Religion and emotional willpower

As I think of willpower,

to me it is just the effort you put into something because power is an energy and will is what you intentionally use the energy for.

so in believing something that can be easy or it can be hard, we have in a belief something wrapped up in it that entangles itself.

I was sleeping when I had the strongest feeling that things exist and the feeling that things exist was amazing, can you imagine things not existing? That be impossible if we had no being behind it keeping it as it were "in place". This brings back memories to me.

I am not alway feeling this way because I think I have attention issues with the energy I have. Normally my mind is on other things.

So it can feel dull in most of my life but I cannot deny that these feelings are real, like yellow is a real color, to me things exist is profound.

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The thing about society that I do not like is that we disagree too much, people think rules are supposed to be good and they can be but not all the time. If a rule is stupid but people try and force that on to you then they must be stupid as well because by default and logic any rule that is wrong must be stupid? So rules can be good but not rules that come from stupidity. That is why society when it tells you things that cannot be 100% correct and people must question it. Otherwise you inject or drink bleach because it is the rules some dumb dumb made up. Life is hard enough but people disagree on allot, and try to force stuff onto others sometimes.

With any belief as long as it is not going to be put onto anyone else it is fine to believe it. But when people debate beliefs then emotions get involved. And when emotions get involved people feel attacked or whatever and they begin acting like the other person is defective and must be some kind of threat to them. Of course this goes beyond religion. I am not exactly applying any of this to religion. I am just saying that humans have problems forcing others to do stupid things. And if they are, the reason comes from belief in some way which has emotions to it.

My ability to cope with people is ok, I just have to remind myself that saying stuff can make people feel like they must protect themselves.

It is not exactly like I need to tell people they are wrong to make myself self feel right. Or blame people.

Only I have been thinking too much about my problems.

Those problems come from people and me having to keep hypervigilant all the time because I don't want to say the wrong things.

I am worried all the time because doing the wrong things can make things turn worse. You always need to be on your toes for that.

Society follows norms. It takes effort (willpower) to follow them.

Otherwise I am fine with rules.

Rules can help,

aeon said:

The moral question comes in choosing to believe in willpower at all, and in so doing, refusing to be responsible for oneself.

Cheers,
Ian

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You do not think it exist?

It is a little confusing to me, how would you define "willpower"?

ErikAlberto said:

What is faith?

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ErikAlberto said:

What is belief?

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I think both depend on knowledge.

But faith usually is about other people where belief is usually about the world.

A deeper question is "where does belief or faith come from?".

Just trying hard to belief something is not going to make you believe it.

I cannot NOT believe gravity exists. Its is hard to believe gravity doesn't exist.

Faith in someone or something cannot just exist if it is not there so where does it come from?

The first is that belief has knowledge (I see things fall down because of gravity)

Faith in someone means you have strong feelings in the person that they are trustworthy, but you must feel that person exists.

Sometimes I feel God exists so I think you need feelings, strong feelings that persist to believe in God strongly. God is not like gravity you see all the time. Not for some people. People who strongly disbelieve disbelieve in God because of reasons and those reason they strong believe prove God not to exist but because it is strong is is still based on feelings.

So when I use the term for the thread of emotional willpower, it is hard for me to recreate feelings inside myself.

I have had feelings that God exists, I have had intense feelings of a higher power existing but because they are based on feelings those feeling can come and go and I have no control over making them bigger or lasting longer. But to me it is like the color yellow. I saw it once and so I cannot deny its existence. I felt God so it cannot NOT exist. The feeling was unmistakable. To deny it would be like saying feeling don't exist. Or that yellow is not a color. Some people never saw yellow some people never felt a mysterious presence of a higher power but I have. Only its not under my control.

Some people can control their feelings, they can feel God exists all the time. It has something to do with emotional willpower they can control or is a default to them.

It makes sense then that what people can do with their emotions has some kind of control or not. That be some kind of willpower.

