Tools are metaphysical objects of power, they are conduits through which one manifests their will upon the world. But it still takes time and effort, which are perhaps the most simple tools created by our psychology. If you feel like you can’t find the willpower to exert time and effort into something -- (even if you really wanna do it! -- then let me suggest the tool of ritual.
As Alan Watts and many others have put it, you are not a what, you are a behavior. It’s all a dance, energy in motion. In contemporary western culture we like to think of objects as solid things. But, I mean, look at the state of things, materialism & capitalism have molded us into apathetic dregs. So, lets have a look at China; Chinese philosophy is old, & over the years, the creme has floated to the surface. I found a stunning quote attributed to the anthropologist David Kertzer about the Confucian ritual, Li, which is still practiced today!
”The Confucian philosophers understood that rulers should always avoid giving commands, for commands, being direct and verbal, always bring to mind the possibility of doing the opposite. According the Chuang Tsu: “But since rituals are nonverbal, they have no contraries. They can therefore be used to produce a harmony of wills and actions without provoking recalcitrance. If a man finds himself playing his appointed part in li (ritual), and thus already, as if it were de facto, in harmony with others, it no more occurs to him than it occurs to a dancer to move to a different rhythm than that being played by an orchestra.“
We must accept that while we are human, and humans are capable of greatness; we are also still finite and have limits, and the world we live in has a rhythm. Everyone will find a different rhythm that works for them, because we’re all thrown into completely different contexts, even parents and children often find conflict in the differing contexts of their lives. It is pragmatic to be adaptive, to flow like water, to reverberate like air. Only once we accept our place --no matter how shitty it is-- can we then use that placement as the fertile soil to plant seeds.
Go, learn and grow and change your behavior through small, incremental tweaking. Understand that making big changes starts with little ones. Make configuring your daily toolbox a ritual in itself, find those behaviors that align with your goals, and if it proves to not work, tweak it. All tools are modifiable, you are capable of making anything, including the tools to make tools to make other tools, such as ritual itself! With this framework, you can apply learning and mechanisms at scale, and in doing so, you can truly get anything done.
References
- Quote found from: Debate and the Ritual Theory of Propaganda by The Morbid Zoo on youtube