Control

Everything you do is about control. You are either controlling yourself, or you are controlling somebody or something else.

Controlling the world

We have a deep-seated need for control, and we express it by controlling ourselves, our physical environment, resources, ideas, and other people.

Every action requires and expresses control. We control our body to effect actions, and these actions control the world around us.

Our attempts to control the world are never fully successful, as there are always things that remain outside of our control. The disappointment of coming up against the limits of our abilities can be managed by self-control, where the need to control is turned inwards.

Controlling your need for control

If you turn your need for control inwards you can control your emotions, responses and desires. This gives you an indirect sense of control over the world around you, because you reduce its power to control how you feel.

But even if you focus entirely on self-control you haven't escaped from your need for control; you have just turned it inwards on yourself.

The persistence of the need for control

And so the need for control is persistent. It is there even if you are not conscious of it.

If you are hungry and you eat, you gain control over your hunger. If you are hungry and you refuse to eat, you exercise self-control over your natural inclination to eat. Either way your behaviour is an act of control.

Escaping your need for control

Can you make a conscious decision to relinquish control altogether?

To live without expressing the need for control would mean never avoiding or pursuing any preference whatsoever. A life without control is a life of perfect indifference. Any values you have must not be acted upon. This is the opposite of life, which is characterised by action in the pursuit of value.

If you seek death you still exercise your agency to control your life by ending it.

It is impossible to be alive and to escape the need for control.

Life as embodied control

Life is a system of self-perpetuating order, and order requires control. To metabolise, to grow, to move, is to control. And so life itself is control; life is the universe gaining control over itself.