The pleasure of a nation or the absence of suffering a conflict: you choose

Sixth of the articles on the Catalonia-Spain conflict from the point of view of Happiness. Or how to be happy despite the political circumstances in which we live.

I am convinced that the different strategies that help us to be happier must be applied to the different vicissitudes of life to maintain happiness in the midst of so much restlessness. Next, I will explain my vision of this topic through eight of them.

8 strategies that I will comment on 8 different articles:

1. Reality and its lack of acceptance
2. We do not control anything
3. Binary thinking: with me or against me
4. Better to be fine than wanting to be right
5. To desire or not to desire a nation, that is the question
6. The pleasure of a nation or the absence of suffering a conflict: you choose
7. Life is not fair. Why only a politician has made a good choice?
8. Why 40% is a political problem and 60% is a problem of poor communication

6.The pleasure of a nation or the absence of suffering a conflict: you choose

«The peak of pleasure is the simple and pure destruction of suffering.» Epicurus

There are, what in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) are called meta programs (or internal programs used by our brain to know what to pay attention to), two contrasting tendencies that are the pursuit for Pleasure versus the avoidance of Suffering. Each of us feels more affinity for one of them.

These meta programs, without being us aware, act as catalysts for our actions and motivate us to make the necessary decisions to achieve one of these two states: pleasure or avoidance of suffering, which we naturally prefer.

Given that Happiness, as Aristotle said, is the final goal that we propose by nature, this preference in our way of being, acts subconsciously as one of the keys when we make the choice that we believe will make us happier.

Once the decision has been made, without having been fully aware, simply adjusting or being honest with our way of being, the reason will seek the justifications and arguments necessary to convince us that we have made a reasoned decision.

Therefore, many times we believe that we have made a rational decision when, in fact, it has been our subconscious brain that has taken it previously. This subconscious brain works 24/7/365 days a year without interruption and especially at night, which is when we «consult with our pillow». It is, at this moment, far from the distractions of the day when our brain solves the pending problems and communicates ,the next morning, to our conscious brain that it can already «fabricate» the arguments that justify an apparently rational decision.

We choose, well, what gives us pleasure, well what prevents suffering, for the sake of being happier. Our behavior is directed more by instinctive reactions and, not so much, by intellectual reasoning, and this may come modulated by previous experiences we have lived.

We move and choose by emotions and, a posteriori, these elections are loaded and dressed with motives. This decision-making process is more instinctive and emotional than rational.

Another curiosity is that, depending on the geographical place where we were born, we will have, by culture and education, a greater probability of developing one of these two tendencies. Therefore, Westerners, by tradition, tend more towards the pursuit of pleasure, passion as the engine of life, the achievement and achievement of our ideals and ends as a source of desire. While Easterners, also by tradition, prefer the domain and even the absence of emotions, the renunciation of attachment, to priorize not to desire with the idea of ​​achieving serenity and calm, in short, in order to avoid suffering.

And, that both, Easterners and Westerners, we are, in ancestral way, more programmed to avoid pain than to seek pleasure for survival reasons.

Why do I think it is so important to know this? because once we know which foot we limp between the disjunctive of the Pleasure-Suffering, and we see in which of them we have been traditionally educated, it will be much easier for us to understand what decisions we will make and why, and which they will be even before reasoning them. Or also, it will allow us to consciously choose a decision at first contrary to our way of being and education because we reasonably believe that it is more convenient for us, avoiding, by doing so, a non-beneficial response automatism.

So choosing between the idea of the ​​pleasure that could give us having a nation, or the avoidance of the suffering that we think we might experience during, or as a consequence of, this process, it would be given to us in advance, by the emotions that produces to us each one of the two positions and that probably we already brought as baggage without being yet fully aware of it. Then, we only had to «point» to the line of political arguments that most justified this election that was already predetermined. And so, we loaded data, different interpretations of the same historical facts, statistics in one way or another, trying to justify something much more obvious, that the decision has been taken beforehand … without even us suspect it.

Even if, in the middle of the process, we changed our mind, it would probably be due to new events or circumstances that have switched on inside us other more powerful emotional button that have led us to change «to the opposing side».

Knowing yourself and knowing the tradition in which you have been educated, are basic elements to make the most appropriate choices to be happier.

γνῶθι σεαυτόν «Know yourself and you will know the universe and the gods.»
Greek aphorism inscribed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi

#BetalltoBlack entry 6 of 8