Something people tend to overestimate is self-control.  Bad habits and thought patterns are supposed to be easy to replace.  If it was that simple, why have they not already done so?  In some cases, it is not something one choose at all.  People are believed able to choose their emotions and emotional needs.  If one could choose not to feel why were there so many colonialists in faraway countries drinking themselves to death?  I think it was the lack of friendship which drove them to alcoholism.

This type of misconceptions has different frequencies in different countries.  Unfortunately, even we here in Sweden have the problem of some believing they have to live as if they only existed for the sake of others.  It is deeply unnatural for humans to behave this way.  In order to do this, they have to constantly struggle against their inborn mental characteristics.  Which in turn makes people unhappy.

Many of these misconceptions seem to belong to the 19th century.  Quick urbanisation led to demands on self-control rising quickly too.  At the same time there were insufficient knowledge on the limits of the humanly possible.  Many still did not ask themselves if the requirements set were sensible.  The growing middle class applied an economical view on ethics on all human interactions.  They expected a degree of self-control which quite simply does not exist.  It did not help they had a shallow view on the inner lives of others.  If something was not communicated there was supposed to be nothing to communicate.

Connected to this is the misconception that problems can be silenced away.  Mental problems don’t disappear just because they are not allowed to be mentioned.  To the opposite they only get worse from them not being talked about.  Not only does it prevent people from getting the help which in fact exist.  It creates the most absurd delusions about the prevalence of one’s own problems too.  Children may grow up in the belief they are the only person in the world having their type of problem.  This can be turned to the other direction too.  Statistical outliers can imagine their condition to be universal.  When such conditions are ascribed to everyone, I think this is the explanation.

The question is why people continues to believe in such myths.  To me it seems they have never learned about modern psychology.  What I mean is what we now know about the limits of the humanly possible.  Moreover, some are frightened by the thought of something being outside conscious control.  Then the question follows why such individuals perceive it as so frightening.  (I have no problem with this.)  My best explanation is one lacking much awareness of nature’s own processes.  Maybe one is only aware when they cause problems?  They also enabling good things one is in such cases unaware of.

Heavy overestimates of self-control may even be life-threatening.  It leads to overconfidence in punishments as solution to problems.  One believes social problems can be solved by punishing people showing them.  It is like beating toddlers for crying.  Toddlers lack the self-control needed for that to work as deterrent.  They cry because they suffer and can’t handle it in any other way.  Beating them as punishment for this will just make them cry more.  Someone who foolishly continues beating to punish the toddler’s reactions will eventually beat him or her to death.  In the same way people die because their lack of control is not acknowledged.  If not from tangible punishment so from suicide, accidents or cardiovascular disease.

Uploaded on the 14th of December 2023.