Choice, Belief, and Defense, Oh My!

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There seems to be three operating aspects of my mind in a matrix of thought that processes my experience. Together, they give everything I perceive value or purpose:

  1. Choice represents the comparing and choosing between ideas and concepts based on their value/purpose.
  2. Belief is the expression of a structured combining of similarly valued ideas and concepts used to support one another philosophically.
  3. Defense is the manifestation of resistance to change.

I use this process to guide me to right-thinking, to make sense of my experiences and achieve wholeness or rightness. My process offers me a sense of freedom to fashion my particular perspective into reality.

I can assign judgements of value/purpose to my perceptions of my experience and benefit from them as a sense of wholeness/rightness. The value I assign to my experience represents my personal value. The greater the value I perceive of myself, the greater the value I assign to my experience.

Choice

Ironically, my desire for independent thought conflicts with my intention for interdependent experience. So much so that I can’t:

  • imagine anything without choosing from options.
  • make a choice without comparing its values to other choices.
  • believe what I can’t defend for and against other beliefs.
  • re-choose the same choice.
  • defend what I haven’t chosen.
  • alter a choice without altering its fundamental value.
  • be fully aware of my choices.

If Heisenberg was right, there is always an element of uncertainty involved in any choice that no amount of computational effort can compensate. For example, I can’t know with certainty what will or won’t happen if I take or don’t take this or that action. There are too many possible timelines and outcomes for my limited mind to consider.

Yet, I can’t not try to know either. And because of my instinctive program to survive, I must find acceptable answers through choice. The beliefs I form I then defend with a sense of knowing. That knowing is about being right and being right is being whole.

Belief

I begin with a premise, if I am a living system and can validate that I’m right, I must endeavor to do so. I set myself up to defend a goal to achieve that end. My sense of lack challenges my ability to choose, believe, and defend a sense of wholeness. Wholeness, for me, can exist as value. Value is assignable and can be added up to represent wholeness. I get a sense of wholeness when I add up the value I’ve assigned to my experiences, which I then relate as my value. The more agreement I get for my value, the more value I have.

Defense

My process enables defense to express the collective value of my process through action. Three defined forms of expressing experience validate my three expressed forms of existence. My existence is defined by three expressions of intention:

  • Thought – defends for and against itself in its ideas and choices to create beliefs.
  • Emotion – defends beliefs by stabilizing ideas into feelings that motivate purpose.
  • Body – personifies physical responses that defend choice, belief, and defense.

The degree of value I assign to my needs and their fulfillment relates to the importance of their purpose. The value regulates the degree of energy invested in the defense expressed in the validation of my purpose. Resistance is the expression of need seeking fulfillment. Fulfillment cancels out need when the validation required is met.

Choice may seem to be a straightforward, “this or that” proposition. Yet, it involves such things as comparing the values of my choices with those I’ve previously defended. This I must defend as real to convince myself that my values are right, proper, and justified. Agreement adds authority to my value.

Choice funnels creativity by defining options. Defense of a choice further funnels wholeness to fewer and fewer options. Defining aspects as having value, purpose, authority, agreement, and etc. limits the potential of something to specifics. When I:

  • choose, I limit my thoughts.
  • create beliefs, I limit my creativity.
  • defend something, I limit what I defend.

I’m motivated to seek and find wholeness. The same is true for every operation of my process. The motivation behind my reasoning is why I choose to believe I have sufficient value to prove my wholeness. Each defense I create carries the energy of what motivates me to take action to protect and promote that value.

I interpret that which I believe has value. I use that value to add to mine to feel complete. Starting from a perspective of lack, my beliefs revolve around what reduces that lack. Seeking beliefs that validate my value motivates me to defend those values and convinces me of my wholeness. Is this process useful in actually understanding wholeness?

How Values Affect My Need for Them

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In my bubble of limited awareness, I need values. What gives me value? A sense of wholeness. Because I perceive myself in a world of separateness, where I am incomplete, I must make myself complete. I must find a solution to the problem of incompleteness.

The first time I perceived a need, I assigned a value to that which satisfied it. By assigning value to what completes me, my need bridges I to not I. For example, me to my environment.

I perceive myself in relation to my environment in terms of need and the value of its fulfillment. This is based on a sense of fulfillment of incomplete me from my environment – not me.

I validate my needs by knowing how to fulfill them. My sense of need determines the value I place on its fulfillment. For example, my sense of thirst determines the value I place on the quenching of the thirst. Satisfaction of a need validates it. Thus, the value of the quenching validates the value of the thirst.

The satisfaction equation is:

value of need – value of its satisfaction = 0

What happens when I apply subjective judgment to the equation? That is, as I apply values based on my judgments and biases, I might tip the scales of the equation. Thus, I turn an objective equation of satisfaction into a subjective assumption I must defend, “I am right.”

Defense of my rightness applies to the values I assign to my need as well as their satisfaction. I’ll be forever seeking and never finding . Yet connected by purpose that includes validating that which the other depends on to exist. I will never feel satisfied because I can’t satisfy the equation.

Do I have a need for values that validate and defend my basic assumption, “I am right,” rather than satisfy the satisfaction equation? That is, I would rather be right than satisfied. This defense of rightness sets me up for dissatisfaction!

Defense of this need keeps it in force as a law I must defend.

