Stop When You're Comfortable

Gluttony is a vice. I believe this. I believe that a virtuous person is not a glutton.

I'm a glutton.

I started overeating in the sixth grade. I remember that grade very well; it's when I realised that there were cool kids and uncool kids, and I was in the latter category. Or rather I thought that I was. Turns out thinking a thing like that tends to influence reality, rather than the other way around. Anyway...

I dealt with it by overeating. Why overeating? People who specialize in food addiction tell us that it's the dopamine. When you eat a piece of fruit or meat your brain releases a moderate amount of dopamine to reward you for feeding your body. When you eat a candy bar your body dumps dopamine into your system as a super reward for finding a rare high-calorie treat.

Problem is that, in the past, finding a high calorie treat meant raiding a bee hive. Nowadays it involves swiping a plastic card.

I had a handle on the overeating thing for awhile, but in times of stress I revert. I'm in a stressful situation now and I'm reverting. I eat past the point of comfort. I eat until I'm NOT comfortable. It actually hurts.

"First decide what you would be; then do what you have to do."

I would be a man in control of his appetites. How to do that?

Authority Nutrition has a post describing food addiction. It details how the brain becomes tolerant of dopamine and how breaking the addictive cycle means that there will be a withdrawal process. I've been "withdrawing" for three days now, and I don't feel anything, but I do think that there's something to this idea of dopamine use. Why else would I eat to the point of discomfort?

The idea that we can become "addicted" to food seems silly at first glance. It seems like psychobabble designed to reinforce the idea that we are all victims. When I think like this, though, what I'm really doing is worrying that I am weak, that if I submit myself to this it will chip away at my confidence.

So when I think about overeating I will remind myself that I'm craving dopamine. I'll do something else. Pushups are good; writing is good. Yoga is good. These are positive uses of time. How good does soda taste, anyway? Tastes salty and rusty.

Look, if overeating is an addictive process then it is. If it is simply a bad habit then it is. I can worry about my confidence or I can do something about it. I can worry about what YOU, gentle reader, will think of me and my weakness or I can accept that I am a flawed human being and I can improve myself.

I will cheerfully confront my problem and defeat it with a glad heart. Or not. Maybe I'll white-knuckle it and fail a hundred times before I beat it, and then appreciate my victory later. It is what it is. The main thing is that I don't want to be a glutton anymore.

First decide what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

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Public domain image courtesy of the New York Public Library


Post Script: Step 1 is to cut out sugar... No soda, no sugar in my coffee (yes I'm addicted to coffee... one at a time, people, one at a time)

Randall Carlson: Renaissance Man

We Stoics are philosophers who continue the tradition of the ancients, and in their time ancient philosophers studied everything. Absolutely everything. Every discipline, every science, every piece of literature... "Philosophy" itself means "the love of knowledge." They were generalists. Maybe we should be as well.

Randall Carlson is such a man. He has spent his life as a generalist. According to his website he is an architect, a master builder, a teacher, a geological explorer, and an independent scholar. His public work focuses on the idea that human beings had an advanced culture before a massive global flood wiped it out about 12,000 years ago, and that flood may have been caused by an asteroid strike.

That's strange.

He's also a Free Mason, which for many will place him in the realm of the looney fringe, and they will dismiss him. There's one problem; he has evidence.

Real, scientific evidence.

I'm not saying that you have to accept his ideas, but if you want to approach Mr. Carlson like an adult you certainly have to defeat his arguments, and his arguments are reasonable. He knows what he's talking about. You will have an uphill fight.

What Mr. Carlson really excels at is bringing together seemingly disparate information into a cohesive whole. He has found evidence for his theory in the following disciplines, among others:

History: hundreds of flood stories about throughout human culture, and those stories tend to be set about 12,000 years ago. One ancient Greek philosopher actually dates it to that period.

Geology: Geologists are now finding evidence that there was a massive flood 12,000 years ago. They can see shorelines etched into mountains. Also scientists have found melt glass all over the world. It's 12,000 years old and it's the result of a meteor shower.

Archeology: The Sphinx shows signs of water damage... in a desert. Gobleki Tepe, an ancient civilization discovered in Turkey in 1994, dates to, perhaps, 12,000 years ago, and then it seems to have been buried. That's 6,000 years before Ur. In other words the first city is as far away from Gobleki Tepi as it is from us. That staggers the imagination. Add to that the fact that the Gobleki Tepe site rests in the shadow of Mount Ararat... you get the idea.

Anthropology: Australian Aborigines have passed along stories of flood heroes for at least 10,000 years. In fact many cultures do. Here's a list, courtesy of The Omni Report:

Sumer: King Ziusudra
Babylon: Utnapishtim
Greece: Deucalion
China: Yu
India: Manu
Scandinavia: Bergelmir
Welsh: Dwyfan
East Africa: Tumbainot
Mongolia: Hailibu

Carlson reminds us that we have gone from riding horses to sending rocket ships to other planets in about 4-5 generations. What if we've done it before?

