A promise broken is your fault. A broken promise believed would be mine.
If anyone is looking for something to read, @WrathOfGnon is on Substack now, and he's doing a whole series on building cities at the human scale. https://wrathofgnon.substack.com/
My version of the monkey model, likely also borrowed from ego/id dichotomy of Freud (which he dropped in favor of repressed sexual obsessions....weirdo), is the programmer/wind-up toy model. Day to day, you're going through your routines, and solving problems big and tiny all day, mostly on auto-pilot. Your internalized processes have already set up the algorithms to execute and even react to exceptions, mostly informed from previous experiences. The real question is, in the previous experience, did you passively experience, or think and analyze consciously and decide this is what you would do different in the future?
The ego is the core consciousness inner narrative, and consequently, relevant to your last post, the narcissist, who draws an image of you *want* to be, and often who you *think* you are. It does, in a very Progressive way, gayly decides how the future should be, and assumes that it is already on the way to that, if not already that.
The id is the auto-pilot, the subconscious, no narrative other than raw reactionary emotion. You need sleep, food, sex, safety, every other thing you're doing is either obtaining that or laying the groundwork to obtain it. This is your monkey, or as I said, your wind-up toy.
The wind-up toy *can* be coded to behave a little differently in the future, but getting to act differently takes (1) conscious effort, being very aware of yourself even in your day to day actions watching for the opportunity to take the new chosen action rather than the usual one, and (2) lots of practice at this until it takes less mental focus to do, and becomes the default path the wind-up toy will take.
This explains much about people acting like hypocrites. Their programmer is well intended and may even have a good idea, but without focused practice with the wind-up toy, the toy is likely to plow through on the old course of action. This is a programmer who does not test his code, or tests it in production only; not necessarily a deceitful person (though that is common too).
Otherwise, full metaphor holds. Know your wind-up toy, know how stubborn, reactive, and "big" it is, and work *with* it.
I don't think that human beings can want sleep, food, sex, and safety without having in mind a fairly comprehensive picture of the world in terms of which those things make sense. This is especially evident in the case of sex; sexual desire entails an awareness of its object as complementary other-self. I notice, too, that you leave power off of your list even though this was the original goal for Curtis's monkey -- and power has to be left off of the list because desire for power is even more evidently worldview-embedded than is desire for sex. People can't want power with having in mind some idea of the self or group of selves that they'd be dominating -- self as self, selves as selves.
Oh, in re-reading my post, I already saw that I left a lot of things out, I spat that out pretty quick. But I did get the bulk of the idea out, and I didn't want to draw away from the OP much, so I tried to save space. Yes power would be on that list, though I would also say not everyone has the ambition to power, such as myself. Then again, some people feel they don't need sleep (also me, ha), and others have a low sex drive, so all of these examples have various degrees of pull on each individual. To sidestep the entire pedantic argument, let's reduce it to "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" and the rest of the argument holds. I do see your point about the OP and GM generally being power-focused, but that's sort of beside the point now that we've derailed into the topic of knowing the self. The point is that base motivations (no need to specify) are acted on subconsciously/on auto-pilot/by monkey and can frequently not concur with conscious/ego's motives, and especially statements and willful actions.
But while we're off-topic to the off-topic, ha... You're right about the sex as relationship aspect, and I was fully aware of that, but didn't take the time to be specific about it. I submit that we are both right, in that sex drive likewise has a wide range from sex at any cost for no reproductive value (e.g. rape), for lifetime pair bonding, to no sexual desire at all, and many points in between and tangential. So I assert that in my model, again, specific motives not actually being relevant to the ego/id dichotomy assertion. If one leans more on the rape side, consideration of an Other and their motives and movements is rather irrelevant (this of course being repugnant and evil, but I'm describing mechanics here). If one leans on not so much the act of sex, but a desire for companionship, then indeed great interest in the motives, movements, and needs of an Other are germane to the pursuit, which frequently would require more conscious thought along the way, pure id is unlikely to achieve success in this market.
