliance. At the same time, to develop or enhance the skills that are necessary to be self-reliant. In short, to turn down the negative and accentuate the positive. The starting point for any of these practices is self-awareness. It’s important to create direction in our lives. It’s equally important to cut ties to what is holding us back, is out of control, or is detrimental for change to be reached. Once the two sides are discovered and acted on, anyone can dedicate themselves to change and become devoted toward a higher form of self.
A key component to my belief system (and this blog) is that improvement of self leads to improving the worlds around you. In order to improve, a person has to have self-awareness to analyze what’s working and what’s not working in their lives. We know what’s working because it brings us lasting validation and fulfillment. We know what’s not working because it pulls us away from lasting validation and replaces that with a series of immediate gratifications. If we surround our world with worlds of immediate gratification, we will never be satisfied or fulfilled and will become mentally and spiritually exhausted in the constant search for the next mental pacifier. We build up a tolerance against the potency of these minute satisfactions. Soon it’s ten hits to get the same gratification buzz, then twenty, then fifty and so on. Self-awareness dissipates. The primary concern of our lives becomes keeping the string of hits in play as a replacement therapy for the qualities of life that have been abandoned. This is not a difficult cycle to fall into. It’s the ease of this moment-to-moment process that makes it so attractive. It only takes little bits of mental or spiritual labor to satisfy the pleasure center of the brain in little bits. Therefore, addiction is an undisciplined practice that is readily supplied by any number of sources, with an amount just great enough to placate the human mind for a little while, until the next hit comes.
The self-discipline required in creating situations of long-term gratification and sustainable fulfillment have key components. The first is patience. Unlike the instantaneous but brief flashes of satisfaction, the structures that are built to provide sustainable happiness aren’t built in a day. A life based on this concept requires the discipline to set goals then develop and follow a plan, collect building materials, and then surround our projects with helpers to construct an apparatus that has durability. Life structures are built to withstand the elements: harsh weather, attacks, and wolves at the door, with comfort and safety as a continued feature. And when those structures decay over time, new structures can be developed and the existing structures reinforced.
You may be asking what materials I should use, who I should get to help me, and what my vision of my life should look like? I can’t tell you that. I don’t know your talents, your habits, your relationships or your situation. The expert on your life is you! What I can say is that all of these things should accentuate the positive, and positive habits are the tools. The first step in this process is to use your self-awareness to make self-disciplined analysis of what you have available. Who are the people you can count on to help realize your plan? Who are the people that will keep pulling you back? What are your talents and where are they lacking? Accentuate what’s beneficial. Move away from what’s not. Have the discipline to make decisions for change that may be uncertain, frightening or aren’t immediately gratifying. The end game is building a level of value internally, so the external values are enhanced too. Compare this to the examples of external discipline versus self-discipline at the beginning of this piece. By accepting the changes internally, the external life-elements ultimately fall into place.
Create habits that keep your person tuned physically, mentally and spiritually. The resources to develop these habits are out there but must be internalized by each person in a disciplined manner that benefits their character and their life visions. If nothing else, emulate the positive things you see in other people. Use new habits to discard and replace old ones.
Create intelligence in yourself to move forward with identifying where your life is lacking and what you can do to fill that vacuum. Find positive methods, activities and environments to gradually change your thinking patterns and revamp your belief systems. Learn most of all to be curious and seek those things that make a better version of you.
Develop acceptance about what makes you you. Your achievements, your validation and your ability are all decided by what you do to develop those things. If your life is a shambles, consider what practices were developed that led to your condition. If your life is embroiled in addictive and self-destructive action, consider the undisciplined internal and external influences you are carrying with you. Are you still practicing those undisciplined actions? A perpetually poor existence doesn’t happen by accident. A fulfilling life of beneficial relationships, rewarding vocations, and recognized value don’t happen by accident either.
As much as anything, recovery involves having the discipline to accept the truth of what you are, how you are sustaining that, and what needs to be done to change that for the better. Once we come to terms with that, and put it into practice, self-improvement can provide the influence others need to improve and enhance themselves. Their improvement will further lead to your improvement. If you can accept this, then also accept that your internal discipline will determine your environment, and your environment will determine your beliefs.