Category: Sage Advice

Food: Medicine, Drug, or Fuel?

In an excess of the ascetic, the author of The Confessions in Book Ten, Chapter 31 recommends taking food as medicine. At the opposite extreme we find those for whom it is a soporific, a sedative, an escape from reality, a drug. The wise tread the middle path: food is fuel.  

Eat in quantity and quality precisely that alone which optimally fuels fratre asino so that he may bear up well in this vale where his services are indispensable.   Properly fortified, he will carry your load over many a pons asinorum.

Kerouac No Role Model

Lest I lead  astray any young and impressionable readers, I am duty-bound to point out that my annual October focus on Kerouac is by no means to be taken as an endorsement of him as someone to be imitated.  Far from it! He failed utterly to live up to the Christian precepts that he learned as a child and the Buddhist precepts he assiduously studied in the mid-1950s.  Not that he was a hypocrite; he was just a deeply flawed human being. 

I just now recall a critique of Kerouac by Douglas Groothuis from some years ago.  (Old Memory Babe ain't got nothing on me.)  Ah yes, here it is.   I am in basic agreement with it.

Fake it and Make it

 When we started out, did we know what we were doing? We do now.

A bit of posturing and pretense may be needed to launch a life. Posture and pretense become performance. The untested ideal becomes the verified real. At the start of a life scant is the evidence that you can do what you dream: you must believe beyond the evidence if you are to have a shot.

And so I beg to differ with W. K. Clifford:

Clifford insuff evidence

For a couple of rather more technical treatments, see here.

Care of Soul and Body

To care properly for the first, live each day as if it will be your last. To care properly for the second, live each day as if your supply of days is infinite. (Adapted from Evagrius Ponticus.)

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The mortalist body-abuser is one puzzling hombre.

Christopher Hitchens loved to drink and he loved to smoke and he knew that the synergistic effects of drinking like a fish and smoking like a chimney could lead, as it did in the case of Humphrey Bogart, to an untimely shuffling off of the mortal coil.  (Hamlet's soliloquy, Act 3, Scene 1) You would think that someone who was utterly convinced that he was nothing more than an animated body, a clever land mammal, would want to take care of  his body. Hitchens was not suicidal. He loved to write and he had writing projects planned out. He died of cancer of the esophagus at age 62 in 2011. Those of us who champion  free speech miss him greatly and what he would have had to say about the current state of the world.  

People think they have plenty of time. But it's later than you think. The Reaper Man is sharpening his scythe as we scribblers sharpen our pencils.

Stoic Advice

KNOW IN ADVANCE that people will respond to you in the most diverse ways, favorably, with hostility, indifferently, in every way. Do not be surprised or much affected. Take as much of it as you can with equanimity. Observe their antics  with detachment.  Observe as well your emotional responses. 

Treat feelings and emotions as they arise  as interesting objects of study.  Holding them at mental arm's length, objectifying them, we lessen their grip on us.

Self-Admonitions

Arm yourself with your maxims as you quit your cell. They are as important as your EDC. The vexatious and worse are out and about. Avoid the near occasion of idle talk. Most of what anyone has to say is bushwa. Smile and greet, but pass on. Restrain the social need — if it is a need. Keep the past at mental arm's length.  Live in the present, relaxed, but situationally aware. Guard the mind. Protect the inner citadel from pointless and harmful invasions.

Ingredients of Happiness

What makes for happiness?

Acceptance is a good part of it: acceptance of self, of one's ineluctable  limitations, of others and their limitations, of one's lot in life, of one's place in the natural hierarchy of prowess and intellect and spiritual capacity, acceptance of the inevitable in the world at large. 

Gratitude is another ingredient in happiness: one cultivates gratitude for and appreciation of what one has here and now without comparisons to an idealized past, a feared future, or to the lots of others.  No regret, resentment, worry, or comparison.  Comparison breeds envy, one of the seven deadly sins. Be your incomparable self. If you are not yet incomparable, take up self-individuation as a life project. Realize yourself. Your life is more a task than a given, a task of transmuting givens into accomplishments.  It is the task of becoming actually the unique person you are potentially. But no hankering for what is out of reach. No false ideals. No consorting with the utopian.  No Lennon-esque imagining of the impossible. No dreaming impossible dreams. 