Therefore, I agree with you that there are sometimes further requirements to reach each of these goals, sometime more in quantity, sometimes more in depth, etc. and that One's awareness of reality and the obstacles will require different things from the id and the ego... But all of that can be black-boxed into "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs," and the additional requirements baked into problem solving of the pursuit. In the end, where does this puzzle get delegated to solve? If it's rather simplistic (for this individual), I assert that the id will simply snatch it from the queue and handle it. If it's more complex, the id may need to borrow more of the ego's processing focus to pursue it. But then that leads us back to the point of the OP and monkey metaphor: Being aware that the id exists in the first place, and then further aware of what sort of work it takes automatically and with what level of aggression, is very important to knowing the self, and predicting real-world application of the self/will in the social reality.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I guess my position here is that any goal at all can be striven-for "sometimes more in quantity, sometimes more in depth, etc.," as you put it, so that the most helpful way to distinguish between drives for X, Y, and Z would be to classify the goals of these drives as intrinsically good, neutral, or bad, as opposed to classifying them as bestial, divine or beastgodly.
We agree that the drives that are often dismissed as bestial can be experienced intelligently. My remaining difference with you here, I believe, is that I see a lot of what would usually be dismissed as merely bestial as intelligent, and also a lot of what would usually be admired as intelligent as being no less thoughtless than a lot of what would usually be dismissed as merely bestial. You brought up the case of a rapist's sex-drive, for example -- but the rapist won't be satisfied by operating upon unconscious humanoid devices, which indicates that the idea of the object of his operation as a self is essential to his sense of what he's doing. And on the other hand, a lot of apparently philosophical and theological activity is just a puzzle-solving game or a construction-enterprise comparable to a beaver's dam-building or a bird's nest-building activity.
It's just occurred to me that maybe every intelligently undertaken action is intrinsically good -- even eating and relaxing into sleep. Well, this is not an original thought, is it. But maybe every intelligent action boils down to an engagement with divine other-self or something like that -- which is why religiously observant people say blessings before and after meals; they want to eat with the right attitude.
So, maybe there's a single meta-action -- engagement with other-self -- and a refusal to engage in this meta-action, a shrinking-away from it into stupidity. And that's the basic division between good and bad. But the will to shrink away from engagement is necessarily intelligent, albeit self-destructively so. So, the rapist intelligently annihilates his own intelligence.
Oops, meant to throw in the (by no means exhaustive) list of sex drives, desire to reproduce in and of itself. Worth noting, this can be mixed in with other things, from being purely Machiavellian and thinking one needs heirs, to narcissistic in propagating one's worldview into the future, to mixed with simple warm-hearted desires for family and bonds and wanting to share love with another, etc. Again, you can't neatly box any of the sub-motives, which is why I bracketed them all as "sex drive," because from there, all the same complexities of Self, sorting Self, and interfacing Self with Others (all capitalized to cite Sartre as source, lol) still apply.
As Curtis acknowledges when he says "Your monkey is you," my desire for power isn't really an entity distinct from me that I can gratify or disappoint. I'm the one who wants power. I gratify or disappoint myself when I do self-empowering things or refrain from doing them. He's only recommending that I pretend that a monkey-like entity distinct from myself wants power, while I myself don't want it. Okay, so when I'm pretending this what I should I think of myself, as opposed to my monkey, as wanting?
Suppose that there are five things that I ultimately want, power being one of them. Does Curtis think that I should pretend that my monkey wants power, while I want the other four? Or would he advise me to pretend that a distinct animal wants each of the things that are somewhat dangerous to have or even to strive for? Maybe I should pretend that I want theoretical understanding and friendship, while various beasts that are somewhat attached to me want power, fun, and comfort? My monkey wants power, my dog wants fun, and my pig wants comfort?
If I'm really the one who wants power, though, can it truly be best for me that I pretend that this isn't so? It seems as though the default-assumption should be that clear perception of what's going on is more helpful in practical affairs than guidance by cartoon-maps. Suppose that my clear perception of what's going on includes an awareness that power is neither good nor bad in itself. Why then would I be better off thinking "Shall I gratify my monkey or not?" than thinking "Shall I go for power in this situation or not?"
