Why do people do things? What does it mean to do something for something else? Why do I have this blog, and why I am I writing on it? Why have I designed it this way? What am I doing this for?

I’ve recently discovered that there is a common tendency to conflate an activity’s cause and its goal. If you ask me, “Why did you order a carne asada burrito?” I might reply by discussing that I was pretty hungry and it sounded good. I might explain that I didn’t want to spend the money for a plate, because rice and beans and shredded lettuce are not worth an additional $5. Etc. Those are valid reasons for buying the burrito. Or, I could also answer you by discussing the processes in my hunger. I could try to tell you about how I was craving meat, something hearty. I had a salad for lunch, and a light breakfast. Etc. There are goals and motives, and they don’t have to be the same. Of course, in practice, it is absolute hogwash to actually give someone a completely transparent response as to the cause of behavior. Every reason we give for doing something is a figuration, a “go-figure,” neither entirely literal nor entirely figurative.

This could be extrapolated to just about anything else. “Why did you go on vacation to Canada?” Teleological reasons: I wanted to visit the Canadian Rockies and spend time there. Motivational reasons: I was tired of the Californian heat and tourism, longing for quiet. Somewhere back around Aristotle, we got our shoelaces tied and forgot that they don’t have to be the same.

In a way, it seems like consumerism relies on making your goals identical with your motivations, so that your physical and teleological reasons for doing something are isometric. Compulsive behavior can be masked as self-actualization in this way. Let’s say you did everything you were motivated to do. You would be living in accordance with your motives. You could even say that you’re “for your froms,” i.e., you’re doing things for the origin of your decisions. In many ways, that’s a beautiful thing. Not everybody gets to do what they want, and doing what you want theoretically means you would experience happiness. The problems arise when what you want isn’t functional for you or for others. Doing what you want makes you and others more unhappy. I won’t split hairs on this. I don’t think the point of an Epicurean lifestyle is to live under detailed mandates for your happiness. It’s a system that expands to cultivate a quality of life that is satisfying. I digress.

As a Christian, I’ve discovered the idea that God causes all our activities, effects all our activities, and is the focal point of all our activities. St Paul the Apostle says, “For all things are from him and through him and to him. To him be the glory for ever and ever.” This is very interesting. It tells of early Christian metaphysics, how Christians view the world, the structure they stitch together reality with. It is not an exclusively Christian metaphysics, as it is shared by other big monotheists as well. For Paul, God is the original cause, the effective cause, and the teleological cause for everything under the sun. All matter comes from God, all physical processes are mediated by God, and all matter is tending back toward God. I’ve not read Aristotle, but I know he has four causes. Paul’s got three right here. That’s interesting to me.

However, I’d like to question Paul’s mind. Does he mean that we should substitute all physical processes with an overflooding of divinity? Should we understand God as the causal reason behind everything we do, the effective causation in everything we do, and the teleological reason for everything we do? Is that healthy? If somebody asks me, “Why did you order a carne asada burrito,” should I answer, “Because God made me want a carne asada burrito, enabled me to pick a carne asada burrito, and is worthy of a carne asada burrito?” (A burrito that is indeed worthy of being given to God, I might add.) Should I answer every question, “What did you do that for?” with “Because God?”

NO! Hogwash! Besides the fact that that’s not what people really want to know anyway, it’s an infantile metaphysics that keeps people from actually living a real life. Just as a baby assumes no difference between themselves and the world, between their ego and the mother, such a follower of God equates everything with God. Now, there is a supreme wisdom in the infant’s mind that we return to in old age, or at least in maturity, seeing that all is connected in oneness. But if we simply paste our image of one thing onto everything else, are we really living or have we not erected an elaborate nest for ourselves to never be dislocated from? Have we not just hid ourselves from real life? We would never be able to speak truly to why we did things, nor would we ever be able to choose something for reasons other than those already given. Life is essentially non-mechanistic. Always living for the givens of your desires is just as lifeless as always living for a heartless gilded age factory line boss.

This is the trap of trying to unilaterally equate causal motives with purposive motives. There is virtue in learning how to get them to match, to line up, so that the symmetry produces tranquility. But if you do that to no end, you end up in a hall of mirrors, in total internal reflection. You seal yourself off from the outside world. There is no differentiation, no creativity, no dance, no play, no experimentation or improvement, no real learning, no genuine experience of life.

Another problem I’ve alluded to is being driven by the outside world to do its bidding. It’s the same problem but inverted. Rather than being sealed internally by your own causes, you can be sealed externally by external causes. Both split/dissever you from the outside. I won’t say much more on it today. I just wanted to mention that the problem is not in living for or against yourself. It’s more paradigmatic than that. As an aside, notice how easy it is to associate “living for yourself” with “living for your motivations.” That reflects the ideology we’re accustomed to. You are not your motives. Those are not interchangeable terms. Sometimes they are close together, sometimes they are far apart.



