let us take an example of some event…
we are sitting in a car somewhere and out of the corner of my
eye, I see a moving yellow shadow… now my experiences
might suggest that the moving yellow shadow is a lion…
but and this is important… we might react to the shadow
in a fight or flight reaction… we flee but we don’t know
exactly what we are fleeing from… we react from instinct,
not from any knowledge or experience of that yellow shadow…
we are animals and like all animals, we are instilled with a billion
years of instinct… not rational, not experienced reaction to events…
now many people/philosophers believe we go toward pleasure and avoid
pain… but doesn’t this idea of pleasure and pain come from instinct…
for example, sex and wanting sex is not a rational thought, but an instinctual
reaction…billions of years of nature programed the sexual urge into animals,
of which we are one such branch… pleasure of sex is from instinct and not
any rational thought… we don’t need to think about or have a rational
thought about sex to want sex… we simply desire it… we want that pleasure
even though intellectual it might not be the best idea… pleasure and pain
are instinctual events… the rationalist or philosopher believe we should
be rational about sex and we should engaged in rational thinking about sex…
but sex itself is instinct, that pleasure is instinct and it is only with a great
deal of thought or self control that we control our sexual instinct…
the drive toward pleasure or away from pain is driven by instinct…
we reach out and grab something… it might be a pillow or it might
be a nail, if it is a pillow, we might continue to grab it, pleasure,
but if it is a nail, we instinctually move away from it… rational thought
has nothing to do with this…
this idea of instinct is missing from thinkers such as Hobbes,
Locke, Hume… they take pleasure and pain as rational experiences,
whereas pleasure and pain are instinctual experiences…
the trick we must learn is to turn instinctual experiences into
rational experiences… we must overcome our instincts…
thus turning an instinctual experience into a rational experience…
and this is the call of philosophers since Socrates…without
using the words instincts…this is what they are saying…
pleasure and pain are simply instincts at work and
philosophy and society and the law and religion all
say that we must rationalize our instincts, instead of
reacting instinctually, we must use rational thought
for our behavior instead of instinct and we must
use rational thought in pursuit of pleasure and pain instead
of instinct…this is how we overcome instinct… with
rational thought… we overcome and this is in part what
Nietzsche means when he refers to overcoming…
becoming who you are…
pleasure and pain are instinctual experiences which we must
overcome by rational thought…
Kropotkin