Of course, if you can't clearly perceive what's going on then guidance by a cartoon-map would be better than blundering around without any guidance at all. Maybe Curtis thinks that our sense of what should be done in particular situations is so vague and confused that we'd be best guided by a cartoon in which our basic desires are depicted as the desires of various animals. But we'd still have to decide whether the imaginary monkey should be gratified or disappointed, so the cartoon won't be helpful until the environment around the monkey and the other imaginary animals has been sketched in, with pathways leading here and there and various dangers noted. (I have the map in My Father's Dragon in mind.)
I guess the figure of a monkey as the subject of one's desire for power is only supposed to be a tool for reminding oneself that power isn't good in itself. So, if something’s good in itself then I needn’t imagine that something other than myself wants it. If theoretical understanding and friendship are good in themselves, then, I can imagine that I myself want these things, while imagining that various animals want the other things that I want. But if I’m sure that theoretical understanding and friendship are the only things that are good in themselves, then wouldn't it be sufficient that I remind myself that this is so? If I kept myself aware that theoretical understanding and friendship are the sole intrinsically good things, then I wouldn't have to imagine a monkey, a dog, and a pig as wanting the other things that I want.
Maybe, though, we're necessarily guided by cartoons, so that we can only keep ourselves aware that theoretical understanding and friendship are the sole intrinsically good things by imagining these things as scenes in a Paradise or Lorien toward which we're slowly struggling. And if we have to imagine our intrinsically good goals in this way, then maybe we can't help imagining our desires for the things that aren't intrinsically good as animals distinct from ourselves that accompany and distract us as we proceed toward Paradise or Lorien.
It’s not just being-at-the-goal that can be good or bad; the things that happen along the way can be good or bad. In the case of power-striving, the things that happen along the way are likely to be more dangerous to oneself and others than the actual empowerment would be. The imaginary monkey would be enormous and spastic, flailing its ten-foot-long arms around as it scrambles in zigzags toward its goal. Wouldn’t this be a problem in our striving toward intrinsically good things too, though? Striving toward theoretical understanding, I can upset other people with my unaffectionate withdrawal and rude questions; striving toward friendship I can disconcert and even frighten other people with the blundering manner of my effort. How would the overall-cartoon incorporate these difficulties? If I also imagine my desires for theoretical understanding and friendship as animals with problematic tendencies – the former desire as a myopic giraffe, perhaps, and the latter as a gigantic crippled rabbit – then what’s left of me? Why would I care more about the rabbit’s success than about the monkey’s?
I think you’re making the cartoon monkey model out to be a lot more detailed and mechanistic than it needs to be. It sounds to me like it’s intended to be a heuristic for reminding oneself not all motivations are rational and oriented towards long term happiness. This doesn’t make them bad, or even useless, just situation specific as to when you trust them. I interpreted the monkey as the limbic system from the previous post rather than as specifically one set of base human motivation. But maybe I’m wrong and CY wants us all to be zookeepers.
I guess I'm just wondering which cartoons would be most helpful, and what would make one cartoon more helpful than another.
Curtis's picture in that previous post of a limbic system getting directly hooked up with a mouth kind of bugged me, because limbic systems don't feel or want anything; WE feel and want things. He seemed to be imagining limbic systems as conscious invertebrate parasites there. Maybe you're right -- in the present post the invertebrate parasite has morphed into a monkey.
I agree that the monkey-image is supposed to remind us that being powerful won't won't necessarily make us feel okay about ourselves and our lives -- and that our efforts to empower ourselves might make us feel crappier overall regardless of whether or not they're fruitful. I guess to the extent that we achieve theoretical understanding and friendship we'll feel great, but our efforts to achieve these things might make us feel crappier than we'd feel if we'd never bothered.
But I guess if we try hard then God'll be our friend and the object of our theoretical understanding in Heaven, no matter how crappy we feel here and now.
