“I cannot but stop looking at my mobile phone every now and then, though I earnestly desired to reduce the amount of the time that I spent with it in my daily routine”. “I could not quit smoking, although I really wanted to do so”. Many say these or similar dialogues in various moments of their life. Such an experience can be named as the problem of akrasia. The Greek word akrasia means ‘weakness of will’.
In The Bible, St. Paul explains this fact of life very beautifully as a soliloquy. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. … For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it……Wretched man that I am!” (Rom. 7, 15-24) Philosopher Don Locke called it as the ‘thought-action problem’: the problem which is both philosophical and psychological. The relation between the thought and action- what one thinks to do, what one want to do and what he really does. B.M. Kiely tries to explain this fact with the terminology of ‘pressures of the situation’ and suggest that these pressures may infl uence not only behaviour but also the reasoning that is used. W. Damon explains this in the following words:-people sometimes fail to act on their moral beliefs because those beliefs are not really their own. Moral ‘oughts’ may then seem oppressive and refusal to abide by them liberating.
When one fails to integrate the moral beliefs one professes or want to practice, there happens an internal division within the self. An understanding about two sets of elements which are basic in human motivation would better explain this internal division, i.e values and needs. Values are linked to rational and refl ective appraisal and they are ‘important in itself’. Needs link to intuitive and emotional appraisals and they are ‘important for oneself’. The importance of each value is self-explanatory whereas the signifi cance of needs are specifi cally comprehensive mainly to the individual itself, at times not even to the individual.
In the example of a smoker, one can find the division of mind in between his or her values and needs. Value of quitting smoking would go in confl ict between one’s need for relaxation or need for entertainment. If the person is less conscious about such needs, the integration of the values will become impossible.
– Fr.Jo Paul Kiriyanthan