Propagating the illusion of an external LOC is the greatest sin of bureaucracy. Take academia. What field should be more suited to an internal LOC than scholarship, where spergs pursue their individual research interests as they want, wherever they may lead?
In theory, at least. In practice, it trains you to be constantly subject to the requirements of unaccountable others - peer reviewers, examiners, hiring committees, grant committees, tenure boards. At each stage in one's career, the institution is carefully calibrated to accustom its members to every development of consequence being entirely at the arbitrary discretion of others.
Does this mean the LOC is external? No, of course not; as you say so clearly, the LOC is never truly external. Free will is built into physics at the most basic level of reality.
But the institution excels at tricking people into *thinking* that the LOC is external. It's no accident that the mental health of academics is infamously abysmal.
Same logic applies to government agencies, large corporations, and as you say, the military.
As always, I admire the clarity and efficiency of your language model, even though I'm not exactly fluent in that tongue. And yet, conducting a simple find-and-replace of "LOC" with "soul", and we're mostly talking the same game. I just believe we sometimes need a little outside help to remember this very important rule.
Insightful and timely essay! I remember hearing someone speculate whether the effectiveness of anti-depressant medications (which are typically only effective short-term) was largely the byproduct of shifting one's LOC, even if only slightly, from external to internal. As in, "here's something I can choose to do to manage my own mental health," and that perception of agency cuts into the learned helplessness that characterizes major depression. So if that hypothesis is correct, it's the change towards an internal LOC that really works.
I have realized my own default is external, rather than internal, LOC, so I have to be vigilant to conscientiously reject that framing and choose to do things to prove that external LOC framing wrong. Thanks for the reminder!
Propagating the illusion of an external LOC is the greatest sin of bureaucracy. Take academia. What field should be more suited to an internal LOC than scholarship, where spergs pursue their individual research interests as they want, wherever they may lead?
In theory, at least. In practice, it trains you to be constantly subject to the requirements of unaccountable others - peer reviewers, examiners, hiring committees, grant committees, tenure boards. At each stage in one's career, the institution is carefully calibrated to accustom its members to every development of consequence being entirely at the arbitrary discretion of others.
Does this mean the LOC is external? No, of course not; as you say so clearly, the LOC is never truly external. Free will is built into physics at the most basic level of reality.
But the institution excels at tricking people into *thinking* that the LOC is external. It's no accident that the mental health of academics is infamously abysmal.
Same logic applies to government agencies, large corporations, and as you say, the military.
As always, I admire the clarity and efficiency of your language model, even though I'm not exactly fluent in that tongue. And yet, conducting a simple find-and-replace of "LOC" with "soul", and we're mostly talking the same game. I just believe we sometimes need a little outside help to remember this very important rule.
Insightful and timely essay! I remember hearing someone speculate whether the effectiveness of anti-depressant medications (which are typically only effective short-term) was largely the byproduct of shifting one's LOC, even if only slightly, from external to internal. As in, "here's something I can choose to do to manage my own mental health," and that perception of agency cuts into the learned helplessness that characterizes major depression. So if that hypothesis is correct, it's the change towards an internal LOC that really works.
I have realized my own default is external, rather than internal, LOC, so I have to be vigilant to conscientiously reject that framing and choose to do things to prove that external LOC framing wrong. Thanks for the reminder!
Thank you.
The last paragraph should be printed and plastered on every place it can be seen, repeated in every meeting, gathering and conversation. It is gold.
Ok 👍