Maliia's Theories on Willpower and Car Alarms

My last post inspired a very small reaction but not much really so I think if something that fun doesn't get you excited about sharing your thoughts with me then nothing will. So instead I think I'll babble about other stuff. First of all I thought it was interesting in this middle east thing that after the cease fire, both sides said they won. It's always nice when you can have a little war and have everyone come out feeling like winners. It's sort of like when children participate in sporting events and they get a ribbon just for participating. You know, it's important for the "special" children to feel like winners too.

You might notice I'm posting this really early this morning (it's not even four am yet), not because I've been up all night but because a car alarm kept ringing for like an hour this morning and it was super loud. I mean it was louder than my alarm clock and I had the doors and windows closed and everything and then when I opened the door to try and figure out which car was the offender, it was super loud. I'm not sure what the point of that is you know? No one even pays attention to those loud car alarms and honestly, I'm not the only one who thought that throwing a brick at the car in the hopes it would knock it out for good would be a nice idea. Okey, maybe it makes the guy who broke your window in the hopes of stealing your stereo run away in a panic, but if someone actually knows what they're doing, I'm pretty sure a little car alarm like that isn't going to stop them. As a matter of fact, I was kind of hoping that someone was stealing the car so at least it would be driven far away from me. Seriously, the only reason I would be tempted to call the police wouldn't be to report the car being stolen but rather to report the alarm going off for 45 minutes! The real problem is that any car worth stealing probably has special theft deterrent systems in it like special keys, engine disabling systems and stuff. The noisy car alarms are pretty cheap to buy and install so they tend to be put on cars that no one would bother to steal or break into anyway.

So a while ago I was talking about how diets don't work and the only way to lose wait and keep it off is to make a lifestyle change. I was laying in bed this morning with stupid asshole guy's car alarm going off (I'm wrongfully assuming it was a guy's car, it could have been a woman's but you know, men are always trying to find ways to get attention and maybe this car alarm thing was just another way to say "hey look at me"). Anyway, I was thinking about why some people do things to extremes and others do them in moderation or not much at all. A lot of people will see a fat person walking down the street and think that person has no willpower. I used to think this same thing about smokers (I can't stand cigarette smoke and frankly, most smokers are pretty disrespectful too but that's another topic) that they had no willpower to quit, but as I was in bed I was thinking what if it's something that has nothing to do with willpower at all.

Okey, I don't know what willpower is, I guess that's like the ability to keep yourself from doing something or making yourself do something and maybe we're saying some people have more and some have less of this stuff right? But what if instead its not a level of willpower but rather a level of urge that causes the problem. In other words, maybe we all have the same amount of willpower, but the amount of pleasure that my friend gets from eating is greater than what I get out of it so her urges are much stronger than mine. We may have the same amount of willpower, but while that level is fine for combatting my urge level, its too small for her urge level.

It doesn't just have to apply to food, sex is another great example. I get tremendous pleasure from sex. I love it and some people could probably argue that I'm a borderline sexaholic since I'm almost like a guy in that I think about it all the time and even when I'm alone I can't keep my hands out of my panties. I have super strong urges when it comes to sex and that makes it very hard for me to control it sometimes. On the other hand, there are women out there who get low level or even no pleasure from sex. They just don't enjoy it that much for what could be a whole bunch of reasons. So for them, its pretty easy to avoid having sex. It's not that they have more willpower than I do, its just that they have weaker urges that I do.

Okey, still don't believe my theory? Think back to when you were a child. Some kids are fat and some are thin. Are you going to tell me that the thin kids have more willpower than the fat ones? When I was a child I had no willpower at all. I didn't try and keep myself from doing things that were pleasurable, that's crazy talk. I wanted to do what I wanted and its not like I was going to stop and say wait a minute Maliia, maybe I should do this in moderation and have willpower. No way. Kids don't have willpower, it's just not there. So maybe the urges and pleasure received are what makes the difference. Okey, like some kids get tons of pleasure from playing outside, running around and doing active things. That's how I was. Other kids may not get much pleasure from that but they get a lot more from playing a video game or watching t.v. (and sure I did a little of those things too but I always preferred being outside if I could). Same with food. Even as a little keiki (child) I ate pretty healthy. Sure my parents made sure of it but I made pretty healthy choices on my own, again not out of willpower or mature decisions but because I just never got that much pleasure from food. It was just I got hungry, I ate something, the hunger went away and I went back to whatever I was doing. The food wasn't the center of the activity for me. On the other hand, some kids get lots of pleasure from food. They just love the stuff and so maybe they have much stronger urges than I did and not that they had less willpower.

So that's my theory of this morning. It's easy to have willpower to control or give up something you were never that excited about in the first place, but when it comes to something you have stronger urges for, well that's where the challenge comes in. I wonder sometimes if the health and diet industries focused first on the idea of lifestyle change instead of quick fixes (which I know, Americans love quick and easy fixes and the businesses are just catering to that) but second, if they approached it not as a lack of willpower and a need to control it but rather a stronger urge or pleasurable experience that needs to be addressed. I think that's what aversion therapy is based on. If you get enough negative associations with a thing, it may stop being pleasurable and as such, the urges get weaker and more controllable. Or maybe not. All I know is I'm not planning on giving up my sex addiction anytime soon. It's just way too much fun being a fetish fucktoy in chains.