Self-control is useless. It's something you fight your whole life and you end up losing it. You control youreself not to smoke, not to eat, to drink, to fuck, to commit "sins" and everything else. But one day you eventually do. In fact, self-control is not just useless, it's worthless.

Observe that i'm not telling you to lose control and live like an animal. That's simply stupid. We all live in a world full of hypocrits, but those hypocrits have laws, guns, jails, churches, money, and they will do everything they can to hunt you down. Observe also that i'm not telling you to hide in the shadows and commit your sins on your basement, again like an animal. This procedure only turns you into a hidden beast, and the world outside will no longer taste you so sweet. Your true self will be confined to those four walls and you will never surface again.

The true beauty of throwing away the self-control is to do that in plain face and nobody noticing. Unfortunatelly, this takes ages of mastering, many friends lost, many movings and depending on the situation, 4 to 20 years on a jail. But I can teach you some tricks that may help you in your quest. If you're interested on doing that, of course.

First of all, you must remain hidden. I'm not talking about the basement stuff: there are many ways to remain hidden in front of a thousand people. Observation is a key. Questioning is another. Taste your prey before you swallow it. Smell it. Watch it. With enough patience you will see what i'm talking about.

People like to talk. You shouldn't do that. You job is just to keep asking, with a straight poker face and a casual look, while your prey massages their own ego telling their life to you. Then you select. The process is easy for the trained. A little complex for the begginners. Usually people tends to involve theirselves with their prey and you mustn't do that. They are prey, just that. You will have enough time to choose something better than a prey to you later.

Then you play mind games. They are not complex nor difficult, and a bunch of literature books can give you some useful tricks to test. I personally sugest anything written by Milan Kundera or Henry Miller. They are real experts in the art of dealing with average people.

The mind games will help you to find your prey's weakness and feast uppon it. Some people exchange love for compliements, others, exchange money for drugs. The ones you must seek are the ones that exchange their souls for pleasure.

That done you should move on. Prey selected, you can start showing yourself little by little, always exchanging something back. With time, addiction to pleasure makes people zombies, and that is the exact time you can lose your self-control and swallow your prey. They will never notice. Friends turns to lovers all the time, and your case is just another one. Almost.

Your relationship with your prey will be of slavery but you must be a kind master. Always a friend, always a shoulder. But always a hunter.

Self-control is useless. It was invented to be destroyed. And everybody else wants to do it, but are afraid of reataliation. You are the link, the nexus of it all. You will be the freedom symbol, where people will be confortable on losing their self-control with you in exchange of your liberty to lose freely your self-control.

At last, when you prey does not make you so happy anymore, move on. But don't throw it away. Keep it close, always feeding, but always away while you look for another prey. It's better to have two birds in two hands, than none.

-- Rigel

I will find the responses to this post interesting to say the least..

I read the first two sentences and then I got lazy and didn't bother reading anymore. anywoo, this is my first post here in over 3 yrs so hey ... anyway I am holding on to a thread of self - control that keeps me from drinking the rest of my rum before karaoke night. I have no cash and I'd be pissed if I couldn't sing drunk.

1st time i catch you losing your self control around me or my family and you molest a kid or jerk off in front of my girlfriend, expect to get your ass stomped right into the ground, because I wont be able to control that.

Look at me: I'm trying to control molesting Billy right now! I'm amazing!

Are you serious?
And people called me crazy!
This is just too much.

Self control leads to true freedom, or you'll become a slave to desire and instincts. You don't fight yourself you just control weakness. That’s how you beat addictions, you just do it because the things you let control you end up owning you.

I seem to be the second person to use this topic to show my head around after years of not being around...odd.

I'm truly amazed at this topic. I don't know whether to laugh or to question what medication you're obviously NOT taking.

Lets have some examples of why self control is a good thing.

You lose control, and in a fit of rage, kill/murder your significant other. This is caused by lack of self control brought on by a rush of emotions. This not only says you have no self control, it also speaks of the absents of coping skills

You get caught by authorities, and there for go through the entire court system, lawyers and all that fun crap. You are convicted and possibly judged as mentally ill. Despite this, you still lost control, and now you will become subservient to law- the very law you broke.

So. Look at it this way. Either you maintain self control, and learn to bend the rules of this society to your own desires without actually being noticed and therefore stopped- or you become a slave to everything that aims to control you.

Loss of control draws unwanted attention and therefore the blinds of life chain you to everything you fear the most- which it sounds to me is conformity.

Well, let me ask this . . . has anyone considered self-control to be the product of morality or society itself? I mean, is not self-control one's own recognition of what it is that seperates them from the rest of the pack, or at least makes them stand out?

I suppose I see self control as a form of order to maintain in society. Either you control and maintain morality or others will do it for you- I personally would rather keep what bit of free will I have left, rather than give it up over an emotional even that leads to a break in my ability to cope.

