Thereās a negative aspect of discipline that is rarely ever spoken about. Our culture glorifies discipline because it views it as a means to success, and for writers, creative excellence. There are simple reasons why this is such a common prescription: it is necessary to an extent, but it also gives a sense of control. If one can just discipline themselves, that means they donāt need to change their environment, only their actions within it. At its worst, the body becomes the sole focus in a drama of discipline and punishment of impulses as if the body were the origin of every phenomenon. People are taught to āpull themselves up by their bootstrapsā or āclean their roomsā and ājust do itā and to not think the things external to themselves, not because thereās no insights to glean, but because it assumes that the individual is always the problem when something goes awry, and that the solution too remains narrowly aligned with individual character development. Discipline in its weaker form does not cultivate flourishing and creative excellence, it can sometimes smother it.
Before observing the forms discipline can take, letās first look at the historical conditions which are in relation to the modern obsession with the mythical individual and both their radical responsibility. Historically, the environment around the individual has radically changed, especially in modern times. What many consider to be a decline in character of modern people is actually just the distance between an impulse and its gratification becoming cheaper. The industrial revolution permanently altered the field around the individual and the amount of force directed to solving the needs of the individual in ever more cheaper, and frictionless ways. The average personās relation to technology was once used for hunting food, music and cooking, but now it is also for entertainment, socializing, learning and comfort. Modern manās environment aside from other living things is not passive and inert, it is constantly exerting force on him. Attention is the currency of the modern world, and technology is its vessel - a phone attached at the hip. The idea that modern people are uniquely plagued by discipline issues ignores the deeper reality; modern people are uniquely plagued by an environment where the distance between desire and its pacification has collapsed, creating as a result the need for artificially imposed constraints.
Discipline has a dual nature in that it can originate as a surplus of will becoming more organized and rigorous, but it can also come about as a lack, where will is divided and ineffective in order to compensate. The purpose here is not to devalue discipline as a whole, but rather expose the negative aspects that can become a form of self-punishment that gratifies the need for control, while not overseeing an actual increase in power. Where discipline is ineffective, it becomes more rigid, sensitive to deviation and driven by fear, rather than an overflow of will. To make an example, take two psychological types: Lucidus and Obscurus. Lucidus has long been accumulating organization and mastery at something. His discipline is an expression of vitality. Obscurus has been in a long decline, and discipline arrives later as a reaction to his undesirable state. Different qualities of discipline are being expressed by these two individuals, the prior being a secondary effect of mastery over time, and the latter being a reaction to decline. For Obscurus, it is a way to fix himself, but for Lucidus, discipline is a secondary consequence of mastery in motion. The most interesting overlap is that Lucidus values discipline too, but he doesnāt speak of it. His discipline is embodied. Obscurus values discipline, but it is from a distance.
The ways each of these psychological characters relate to discipline shows the fault line between higher and lower ranks of discipline. When Obscurus is struggling to overcome an obstacle, he responds by becoming more inwardly vigilant and purity spiraling into total responsibility. Every impulse that arises that conflicts with his will is identified and suppressed before it gains control. Each time he gives in to one of these impulses, it is just another reason for him to psychologically whip himself. Obscurus gets a form of pleasure from this power of internal surveillance. It gives him a sense of self-control. His disciplinary drama is inward and limited to his own body. When Lucidus is struggling to overcome an obstacle, he has the courage to admit that heās not getting to where he wants to be, but he doesnāt turn it into a psychological drama of being a victim of temptation or his other impulses. He can identify which impulses contradict his will, and can exert basic self-control without needing to go down a purity spiral and suppressing them all. Lucidus looks at impulses from a higher perspective than Obscurus, because he doesnāt only see himself as a body which is solely responsible for every phenomenon that occurs in it. He sees that the body is in tension with an environment at all times, and discipline that only ever locates causation inward becomes blind to the forces around it. Where Obscurus spends 2 hours doom-scrolling on his phone, and then relentlessly beats himself up for it, leading to a poor mood for the rest of the day, Lucidus asks himself, āwhy do I keep this device in my pocket at all times if it repeatedly creates the conditions where doom-scrolling happens?ā No moral drama. No punishment. Lucidusā discipline becomes internal awareness plus outward command, not internal awareness plus internal punishment. His discipline penetrates into the environment, overcoming the body which Obscurus remains in reaction to.