I know, I know, it's bizarre, and I don't accept it whole heartedly. I don't think that we were flying airplanes and using nuclear reactors 20,000 years ago. On the other hand humans made a massive monumental stone structure 6,000 years before they were supposed to. That actually happened. There was a time when most people thought that the idea that Vikings colonized North America was silly. Then we found their long houses. The world can be a surprising place. Listen to the man and form your own conclusions (language warning):

There is a lesson to take from Mr. Carlson beyond his theory: he is a generalist, in the vein of the great scholars of the ancient world and of the Enlightenment. He sees the world as a whole and he glories in all of it. He is a multidisciplinary human of the world, and this allows him to live life on a higher plane than the rest of us. 

I always liked this quote by Robert Heinlein: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Socrates was like this. Benjamin Franklin was like this. We could be like this as well.

Check out Mr. Carlson's website here.

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Image of a bull, a fox and a crane from Gobleki Tepe by Teomancimit is, I believe, public domain... please contact me if it is not

If you really want your mind blown, google "100,000 year old South Africa gold mines..."

Forgive Them, Father...

...for they know not what they do.

-Jesus of Nazareth, Luke 23:34


In his Meditations Marcus Aurelius reminds himself to practice the following:

"Say to yourself in the early morning:

I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men.

All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill.

But I, because I have seen that the nature of good is right, and of ill the wrong,
and that the nature of the man himself who does wrong is akin to my own
(not of the same blood and seed, but partaking with me in mind, that is in a portion of divinity),

I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong,
nor can I be angry with my kinsmen or hate him;
for we have come into the world to work together,
like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth.

To work against one another therefore is to oppose Nature,
and to be vexed with one another or to turn away from him is to tend to antagonism."

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations as translated by A.S.L. Farquharson

This seems to be very similar to what Jesus said as he waited to be nailed to the cross. Jesus asks his father to forgive Jesus's murderers and reminds his Father that they do what they do because they are ignorant of the good.

Aurelius reminds himself of the same thing, that the people around him are ignorant rather than evil. He also reminds himself that it is natural for him to work with his fellow humans despite their poor behavior because ultimately we are all of one body. It is the will of the Logos that we work together. Maybe it would be better to say that it is the WAY of the Logos.

Aurelius's thought and Jesus's thought are different in one critical way, though: for Jesus his tormentors require forgiveness from God. For Aurelius his tormentors don't require anything. He must reconcile himself with their behavior. Aurelius must change himself, while God must forgive wrongdoers. To take it a bit further, Aurelius saves himself while Christians are saved by another. For a Christian God is external. For a Stoic we are all a part of God, or the Logos. In this way a Stoic is his own savior, maybe.

It's a beautiful thought either way, and it put me in mind of this excellent essay by Jules Evans entitled "Stoicism and Christianity."

Evans tells us that Stoicism anticipated Christianity* in the following ways:

1. Christians serve the will of God and Stoics serve the will of the Logos (they were also monotheists after the teaching of Heraclitus). Evans notes a unique distinction, though; where Christianity has an opposing force in Satan and his demons and God has heavenly followers in the angels, for Stoics there is only the Logos. Evans also notes that the Logos is used in the book of John.

2. Christians are taught that they can serve God or money, but not both. Stoics are taught that they can serve the Logos or public approval, but not both.

3. Both Christianity and Stoicism advise followers not to be ostentatious in their practice. We shouldn't make a big show of it.

4. Both the early desert fathers and the Stoics believed in askesis, or the deliberate training of the mind.

5. Christians shared the Stoic idea of the Cosmopolis, or City of God. We should serve humanity first and our tribe second.

Evans then goes on to highlight some differences between the two traditions (and Christianity does not compare favorably in the author's opinion), but I'll leave that to you to discover.

An interesting line of thinking, anyway.

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* I am not claiming that Stoics should be Christian or that Christians should embrace Stoicism, or that a Stoic must believe in a God at all. That's really none of my business.

Image is public domain

The Only Safe Harbor

"For the only safe harbour in this life's tossing , troubled sea is to refuse to be bothered about what the future will bring and to stand ready and confident , squaring the breast to take without skulking or flinching whatever fortune hurls at us."

- Seneca, Letter 104, Letters from a Stoic, posted to the Stoic Sub Reddit by silverdeath00


"Fortune" is in this case Fortuna, the goddess of chance. Seneca has a literal being in mind when he says "Fortune," whether or not he believed in her literal existence (see 5.3 at this link).

She hurls challenges at us like Jupiter hurls thunderbolts, if you're into that sort of thing. Once we've done all we can do then we can whine or we can ride it out with some style. What else is there?

Good post, silverdeath00.

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Image is public domain

Only Apologize Once

I read this excellent entry at Manly Distribution on apologies and it got me thinking about my own apology practice.

I've noticed that my best apologies occur one time. I admit fully and completely my mistake and I say that I've learned from the experience. After that if the person brings it up again I say something like "yeah, I remember that" or "I thought I already apologized for that." The other person may accept or reject my apology. The relationship may continue or it may stall, or it may cease all together, but I won't grovel.

The key here is to own the behavior completely. Some people use an apology as a sort of get out of jail free card. They insult you, then they off handedly say "just kidding." Then they insult you again. The apology isn't sincere. I've done this myself and it makes me feel cheap. So the goal is a sincere, complete apology delivered one time only.