You were born somewhere in the natural hierarchy of physical endowment, moral and affective and aesthetic sensitivity, mental power, spiritual capacity, and strength of will. But your place in the hierarchy allows for development. Know your place but press against its upper limits.

But of course happiness is not just a matter of attitude and exertion but also rests on contingency and luck.  We need, but cannot command, the world's cooperation. Happenstance holds happiness hostage.  You were dealt a bad hand? Suck it up and play it the best you can for as long as you can.

Conservatives emphasize attitude and exertion, leftists happenstance. Both have a point.  "The harder I work, the luckier I become" is a conservative exaggeration, but a life-enhancing one.  It is however the foolish conservative who thinks he is self-made and not the beneficiary of a myriad of forces and factors far beyond his control.  There is truth in Phil Ochs' lament, "There but for fortune go you or I," but not such truth as to trump the conservative's exaggeration.  Weathering "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," (Hamlet, Act III, Scene I) he will slog on, per aspera ad astra.

Per aspera ad astra

 

Memory: Content and Affect

The trick is to retain the content so that one can rehearse it if one wishes, but without re-enacting the affect, unless one wishes.  Let me explain.

Suppose one recalls a long-past insult to oneself, and feels anger in the present as a result. The anger is followed by regret at not having responded in kind. (L'esprit de l'escalier.) And then perhaps there is disgust at oneself for having remained passive, for not having stood up to the aggressor and asserted oneself. This may be followed by annoyance with oneself for allowing these memorial affects  to arise one more time despite one's assiduous and protracted inner work. Finally, pessimism supervenes concerning the efficacy of attempts at self-improvement and mind control.  

Well, welcome to the human predicament.  Buck up, never give up. We are not here to slack off and have a good time. This world is preparatory and propadeutic if not penal. That is the right way to think of it. Live and strive. Leben und streben! Streben bis zum Sterben!  There is no guarantee that the "long, twilight struggle" will open out into  light.   For there are two twilights, one that leads to dawn, the other to dusk. But we live better if we believe in the advent of the first.

Judge your success not by how far you have to go, but how far you've come.

Inquire and aspire.  What Plato has Socrates say about inquiry (intellectual self-improvement) in response to Meno's Paradox is adaptable to aspiration (moral self-improvement).

And therefore we ought not to listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of inquiry: for it will make us idle; and is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive. (Plato, Meno, 81a-81e)

On Acquiring a Large Vocabulary

How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays.  The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

But what good is a large vocabulary in a society of semi-literates? Not only is it of little use, it can harm relations with regular guys social intercourse with whom can be useful.  Among the latter, one needs to pass oneself off as one of them. Use 'big words' and you will strike them as putting on airs, whether or not you are — not that the semi-literates would understand this old phrase.

While alive to and appreciative of the good in people, one should not overlook the prevalence of the mean, the paltry, the envious, and the resentful. In this joyous season, and in every season.

Happiness Maxims

Just over the transom:

I do want to thank you again for the 'happiness maxims'. I've been reading them to wifey recently, and over time I've benefited hugely from them.

Here they are again, easier to read, and slight emended.  This is a re-post from 26 May 2013.

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These maxims work for me; they may work for you.  Experiment.  The art of living can only be learned by living and trying and failing.

0. Make it a goal of your life to be as happy as circumstances permit.  Think of it as a moral obligation: a duty to oneself and to others.

1. Avoid unhappy people. Most of them live in hells of their own devising; you cannot help them, but they can harm you.

2. Avoid negativity. Squelch negative and useless thoughts as they arise. Your mind is your domain and you have (limited) control over it. Don't dwell on the limits; push against them and expand them. Refuse entry to all unwanted guests. With practice, the power of the mind to control itself can be developed.  There is no happiness without mind control.  Don't dwell on the evil and sordid sides of life.  Study them unflinchingly to learn the truths of the human predicament, but know how to look away when study time is over.

3. Set aside one hour per morning for formal meditation and the ruminative reading of high-grade self-help literature, e.g., the Stoics, but not just them. Go ahead, read Seligman, but read Seneca first.