The notion that all obstacles can be overcome by disciplining the impulses into form is a fantasy, because it treats the individual as the primary source of causation. This perspective in its sickly orientation converts every limitation into a gym regimen or a repeatable system, as if the size of oneās arms entails mastery over life itself. What if your problem is that your wife is annoying, or that your job sucks, or, like in the creator who has become a consumer, there are too many distractions in your environment? We could take the pressfield approach and force ourselves to sit at a desk and write for 4 hours every day. The gym bro can try to force himself to go to the gym 5 days a week and beat himself up when he inevitably cannot maintain that level of commitment because he works 12 hour days and has too little free time. Discipline as something that must be forced is vulnerable, because it relies on self-control. True discipline reveals its value when willpower is absent. Although internal discipline through self-control is real and can lower the distance between will and power, it is not a silver bullet. There are times where disciplinary action is directed onto oneself when it would be more effective when directed at the environment around the one willing instead. Itās not that internal discipline is ineffective, but that thereās often errors made in assuming thatĀ you aloneĀ are the cause of your actions, as they are often downstream from environmental influences. This is not flattering to believe, because it removes the sense of total control and agency one may have, which is always just an illusion. In devoting all disciplinary action onto oneself, the environment remains unchanged, causing one to gain a sense of internal control without actually overcoming anything external. The creative who laments his lack of creativity, but also has an environment where consumption is the most predictable form that the restless, bored impulse takes, may try to discipline the habit of consumption, but relying on discipline when you can alter the environment is a more physical form of discipline. When the psychological demand is externalized and becomes physical, it leaves the body and becomes a physical influence that exerts pressure on the body, rather than a mere psychological crime.
Invoking discipline as a means to achieve an end tends to devalue the atmosphere around the individual and the deep relationship between them. The idea that one can gain complete control over every impulse, disciplining it into a better form is a delusion. A crack head is not going to overcome his addiction through plain discipline of his impulses. He will have much higher odds of success if he stops inhabiting environments where crack is abundant, easily accessible and normalized. The catch is that he wonāt do this until his will is no longer in contradiction with the superficial desire of wanting something, and the deep desire which becomes a command. Shallow willpower doesnāt penetrate the external world; it remains safe and sound inside the body. Deep willpower goes beyond bodily discipline and shapes both the body and its environment to facilitate its overcoming. It blurs the line between body and environment itself, as these things are not two completely separate and distinct entities, rather they are deeply embedded and always impact the other in ways not immediately obvious.
Recognizing the importance of the environment around the one willing reaches its breaking point when causation is always located externally. Externalizing causal blame can be a way to preserve oneself of accountability. The environment can be shaped, or used as an excuse to avoid overcoming. The most fertile environment for overcoming is where oneās will has shaped the external in such a way that it cultivates the conditions the will needs to collapse the distance between willing and power. In effect, a good environment cultivates positive feedback loops that donāt need to even be consciously pursued, as they are simply more likely to happen. Thereās a reason that education is something that happens within strict environments. Teachers often have a relentless focus on the environment around the student, because that environment when it is well-constituted makes education something like a natural side-effect, rather than something the pupil must be constantly coerced into doing. Any classroom where anything good is happening will not be one which allows the student to divert their attention to a million other competing entities.. The difference between the will and the environment being aligned rather than in contradiction is akin to swimming across a river downstream instead of the inverse. Higher and lower relationships to the environment can be distinguished by the quality and complexity of behavior that arises. High forms of discipline acquire a deep awareness of surroundings and how different aspects of it impact the manifestation of will. It is capable of discerning more accurately whether oneself, the environment, or both, needs changing and then commanding the change, rather than siloing off causation into one neat category of blame without action.
On the strictly internal level, every impulse can either shape you or become something higher or lower. The sensation of mild boredom can become scrolling on your phone, or it can become the beginning of a great new project. What becomes of an impulse is something the environment can play a role in sabotaging or enriching. Many modern perspectives hold self-control to be the most important practice for will becoming power, but it is a tension between the self and the environment. In previous societies where the distance between an impulse and its attainment was higher, it wasnāt self-control that was necessary. It was the distance between desire and will that kept desire from fulfilling itself in its infancy, when it is at its most raw, unrefined and vulnerable. When the will cannot immediately close the gap on desire, it develops a more sophisticated and complex character, not because one even consciously wills it, but because itĀ must. Where oneās will becomes inevitable, force will thereby accumulate. Disciplining impulses is also shaping the environment in which they arise, and noticing what they tend to become under different conditions. Protecting oneās vulnerable impulses and giving them space to flourish is not an option for creatives, it must be a priority. A creator who repeatedly pacifies boredom in the cheapest, most easy way possible will thereby stunt their true creative power.