A man is made up of a number of different desires like you said, but it's up to the rational mind to balance these desires. The monkey's will to dominate might conflict with the giraffe's desire for friends, or the rabbit's desire for safety. The monkey could also find allies, like the peacock's desire for praise. You should try and keep all the animals fed, instead of giving just one all the food at the expense of the others
Does the man himself only want to balance all of these desires, or does he have his own goal/s? Plato pictures our sensual appetites as a many-headed-monster, our ambition as a lion, and our thoughtfulness as an inner man who's supposed to domesticate those two beasts -- so, the true inner self (intellect) has its own ultimate goal, which is theoretical understanding.
I was imagining desire for theoretical understanding as a giraffe (head in the clouds, but myopic, so tends to step on people), and desire for friendship as a rabbit (soft and cuddly but gigantic and crippled, so tends to knock people over), by the way. But if all basic desires, including these desires for intrinsically good things, are imagined as animals, then the self that harmonizes them all would be an indefinite ghost -- a ghostly zookeeper, as Dr. Nihil suggests.
(Your peacock is a good addition to the menagerie. Most people who want social power also want to be noticed and praised, but it's possible that someone would want to pull strings from the shadows, so that desire for power is distinguishable from desire for praise.)
Nietzsche said that eventually one desire, or will, would triumph over the others and consolidate power over the man. Siddhartha said that man should overcome all desires, and put the animals in their cages. Trad-wisdom, christ, the apostles, and the prophets says that every desire has it's own specific limits, e.g. limit your lust to your wife.
Asking what's the highest goal you shoot for is the same as asking what's the meaning of life
Well, let's ask about the meaning of life, then! Doesn't Jesus say or at least strongly suggest that our ultimate goal is communion with God or something like that? Maybe the difference between Jesus and Plato (trad-wisdom) is that while Plato sees our ultimate goal as a one-way gazing-on-divine-beauty, Jesus sees this divine beauty as gazing back at us.
Thanks, Uncle Yarv!
sorry Kurt, but "Maximilian from Alice Springs" is obviously a Fed
"subversion" look it up
Moldbug > Yarvin
A promise broken is your fault. A broken promise believed would be mine.
If anyone is looking for something to read, @WrathOfGnon is on Substack now, and he's doing a whole series on building cities at the human scale. https://wrathofgnon.substack.com/
The best artists reinvent themselves.
REEEEE!!!!
Wait, monkeys? All right! Monkeys rock.
This is a common misconception, easily refuted. Monkeys have tails. I ain't no monkey, I'm a Great Ape.
My version of the monkey model, likely also borrowed from ego/id dichotomy of Freud (which he dropped in favor of repressed sexual obsessions....weirdo), is the programmer/wind-up toy model. Day to day, you're going through your routines, and solving problems big and tiny all day, mostly on auto-pilot. Your internalized processes have already set up the algorithms to execute and even react to exceptions, mostly informed from previous experiences. The real question is, in the previous experience, did you passively experience, or think and analyze consciously and decide this is what you would do different in the future?
The ego is the core consciousness inner narrative, and consequently, relevant to your last post, the narcissist, who draws an image of you *want* to be, and often who you *think* you are. It does, in a very Progressive way, gayly decides how the future should be, and assumes that it is already on the way to that, if not already that.
The id is the auto-pilot, the subconscious, no narrative other than raw reactionary emotion. You need sleep, food, sex, safety, every other thing you're doing is either obtaining that or laying the groundwork to obtain it. This is your monkey, or as I said, your wind-up toy.
The wind-up toy *can* be coded to behave a little differently in the future, but getting to act differently takes (1) conscious effort, being very aware of yourself even in your day to day actions watching for the opportunity to take the new chosen action rather than the usual one, and (2) lots of practice at this until it takes less mental focus to do, and becomes the default path the wind-up toy will take.
This explains much about people acting like hypocrites. Their programmer is well intended and may even have a good idea, but without focused practice with the wind-up toy, the toy is likely to plow through on the old course of action. This is a programmer who does not test his code, or tests it in production only; not necessarily a deceitful person (though that is common too).
Otherwise, full metaphor holds. Know your wind-up toy, know how stubborn, reactive, and "big" it is, and work *with* it.
