Ta-Nehisi got it started with a post on obesity; Rod Dreher made a case for mild self-loathing in the name of self-improvement; and then TNC followed it up with some thoughts on motivation:
The best thing about this journey I’m on isn’t the weight loss (although I have to say, that’s been, like, really cool) it’s the deeper understanding of self. It’s the consciousness part, not just of what you eat and why, but of the line between individual agency–which is strong and should never be discounted–and that part of you that you don’t actually control.
[...]
I have had to stop seeing this as a matter of working harder and working more. A few weeks ago, I was in Chicago at a lunch and was served bread pudding for dessert. It was the best bread pudding I’d ever had in my life, and the best dessert I’d had in about a year. I ate about half of it, and I think a younger me would have focused on willpower, denial and mental laziness. The older me thinks that eating is a complete experience–it’s about consuming enough of the thing to bring you pleasure, and not marring the experience, and the memory, by eating so much that you feel sick and weighed down. Thinking like that doesn’t require much control. It just requires understanding your expectations.
Italics added. I’d say both are paths to self-control (though I’d say TNC’s is probably psychically healthier).
Hm. Well, I was reading the comments while typing this out, and TNC says most of what I was going to, and then some, so…blockquote time!
It’s true that we’re both offering a cultural critique, but there isn’t much in common beyond that. Rod believes the culture is to[o] therapeutic and promotes mediocrity and laziness. I believe the culture promotes quick fixes, many of them unhealthy, as opposed to long-term solution. I think it privileges escapism over hard unmoving truths.
But for the reasons I outlined I don’t believing thinking of that as “laziness” is helpful or particularly descriptive. “Laziness” is a question masquerading as an answer. As I said I think people do things for specific reasons. There’s a reason the “bikini body” story sells. And it’s much bigger than laziness. Condemning terms like “laziness” and “mediocrity” actually understate the problem. It’s bigger than that.
Anyway, since TNC beat me to my original point, I’m in the middle of a weight-loss plan built around a long-term bet with Caroline. It combines my love of gambling with my general need to win and/or be right, and I’ve seen good results in the last three weeks, so I think this has a pretty decent shot at working over the long haul.
