FEARS/DESIRES

Fears and desires are opposite sides of the same coin. If you fear something, you desire it to not happen. If you desire something, you fear that it won’t happen. You can use either fear or desire to describe the same circumstances.

You try to feed a squirrel a peanut.

He desires the peanut and he fears you.

These two feelings pull at him to decide his actions.

He comes closer because he wants the peanut. Then he backs away because he fears you.

He is in balance of fears/desires both pulling at him at the same time.

His past experience, or memory, makes up his reality map.

If he has a bad experience from a human before, he will have more fear and not come as close. If he was raised by humans, he would have less fear.

His reality map, or his state of mind, determines his choice.

He cannot know if you are an actual threat to him, or not. He doesn’t know the true reality of the situation he is in. He doesn’t know his actual state in contrast to his state of mind. They are different, but he acts based on his reality map.

His current reality has an effect on his reality map.

If he were in starving, he would sense this and it becomes a part of his reality map.

When in state of starvation, he would be more likely to take the peanut.

His actual state, or reality, affects his state of mind. State of mind then determines his actions.

His state can be affected by you. You can reduce his fear by staying still. You can increase his desire by crushing it into peanut butter, so he can smell it better.

You can affect his state by training to reduce fear and increase desire over time.

He can affect his state only by action. He can try to come closer and see if you attack. He can back away until reality forces sensation on him to change his state as he becomes more hungry. He takes his best guess and lives with the consequences. These consequences can be very severe. He is betting his life.

CHANGING YOUR STATE WITHOUT RISK OF LIFE

The squirrel or any other lower animal is betting his life on every choice he makes based on the reality map that he currently has.

It is an evolutionary advantage to be able to make a choice, see what would happen and then have a do over. Restart with a new life.

This is the advantage of humanity. We have more brain power. We can imagine another reality map in which we make a certain choice. We then imagine how it would play out. If we don’t like what would happen, we don’t make that choice. That reality map dies instead of us.

We change our state by visualizing possibilities and creating a potential reality map to compare to our present reality map.

We determine which future we would like best and choose the actions that bring about that reality. We take our best guess and decide.

Our best guess is better than the squirrel, because he can only have one reality map. We have used as many different reality maps and scenarios as we can to determine our actions. We have looked at the situation from as many angles as we can. As many viewpoints as we have the time and brain power capabilities for.

We are using our rational abilities. We are rationalizing. The self is rationalizing. It just runs it’s program of if I do this, then this will happen. We create another self that can make a different choice and then it runs it’s programming of do this then that will be the result. If we don’t like the result, we abort that self and throw away that reality map.

We use rationalization to change our state, so that we can make our best guess and choice.

It is also possible for a self to use rationalization to avoid making a decision, or to make ourselves make a bad decision.

REALITY MAP OF FEARS/DESIRES

Every fear/desire is a learned thing. As we encounter reality, we have experiences. We determine if these are good or bad for us. We remember them. They become our fears and desires.

We are building a map of reality so that we can function in the world. We have to know how things affect us, so that we know how to interact with them. Our fears/desires become the basis for our reality map.

When we encounter something, we compare it to past experience. Where does it fall on our fear/desire spectrum? How urgent is the need to act? How did we act in the past? Was our past action successful?

When we have what we believe to be a successful outcome for a past action. We tend to do that again when we encounter a similar problem. We have programmed ourselves. When we encounter a specific problem, we take a specific action.

Our reality map contains a set of programmed actions that we take based on what we want to happen whenever we detect fears/desires.

All life is in a balance of fears/desires. Some are just more complex than others. More complex animals have more complex fears/desires. Humans are the most complex of all. We are drawn and pushed in many directions at once by all of our fears/desires.