Yes, the alcoholic will find a solution to buy the drinks sooner or later — javi2541997

If later - and every minute he's delayed - his chances of recovery improve. If he's trying to resist the temptation, he needs all the help he can get. Sometimes, just removing the temptation a little way out of reach is a boost to the addict's willpower. As a recovering smoker, I know this for a fact.

Well if nothing we feel is genuine then why bother living? — Darkneos

This is one of those cute tail-eating propositions, isn't it?
If nothing we feel is genuine, the bother of living isn't genuine, since we're not genuinely living.
So, where did all this illusion, conditioning, control and influence come from? And on whom is it working, if "we" are not genuine persons?

Well, that's why you drive an hour to the nearest city... — Moliere

And half-way back again.

When I am an alcoholic, if you will not sell me your finest ethanol, I will have to go to the hardware store and buy meths. No tax on meths! — unenlightened

In my town? No, you won't. The guy in the hardware store knows about you; the girl at the drugstore won't sell you cough syrup with alcohol in it; if you try to buy anything, anywhere in town that's harmful, the clerk will call your AA sponsor.

How can you help me, addicted as you are to your respectability? — unenlightened

That won't wash, or shame anyone who really cares about you.

This is more like denying reality though. You don't genuinely feel anything so those emotions are more or less a lie. — Darkneos

What makes you think you know more about reality than I do?
But then, I'm still not clear on what you mean by feeling, emotions or genuine. Or why influence is considered control, or how that which is influenced by the environment becomes unreal.

A no-brainer, if you look at a small town like a clan. Everybody is his brother's keeper. If you're a farmer and somebody in the town is hungry, you bring them food. If somebody's house is on fire, you help put it out. If their goat fell into a well, you help pull her out. You all make sure the children are safe, the sick and injured are cared-for, the young are instructed and the old are cherished. And if one member of the community has a problem with alcohol, everybody feels responsible for his recovery.

Quiet contemplation can help us experience our negative emotions without resistance. If we allow ourselves to feel our grief, sadness, anger, shame, or guilt fully and without trying to avoid them, they lose their power over us. — T Clark

This, or something like it, I know from experience. There are different methods - solitary contemplation works for me; for someone I know who suffers from depression, it's analyzing dreams, or it might be writing poetry or keeping a journal. Basically, the process boils down to: See it, name it, accept it, own it. Then it can't own you.

When in regular meditation practice I notice being generally more sentimental. Hearing a touching story, for instance, makes eyes water when ordinarily they would not. That sort of thing. — praxis

So, it makes you more sensitive to others, more empathic? Those are frontal lobe functions, abstract thought, symbol-making functions, far from the primal drives. Seems to me that's more connected to the thinking world, rather than the physical one.
I've only ever tried meditation at the most elementary level, to reduce anxiety during a rough patch in my youth. It worked, up to a point, and i didn't pursue it beyond that point.

Actually you tend to feel things more deeply because you’re more attuned to bodily sensations than wrapped up in what Buddhists call ‘monkey mind’. — praxis

That's interesting. What 'things' do you feel when meditating that are different from the things you feel when connected to the outside world? And how does feeling deeply affect behaviour differently from the presumably shallow feeling we normally experience.
I can't always follow what other people mean by feelings (which i think of as response to sensation and other stimuli) and emotions (which i think of as either primal or sentimental.) We have more precise language available, of which most of us rarely make use.

Meditation may offer a "spaciousness" where there's more room to not react mindlessly. — praxis

It's what Vulcans do to control their otherwise volatile emotions. Social conditioning is aimed at the same thing: to keep a rein on feelings that could prompt destructive actions. Language gives us a way to communicate emotion without the threatening or provocative behaviours that could disrupt the social order. Alcohol and other substances relax these social inhibitions - and you see on the news what results. Maybe Friday-night brawlers should be sentenced to a course of meditation instead of a weekend in jail.

Are we essentially just brainwashed by society and nothing more than puppets in our lives or is there more than that? — Darkneos

What are feelings? Wouldn't you have to be quite clear on their definition and origin before you could begin to assess their genuineness?

Don't you have to wonder about the sequence of events in the above scenario? Why does "society" need puppets, and why influence "you"? What is society and what are you in relation to society? How did society come about? How did it get to care enough about "feelings" to figure out how to brainwash its individual members to have one feeling rather than another in a given situation?

But if you are being affected or influenced by something else then it's not genuine, you're being controlled. — Darkneos

Affected and influenced does not equate to controlled. We're living in an environment that affects and influences us all the time, but doesn't control us. We're affected an influenced by our family, friends, community, teachers and fellow students, work associates, romantic interests, political leaders, spiritual leaders, sport heroes, our intellectual interests, editorials, books and television entertainments. Unless all of those entities are in collusion, I don't see how they can control anybody.
Way too many associations and assumptions with very little plausibility-checking.