I don't think that human beings can want sleep, food, sex, and safety without having in mind a fairly comprehensive picture of the world in terms of which those things make sense. This is especially evident in the case of sex; sexual desire entails an awareness of its object as complementary other-self. I notice, too, that you leave power off of your list even though this was the original goal for Curtis's monkey -- and power has to be left off of the list because desire for power is even more evidently worldview-embedded than is desire for sex. People can't want power with having in mind some idea of the self or group of selves that they'd be dominating -- self as self, selves as selves.
Oh, in re-reading my post, I already saw that I left a lot of things out, I spat that out pretty quick. But I did get the bulk of the idea out, and I didn't want to draw away from the OP much, so I tried to save space. Yes power would be on that list, though I would also say not everyone has the ambition to power, such as myself. Then again, some people feel they don't need sleep (also me, ha), and others have a low sex drive, so all of these examples have various degrees of pull on each individual. To sidestep the entire pedantic argument, let's reduce it to "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" and the rest of the argument holds. I do see your point about the OP and GM generally being power-focused, but that's sort of beside the point now that we've derailed into the topic of knowing the self. The point is that base motivations (no need to specify) are acted on subconsciously/on auto-pilot/by monkey and can frequently not concur with conscious/ego's motives, and especially statements and willful actions.
But while we're off-topic to the off-topic, ha... You're right about the sex as relationship aspect, and I was fully aware of that, but didn't take the time to be specific about it. I submit that we are both right, in that sex drive likewise has a wide range from sex at any cost for no reproductive value (e.g. rape), for lifetime pair bonding, to no sexual desire at all, and many points in between and tangential. So I assert that in my model, again, specific motives not actually being relevant to the ego/id dichotomy assertion. If one leans more on the rape side, consideration of an Other and their motives and movements is rather irrelevant (this of course being repugnant and evil, but I'm describing mechanics here). If one leans on not so much the act of sex, but a desire for companionship, then indeed great interest in the motives, movements, and needs of an Other are germane to the pursuit, which frequently would require more conscious thought along the way, pure id is unlikely to achieve success in this market.
Therefore, I agree with you that there are sometimes further requirements to reach each of these goals, sometime more in quantity, sometimes more in depth, etc. and that One's awareness of reality and the obstacles will require different things from the id and the ego... But all of that can be black-boxed into "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs," and the additional requirements baked into problem solving of the pursuit. In the end, where does this puzzle get delegated to solve? If it's rather simplistic (for this individual), I assert that the id will simply snatch it from the queue and handle it. If it's more complex, the id may need to borrow more of the ego's processing focus to pursue it. But then that leads us back to the point of the OP and monkey metaphor: Being aware that the id exists in the first place, and then further aware of what sort of work it takes automatically and with what level of aggression, is very important to knowing the self, and predicting real-world application of the self/will in the social reality.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I guess my position here is that any goal at all can be striven-for "sometimes more in quantity, sometimes more in depth, etc.," as you put it, so that the most helpful way to distinguish between drives for X, Y, and Z would be to classify the goals of these drives as intrinsically good, neutral, or bad, as opposed to classifying them as bestial, divine or beastgodly.
We agree that the drives that are often dismissed as bestial can be experienced intelligently. My remaining difference with you here, I believe, is that I see a lot of what would usually be dismissed as merely bestial as intelligent, and also a lot of what would usually be admired as intelligent as being no less thoughtless than a lot of what would usually be dismissed as merely bestial. You brought up the case of a rapist's sex-drive, for example -- but the rapist won't be satisfied by operating upon unconscious humanoid devices, which indicates that the idea of the object of his operation as a self is essential to his sense of what he's doing. And on the other hand, a lot of apparently philosophical and theological activity is just a puzzle-solving game or a construction-enterprise comparable to a beaver's dam-building or a bird's nest-building activity.
It's just occurred to me that maybe every intelligently undertaken action is intrinsically good -- even eating and relaxing into sleep. Well, this is not an original thought, is it. But maybe every intelligent action boils down to an engagement with divine other-self or something like that -- which is why religiously observant people say blessings before and after meals; they want to eat with the right attitude.