But it doesn't mean people can disbelieve gravity unless they have such overwhelming intensity to do so.

Faith is more feelings based because sometimes people are not present but you still know they exist.
This makes it easier to have faith than disbelieve a solid objective fact (gravity) because it is a person you are relating to.

I do not have much control over my feelings to make them do what I want but I can remember what I have felt in the past.

So I do not feel anything right now but I have in the past and this is a guide to me.

Other people have stronger emotions than I do in what they can control or by some default what they can believe.

Wyote said:

Can you elaborate on why you think this or how you came to this conclusion

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When I look at certain people in my life they can feel things strongly, thus believe or disbelieve things strongly and with much passion.

Passion in what you believe is something I am not really able to muster.

Since I think belief or the consoquences of belief has strong emotions attached to it,
people can do things I cannot with those beliefs.

So it is like an energy.

Stronger belief = more energy to do something with that belief.

Some people I know can conger up energy at will.

So if they can do that then they can channel such energy into their emotions and so too into their beilefs.

I might lack the energy to believe things, but other can do that with little effort.

(feelings, beliefs, energy, emotions) - they all are related in some way

The person I am referencing is an ESFP

I am comparing them to myself.

aeon said:

Willpower is like luck. A trick of language, and a kind of magical thinking. Beyond being an idea with an associated word, it does not exist.

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Would not other words like hunger and definitions of things like muscle strength also fall under the same category as not real also?

I for example can never be a navy seal because I lack the willpower, that does not mean I define it as not real. Or moral or non moral.

It is not that people lacking the willpower to be navy seal is morally objectionable in any way, because most cannot be one so I don't think that morals has anything to do with it. We could say it is morally wrong to like chocolate ice-cream so define chocolate ice-cream as not real but that be fallacious because neither does it have anything to do with morals nor anything to do with not existing because of morals.

aeon said:

People have agency and make choices. They either do, or do not. They are responsible for their choices and their actions. Nothing else is involved. People are responsible for, and get all credit for, and the consequences of, their choices and actions.

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People do have agency but not everyone can be a navy seal. that is ok. they have more willpower to be what they are than the rest of us but that does not mean anyone who is not is morally bad or anything.

(being punished for lacking willpower comes from old beliefs the existed before science could prove things like ADHD existed)
(many things that were said to be moral failings like depression and Schizophrenia were not understood before science explained them)
(But if willpower is just a word maybe it be unexplainable also? but I believe people who are navy seals are doing something different)

aeon said:

In my experience, people who become strongly emotional about their beliefs have made the mistake of mixing their belief with their self-identity, such that challenges to their belief is experienced by them as the threat of annihilation.

I think it better to understand things to the best of one’s inquiry and critical thought, and then remain open to new information or insight, celebrating when one is shown to be wrong, inasmuch as it requires reassessment and the potential for growth.

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Sometimes I get angry that people do not understand me.

I try not to let it affect me unless I know it was intentional and then I start to think that they have problems and not blame them as much.

If the pattern repeats they only get angry at me for telling them what I know or what I hold to be the case because their identity depends on me being wrong about myself. Some people need to have everyone else wrong no matter who they are. So it is like a pattern.

Unless of course people start making claims about me I do not make claims about them, but that is what there pattern determines them to do. It is a hard thing to deal with because their identity is all about destroying others identities and it is confusing.

But if one has an identity that is not based on countering the identity of others that means I can get along.

I do not need to tell people apples are bad but they must agree that apples is not everyone's favorite fruit.

That is what I am saying I suppose because I don't have a preference for apples but that is against their identity.

I know lots about apples but because I do not accept it as the one true way or something they get angry.

So its like you cannot say anything about it to them, the pattern prevents them from not creating the false believes about you.

The pattern is all about creating false beliefs about other people.

But I do not think is is wrong to have an identity based on some beliefs.
Family as example could be one's identity and that does not need to be about creating false beliefs about others.