At some point of pursuing our object of desires: the fruition of ourselves as a person who does things in accordance with their desires, so that what they do, how they do it, and what it results in are all in focused teleological agreement—we may begin to discover the value (or rather experience something beyond the evaluation of purposes) of not being in total accord. Internal consistency is not a requirement for living, nor even for living well. There’s something seriously to be said for it, but there is art beyond the rule of self-actualization. Self-realization is more of a work in progress of discovery what the self is and how it interacts with the world more than a concomitance to one’s own desires. Self-realization and self-actualization are not the same thing. Self-actualization is the thrust for unified personal purposes (which is very valuable and healthy for oneself and the world if it is pursued not unconditionally). Self-realization is the fuller word that includes most instances of self-actualization. Self-realization is a more objective combination of witnessing and willing. The self is more of a reference point, a datum, than a standard. Self-actualization treats the self as a standard to be followed, whereas self-realization treats the self as a datum for sensemaking. Someone recently said that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was actually a re-envisioning of a native american hierarchy of needs. Maslow put physiological functions on the bottom and gradually built up to an individual getting to focus on themselves (which was admittedly a pretty popular hope back in the mid-twentieth century when he invented it. The Native American pyramid he turned around instead put self-actualization on the bottom, as a sort of groundwork or prerequisite for building up to meeting the needs of one’s community and beyond to the farthest extents of the earth. I think I heard that on a YouTube documentary. The details don’t matter. The point is that you can look at physiology needs, etc. as building blocks for the apex of life: self-actualization. Or you can look at self-actualization and individual wellbeing as a doorway to addressing what is beyond you. The pyramids aren’t really opposed anyway. They’re just expressing different things and have their own pros and cons. They reflect different cultures and ideologies. Wellness looks different in these different paradigms. I digress (again).

Where I’m headed with all this is that there is hard causation and soft causation. (By this, I mean the same as “gross” and “subtle,” words I’ve used elsewhere to much effect. Those are my preferred terms for the primordial moral duality.) We can be driven in vicious cycles, or we can access fluidity and respond to various circumstances uniquely. When we are driven in vicious cycles, we are “attached to” an object of causation. We do things FOR something in particular. We can say with faith that we’re doing something for this or that reason. When we are able to be fluid to changing conditions, we are “detached from” an object of causation. We do things for no thing in particular. We have uncertainty about why we’re doing something, and we’re open to exploring different goals and motives.

Now before we begin to slide down into the avalanche of pop-spirituality’s duplicitous teachings on detachment and attachment, I want to put my stake in the hillside. Hold on. I’m going to blow up one of the biggest misconceptions about finding peace in a restless world. I would like you to focus and think critically on the following statement: “Detachment is not the same as disconnection.”

Before we discuss this statement, I want you to notice how my framing of the statement illustrates the statement itself. I said, “I would like you to focus and think critically on the following statement.” I did not say, “Focus and think critically on the following.” I gave you space. I recognized that I cannot directly cause you to behave as I intend. There are so many degrees of separation between me and you that it is rude and unethical for me to trespass those boundaries. Moreover, it is frankly naïve to believe that saying a word will make something happen. I hate yoga instructors and spiritual teachers, and supervisors for that matter, who think by saying “Focus” will make me focus. No, it will make me anxious about the difference (or more aptly, the “différance,” thank you Derrida) between their imagined version of what things should be like and what they are. I will have an image of being focused conjured up in my mind. I may be able to associate my memory of what it’s like to focus with the command “Focus” such that the phrase brings the state of mind to mind. But that’s transgressive talk. The internal state of focus and the communicated referential form of that internal state are not the same. My words “focus” are not directly connected to your cognitive processes. They are connected by various degrees of separation. In that way, they aren’t attached directly, they are detached, and I know it.

When you say your reasons for doing something, what you communicate is, in truth, detached from what it is. You might be carried away with an illusion, or you might be playing with an image. You might even resist description simply because you feel disconnected by trying to act like you can attach a clear reason to your actions. In this way, you might even have subtle reasons for doing things, but the explanation of them, the bringing of them to the surface, is always something in process, something of a becoming rather than something of a discrete “this is why I’m doing something, this what I’m doing it for.” You do have causes, but the communication of them is not a sharp identification and more of a graduated materialization of apparently greater and lesser causes. Everything is so interrelated that it is tempting to just cut everything extraneous off and be given to something manageable than to be real. But to really be in control of a real situation requires opening up beyond gross materialistic control and stepping into the many subtle variations in control. Life is always beyond our reach, so why would we throw it into a tight container?

So why am I on this blog? Why have I designed it the way I have? What are my motives, my purposes? Do I have no orienting purpose, no monotheistic creator with an exclusive salvation plan orienting my behavior?

Let me ask you this: why do the wildflowers on alpine meadows beyond human reach bloom? What is the purpose of beauty if there is no one to see it? Maybe there is greater purpose in setting aside the questions of motive. Maybe we should not focus on why we do things, nor on why we can’t find straightforward meaning for our actions. Maybe asking for a reason or rejecting reasons misses the process itself. Maybe even the dualism of acting vs thinking isn’t helpful.

What am I doing this for?



July 21, 2021
San Luis Obispo