So, maybe there's a single meta-action -- engagement with other-self -- and a refusal to engage in this meta-action, a shrinking-away from it into stupidity. And that's the basic division between good and bad. But the will to shrink away from engagement is necessarily intelligent, albeit self-destructively so. So, the rapist intelligently annihilates his own intelligence.
Oops, meant to throw in the (by no means exhaustive) list of sex drives, desire to reproduce in and of itself. Worth noting, this can be mixed in with other things, from being purely Machiavellian and thinking one needs heirs, to narcissistic in propagating one's worldview into the future, to mixed with simple warm-hearted desires for family and bonds and wanting to share love with another, etc. Again, you can't neatly box any of the sub-motives, which is why I bracketed them all as "sex drive," because from there, all the same complexities of Self, sorting Self, and interfacing Self with Others (all capitalized to cite Sartre as source, lol) still apply.
As Curtis acknowledges when he says "Your monkey is you," my desire for power isn't really an entity distinct from me that I can gratify or disappoint. I'm the one who wants power. I gratify or disappoint myself when I do self-empowering things or refrain from doing them. He's only recommending that I pretend that a monkey-like entity distinct from myself wants power, while I myself don't want it. Okay, so when I'm pretending this what I should I think of myself, as opposed to my monkey, as wanting?
Suppose that there are five things that I ultimately want, power being one of them. Does Curtis think that I should pretend that my monkey wants power, while I want the other four? Or would he advise me to pretend that a distinct animal wants each of the things that are somewhat dangerous to have or even to strive for? Maybe I should pretend that I want theoretical understanding and friendship, while various beasts that are somewhat attached to me want power, fun, and comfort? My monkey wants power, my dog wants fun, and my pig wants comfort?
If I'm really the one who wants power, though, can it truly be best for me that I pretend that this isn't so? It seems as though the default-assumption should be that clear perception of what's going on is more helpful in practical affairs than guidance by cartoon-maps. Suppose that my clear perception of what's going on includes an awareness that power is neither good nor bad in itself. Why then would I be better off thinking "Shall I gratify my monkey or not?" than thinking "Shall I go for power in this situation or not?"
Of course, if you can't clearly perceive what's going on then guidance by a cartoon-map would be better than blundering around without any guidance at all. Maybe Curtis thinks that our sense of what should be done in particular situations is so vague and confused that we'd be best guided by a cartoon in which our basic desires are depicted as the desires of various animals. But we'd still have to decide whether the imaginary monkey should be gratified or disappointed, so the cartoon won't be helpful until the environment around the monkey and the other imaginary animals has been sketched in, with pathways leading here and there and various dangers noted. (I have the map in My Father's Dragon in mind.)
I guess the figure of a monkey as the subject of one's desire for power is only supposed to be a tool for reminding oneself that power isn't good in itself. So, if something’s good in itself then I needn’t imagine that something other than myself wants it. If theoretical understanding and friendship are good in themselves, then, I can imagine that I myself want these things, while imagining that various animals want the other things that I want. But if I’m sure that theoretical understanding and friendship are the only things that are good in themselves, then wouldn't it be sufficient that I remind myself that this is so? If I kept myself aware that theoretical understanding and friendship are the sole intrinsically good things, then I wouldn't have to imagine a monkey, a dog, and a pig as wanting the other things that I want.
Maybe, though, we're necessarily guided by cartoons, so that we can only keep ourselves aware that theoretical understanding and friendship are the sole intrinsically good things by imagining these things as scenes in a Paradise or Lorien toward which we're slowly struggling. And if we have to imagine our intrinsically good goals in this way, then maybe we can't help imagining our desires for the things that aren't intrinsically good as animals distinct from ourselves that accompany and distract us as we proceed toward Paradise or Lorien.
