The mind and body

So this is kind of an extension from the previous post but it turned into something completely different and random so I separated the post. If you think about it, what one's body does and what one thinks one's body should do are often times at odds with each other. Like with the fat thing (see previous post), your mind tells you that food is good, you like cookies and thus, you will eat all the cookies in the bag when your body is very clearly telling you to stop eating because you're full and you want to throw up. Your brain overrides those concerns and you eat until you barf.

Why is that? When did our minds take so much precedence over our bodies to the point where we are quite literally working them to death? Working, eating, even the very idea of self-control implies this. Well, self-control is something else, I think (I'll get to that in a bit). When our bodies are tired, we force ourselves to stay awake or do all sorts of fun things (coffee, energy drinks, caffeine pills) to keep our bodies awake. And ironically, trying to keep the body awake like that decreases the functionality of the mind and body...

It's an interesting thing, the mind.

The very idea of self-control is interesting, too, if you think about it. Why must one tell oneself to stop doing something? Or why must one restrict oneself? I suppose this stems from an idea that the mind and body are one or whole, thus self-control shouldn't be necessary. So the very premise of the idea that the mind and body are one is flawed.

If the mind and body is not one, then it makes sense that one must exercise self-control in order to check the collisions of the mind and body, i.e. my mind wants my body to do this, but my body often will not respond accordingly or will not listen.

It works the other way too in the sense that one must exercise self-control because one does not have control over their body regardless of what one's mind tells them to do. With the eating analogy, it becomes, "My hand keeps reaching into the bag of chips even though my mind is telling me that I should stop."

But self-control also implies that there is a battle within the mind as well because there implies that you want to do more than one thing and you must stop yourself from doing one or more of those things.

Freud would've called the two sides of this battle the id and the superego but I hesitate to do so because I find his definitions somewhat inadequate. If anything, there is a battle of wills - what you want to do, what you should do, what you think you should do, what you've been told to do, etc. Perhaps one could argue that there are many sides - that there are multiple "wills" that are at odds with each other and that one must exercise self-control to do what is determined to be appropriate for that situation (though often times this does not happen). Like when you tell yourself that you should start your homework as soon as you get home and before you realize it, it's bedtime. What just happened there? Which "will" took over? Where was your mind then?

Eh. This one feels half-baked still. I suppose I still have to work on this thought but there is a separation with the mind and body and to me, that in and of itself is quite interesting.