Hold your horses
by westwood
What is the most underrated virtue? In our world of excess, it is definitely self-control.
I was reading this post about willpower and weight loss and getting pretty depressed. I mean really, we live in a world where we can’t stop ourselves. A world where I’ve eaten three litres of ice cream in the past five days on the pretext of needing a bucket to put compost in. A world that looks like this:
And this.
And this.
And you know what I thought?
I thought… we need help. All of us, as a human race. So lets look back to one of the masters. Who better than Plato’s Socrates? We talked about him before, when we needed some relationship do’s and dont’s (read: I was very, very bitter at the time).
Plato, in the dialogue Phaedrus, split up the soul into three pieces: reason/intellect, appetites/desires, and spirit/boldness. His allegory is not overly creative (and probably racist). Reason is a charioteer, which drives the white horse of spirit and the black horse of desire.
So the charioteer wants to ascend divine heights. The white horse listens if given clear, logical instructions. However, the black horse does not. As the story goes, the black horse is distracted by encountering the love, the object of desire (who is an attractive young boy) along the side of the road. It wants to give in to overwhelming sexual lust (strangely enough, most summaries of this allegory omit the bit about equine pedophilia), and the soul is tempted. In Plato’s system, the charioteer must be the master… and must drive the horses to do what is right (ie: not let the horse have sex with the boy). Whips should be used when necessary. The charioteer keeps the horse steady, despite recognizing just how super hot this young boy is, and the chariot stays on course.
Lack of self control is just the product of us charioteers being too light-handed with the whip, and giving in to our desires. We must use reason and apply restraint heavily and often, until our desires are reigned in.
Well Plato, that is all well and good, but I still can’t stop with the ice cream. Any suggestions?
Filed under: virtue | 32 Comments
Tags: appetite, desire, horses, phaedrus, philosophy, plato, reason, self-control, socrates
-
Recent Comments
Hahaha! I don’t even need a pretext to eat 3 liters of ice cream in 5 days. I hear ya, sista! Sorry I can’t be more helpful though.
Why would anyone try to NOT give in to overwhelming sexual lust? Isn’t it one of the healthiest, cheapest pleasures of life? LOL
But seriously, I hear the trick for controling your impulses is to engage in somethingelse that keeps you busy enough, and that does not allow for what you feel like doing. Ex.: it’s hard to eat ice cream while taking a bubble bath, and it’s hard to overindulge in sexual lust while you’re running 10K.
Good luck!
Hmm. Valid point. Worth a try, anyway!
simple Look every day in the mirror…and watch urself
is this what i want???? what i like????
hell no…and then u start working on urself.
the easiest way is not to watch others…
Start with urself….Good idea no???
I’ve read a number of different things that discuss how we have a limited amount of willpower every day – that it can increase with practise over time, but in the end there still is a finite amount.
I find this particularly problematic when a whole lot of my willpower goes into disciplining myself for school/research. I try to circumvent having a limited amount of willpower by indulging, but setting limits on it – I’ll keep a chocolate bar in my desk, but eat half or something… so it’s still satisfying, and I’ll have more to indulge in later. Buy things that are still delicious but better for you – creamscicles only have 90 calories, and fudgsicles have like 70, and if you buy the brand name, they’re both AMAZING. So if I eat two I don’t feel nearly as guilty as if I eat the double brownie Breyers or something like that.
Hmmm I would be very interested in reading more about such studies!
Perhaps a pilot fable applies to will-power:
They say that every pilot when beginning their flying career is given a bag of luck. We draw from this bag as needed in our adventures. No one knows how much is in their particular bag, but we sure know when the luck runs out!
I was having a debate with someone on the food topic and how research shows that when people get rich they buy food, and there are even levels of obesity in rich African communities; as in people have this inherent need to stock up on food now, because there might not be any later. Juts proves that humanity hasn’t quit concord (it’s) nature
So maybe Froid was right, our nature is evil and runs on lust for violence and sex (;
O, and this is why huge ice cream tubs should be shared!
Honestly, I don’t have a huge appetite so overeating has never been an issue, but when I feel my control slipping in terms of other things like shopping, watching too many movies, etc, I cut myself off cold turkey for a while. I know people say that doesn’t work but for me it does. In fact, I feel so liberated when I realize that I have everything I need that it’s like an epiphany. I believe in everything in moderation (except moderation).
Look at that third photo that you posted. That really should put you off your ice cream.
I think we’ve found someone very wise here.
Possibly a rather overused reference in some places, so please feel free to boo hiss and jeer if it has come up before, but in “The Decisive Moment” Jonah Lehrer gives the whole chariot and horses analogy a good kicking using some fairly compelling evidence from recent neuroscientific experiments.
I have been interested of late to note that those who (in most cases quite timidly actually) posit that we do in fact, NOT have free will, and only live with an illusion that we do, were once philosophers, and now seem to be joined in this position by neuroscientists. Such a convergence adds credibility to the idea, in my mind at least.
