Human internal states can be abstracted and explained in many ways. Much of the Philosophy of Mind wishes to explain the relationship of the human consciousness to the body and how that effects us. This is not that. This is an abstracting layer above the Philosophy of Mind that wishes to give us meaningful interpretation of the mind and its faculties. These interpretations are far from unique and are what I use to define the internal state of being that I hold.
Breaking Down the internal world
From my observations, the mind consists of three parts. These parts work more as groupings of wants, processes, needs, and feelings rather than parts of their own. This allows for ease of abstraction of said wants, processes, needs, and feelings into easily readable and understandable groups.
The Mind - Logos - The part of the internal world that is responsible for all higher level thinking. This is usually the part of the mind that is called "rational". It is integral for Humans to keep this part of their mind or else risk the other two sections of it.
The Body - Base Pleasures and Feelings - The animal part of the internal world that is responsible for what people call "lower order pleasures". This would be the sexual satisfactions, the satiation of hunger, the quenching of thirst, and the needs for intimacy. All pleasures here find a direct parallel to some form of satisfaction that can exist in a bodily fashion. This also means that pleasures here are the most impacting on the health of the physical body and the mind (i.e drug usage, obesity, and addictions are highly bodily pleasures that, if run rampant, can do much more damage than poisons to the soul).
The Soul - The Human Spirit, whatever it may be - This part of the internal world is the love of the higher order pleasures. It embodies the human wish to create and have meaningful experience. To a religious believer, this would be akin to God's gift of the ability to create to man in the form of satisfaction from creation (as humans are mirrors of God). To the irreligious though, the human spirit can be more of an internal manifestation of the want for goal orientation work that our time evolving has given us. Rather one subscribes to either of these theories (or something else entirely), it is clear that the purpose and feelings of the soul give us the ability, want, and desire for something greater than the self. Most of the time it is productive creation, alignment with movements, or other forms of groupthink and tribalism that in some way create. This too, like body, can be hijacked by the world for misdeeds. One could align themselves with personally unsatisfactory movements, movements that harm, or associate with horrible and unsustainable people. Also too one could use their tools and gift of creation not for good, but instead for evil that doesn't satisfy themselves. Worst of all though is indulging too much in soulful activities without the checks of The Mind (logic) and The Body (practicality and reality) could easily lead to adoption of philosophies, political structures, and ways of creation that, while higher order, are not reflective of our world and serve no utility to Mind or Body.
The Internal World and Personal Satisfaction
The Mind, Body, and Soul all play integral parts in the development of a human. Without one of the three, a person will most definitely fail in some spectacular way. A man without a mind is an idiot, and an idiot cannot sustain his needs of soul and body. Said idiot would be more willing to take upon pleasures in both that are unsustainable or unhealthy. An idiot without proper rationality is left unchecked to the whim of the soul and the whim of the mind: he is short sighted. A short sighted man will stumble and fall eventually and (if not checked by others) could easily land himself into a position of soulful or bodily dissatisfaction.
A man without a Soul is a husk. He has the logical capabilities to sustain his body, and likely easily does so, but his soul goes unnurtured and undeveloped. Such a man remains empty throughout his course of life, only really attached to what is physically there. A man who glues himself to physicality will end up in a position negative to him. The consumer, the drug addict, and fetishizer (all of whom put product in high regard) are unhappy, unsatisfied people who, in the end, are experiencing a lesser reality to those who are achieved.
A man without a body is a drifter. He has the logical capabilities and time to sustain his mind, but is not satisfied in his worldly pleasures. This type of dissatisfaction is much more common in the modern world in where one can obsess themselves in ideologue, identity, and politics more than they can invest themselves in their self, personal pleasures, relationships, or community. Such sorry displays of obsession can be found within the incel communities, a people who have no attachment to the physical world in terms of relationships, love, or kindness, and thus obsess over a philosophy they have made up. These people in specific have let their philosophy go unchallenged (similar to many in the post-modern movement) and thus have, by sheer will and ignorance, left themselves in a dangerous position. A similar scenario can be found with those who are philosophically uninclined but involved in politics or movements. They have managed to foster a meaningless intellectual and spiritual pursuit, a surrogate task if you will, that produces no good for the body or sustainability of the mind. Such fanaticism exists simply for the sake of justifying itself; it exists to make sure that the victim of it continues to be spiritually satisfied, but bodily failing.