Well, that's assuming free-will even exists . . . another great philosophical debate.

If indeed self-control is in some way a construct of society, then what does that say about the self? The self is that which only matters, morality doesn't exist, and society (and morality) have done nothing but stunt conscious evolution through lack of perception . . . ergo, how important is self-control?

Dear Rigel,

I don't like the way you frame your methodology. It's sloppy and weakly painted from a positivist view. And definitely written in a high-handed Eurocentric style. If you don't know what positivism is, look up on Comte. He's just a starter on that perspective, by the way...

The issue of self-control is better stated as "free-will" in terms of philosophy. In respect to my discipline, the social sciences, it's labeled as "agency" (free-will) vs. "structure" (control via one's society/culture).

First, I'd like for anyone to stand up and declare a solid definition what "freedom" actually is. I think you'll find it utterly impossible to do so without referencing your own culture (or set of belief systems, if you like to coalesce multiple cultural beliefs into your philosophical lifestyle). That is, our very thought processes and words we use to communicate are embedded in rules, and more rules that underlay even more rules! I feel that gives me enough room to put forth the claim that one cannot exist without one's structure.

Now that doesn't mean that I don't believe in free-will. In fact, I'll just jump the gun and say what I think before I set forth some proofs: we're both (controlled and free), and the ideal, for the most part is to live as free as possible.

Radical individualists such as Anthony Cohen will claim that: "I am I and no one but myself can claim and assert that I am I" He goes on for much longer, and it gets a lot more twisted, but he basically downplays the whole idea of a "you" since that references a person from the position of a judging stance, which to Cohen, can't exist, since no one can truly claim to know another as much as oneself. Further, to know oneself, or simply the "Self" is the matter of further discussion. He's popular for the whole "self-consciousness" thing.

In regards to structure, Durkheim theory would probably be the easiest way to start discussing things. Durkheim was a sociologist, famous for his idea of "social solidarity"

Here's a brief overview of it:

I got this from (solidarity) since I'm much too lazy to go digging through my closet of articles to find my own sources...

Durkheim structures his argument in a way to say that each individual has their place in society and to stray from it without the proper means (such as wealth, or prestige/power) will equate in disorder and just won't work (to oversimplify).

Free-will is the idea to act autonomously, of one's own accord. Tying this to "self-control" or the freedom to form thoughts unbounded by other thoughts is a skill I'd really like to see proven. You don't need to get into abstract love-affairs with Eastern philosophy, either. It's my line of study, and it's just as complimentary to structure as many Western philosophical arguments. Just to save time there. The real point that I'm aiming to draw is that one thought is always connected to another. In a sense, self-control is by its own nature always tied to another thought. An example: "I shouldn't eat that candy, it'll ruin my supper." That is, one cannot simply think that they should or should not eat the candy. The candy itself is objectified as being in a position of either "good" or "bad" (sixxx identified it as a moralistic position) in this case. Further, the act of either consuming or not consuming the candy is tied to a resultant state. Intrinsically, there's a structure tied to it. Kapish?

In that sense, where is your version of free-will? Again, I restate that I do believe in forms of free-will (I prefer the term "agency" since I belong to the social sciences, but it's the same thing, effectively) but I'd rather see responses before putting forth my claims on it.

Last thing, I restated a few of my views on purpose, just to drive my points home in your heads. In my experience here, a lot of people tend to get caught up in their own thoughts and rant ineffectively as such. If you respond to me, please try to argue with me, rather than just with yourself. In other words, I'm not trying to be a snob.

And here I thought the OP was talking about a slave/domination relationship.

Self-control may well be the shackles of decency thrown on by a constant society, but removing it from the human instincts and thought processes lead to bloody messes all over the floor.

What you seem to be stating Rigel, is that without the burden of self-control you will be able to disregard your own feelings over the manipulations of others, therefore granting yourself power over your friends or partners. This is in itself is not a bad thing, merely unusual. There are many examples of relationships where one person has full control of their partner, and there have been countless times past and present where a person has bored of their latest friend or conquest, moved on, but kept their ex-partner around as a back-up to fall onto.

I don't know whether I'm simply reading too little into it, but it seems to be simply be a statement on the benefits of manipulation and lack of self control, albeit dressed up in the kind of flowery speech I personally like to adopt when I'm weaving a point through a lengthy statement.

hmm. Self control is useless? And yet, Rigel details how you have to work hard at learning your "prey" so you can work towards losing your self control in an effort to control others.

Seems like a circular arguement to me. You have to practice self control to shed it?


Not my cup of tea. I enjoy my self control.

Would you get rid of you really stupid signature?

No.

I enjoy sixs' sig. It means something different every time I look at it