Its an interesting idea that, dicomfortingly, appears to have some merit.
That said, I am often dangerously close to using it as a justification for doing things I shouldn’t so, perhaps, even if it is true, we should be wary about admitting to that, or allowing others with less honourable desires to know such a possible “Justification” exists.
And now I am going over toe chocolate machine because my mental state-machine just encountered the conditions that cause it to want a kit-kat and I appear to be powerless to resist.
I will admit that I avoid philosophy of free will like the dickens because it is awfully difficult to come up with any reasonable scenario under which we might actually have it.
Do you know the experiment with the DEAD Salmon the dead Salmon had brain activities when showed photo’s of human faces ??? http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/fmrisalmon/
in my opinion we have free will but fear (fear of the whip) stands in the way and in this case pleasure however when you give in to pleasure you get enjoyment ice-cream, chocolate, sex etc. but when you give in to fear what do you get fear that you get fat.
Well, upon reading that, the dead salmon didn’t ACTUALLY have brain activity… the study was highlighting the importance of error margins.
Gotta ove the paradox that is human
You should definitely start whipping the ice-cream. Yeah. I’m almost sure that’s right…
I’m pretty sure if you think about a horse lusting after a young boyfor long enough, that might kill your urge to eat. If i have one weakness in this world…it’s is definatly ice cream! Oh and general takeaways, crisps, the odd chocolates. Oops, i seem to have been distracted.
Well that certainly was an unintended consequence of my column on apathy! Chocolate chip I hope
I defer to Ralph Waldo Emerson and his views on the importance of discipline and strength of will on a person being a success in their life’s goals. I understand chocolate chip was a favorite of his!
Hmm yes… I suppose goals would be an essential component. A hill for the charioteer to climb, as it were.
big fan of the Middle Road (Buddhism) here, everything in moderation, including moderation…so go ahead and have some ice cream, but don’t eat so much that you end up like your pic #3…go ahead and be moderate about your ice cream intake, but every once in a while have no ice cream and every once in a while have a lot of ice cream…i think that we tend to forget that we do not have to make the choice between all or nothing, but that, yes, we can find a happy medium between the two. the Golden Mean (Aristotle) is difficult to find, but worth it. we forget that the moderate, the mean is where virtue is, our society places so much value on the extremes…self-control alone is not virtuous, it is knowing how much and when to use self-control…virtue in action?
shout out to Foucault “History of Sexuality Vol. 1 and Vol. 2″, where he talks about sexual desire, practice and acceptable conduct. but, i can’t say i remember him saying anything about horses being attracted to young human boys…
Westwood: I like the analogy with horses. A clinical psychologist friend of mine once referred to the halter (or bridle) of a horse as reason, the horse itself the passion (desire). I now have your charioteer as a reference to self-control. Thanks. Thanks also for coming over to my blog and commenting about the great plains. I am following your blog. The pic of the fat people? What a awful vignette of what non-self-control. Ye gads, what have we come to?
*Enabler here*
You definitely needed a compost bucket.
One free peice of good Cowboy advice—-get the bucket of ice cream and go for a walk—hurry before it melts!
Still thinking about self-control…the whole idea rubs me the wrong way, like it’s a neuroses in and of itself. Then again, maybe I have issues
Compost is pretty important, IMO.
Aside from that, I’d say willpower is pre-determined, as are its symptoms. I’d also say “willpower” is a misnomer. Of course this is depressing, but I’ve learned to work around this information, as I was pre-determined to do so.
Good points
Saw the comment about ‘having a certain amount of self control’ and had to comment.
It’s one of the more interesting things to come out of social psychology in recent decades. Self control (or self-regulation as we psychologist call it) is thought of like a resource that can be used up in a process known as ego depletion. Basically, when you have to spend energy controlling yourself for one thing, it’s harder to control yourself regarding other things, either at the same time or immediately after…which is probably the reason why people eat more if they have a bag of chips lying around when they are working / studying (although not sure if that’s ever been researched empirically…hmmm study idea!!)
Anyway, ya being ego depleted makes you make worse decisions, remember less, etc.
Also a famous study is the importance of self-control. In one longitudinal study, they told a child that he could have one marshmallow now. However, if he waited until the experimenter came back, he could have two marshmallows. The amount of time it took for a kid to eat the marshmallow was correlated extremely highly with future success as highly (maybe even more) than IQ.
I would quite, quite like to know more about ego depletion.
It also worth noting that he draws Lois Lane more realistically than anyone I can remember right now. She has a body that you might actually see on a woman you know (meaning she doesn have a ridiculously unnatural chest and curves) and her expressions go across an exceptionally full range. knock off oakley sunglasses http://pinterest.com/fakeoakleysoaho/fake-oakleys%2
Bereits seit mehreren Jahren gilt Viagra als eines der
bekanntesten Orgasmusmittel fֳ¼r Herren und das aus gutem
Grund, denn das Orgasmusprodukt Viagra ist absolut wirksam.
Authentic Cialis rezeptfrei