Willpower and obedience are, one might think, contradictory concepts, hardly likely to be confused. Yet, as this interesting comic shows, when these contradictory concepts act on opposing things – ideas and desires – it’s difficult to tell them apart.
The traditional take on quitting a habit is the one Sanus espouses, that of willpower. A person has desires – in this case, for a cigarette – and ideas (or perhaps, ideals, long term desires as opposed to the immediate one to smoke). The desire is a craving that beckons, and – in the absence of any opposing force – you might succumb to it. Willpower is that opposing force, which, if sufficiently powerful, holds you back from falling into the abyss of desire. This is the story of suppressing or overcoming your true desires to achieve the ‘ideal’ you have set in your mind, in the belief that it is what is ‘good’ for you, even if, deep down, you don’t really want it.
Amencia’s argument is more unusual and interesting. Willpower is the force that propels you towards a desire, not away from it. Obedience, not willpower, prevents succumbing to desire, by submitting to an idea that runs contrary to the desire. Since the desire is immediate, it belongs to the present. The idea, on the other hand, is a long-lasting one, which, though retaining its hold in the present, originates from the past. Resistance through obedience thus implies loyalty to the past self who came up with the idea, over the present self who has at this very moment a desire.
Obedience to this past self, over asserting one’s immediate will, is Amencia’s take. Willing to act in accordance with a past resolution, instead of submitting to an immediate desire, is Sanus’. Though Sanus’ take is more conventional and intuitive, Amencia’s example is difficult to argue with. The place where one sticks to one’s ideas in the face of competing immediate desires – such as the army, or a monastery – is the place one is taught to obey.
Both Sanus and Amencia offer compelling arguments, so who makes more sense? Though the comic seems to suggest Amencia, the answer, I think, is both. The difference between the two is more of wordplay and semantics than substance. They do not, as Amencia says, teach one to be wilful in the military, but wilfulness is different from, and even often contrary to, willpower.
Obedience is not contrary to willpower, even if it is contrary to wilfulness. Obedience is, in fact, strongly correlated to willpower, and builds upon it. To continue with the example of the military, a weak-willed soldier is unlikely to survive the rigours of training, and more likely to defect than obey during wartime. Obedience demands willpower – the more difficult the task, the greater the obedience it compels, and the greater the willpower required to sustain that obedience.
Obedience is the acceptance of an external authority, real or imagined, whether it be obedience to a god, an institution, a human, an idea or another. Willpower is obedience to oneself, a subset of obedience. When the authority happens to be internal, obedience is willpower; in other cases, obedience subsumes willpower, as willpower underlies obedience. I can choose to obey someone or something, but to continue to obey my choice to undertake such obedience, particularly at those moments when this obedience is most difficult or demanding, requires willpower.
In that particular case when there is no such authority but myself, we speak of willpower rather than obedience, for they are the same. Sanus’ choice to quit smoking is obedience to himself, which is willpower. Sanus’ choice to obey his father’s command to quit smoking also requires willpower, to continue to obey his choice to obey his father’s injunction just when a smoke is most tempting. And it is Sanus’ wilfulness that drives him to smoke in the face of his commitments not to.
But how far is this true? Willpower tends to have majorly positive connotations; obedience, on the other hand, has both positive and negative ones in nearly equal measure. So long as one speaks of obedience as a virtue, it appears to build upon willpower. A significant share of obedience, however, stems not from a strong will that resists temptations or surmounts challenges, but a weak one that gives into them. Obedience can just as well be the opposite of willpower, as when one obeys out of fear and greed – out of a lack of willpower. One speaks of sycophancy rather than willpower when talking of those who obey tyrants.
This is, in fact, the kind of obedience which involves giving in to one’s desires at the cost of one’s ideas, instead of Amencia’s obedience that conquers one’s desires by sticking to one’s ideas. One obeys tyrants by selling one’s principles or ideas for power or pelf or safety.
Here too, however, there is no contradiction, for Amencia’s idea holds, and the distinction is simply a play on words. The one who obeys another for the sake of reward in reality suffers from a lack of obedience to his principles or ideas, unable to stick to them in the face of competing desires. ‘Obeying’ another through inducement (coercion is a separate matter) is less of ‘obedience’ than it is temptation – yet another victory of wilfulness over obedience and willpower.
A more difficult question to answer is why we have this distinction with two different terms for the same principle, depending on the source of authority. Obedience when listening to another, willpower when listening to oneself. As Amencia says, the struggle between idea and desire would be identical even if it was not your idea that you attempt to obey, but another’s. That is, I suspect, not entirely true. The struggle may indeed be identical on the outside, to an external observer, but internally, perhaps, it need not be so.
A fear of consequences might compel obedience to another. Willpower, however, is generally a more positive force, I think, driven by carrots rather than a stick. One might complete a difficult workout to avoid disappointing their trainer, or by the more positive thought of how they’d feel to achieve it – in one case, a fear, and in another, an inducement. This is obviously anecdotal, and it might be that the distinction between the two is simply a question of language and semantics.
To conclude then, what Sanus needs to quit smoking is both willpower and obedience, for it is willpower that will ensure his obedience to his idea over giving in to his desire.