It’s not just being-at-the-goal that can be good or bad; the things that happen along the way can be good or bad. In the case of power-striving, the things that happen along the way are likely to be more dangerous to oneself and others than the actual empowerment would be. The imaginary monkey would be enormous and spastic, flailing its ten-foot-long arms around as it scrambles in zigzags toward its goal. Wouldn’t this be a problem in our striving toward intrinsically good things too, though? Striving toward theoretical understanding, I can upset other people with my unaffectionate withdrawal and rude questions; striving toward friendship I can disconcert and even frighten other people with the blundering manner of my effort. How would the overall-cartoon incorporate these difficulties? If I also imagine my desires for theoretical understanding and friendship as animals with problematic tendencies – the former desire as a myopic giraffe, perhaps, and the latter as a gigantic crippled rabbit – then what’s left of me? Why would I care more about the rabbit’s success than about the monkey’s?
I think you’re making the cartoon monkey model out to be a lot more detailed and mechanistic than it needs to be. It sounds to me like it’s intended to be a heuristic for reminding oneself not all motivations are rational and oriented towards long term happiness. This doesn’t make them bad, or even useless, just situation specific as to when you trust them. I interpreted the monkey as the limbic system from the previous post rather than as specifically one set of base human motivation. But maybe I’m wrong and CY wants us all to be zookeepers.
I guess I'm just wondering which cartoons would be most helpful, and what would make one cartoon more helpful than another.
Curtis's picture in that previous post of a limbic system getting directly hooked up with a mouth kind of bugged me, because limbic systems don't feel or want anything; WE feel and want things. He seemed to be imagining limbic systems as conscious invertebrate parasites there. Maybe you're right -- in the present post the invertebrate parasite has morphed into a monkey.
I agree that the monkey-image is supposed to remind us that being powerful won't won't necessarily make us feel okay about ourselves and our lives -- and that our efforts to empower ourselves might make us feel crappier overall regardless of whether or not they're fruitful. I guess to the extent that we achieve theoretical understanding and friendship we'll feel great, but our efforts to achieve these things might make us feel crappier than we'd feel if we'd never bothered.
But I guess if we try hard then God'll be our friend and the object of our theoretical understanding in Heaven, no matter how crappy we feel here and now.
A man is made up of a number of different desires like you said, but it's up to the rational mind to balance these desires. The monkey's will to dominate might conflict with the giraffe's desire for friends, or the rabbit's desire for safety. The monkey could also find allies, like the peacock's desire for praise. You should try and keep all the animals fed, instead of giving just one all the food at the expense of the others
Does the man himself only want to balance all of these desires, or does he have his own goal/s? Plato pictures our sensual appetites as a many-headed-monster, our ambition as a lion, and our thoughtfulness as an inner man who's supposed to domesticate those two beasts -- so, the true inner self (intellect) has its own ultimate goal, which is theoretical understanding.
I was imagining desire for theoretical understanding as a giraffe (head in the clouds, but myopic, so tends to step on people), and desire for friendship as a rabbit (soft and cuddly but gigantic and crippled, so tends to knock people over), by the way. But if all basic desires, including these desires for intrinsically good things, are imagined as animals, then the self that harmonizes them all would be an indefinite ghost -- a ghostly zookeeper, as Dr. Nihil suggests.
(Your peacock is a good addition to the menagerie. Most people who want social power also want to be noticed and praised, but it's possible that someone would want to pull strings from the shadows, so that desire for power is distinguishable from desire for praise.)
Nietzsche said that eventually one desire, or will, would triumph over the others and consolidate power over the man. Siddhartha said that man should overcome all desires, and put the animals in their cages. Trad-wisdom, christ, the apostles, and the prophets says that every desire has it's own specific limits, e.g. limit your lust to your wife.
Asking what's the highest goal you shoot for is the same as asking what's the meaning of life
Well, let's ask about the meaning of life, then! Doesn't Jesus say or at least strongly suggest that our ultimate goal is communion with God or something like that? Maybe the difference between Jesus and Plato (trad-wisdom) is that while Plato sees our ultimate goal as a one-way gazing-on-divine-beauty, Jesus sees this divine beauty as gazing back at us.
The Monkey Sphere article was already written, thank you anyway.