What's the meaning or purpose in doing anything at all? — niki wonoto

There isn't any! That's the beauty of it: no requirements to fulfill, no deadlines to meet, no justifications or excuses or alibis to concoct.
Unless you want to.

You will never know if you do not try. — I like sushi

That's one bumper-sticker too deepish for me.
For a minute, I was curious what your problem with me might be, but I got over it.

It might help. — I like sushi

Help whom accomplish what?

Because authoritarians can march toward the same place, but egalitarians go haring off in all directions.

However, this doesn't imply that democratic governance must "always fail" — javra

Yes, it will always be corrupted, and will need to be reformed periodically. So, when you're setting up the checks and balances, why not also build in a mandatory review every decade or so?

The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. — 180 Proof

I have a slightly different take on this. The baby doesn't dream of dragons or evil: its world revolves around meals, nappy changes and cuddles - but it may have an instinctive fear of falling and loud noises that feature in its dreams. however, a child old enough to understand fairy tales is aged a precocious 3 at the earliest. By this time, the child not only has a concept of badness, the dragon, the bogey, but knows its existence in himself. He has the urge to trample and destroy (see when he's awake, how he topples towers of building blocks and crashes toy cars into walls?) He is the monster. And he needs to deal with that - first through wish-fulfilling dreams, in which he throws the baby brother into a lake of fire and stomps all over the grandparents' garden and terrifies the parents into abject obedience - where he lives out his desire for power which is utterly denied to his feeble little child self in real life.
And then, absorbing the stories, he has the opportunity to understand the consequences monsters must suffer and appreciate the rewards that come to a hero. Dreams, then, give him an opportunity to try out roles, and choose, and stories reinforce the socially acceptable choice.

That's his prize. — L'éléphant

That, and his perfect, unscathed dental work.

But notice that populism (not to be mixed with something being popular) is confrontational and adverserial: it's us, the ordinary people, against them. Be they the leaders, the elite, the rich or some ethnic minority that is seen to dominate. — ssu

Okay. I was interested in why so many of the people - us - are prepared to follow the leaders of such a movement. Presumably, not because each of the foot-soldiers hopes to dominate someone, but because they're hoping to get free of oppression. Those leaders may not want democracy, but the followers presumably do.

Few countries have been able to transform from a monarchy to a democracy (usually becoming constitutional monarchies) without any violence — ssu

Gradual doesn't rule out violence. The violence, however, is not a single clash, but long civil war between contenders for one throne, or a struggle for independence from a foreign power, or sporadic factional conflict or religious upheavals... all kinds of violence that's not about Joe Bloe getting a vote, but each contributing to a situation that erodes the absolute power and opens the way to more participants in decision-making.

I think this is why generally speaking we favour literature as the influencer of film and not the other way around. — Benj96

Interesting idea. Now, I'm thinking about movies, but don't know enough to comment.

A third one doesn't come to mind now, hence it's usual that a political movement that drives for political change by using dictatorial powers usually will end up with one individual as a dictator. — ssu

Oligarchies, yes; I should have thought of that option. But military dictatorships still have a chain of command, just like monarchies, even if the turnover rate at the top is too fast to establish a single figurehead. They may not all get statues, but they give one another lots of medals - some with a poisoned pin.

in democracies people aren't always jubilantly happy about their elected leaders and there simply always is an opposition. — ssu

But democracy is not the usual outcome of a populist revolution. Democracy is the usual outcome of a gradually dismantled monarchy. First, the aristocracy demands a hand in governance in return for supporting the king; then rules and limits are laid on the king; then a constitution is drawn up; the aristocracy metamorphoses into a senate or Hose of Lords; then the middle class wants a look-in because it's supplying the funds, so it gets a parliament, and so on, until the big general strike when all the common men finally win a right to vote, and then all their wives go on strike.... A long process of democratization, not one big clash of arms.

And then, it's just as usual for democracy to devolve into oligarchy, nepotism, dynastic rule, military dictatorship and despotism by a once-charismatic megalomaniac.

Yep. It's just what we do.

Don't know what happened here, but I'm not one to waste a free reply box.
Here is another aspect of story-telling, in all formats. We need our ideas and convictions reaffirmed by others. And we need reassurance that our nation is worth being loyal to and, our soldiers are fighting ,and sacrificing for the right cause. that god's in his heaven, that our institutions work, that justice will prevail and the police are honourable; that the good guy will rebound in the end and win.

The printed word still carries a certain authority in our psyche, while the screen flashes visual images directly into our brain, bypassing critical judgment. They have different kinds of influence.

