Freud talked about the pleasure principle and the reality principle of motivation. I believe that physiological homeostasis (of organ systems) is primary or prior to the psychological pleasure principle. It is worth mentioning that because homeostatic regulation influences our experience of the higher order principles. The hierarchy seems to be from homeostatic regulation to pleasure-seeking to exploration of reality to exploration of possibility. So I would add a possibility principle after the reality principle. (It may be tangential, but the possibility principle may feed into a synthesizing-ecstatic principle which leads into a oneness or eternity principle which leads into nonduality. Ken Wilber covers this progression in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.)
The reality principle is firmly established in our cultural beliefs about science, but when overdone or seen within a reductionist framework, “reality” can be used to deny or limit possibility. I believe that many of our ways of expressing understanding are moving into the possibility principle, and this is generally spoken of as a paradigm shift. The possibility principle has not been clearly explained in a thorough manner. Those who have embraced possibility have usually tried to move into synthesis and ecstacy without fully appreciating how the possibility principle functions in individual motivation and cultural change. This embrace of synthesis and ecstacy is laudable but has created certain misunderstandings that need to be addressed. I believe they can be addressed by taking a more precise, more inclusive look at possibility and how possibility actually functions. Possibility is much more than just a step on the way to insight, ecstacy, or synthesis. If possibility can be fully appreciated, that appreciation and understanding will form a steadier foundation for the stories yet to come.
While emotional descriptions may best capture the struggle between our desire for pleasure and our sense of reality, emotional language may not be most applicable to possibility. Emotions are usually more immediate (present) or related to past occurrences than directed towards a possible future. In order to discuss the realistic future (actual potential), then, it may be necessary to shift to a language basis that fits a future orientation. We will want to do so in a way that includes the past, the present, and emotions. But we may need to do so in a way that does not give primary emphasis to the past, the present, or emotions. This shift in language and understanding does not invalidate what we already know. Hopefully, this shift can be seen as sharpening our understanding in the same way that later understandings in physics did not so much invalidate Newton’s work as they did build upon and sharpen the understanding that Newton’s work opened to humanity. This mirrors the evolutionary development of primate and human neocortex added onto the more basic mammalian cortex and mirrors developments in possible-but-not-guaranteed or forced maturity in what psychologists call executive functioning. We’re shifting towards possibility without denying emotion, the present, the past, or reality.
In comparing affective to attentional language, with attentional focuses (including mindfulness), affect can be spoken of in descriptive terms of texture, color, volume, etc. (sensation focus rather than phenomenological or inner child sort of focus in language and thinking) of attention. Moving outwards from a sense of core self, emotions can be experienced and explained as physical–occurring in the body, and interactional–occurring in the social “body”. We recognize that emotions are affected by interpersonal interactions, even that they often lose meaning and sometimes impact without adequate socialization. Emotions, then, as physical and interactional, never need to be justified; in fact justifying emotions or feeling a need to justify and control emotions tends to be unhealthy.
Emotions can be understood within evolutionary and/or spiritual-cultural belief systems. Emotions are “accepted” through a viewpoint of personal awareness and validated as both inexhaustible energy and as providing the phenomenological richness of life. One is viewed as responsible for actions, not feelings, and improvement is described in terms of awareness–increased precision, applicability, stability, inclusion, engagement, and vitality.
With a focus on attention, the main problem is attentional avoidance. Avoidance as a nonconscious defense mechanism or conscious strategy is encountered as distraction (a diffusion of attention), rigidity (being overly focused), or denial (semi-conscious or willful delusion or misrepresentation). With these as the main methods of avoiding, we can assume personal incompetence and ignorance, accept incompetence and ignorance as real, but choose not to cherish them as stable limitations for individual or corporate agents. We can recognize incompetence and ignorance without choosing to maintain or defend incompetence or ignorance. When understood to be unavoidable prior conditions, there is no sense crying over spilled milk by judging incompetence or ignorance to be horrible or by complaining that they exist. They exist. But we can quite often look into how our choices maintain our incompetence, and in doing so, decrease our ignorance.
Avoidance can be challenged by evidence, experience, and inclusivity rather than being challenged by psychological force (“shoulds” and the concomitant emotional or psychological “pressure”). History will be found to offer evidence (relatively objective) and experience (relatively subjective), but it does not include all possibilities. (As a point of debate, it could be said that the past includes all potential in the same way that a tree includes its potential fruit, but I am making the argument that the tree is not the fruit. History, our stories about the past, do not include all of the details of the past, and we can challenge our current stories by finding excluded detail. We can expand our understanding by finding ways to include that detail; we can also explore potential and possibilities imaginatively rather than only through historiographical efforts.)
From such a perspective, change can be directed by the constantly fluctuating desire for happiness as one engages with reality. With this understanding of direction, emotions are not discounted or marginalized, but neither are they privileged. Reality is assumed but totally open for exploration. I will call whatever is found “reality”. Assumptions about reality are questionable, not held sacred. Concepts about reality are recognized to be connected to but not equivalent with the personal choice to be reverent or irreverent.
Maturation can be experienced as some internal sense of progress or measured in terms of one’s ability to balance joy, acceptance, ability or competence, appreciation, and accountability.
The major motivation that fits with pleasure-seeking is pleasure. The motivation that fits with the reality principle is practicality or functionality. The possibility principle includes and balances a mature incorporation of pleasure-seeking and practicality in what I call appreciation–an acceptance of reality which includes imagination. Practicality without joy is unsupportable, and an attempt at an exclusive reliance on practicality leads to its own excesses–to which our ecological, personal, familial, and cultural contexts bear witness. Appreciation does not deny practicality, but with a mature acceptance of practicality and the desire for happiness, practicality must step down as CEO and take its place with the other board members. Incorporating appreciating into our decision-making processes allows for greater happiness, greater health, and greater possibility.
Copyright Todd Mertz