This practice isn't universal; if I do something major I understand that my apology will be a process rather than a one-off event. This hasn't happened in recent memory, but in the past I have occasionally said something horrible and it took some time to convince the other party that I was speaking without thinking and that I was truly contrite. Then there was that time I backed my uncle's van into a solid post. That was a tough one. Then there was that time I got a guy's expensive radio controlled airplane stuck in a tree...

What I'm talking about here is different; I am describing the everyday apology. We're all human and we all make mistakes. Sometimes the people we have wronged need to hear that we understand that we have wronged them, that we care about them and that we will try not to wrong them in the future. This keeps relationships alive and, in my experience, can even strengthen them.

As Stoics, of course, we think about being "wronged" differently, but the idea still holds relevance for us. Suppose I lend something to my friend and he breaks it. He doesn't apologize and he doesn't replace it. I've learned not to lend him anything. That's good information to have. Suppose, instead, that he breaks it, apologizes and maybe even offers to replace it. I will likely lend him something again. I've seen some reflection on his part, so that particular aspect of our relationship may continue. This is also good information to have.

Apologies are, therefore, necessary and useful. What is NOT useful is grovelling. If we wrong others and they can't let go of the wrong, or if they bring it up over and over again they are trying to punish us. Fair enough, if that's what they want to do, but if the act in question was a minor one and if we apologize fully for it the matter is now their problem, not ours. We've done all we can do.

Of course this also means that I must accept the sincere apologies of other people with as much grace as I expect from them, and I do. I actually feel pretty good about it. Letting go of past hurts is, after all, a very Stoic thing to do.

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Public domain image courtesy of the New York Public Library

Stoic Yoga

"It shows a lack of natural talent to spend time on what concerns the body, as in exercising a great deal, eating a great deal, drinking a great deal, moving one's bowels a great deal or copulating a great deal. Instead you must do these things in passing, but turn your whole attention toward your faculty of judgment." -Epictetus, Enchiridion 41


There are two things to take from this passage. The first is that Epictetus assumes that we will take physical exercise, eat, drink (wine, presumably), use the toilette and enjoy physical love. The second is that he sees these things as mere incidentals, not goals in and of themselves. For him the needs of the body should be met, but not dwelt upon.

I'm pretty good about not dwelling on these things, but I'm not very good at meeting them.

I want to set up some simple systems to care for my body without requiring obsessive amounts of time and effort. I want to be a good steward of it, but I don't want to build it into my life's work. I don't want my body to be a monument to my will.

So what have I done to further this goal?


1. Green smoothies to up my fruit and veg consumption

2. Walk three miles three times per week

3. Body weight and fitness band exercises twice per week

4. Calorie limitation using myfitnesspal.com

I'm getting to the point that these things are becoming habit. I don't have to think about them too much. I believe that this is in keeping with Epictetus's teaching.

There's one thing left to deal with: pain.

There is a very realistic older man where I work, a man who tells the truth all the time. He doesn't volunteer it freely; he's pretty self contained. If you ask him a question, though, you'll get a straight answer.

Once I asked him what it's like to be an older man.

"I'm in constant pain," he said. I thought he was talking about psychological pain. He may have had regrets or failures of character. I said as much.

"No, I mean physical pain. The older I get the more everything hurts."

There is some truth to it. What we cannot change we must accept, right, fellow Stoics? But what if we CAN change it?

I try to do a simple yoga routine at least once per week. Notice that I say "try." What I really ought to do is to commit to doing it twice per week. I've noticed that when I do yoga my joint pain decreases and my back pain sometimes dissappears.

So I have a goal: I will do yoga twice per week. This seems moderate, and I know that it will produce real results, a claim which seems to be  backed up by science.

Here is a sequence I've been using, and it seems to work pretty well:

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Public domain image courtesy of the New York Public Library

Admiral Stockdale's Take On His Debate Performance

I found an interview that James Stockdale did with Jim Lehrer in 1999. The transcript is here.

I'll let the Admiral speak for himself, but a few things did jump out at me.

1. He considered character to be far more important than specifics. A man of character can deal with specifics. He says that he doesn't get up in the morning thinking about Social Security.

2. He was a placeholder because Ross Perot needed a warm body in states that required a declared VP. He never expected to be in a public debate, and he wasn't terribly thrilled about it.

3. He and Perot never ever talked about politics.

4. He considered physical courage to be very important. If he ran a presidential debate he would ask the candidates about a time when they had to demonstrate physical courage.

5. He was very realistic about his performance. He was surprised to be there, but that's where those other guys lived. It is what it is.

6. He describes his time in the big central prison as the founding of a new civilization. They lost everything and had to start over. He is proud of what they accomplished.

7. His experience during the VP debates caused him to feel emotion. There were highs and lows. His way seems to have been that you experience the emotion and then you deal with it. The emotion seems to happen whether you like it or not, and then you use philosophy to manage it.

So for anyone who wants to know "How does a Stoic handle X or Y?" This is how a Stoic handles it.

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The images used are official US government property, so I think that they are in the public domain.