I've been a tv watcher since age 10, when I first saw a tv. By watcher, I mean close observer, commentator, critic and chronicler, and well as appreciative audience.

It's not the simple case that smoking became taboo and was then adopted by entertainment media as a device. It became taboo in large part because of the way it was treated by entertainment media. There were some early indications of in some movies, where the danger of smoking was explicitly stated by a character or situation, then more obviously, where a central character quit smoking as part of the story - like the depiction of Kojak and his lollipops, while both character and actor struggled with a nicotine habit. Then, the problem started showing up in medical shows and courtroom dramas, gently educating the public.
This function of mass media was even more obvious in race and gender issues, which were tackled head-on by some tv programs; handled more obliquely in others: simply by inserting a previously unheard-of character - female chief inspector or Black senator in the story, so that the young audience becomes unconsciously accustomed to the idea that this is not just acceptable, but normal. I saw the first instance of a mixed marriage in a comedy skit; then the subject was featured in a couple of sit-coms - with all the bigotry and controversy depicted humorously, forcing the more open-minded members of the audience to think: "Hey, that is a ridiculous belief."

Of course, there is a dark side to public education by media.... and it's big.

It's not that our wills are being thwarted by greedy evil doers, it's that we naturally gravitate toward hierarchy — frank

It's both. But I do have a problem with the phrase 'naturally gravitate'. I do think social animals evolved an advantage in designating leaders and instituting rules of privilege, indulgence and protocol: it keeps interpersonal conflict to a minimum and reinforces solidarity, which is good for the group.
Human groups have experimented with all kinds of social structure. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56269264 more rationally and practically than other animals, and have come up with many ways to circumvent individual ambition in those who would overreach.

The problem we have now is far too many people, too great a diversity within populations and an increasing inability to communicate. Yes, ironically, the more technology enables us to broadcast information, opinion, propaganda, lies, misunderstandings, jingo, spin, malice, campaign promises, gossip, advertising, preachment, news, statistics, editorials, educational material and entertainment, the less we actually communicate with one another, the more alienated each individual becomes, the more lonely and anxious we feel. As social animals, we can't bear isolation. So we are attracted to the virtual tribes created by artificial "leaders" and their slogans, and their simplistic solutions.

Over the past couple of centuriess too this appears to be a rather weird concern of many … the ‘goal’ or ‘target’. — I like sushi

You mean the Medicis didn't have goals and Alexander didn't aim for targets?

You might argue that every society has it's pigs leading us, but that's not the case. — ssu

Show me three dictatorships without individual, identifiable dictators having hijacked a system that was originally intended for the common good.

The pigs can act and behave quite differently. In a perfect society, we will feel that our pigs are incompetent in many things, but somewhat OK. Yet they aren't thieves and murderers. In a democracy, it doesn't get better than that. — ssu

I don't understand. What perfect society? Which democracy makes it okay for leaders to be incompetent as long as they're not murderers?

The more interesting question, for me, is why so many other people follow incompetents, pretenders, charlatans and crackpots?

I wouldn't like to be in Animal Farm at all.
Where we actually are, I don't get a lot of choices of where in society I would rather be.

Yup. The Pigs win, because the horses are too nice.

It doesn’t have the burdens of reasons, that is. — schopenhauer1

Lucky Cow! Was that productive for you?

This is bullshit because you smuggled in the value of "counterproductive" — schopenhauer1

It's not smuggled in. It's right out ion the open. The kind of actions for which we seek justification are the ones we consider wrong, exceptional, peculiar, questionable, or use whatever term you like for "that which is not producing desired results."

there is no objective "productive" that means "this is what I should be doing" — schopenhauer1

That's quite possible, and it's also possible that we can never agree on what we should be doing, just as you must have meant something by "productive dialogue" that I did not understand .

You are making a narrative a statement of obvious truth, which it isn't. — schopenhauer1

I was expressing a firmly held opinion, based on observation of human behaviour. I have, never, not once, heard anyone else explain why they went to the bathroom in the morning before making coffee, (though I can imagine someone who made that detour explaining that they're in a hurry and want the coffee ready when they're done in the bathroom) or why they brush their teeth (though I have heard excuses why someone doesn't), or why they eat rather than starve (If they do choose to starve, they have some compelling reason, like a hunger strike, or religious fast or dieting), or go to work (but there are plenty of justifications for not going to work!), or tend the vegetables they planted rather than let them die (though people who neglect their garden do give an explanation why or how that was unavoidable), or answer when someone calls their name (but they justify failing to respond). I assumed all this time that other people also think these habitual actions have obvious reasons that do not require explanation.

