Dear friends
a while ago, I wrote about the guidance of satisfaction (post #4), and how it helps me avoid the loss of deliberate action and purposeful agency characteristic of kleros (κλῆρος) and dioko (διώκω) (post #11, and post #27), which I consider to be the passive versions of Choice (conquer/master/capture) and Avoidance (flee/set free), which are both active and deliberate. Currently, I wonder:
Assuming my hedonic calculator made no mistake, and further assuming that no unforeseen event (weather, other people, human error on my part, …) prevents me from succeeding with what I had set out to do: is it safe to say that every Choice is followed by satisfaction (in addition to other pleasures) and every Avoidance is followed by relief (in addition to other pleasures)?
Please note that I am not arguing that satisfaction and relief could replace Pleasure as the guide to life. I am asking: Can one have made a Choice despite not having any satisfaction to look forward to? Can one have decided on an Avoidance without having any relief to look forward to? Thus, is the concrete anticipation (lower-case "anticipation" in the non-Epicurean casual sense of the word) of satisfaction / relief a reliable indicator that a successful Choice / Avoidance decision has been made?
And finally: When I commit (using "commitment" in the sense of non-flakiness, not in the sense of duty; further details see here in posts #29 & #30) to a Choice, that mental operation in itself brings about a pleasurable "Let's do this!"-type energy which would not be present with mere uncommitted, remaining-passive dioko. What is the name of this pleasure? What is the name of the pleasure of Choice itself? It also exists with Avoidance as opposed to kleros: There is a rousing, electric pleasure associated with saying "I will take no more, I will now defend myself against this pain!" Does this have a name? Do we have a (modern or ancient) word for this?
In case you wonder why any of this matters: I think it's very important to note that the act of making a Choice / Avoidance decision is itself a pleasure, because that immediate gratification conditions the brain towards making Choices / Avoidances in the first place. More importantly, when (re-)learning proper Choice / Avoidance, it seems to me to be a useful test to ask oneself "Am I looking forward to satisfaction / relief?" because if not, the Choice / Avoidance procedure was faulty or incomplete. I am still making a lot of half-hearted would-be Choices / Avoidances, and keep ending up in the pain of dioko / kleros passivity and all its consequences, and it is through mentally bringing into the present the anticipated satisfaction / relief that I am learning to fix that: Either I cannot yet readily bring any satisfaction / relief to mind, which means my Choice / Avoidance was too vague; or I am still unconscious of the foreseeable satisfaction / relief, which means my commitment is lacking and I'm probably in dioko / kleros. My underlying question being: "Is that just me, or is this a general principle?" If it were a general principle, I imagine it would be useful to other newcomers to the Garden, especially those who are pained by a lack of activity overall or a lack of deliberate activity
Thank you