Passion vs Rational

First, I need to thanks those who read this blog, and comment. Writing helps clean my understanding of the issue and express those concepts. It is interesting how many ways the same nebulous concept can be expressed and remain nebulous. Smoke. Not solid. Changing. Yet similar. Same core, different process.

Passion verses rational may not be the correct terms but this concepts shows up in many places. We have a passion side, aka; animal, lizard, primitive,  unconscious, habitual, automatic, and a rational or intellect, the academic side, which plans, computes, theorizes and the like. It may be more a unconscious automatic verses a rational though out response. Some have likened it to the dual core processor; but the two cores using different methods. We humans have evolved or not, but in big populations, the change is not uniform; there is a population range. Some of us are more passion driven, other more rational or reason driven. Most are a mix of the two. I assume that the craving is animal, while the desire to be of a normal weight is rational. At this level, the cause of the cravings is not important, but there is a couple of craving characteristics we need to look at. First is the strength, and secondly the duration and fading or adaption.

Are we more rational driven or passion driven? The famous marshmallow experiment, where children were given a marshmallow, and were told that if they did not eat it for 15 minutes, they could have more. Those that weighted (ok, the other one, waited) also did better in later life in a number of ways. I believe what really tested was if the child was passion driven or rational driven.  

Now which am I? Although I, the rational me, would like to think of myself being rational, the test shows me to be passion or animal driven. We are a mix of the two. Which one is stronger? Separation of the craving as animal, and overcoming it with a rational response is the only method of recovery; it is the awareness of the actual action, or are we just doing a process, that is different. How well it works is a function of the actual strength of the relative signals, the persistence of the signals, and the adaption.

Now that I have gone through the "engineering" analysis of all this, what is the point? There are numerous process that lead us through the life, and may ways can work. It is all about the strength of the signal, the resistance, persistence, weakening, or strength gain. Environment, temptation,  availability,  are big factors.

If the craving is persistent and strong, the relief always available, and the resistance just a struggle, we at time will fail, slide, and consume. Or we can struggle against the desire, compulsion, natural characteristic, using any method available. Always being aware of the struggle, and watching we never slip, (mindfulness) regardless of what we call it, is required. Consciousness of this problem 24/7/365.25 is required. No letup, ever. It does get overwhelming at times.

The worst part about all this is the non-support from those who do not understand the problem, pushing crap, when they do not live the hell. There are those who push impractical advise, usually those who also do not have nor understand the real problem.

And still at times, the only thing to do to relieve the craving is to eat.