A man with neither body or soul is a failure. For he is both unmotivated and unmotivated. He is a living vegetable who pursues nothing. Such failure lives in degrees with underpreformance and both body and soul being the least offensive and the most being a state of catatonia. Such a man, when stumbled across, is a being of pure pity, not even exploitable by the consumers or fanatics for their sick needs due to the lack of a will in these people. Generally speaking, these people are insane.
To brighten the mood though, a man with both a healthy body and soul with a sustained and capable mind is peak manhood. For he who exhibits all the traits needed to get along is fully a person. Said person is, generally speaking, is content with life. He may feel pain, suffering, or sorrow on some days, but those days do not define him and, for the most part, he is in a fine position. A man like this can have degrees above him (all in increasingly magnitudes of virtuousness) that make him more of a man, and if peak potential is reached, a superman. These statuses though are far from linear and should be no source of confidence. They are merely statements of how "better off" someone is than someone else, not how much utility they serve. A drifter or a husk could have great skills in cooking and baking, superior to that of the best superman, and therefore have more utility, but the superman is better off than the husk or drifter by a long shot.
The Importance of each of the values
Though, the assertion of these classes of people does beg a question: why are soul, body, and mind the valuable groupings in a person? Each value has its own reasonings:
- Mind - The mind is the sustainer of movement and action. If one cannot make decisions with the rational faculties that exist in the mind, that person can not sustain himself. Thus, the supreme value of the mind comes from its practicality in sustaining spirit and body.
- Spirit - The Spirit is the execution of the internal goals. This internal execution is commonly referred to "self-actualization" and is touted as the "point of life" by many. Although, the spirit is important in creating meaning (as someone who is not reasonably challenged by goals and effortful works that one wishes to create will be greatly upset by the work), it is not the sole point, more on that later. The spirit, when satisfied, can be a tool of great amounts of creation. Due to this, there is a high prize on the goodness of a spirit as it best allows a person to innovate and practice what they care about.
- Body - The body is the physical needs. The need for good food, good sleep, a healthy sexuality, good health, entertainment, and companionship. All of these fall under the bodily needs and, if these are ignored, can lead to plenty of unpleasantries. The base of the bodily needs (food, shelter, water, etc.) are paramount for survival and if these needs are not met will lead to a person's demise. The upper bodily needs of socialization, sexuality, entertainment, and companionship are too very important, not deathly important on their own, but certainly important. Without these outlets a person will feel physically unsatisfied. An dissatisfaction that, depending on the person, can manifest in illogical or irrational behaviors. A man may kill due to his loneliness, start uncontainable fires due to his boredom, or rape and coerce in the name of his lust. All these symptoms of a unsatisfied body are marks of insanity and unhappiness. Thus, The physical pleasure should be treated with high regard and not ignored. If a man finds satisfaction in his physical pleasures by natural and non-harmful means (such as playing a sport for entertainment or going to public outings to socialization) that is fine and should not be abstained from. There are those who wish to ignore the need for the material, physical, and bodily when it comes to goodness. Those zealots wish to suppress the healthy and good natured man in the pursuit of some higher virtue that, in all likelihood, is not virtue, but instead a means of control of individuals into gaining their bodily pleasures in approved of ways. Though, it should go without saying, that the bodily pleasure, being physical, is the most weak to the powers of addiction and abuse. A man must be careful to meet his needs, but not saturate himself with license and overdoing. If he overdoses on what makes him feel good, he may end up overriding his mind's capability to reason, thus letting the stability in that pleasure he had slip away.