Self Mastery, not Self Control

by Antonio Dias

The title of this post is a nod at an earlier post, Mastery, not Control, in which I laid out a case for distinguishing between these two terms and showing the consequences related to each. In the end, that post did rely on distinguishing self-mastery from the will-to-control. This is still the case here, but what I’d like to clarify is how self-mastery is distinct from what we know of as self control, not versus any form of control, but the ways in which we expect to be able to – and feel the need that we must – control ourselves or fall into some sort of chaos or evil.