Freud and Haidt got it backwards: the unconscious is rational; the conscious mind is not

A friend insists that I'm disciplined, since he sees that I take time every day to work out on the gymnastics bars in the local park. I object: I work out because I enjoy getting out of the house. He concedes that we do what we enjoy without discipline. 

We both have it all wrong. I'm well aware that the opportunity cost of staying at home is, on most days, far greater than the opportunity cost of going to the park and socialize while practicing acrobatics. I know that I need to socialize every day and maintain my strength and agility. But that rational cost-benefit equilibrium never motivates me. I'm comfortable at home, I don't feel energetic enough to brave the cold -- there's any number of reasons to stay home. If I debate with myself over whether to go out, I will stay. The immediateness of laziness -- the comfort of now -- overcomes any rational equilibrium. So how do I get to the park? It's not discipline. I don't even understand what "discipline" means. Is there an emotion of discipline? Is it suppressing one's thinking -- including one's deliberating and second guessing and procrastinating and distracting oneself -- and just do it? 

As mentioned in this post, the unconscious mind's rational intentions will make decisions without consultation with the conscious mind, as long as the conscious mind is distracted. Focus my conscious attention on going out and immediately I'm feeling comfortable and lazy and call up all the reasons to stay home. Think about anything else unrelated, and soon enough it seems time to grab the wool sweater and go. Sometimes I'll watch myself grab the wool without knowing when I made the decision to grab it. It just happens.

It's the unconscious mind that knows what's best for my long-term goals. It's my conscious mind that's swayed by the emotions of now. Haidt treats emotions as the unconscious mind, sort of following Kahneman. This is a mistake inherited from Freud, in turn inherited from Plato's Pheadrus and popularized in the 19th century romantics, Schopenhauer, Wagner and Nietzsche, that whole crowd convinced that the uncontrolled emotions, dark, mysterious and dangerous, disturb and cloud the serenity and clarity of the reasoning awareness. 

This is all mythology, and religious mythology, self-punishing and confused. 

Awareness and emotions cohabit the now. This is obvious, a truism. "I feel, therefore I am" is equally definitive and necessary. There's little to distinguish between think, perceive, and feel. The awareness of the momentary environment feeds the emotions. The comfort of my chair is at once an awareness and an emotion. Any reasoned attempt to dissuade me from the comfort of my chair in the now for the sake of a merely imagined future will engage struggle, and the strength of perception will likely win. Every failed dieter, every procrastinator, every substance abuser, every phone zombie, every wanker knows this all too well. 

I once got off all sugar, not by struggling against my desire, but by distracting myself with the one thought that I knew would always distract me from that very desire: distracting myself with the desire itself. I spent my idle time thinking about all the sweets I most like, listing them, ordering them and categorizing them -- cookies, cakes, chocolates, ice creams -- and thought hard about which in each category I most wanted (childhood comfort favorites mostly beat fancy treats). You know, the opposite of "Don't think about an zebra!" That's a recipe for sure failure. But, "Okay, there's no way out of thinking about the zebra. Let us now then examine this zebra that is inhabiting our mental space" and pretty soon, sliding down with no struggle at all, you're too deep in...and you're enjoying it. 

It's the unconscious drives that are independent of the emotions and awarenesses of now. It's the unconscious mind that is the real decision maker. This detached, rational, disciplined, far-sighted unconscious mind is free from the emotions. It's the rational nagging mind of what I know I should do, and that I would do but for the interventions of my conscious, biased, instant-gratification emotions of the aware-now. 

The emotions are always immediate -- they are feelings and have to be felt in the now. The unconscious mind isn't in the now at all. It's a hidden subterfugeal world of long-term rational sabotages against my conscious will. Freud misplaced the conscience. It's not the superego, it's the subterego, the intuitive fast system that's thinking far ahead, working to keep me well against my will and motivated reasoning.