Right, you aren't getting it. — schopenhauer1

Is anyone?

I think entertainment serves a great purpose in that it is an outlet for musings that may/or may not be temptations for action otherwise. — Benj96

Yes, that's a useful function, actually. I've participated in any number of discussions started by a movie: "What would you do in that situation?" or "How would you react?" We explore different points of view, different aspects of a problem. Probably, we'll never be taken hostage - but we've still learned something about other people's motives and our own attitudes.

There's another thing about mass media: they do influence societal norms and expectations and attitudes. When I started watching television, everyone everywhere smoked cigarettes. Now, if you see someone in a movie with a cigarette, you know he's the villain. If you watch videos from the 70's, you can see the transformation in process. And it's all done through storytelling: putting the audience into the story of someone with whom they had never before identified.

So my point was the extra burden of the extra effort for motivation. — schopenhauer1

Huh? Extra beyond what basic standard of burden? There is a reason for everything that happens or is done in the world, even if we don't know all the reasons.

We provide narratives and reasons to ourselves for why we start, continue, or finish a project or task. — schopenhauer1

We're a narrating species. Our entire memory-bank is an archive of stories we told ourselves about ourselves and what we saw, heard, felt and thought about.

We may have a tendency to do things, but at all times, we are judging based on standards, values, ideas of what we think is good or preferable. — schopenhauer1

Yes. And?

Often we default to routine as a justification, — schopenhauer1

No, we don't. We don't justify our routine actions, and don't feel any compulsion to justify them. Only when we decided to do something unexpected, contrary to routine, or counterproductive, do we feel any need for justification, and the one we give may not be the real reason.

Every time I bring this idea up, it is like there is a bug in this forum where no member quite understands what I am getting at but wants to debate animal cognition, — schopenhauer1

You brought up other animals, made a comparison.

losing site of the focus, and throwing up red herrings or getting lost in non-essential tangents rather than productive dialogue on our existential situation.

I have been trying to discern a focus, and failing. You think "an existential animal" has some kind of burden by thinking about itself. I don't get what productive dialogue about this could produce.

I'm sorry if I've upset you — MojaveMan

What makes you think you've upset me? This subject doesn't come anywhere close to raising that kind of emotional response. I serenely and respectfully disagree with your stated position.

I'm saying it may not be sane to seek happiness and possessions, etc. if it will all get taken in an instant as you trip going up the stairs. — MojaveMan

Fine. You go your way; I'll go mine.

Why does the human want to live a happy life instead of a miserable one if they lead to the same end? — MojaveMan

Because he's sane?

But if they had lived hopelessly painful lives they would have always been ready. — MojaveMan

So you advocate that everyone have hopelessly painful lives as a preparation? Doesn't sound all that clever to me.

You "wake up" and get out of bed. You decide to go to the bathroom. Perhaps this is habit/routine, though. It is just something you do because you have done it. — schopenhauer1

No, it's something you do because otherwise you'd soil your nightclothes. Bodies have imperatives that cannot be denied.

You broke the routine. You recognized it and did something else. — schopenhauer1

Maybe you can. At my age, when nature calls, I answer, no excuses, no delays. After a long sleep, most people can't decide to put off urinating. And once you're in the bathroom, it's more efficient to take care of the ablutions than make a detour.

You brush your teeth out of habit/routine — schopenhauer1

And because neglecting oral hygiene is both painful and expensive in the long run.

when someone calls your name from the bedroom. You instantly lookback — schopenhauer1

Someone? Who's likely to call from the direction of your bedroom? Someone who matters to you. Of course you respond; it may be important.

But of course, you can do anything you want. — schopenhauer1

And everything you do has consequences. As a rational animal, you know the probable consequences, so you weigh the risks against the rewards.

In fact there seems to be almost no decision to be made, one is doing it). — schopenhauer1

People do have routines and habits, yes. Those routines were developed because they worked for that person. When they stop working, we change them. Addiction and external constraint may be factors, so that our autonomous choices are limited. And if we only have to make seven decisions in a hour instead of 49. So what?

is it moral to cross that boundary intentionally, or to be entertained by real life conflict? — Benj96

real world conflict is the life blood of news media. The rest of us need to know what's going on in the world that affects us, and if we are entertained by the dramatic presentation of some conflict, that's unavoidable and morally neutral. What becomes a moral issue is when and how and which side we decide to become involved.

What I think one can more successfully fear is the loss of the known, — unenlightened

When one doesn't believe an afterlife, that's pretty much all there is. Why would you spend all this potentially wonderful time preparing for oblivion?

My mother had some non-denominational faith; I think she sort of believed in an afterlife. When she learned that she was dying, she didn't show any fear; she just said, "I hoped it would be longer."