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Will and wants

A dear friend of mine asked me something interesting and all but trivial.

I blurted out an answer that obviously turned out to be quite lengthy for the standards of an instant messaging app, so I thought I’d share it here.

It’s food for thought, and I didn’t feel like letting it rot in the ephemeral world of chat messages (which I set to autodelete after some time).

Before we start, here’s a bit of context:

The conversation happened in Italian, this is just a quick (and somewhat crude) translation. Apart from that, it’s wholly unedited in both content and form.

[additions and edits are marked by square brackets, just like this sentence]

Impromptu Thoughts on Deep Shit

Hi Mick, I have a philosophical question/quandary that has sprang from this. [it was a podcast episodes on the subject of will and wants]

There is a part of the philosophical theory/doctrine that urges us to become what we are and at the same time others who say that you should not follow your wants, but your will (i.e. that which you have intentionally decided to be). Point one: How can I become what I am if I don’t know who I am? Point two: if who I am is the result of my choices, or rather of my will, then it means that there not an inner me and a “natural” me and a me that I should aspire to (“become what you are)”, but I can decide from the outside who I am and force myself to be that

Anyways, answer when you have time

[a couple of days later]

Assuming that for me the only valid and plausible answer to this kind of questions is an honest “I DON’T KNOW”, before venturing into speculation I’d like to make an important premise

[as I read this again, I thought another valid answer would be Mu]

The premise is I’m not sure these answers fully pertain to philosophy, for a reason that’s very similar to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems (a matter of “language power” if you like)

What I mean is, logic and rationality are means that can get us only so far

And up to that point they are fantastic, impeccable even

But beyond that, they become useless if not dangerous

[it would be] Like crossing the ocean with a ferrari

And it’s exactly on these kind of questions in my opinion that oriental wisdom shows all its splendor, and buddhist koans are an excellent example

Having said that, let me go back to your questions (to which I will probably answer with more questions)

Point one: How can I become what I am if I don’t know who I am?

By listening to yourself. There’s something inside of us – or maybe it’s not even inside, what do i know, it comes natural to say that, who knows why… you see? Rational logic starts failing us already. There’s no real reason why things should be how they are, but many times we know something even before knowing why it is so. It’s an instinctive knowledge, an emotional knowledge, a knowledge of something we just feel and that is of a different quality than rational logic (and not even necessarily always in opposition, but in fact very often in agreement).

Maybe I’m digressing a bit too much (very likely, since I’m writing this in one go. But let’s move on). By “listening to ourselves” I mean trying to heed that little “inner voice” (lots of air quotes here, so much for the formal rigor of mathematics 🤪😂) that makes you say “yes, this thing has to be just like this” or “no, something doesn’t feel quite right”

If you can’t hear it all the times is still ok, but sooner or later at some time I think it’s there

So the real question is: who am I really?

And to me, this is THE question of life

And it is precisely to reach this answer that we undertake this masterful research work that is our life itself

Because one of the few truths shared by almost everyone is that “who we are” is something we forgot 🙂

At this point (I mean once we have realized this) the question to ask ourselves becomes: do I really want to know? And from there a whole world can open up

I feel like someone settle for a false answer, for the illusion that comes from our ego, or at least this is the impression I get looking from the outside. When one says “I am an architect”, “I am a mother”, “eh but I’m like that”, etc etc. It is easier, maybe more comforting to have an answer, I can understand them and I couldn’t really say if their way is right or wrong. I only know that for me it’s not enough, I’d like something more authentic

Back on the question: if you don’t know who you are (on a logical/rational/conscious/etc level) but at the same time you appreciate there’s a deeper part of you (who has a higher intelligence, different from and inaccessible by your logical/rational/conscious/etc level), then the answer becomes LISTENING TO OURSELVES and let that guide us

Point two: if who I am is the result of my choices, or rather of my will, then it means that there not an inner me and a “natural” me and a me that I should aspire to (“become what you are)”, but I can decide from the outside who I am and force myself to be that

Who you are is also the result of your choices and your will, but about which level are we talking here? Thing in a layered way (once more Kurt comes to our aid: there’s a formal language L1, and then a formal language L2 that includes L1, and then a formal language L3 that includes L2, and so on and so forth).

[Just to clarify: higher languages are more powerful (L1 < L2 < L3 < …)]

So if something is TRUE in the L1 layer, that does not exclude that it may be simultaneously FALSE in the L2 layer (that knows more). And then maybe – PLOT TWIST – it can be TRUE again in the L5 layer

(obviously even this true/false example is a simplification, but I hope it’s good enough to get the message across)

forcing yourself to be something… I wonder if it’s even possible. When you force yourself you are not being something, you are doing something. You are carrying out an action (that is, forcing yourself) and I don’t thing that doing has necessarily something to say about being

With the aggravating circumstance that simply by perceiving forcefulness, it probably means that you are acting in a way that is contrary to your being.

But even here it’s complicated, as always ego comes into the equation, but in this case there is also the concept of identity… often mentioned for example when one wishes to change habits (WILL)

(I’m referring to the well-known advice to already perceive yourself as the kind of person who habitually does the thing you would like to integrate into your life even if you haven’t gotten into that habit yet, for example thinking of yourself as a sporty person even if you’ve only been running for 2 days or thinking of yourself as a person who eats healthily even if you still have chips in the cupboard. In short, making it a matter of “identity”, even because as long as you say “eeeh but I’m lazy” it will be objectively more difficult to go running 😁)

Anyhow in short (maybe), why do you speak of an inner me and a natural me? And why natural between quotes? And above all, why ONLY THESE TWO mes?

I feel like a better analogy is one with a crystal. A diamond has a thousand facets, but all of them are the same diamond

And about “becoming who you are” – some time ago I came up for myself with another metaphor, one about colors

The painter needs all colors on his palette. Imagine if red wanted to become blue and yellow went to great lengths to become greener. Sure, green and blue are wonderful colors, but so are red and yellow. And each one has their own peculiarities, their strength and weaknesses. Maybe where one is useful the other is not, and vice versa. Maybe a color is predominant in a painting, and so what? It’s not a competition. Every painting would have something to lose if a color was missing, even if it was only used for 3%

The painter is the universe and I am a color

If I copycat other colors, I do a disservice to both the painter and myself.