4. Cultivate realistic expectations concerning the world and the people in it. This may require adjusting expectations downward. But this must be done without rancor, resentment, cynicism, or misanthropy. If you are shocked at the low level of your fellow human beings, blame yourself for having failed to cultivate reality-grounded expectations. 

Negative people typically feel well-justified in their negative assessments of the world and its denizens. Therein lie a snare and a delusion. Justified or not, they poison themselves with their negativity and dig their hole deeper. Not wise.

Know and accept your own limitations. Curtail ambition, especially as the years roll on. Don't overreach.  Enjoy what you have here and now.  Don't let hankering after a nonexistent future poison the solely existent present.

5. Blame yourself as far as possible for everything bad that happens to you. This is one of the attitudinal differences between a conservative and a liberal. When a conservative gets up in the morning, he looks into the mirror and says, "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. What happens to me today is up to me and in my control." He thereby exaggerates, but in a life-enhancing way. The liberal, by contrast, starts his day with the blame game: "I was bullied, people were mean to me, blah, blah, people suck, I'm a victim, I need a government program to stop me from mainlining heroin, blah, blah, et cetera ad nauseam. A caricature? Of course. But it lays bare some important home truths like all good caricatures do.

Perhaps we could say that the right-thinking person begins with a defeasible presumption in favor of his ability to rely on himself, to cope, to negotiate life's twists and turns, to get his head together, to be happy, to flourish. He thus places the burden of proof on the people and things outside him to defeat the presumption. Sometimes life defeats our presumption of well-being; but if we start with the presumption of ill-being, then we defeat ourselves.

We should presume ourselves to be successful in our pursuit of happiness until proven wrong.

6. Rely on yourself for your well-being as far as possible. Don't look to others.  You have no right to happiness and others have no obligation to provide it for you.  Your right is to the pursuit of happiness.  Learn to cultivate the soil of solitude. Happy solitude is the sole beatitude. O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo.  An exaggeration to be sure, but justified by the truth it contains. In the end, the individual is responsible for his happiness.

7. Practice mental self-control as difficult as it is.  Master desire and aversion. Our thoughts are the seeds of words and deeds.

8. Practice being grateful. Find ten things to be grateful for each morning.  Gratitude drives out resentment. The attitude of gratitude conduces to beatitude.

9. Limit comparisons with others. Comparisons often breed envy. The envious do not achieve well-being. Be yourself.

10. Fight the good fight against ignorance, evil, thoughtlessness, and tyranny, but don't sacrifice your happiness on the altar of activism.  We are not here to improve the world so much as to be improved by it.  It cannot be changed in any truly ameliorative and fundamental ways by our own efforts whether individual or collective.  If you fancy it can be, then go ahead and learn the hard way, assuming you don't make things worse.

11. Hope beyond this life.  One cannot live well in this life without hope.  Life is enhanced if you can bring yourself to believe beyond it as well.  No one knows whether we have a higher destiny.  If you are so inclined, investigate the matter.  But better than inquiry into the immortality of the soul is living in such a way as to deserve it.

Companion post:  Middle-sized Happiness

The Art of Life: Among ‘Regular Guys’

Among regular guys it is best to play the regular guy — as tiring and boring as that can be. Need relief? Strictly limit your time among regular guys. But mix with them a little lest you be hated for being 'aloof,' or 'unfriendly.'

As long as one is in the world, one must be able to pass as being of the world.

Almost all socializing is levelling and dispiriting.  It drains one's spiritual sap. But a little socializing is good, like a little whisky. In both cases, however, more is not better.

In this fallen world, society is the enemy of solitude, and solitude is to be preferred if the good of the soul is a goal.

But I can imagine a form of sociality superior to solitude. This would be a society of spirits who had passed through the school of solitude and had achieved self-individuation.  But such a society is not to be had here below, if anywhere.

A qualification is needed. There are rare occasions in rare friendships in which one gets a glimpse of what that sodality of spirit would be like.

I'll end on a mundane note.  In my experience, a little socializing is often physically stimulating.  On an early morning ramble, I am doing alright.  I encounter an acquaintance. We chat for a few minutes. When I start up again I feel energized. There's a spring in my step and  glide to my stride. I exult, "I feel better than any old man should be allowed to feel."

RELATED:  Introverts and Inwardness

Time it took to compose this entry: 35 minutes from 4:00 to 4:35.