Acting is probably impossible; all we can do is react. If you have watched any of my videos, you might have seen that I say “act” or “acting” or “inaction” in reference to doing or not doing things. I do this as a manner of simplification, and it doesn’t necessarily take away from the meaning of the text. If I say you should act in accordance to your beliefs, it means you are doing and being a person in accordance to your beliefs. However, what I really mean by this, is that you are reacting to your beliefs, and so the result of that reaction is a person who is doing and being a person in accordance to those beliefs. Those beliefs you probably believe to be yours, but they really aren’t, but I also don’t mean to take away from your individuality. This all may seem semantical, but I’d argue it isn’t. There is a purpose in identifying that you are merely reacting to all things, even internal things: for the purpose of increasing your ability to actually do things.
If I say I want to go for a run in a conversation, it’s quite obvious what my urge and interest is as I’m stating that information. You, the listener, would understand I want to run, assuming you know what running and wanting are, and you probably would understand both, but not why I want to, nor would understanding those things in themselves help you understand me. Internally, I might not actually want to go for a run. I might want the benefits of going for a run, like actually going outside and seeing the sun or for cardiovascular health. I might want these benefits but I don’t want to experience the exhaustion and anguish from running. You might be unaware that I don’t receive any of these so called “good-feel chemicals” from running, but I know the prerequisites of a healthy body. So, I react to my body’s needs, and the thoughts that tell me that it’s necessary to go for a run, and it’s the right thing to do, and so I go for a run. In the end, I go for the run. What’s being done in the end is the same, the run, but how that’s thought about can influence the execution of the thing and help you understand why that’s happening, or why you might convince yourself to not make it happen.
This might be viewed as my own belief system. A system of thought that there is no such thing as free-will. I would take that as a minor simplification, but if you wanted to believe that, it could work and be applied to me in specific. For others, it might actually be different, I’m not quite sure. Some might literally be able to act and be done with it, they don’t have to do any mind-games or get themselves to react to certain scenarios or put themselves in situations where they react in accordance to their interests. However, for me, I must do this. It might be of help to you too, supposing you aren’t able to do the things you want to do, this is essentially being the cheap version of “free-will” where you aren’t free, believe you aren’t free, but use that to your advantage. Instead of just doing the thing, you set yourself up for the thing to happen, whether it will be something internal or external.
A real example I can make note of is one by my friend, he does not literally label this as his means of making himself react to his environment or to his actions, but from my perception, that’s what is happening. What he does is he deliberately keeps his bass ready to go and play, and keeps it in his peripheral vision. Now that the bass is there, ready for him to play, and he can visually see it, he can make himself want to play it. Thus, he is reacting to his environment that he adapted to fit his needs, and this reaction gives the same result as if he were just acting, as if he hadn’t done all that preparation and just started playing instead. Personally, I make myself believe I must do something, for whatever reason, and I react to those beliefs and do the thing. The grander the belief the more time it takes to start reacting to it, in my experience. It might make one wonder why this person in particular, or myself, couldn’t just do the thing, instead of setting ourselves up to do the thing? Why must we play these games with ourselves in order to do the thing we want to do? Not only do these questions come to mind, but now we begin to wonder if we are still acting, but the actions we do commit are considered to a lower level, so we are able to exercise them, but not the ones we consider to be a higher level, which we must set up for ourselves to react to.
This is pretty clear and easy to understand. You can put yourself, physically or mentally, in situations where you react to these situations you created. However, one might believe that the situations themselves are actually actions, for you needed to create the situation in order to react to it. This goes another layer deeper. Those situations created, suppose the running example, are reactions to information received. I was not born with the awareness of all the benefits of running, nor with the agony of it. In fact, when I was born, I didn’t know what running was, but I could experience wants. The point is, the information I received thus caused another reaction to create the situation, meaning there are multiple layers to these reactions. If you wanted to go another layer deeper, supposing that I actively chose to remember that information and then do something with it, I would tell you that I didn’t have any active choice in keeping the information. I was put in an environment, an educational institution, for example, and then taught information and was convinced that I should remember this information, for what purposes I could not remember, but it was the goal of the teachers to make me believe I have to and should remember it, or else “bad” things will happen. This was against my will, or assuming I don’t have one, like aligning with my beliefs, I was just placed in a situation and I reacted to it, and I continually do so.
This goes for all things, not just doing things, but my entire means of thinking. Everything is just in reference to something else, which allows you to understand things. We tie together patterns, whether physically or mentally, and we try to extrapolate possibilities from experiences. This steers into a place where we aren’t really ourselves, but rather a collection of all that we’ve absorbed. It’s much easier to say I’m an individual than to say I’m a collection of a variety of experiences, environments, people, and things I’ve consumed. It’s that specific variety, and some genetic sprinkles, that make me, well, me, the individual. This goes for about everyone else, too, and so our thoughts are not really ours, but just reactions to all the things that have been entered into our mind, much without our choice. Unless someone knows how to stop perceiving, and I’d very much like to hear from that person, but I’m pretty sure the only one’s who don’t perceive are the dead.
It’s not that I wish to downplay doing things or being a person, but instead, give a little insight in what I think. As you might understand by now, what I think is based around what I’ve perceived and understood, and if it works, I have a tendency, like anyone else, to hold onto that. If you have another means of thinking about this, let me know, but this was intended to be a little shorter in order to give some clarification as to what I mean by “action” and “reaction.” I also intend to continue using “action” as a replacement for “reaction” because it tends to make more sense, especially if you don’t know my personal beliefs on that matter, such as those laid out here. It might seem a little silly to have gone out of my way to specify this, but I find it important because in identifying this, I have been able to get myself to do things, and I imagine for my friend, he was able to get himself to play more bass as a result of getting it set up to be as easy as possible. Actions, reactions, however you want to think about it, you are just doing the thing or setting up to do the thing, and as long as the thing is done, that’s all that really matters, no matter how you got there.