Why You Do What You Do

An ancient and timeless question; "Why do I do what I do?"

The answer is simple.

You do what you do to preserve your sense of equilibrium. If you tip too far in any direction, you have a tendency to self-correct to preserve your current state of equilibrium. Real life has a way of knocking us out of our current energy shell, just like it happens in the atomic and subatomic world.

Electrons move around. They get shared, borrowed or sent to another molecule for purposes only that molecule knows.

We get knocked around too. Sometimes to our great distress. But tension is always seeking resolution. We will always end up somewhere. Usually at the point where the tension has resolved itself. Of course we may not like it. But no need to fight it. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

No need to panic. Just need to see how all this movement fits into the scheme of the universe. In the simplest of terms, tension seeks resolution. And it is this tension resolving aspect that ultimately drives the ship of you.

If we were to simplify this for everyday living purposes, it would look like this:

1. You want to maximize your experience of living in accordance with your particular beliefs and do it in such a way that minimizes your chance of loss and more importantly minimizes the chance of your ultimate demise.

2. Depending on your personal frame of reference, you make choices which reduce or eliminate the current pain with only marginal regard for the longer term consequence or you make choices which consider both the current and future consequences.

3. These choices are made within the framework of your belief system, values and habits of being.

4. Every choice you make is a bifurcation or split point that gives birth to an entirely new world.

5. These choices will either preserve your current equilibrium or lead to its disruption. The two prime forces at work is your self-correcting homeostatic mechanism and the Second Law of Thermodynamics which predicts increasing amounts of randomness.

If the assertions above are true then we have to rise to a higher level of consciousness to shift our equilibrium on purpose. This shift from unconscious habit bound living to a creative dance partner with the universe demands a shift in out attention, a conscious intention to do so and a tool we can use to correct and adjust the energy distribution.

I propose a mindful combination of the Japanese martial art Aikido, Hegel's Dialectic and game theory to help keep the life energy moving ever higher. Together they can create a context for better energy management and new levels of understanding.

The key is the complete acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of our choices. Tough but not impossible.

Somewhere in a future post, I will discuss the impact of the Nash Equilibrium on our personal economies.