What is it that I think I want?

How do human beings make decisions? When you’re presented with multiple courses of action how do you determine which is best? When you ask yourself a question such as “what do I want to do?” you feed the question into the black box that is your subconscious brain and you await a response. There is a philosophical argument that free will does not exist because we are all slaves to that black box. Something other than our conscious mind decides what we want to do and then tells us. I find this to be only half true because human beings have a conscious mind which allows us to reflect on the information which comes out of the black box. I have come up with the following analogy to function as a working model for the decision making process. The analogy involves a kingdom and in this kingdom reside:

Subjects: The subjects represent all aspects of your physical self which you have conscious control over. This excludes bodily functions which you have no conscious control over. Your heart beats on its own, your hair grows, your stomach digests food, your intestine absorbs nutrients. They do their thing and you have no say in it so they are not part of this argument. But anything that you can control, from your eyelids to your lungs to your arms and legs, they are the subjects of the kingdom. These subjects are versatile and dynamic and can be put to an almost infinite variety of tasks. The subjects operate under the guidance of:

The King: The king is your conscious mind, the part of you that can make conscious decisions. Whenever the king gives an order, the subjects always obey. The subjects are completely loyal to the king and will do anything he orders them to, even if the result is harmful to the kingdom. They would march off of a cliff if told to do so by the king. They would put poison in the kingdom’s drinking supply if the king said to. The king is in charge and makes all decisions but he is highly influenced by:

The Advisor: The advisor is your unconscious mind. He has no authority over the king OR the subjects. The subjects will only obey the king. The advisor provides the king with suggestions about what orders to give, and the king consults him constantly. The advisor is masterful in his sales pitch. Regardless of what he is suggesting, he will always present it in a very persuasive fashion. Like a master salesperson, the advisor can plant ideas into the mind of the king so that he thinks they were his own. Think of the used car salesperson who convinces the customer that he WANTS to buy the ’84 Fiat with no windshield (I also like the Far Side comic of the master salesman who has just sold refrigerators to a tribe of Inuit). The advisor could make an appealing pitch for poisoning the water supply if he were so inclined. All of the suggestions which the advisor makes so persuasively come directly from:

The Rulebook: The advisor is slavishly devoted to the rulebook. He can not come up with his own ideas and can ONLY derive them from the rulebook. His skill lies in persuading the king, not in coming up with the ideas. He is also closed off from anything external to the rulebook. He is as slavishly devoted to the rulebook as the subjects are to the king. He would advise the king to poison the water supply if the rulebook told him to. The rulebook is the combination of your genetic makeup and past environmental influences (Robert Anton Wilson cleverly referred to these as the biogram and the logogram) Genes (the biogram) are naturally selected to optimize survival and reproduction of themselves within their environment (the logogram).

The rulebook was created through natural selection over millions of years with the effect of perpetuating only information which would benefit the kingdom. Natural selection is the process of editing out sections of the rulebook which are counter-productive to the prosperity of the kingdom. However, the current rulebook is tailored to an environment which bears little resemblance to the one the kingdom currently exists in. There have been some severe changes to the environment which have led to direct clashes between the rulebook and its environment. These clashes tend to obstruct and sometimes completely pervert the original advantage of any given rule within the book. The resulting information the rulebook contains is full of:

The Revisions: The revisions are the result of our modern environment perverting the original messages of the rulebook. They are NOT revisions to the original text, more like new interpretations. The original text remains intact but in the few thousand years human beings have been living in this foreign environment the list of revisions has become very long. The original messages of the rulebook have been almost completely lost in a sea of revisions. And unfortunately the advisor is unaware of these revisions and treats them as if they were part of the original text.

Many of the original rules have survived the revisions and continue to directly benefit the kingdom. The rulebook says to eat when you are hungry. The rulebook says to sleep when you are tired. The rulebook says to get out of the way of that bus. And the advisor, crafty as he is, has no agenda other than to persuade the king to follow the rulebook. As a result, many of the advisor’s suggestions continue to aid the kingdom. Unfortunately a lot of them do not, and the advisor is just as persuasive with the bad suggestions as he is with the good ones.

Imagine someone you know with an aggressive temper, someone who has difficulty controlling their anger. Their rulebook contains the information which makes them that way. A few million years ago, before the revisions, these traits would have been instrumental in maintaining the kingdom. It would have been helpful for defending the kingdom from invaders. However, post-revisions, these rules might translate to “punch someone in the face if they get in your way.” This is a decidedly counter-productive suggestion in our current environment. When you apply the modern logogram to the established biogram you can get very mixed and unpredictable results.

The obvious solution would be for the king to scrutinize the suggestions that come from the advisor. But this is harder than it sounds. The advisor is not only persuasive, he is also persistent. The king may reject his advice but that does not stop him from continuing to try. The king must be able to continue saying no because the advisor will keep trying and trying. Who can live like that? Eventually the king will wear down and the advisor will finally be able to get into his head. However, the king has an ace up his sleeve because he knows where the advisor is getting his information. The king knows how to manipulate the manipulator and directly influence which rules the advisor will consult

Imagine that you have come home from a long hard day at work. The advisor is telling the king that the subjects should rest. The king knows that the subjects have been resting an awful lot lately but the advisor is being very persuasive. Then you get a call from your friends inviting you to come over and play Agricola. The advisor consults his rulebooks and says “no no, your majesty. The subjects clearly need to rest.” But the king knows that the advisor is reading strictly from the rulebook. The king knows that going out with friends would be a positive thing for the kingdom. So he rejects the advisor’s suggestion and sends the subjects out to play games. You arrive and see your friends, get to talking, bust out the game, and suddenly the advisor changes his tune. Now he starts telling the king “the subjects should stay here and keep doing this.” The advisor is still reading from his rulebook but now he’s reading from a different passage because the environment has changed. By having an understanding of the source of the advisor’s suggestions, you can bend them to your will.

This analogy is not a perfect one but it does outline my main point. The next time you “feel” like doing something that you pretty much know is not the best thing to be doing, think about where the desire is coming from. It’s likely the result of some seriously faulty information. Ask yourself, “what is it that I think I want right now?” With practice you can recognize not only bad suggestions from the advisor but where those suggestions are coming from. And always remember that the advisor has no power over you. Sometimes just remembering that is all it takes to resist his suggestions.