Beyond Values

My defense of the value I place on a need affects my need for it. Self-validating defense has never led to an increase in awareness. It has, however, strengthened confirmation bias. An over-blown defense of a need closes down awareness to serve that need clearly.

Defense validates the value and the value validates its defense. Stuck in this loop, I’m continually defending myself against adaptation. Resisting evolution, I may be putting myself on the extinction list.

The question that challenges confirmation bias is, “Could I be wrong about this?” – with its assumed affirmative answer, “Yes! I could be wrong about this!” This opens potential.

When I feel I’m in need, I might ask two simple questions to check my defense of the value I’ve applied to a need:

  1. What do I actually need right now?
  2. How much do I actually need it?

The solution to the problem of incompleteness is NOT in its answer – it may be in its question.

Solving My Problems by Defending My Defenses

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I live an equation-based life in limited awareness! It’s pretty simple – I solve problems by associating them in equation-form with what I perceive as their reasonable complementary solutions.

In equations, I balance values I perceive in problems with the values I perceive in their solution. Thus, I defend my equations because they represent my ability to solve problems. Might this be more about defending my abilities than seeking solutions?

I accept that I can turn to my problem-solving mind and ask it what I can do to compensate for the lack of awareness. I may add value to awareness with its defense in comparison. Thus, the more I defend, the more confidence in my defense I feel – and the greater value I place on that confidence. This creates a positive feedback loop that grows confidence in the value of defense of my rightness.

However, this confidence tends to restrict my equations to a narrowing field of possibilities. This is the essence of bias – where confidence inflates values to make my equations work.

Thus, solving a problem by defending its defense is an impossible problem to solve – no matter how much value I add to the equation.

I Need to Compensate for My Lack

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I’m experiencing limited awareness because I compensate for what I lack. I compensate for what I need by defining them in terms of specific lack. For example, I need air, water, food, protection, and etc. to live in limited-awareness.

One of my first awarenesses is that I live in an environment – “not me” – to which I must relate. All this exists within the limited framework of me and my environment. This restriction on understanding applies to my perception of threat and benefit.

This restriction sets up my world view – how I behave, what form I take, why I do what I do, and etc. It also sets me up for a world-view of lack and a need to compensate for it.

Defending My Awareness

Once I become aware of what and how to get my lack filled, I defend that awareness without question – problem solved. This defense expands my awareness of other defenses of those truths while narrowing my perspective. At some point, I become so convinced I’m right in defending that my truth becomes the truth.

There’s a flaw in my limited-awareness strategy. Defending my compensation for a lack as a solution to it does not solve the problem of lack.

I perceive a problem, I apply a strategy to solve the problem, and I perceive a result. This is a mathematical equation in the form of a program. Due to limitations in awareness, I can never be 100% certain. No defense can compensate for lack of awareness. Thus, at some point, I’ll find that my equation is in error and I’m left with a solution that isn’t a solution.

In my rudimentary mathematical mind, I approximate truth and accuracy in what works for me. This is the essence of belief.

Circular Reasoning

Trust in this circular reasoning affects my perception and awareness for which I feel a need to compensate. Expanded defense and its compensation do not, however, get me any closer to the truth.

I compare the values of what I lack to serve the most vital first.

For example, air is the complement for needing to breathe. The complements are solutions to the needs they fulfill. Needs their complementary fulfillments are the paradox that makes up my existence. The result of existence is compensation and the defense of it,

From Need to Compensation for Lack

Compensation for lack begins and ends with a cycle from need to fulfillment. Every system must compensate for itself to validate its existence. The following are three interactive aspects of a system:

  • Need implies a state of lack requiring fulfillment.
  • Lack specifies the implications that need can only generalize.
  • Compensation – awareness and action taken in response to need through an application or a means of fulfillment (like feeding); sense of completion (like satisfaction).

My belief that I exist in limited awareness defines myself as lacking. This greatly affects my perception and my need to compensate. Thus, I am always in compensation of my definition.

How Biases Are Choices

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Biases limit my ability to select from a wide range of options down to just those I feel I can defend. This fools me into believing I’m making a free choice from all the available options.

However, I’m actually defending as few options as necessary to make me right or, at least, not wrong. Over time and practice, this becomes a pattern of behavior that narrows my perspective, turning choice into confirmation of rightness.

Perhaps it’s impossible to make a “free” choice when my need/fulfillment is to validate my rightness. Because rightness tends to feel like wholeness, I don’t feel limited by bias. I feel justified – whole! That which I validate validates me!

Biases – a Twofold Defense

One side intended for and the other against. This alludes to paradoxical thinking, in which I fight for what’s right by defending against what’s wrong. Bias weights one side over the other.

Could choice actually be a form of defense? When I make a choice, I also create a defense for that option and against others. Perhaps my defense is present before I make the choice. In that case, I’m double-defending my selection with bias.

For example, when I choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream, I have a preconceived reason. Maybe I think the vanilla tastes better than the chocolate ice cream because of a bias.

Bias offers complementary defenses for and against that must validate each other for me to consider each as an option. That is, what I like and don’t like counter and so validate each other. Even weighing one over the other, the end result is validation of separateness, which appears as my choice!

“Why” is at the root of my biases, which I defend as truths. This sets the stage for proving biases as truths. Thus, more than affecting my choices – biases ARE my choices.