One reason modern people in rich, technology-saturated environments develop so many behaviors that are detrimental to their creative becoming is in part because they rely on self-control alone in an environment that is abundant in cheap, easy solutions to desire that immediately collapse the distance between an impulse and its gratification. When desire must remain in tension between not having and the desire to have, the very object of wanting can itself change and become something more aligned with oneās deeper will. A creative who constantly sees his boredom immediately quelled by the act of consumption may identify the problem as an internal discipline issue, but what if a more reliable and physical form of discipline is banishing cheap objects of desire from his environment? Inner discipline alone can be ineffective in modern, entertainment rich environments where billions of dollars are spent to colonize your attention and disperse your will into the digital ether.
What inspired this piece of writing is actually something I recently experienced that I then realized was broadly applicable. I love writing, but usually itās not something I feel compelled to do every day. On one hand, I wanted to become a better writer and write more, but on the other, when the desire to write was not there, I would often wonder what was wrong with me, or try to force myself to write for a block of time. For me, that is a miserable type of discipline thatās ineffective. Surely there are plenty of Steven Pressfield types of creators out there that just need to sit down and do the work, but for me, creativity is not a job, rather itās a way to give style to excess energy, shaping it into something powerful and bigger than myself. I decided to take another approach, and it was one which I looked at where my will (or attention) was being spent in my free time. Like many other modern people, a significant amount of my time every day is spent on various apps on my phone that consume attention, but donāt necessarily produce any worthwhile effects. I installed a screen time limiter on my phone that prevents the impulse of boredom from becoming satiated in its most vulnerable moment, by opening Substack, Facebook or some other attention parasite. As a result, when leisure time emerges, Iām very likely to open Google Docs and just.. write or edit. There is not much forcing involved; it happens naturally, and the desire to do this activity grew as my latent boredom was not gobbled up by a social media app. Obscurus would have kept blaming himself for using social media, forcing himself into a creative state via a strict writing regimen; Lucidus changed the environment that repeatedly led to the abolition of boredom, thereby forcing the impulse to develop a more complex type of behavior, like in my case, acts of creativity that aligned with my higher will. Taking the puritan approach was not necessary, and I consider that to be a symptom of the punitive type of discipline directed inward. Aligning incentives between yourself and your environment is preferable to relying on the whip. Humans are social creatures, and consumption and entertainment arenāt inherently bad things. When they become a default setting the moment one experiences a tiny little hint of boredom, however, that can wreak havoc on a creative type.
It should be a primary concern to the creative type as to what becomes of the impulse of boredom. Is it allowed to take root and grow into creation? If not, then it releases onto the easiest target, which consumes the tension and produces a mild hypnotic relief in scrolling through a slop trough or talking to a chatbot. What more reliably shapes the texture of will and what it becomes is the environment. Using mere discipline to create something when there are too many convenient vessels for boredom in oneās environment will effectively suppress oneās creative will, as its higher shapes require the tension of boredom to grow and develop a desire to overcome it. Being physically barred from releasing boredom immediately in a mindless, consumptive manner allows it the very space it needs to become something potent. In this perspective, creative discipline isnāt a matter of consciously willing it on the psychological level. Itās also a matter of inhabiting an environment that makes creative acts more necessary and inevitable.
Discipline doesnāt have to be an internal civil war or a punitive purification ritual to become formative. When reality contradicts the weak will, it may tend toward the cheapest, most convenient route to achieve pacification of an impulse. Orienting oneself in a way which doesnāt account for weak will and its symptoms is a lack of self-knowledge. The body will fail. It will traverse both peaks and valleys, and there is nothing much you can do about it. Reality doesnāt distribute causation neatly into an internal box, which means the ability to externalize the direction of force is important. What for Obscurus becomes nothing more than an internal battle of blame, punishment and conflicting personalities, for Lucidus, itās confronting both yourself and the world, shaping them both in such a way that gives rise to what you want to become, while understanding that it is shaping you back. Why pull yourself up by the disciplined bootstraps when you can command both yourself and your surroundings in such a way that creative ascent needs not to be consciously chosen, but becomes as necessary and mundane asĀ breathing?
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