Here's the Problem
The thing is it’s just too easy to buy stuff and eat food.
As soon as I get on my computer, (well, as soon as I go online), I’m tantalized from all sides to purchase things. Most of these I have no interest in—reduced rate mortgages, new types of insurance, penis enlargers—but some, notably cool bike stuff, the occasional computer upgrade, camping gear or kitchen gadgets—I’m relatively enticed by. So, it’s only a matter of time before I’m worn down by the sheer bombardment of temptations and out comes the debit card to be fired up for the UPS delivery several days hence.
Same thing when I’m out and about on my bike or anywhere near the refrigerator or pantry cabinet in my house: slices of cheese, cold pizza, chips, sesame crackers, a banana, sometimes some tofu, they’re all right there, calling to me. How can I resist their relentless appeals?
Perhaps it’s just a failure of willpower. If I were a stronger person, I could shut my eyes and ears to the inducements of things I don’t really want anyway and carry on, free to be myself, unencumbered by desires that impel me that way and that.
What?
Moreover, as I write this, I’ve got a small bag of the stinkiest sweet-smelling pot in the file cabinet next to me that is just begging to be sampled. And it’s a snow day, too, and I’ve got most of the work I need to get done already done.
I’m always trying to balance my half-hearted knee-jerk asceticism with a proper appreciation for my appetites.
One of the Aristotelian moral virtues is “temperance,” which sits in the mean between the associated vice of excess—gluttony—and that of deficiency—something like insensibility, essentially the inability to take any pleasure in the sensual pleasures.
I don’t want to be a pig, but I don’t want to be a dried-up prune, either.
Maybe just one small toke.
As soon as I get on my computer, (well, as soon as I go online), I’m tantalized from all sides to purchase things. Most of these I have no interest in—reduced rate mortgages, new types of insurance, penis enlargers—but some, notably cool bike stuff, the occasional computer upgrade, camping gear or kitchen gadgets—I’m relatively enticed by. So, it’s only a matter of time before I’m worn down by the sheer bombardment of temptations and out comes the debit card to be fired up for the UPS delivery several days hence.
Same thing when I’m out and about on my bike or anywhere near the refrigerator or pantry cabinet in my house: slices of cheese, cold pizza, chips, sesame crackers, a banana, sometimes some tofu, they’re all right there, calling to me. How can I resist their relentless appeals?
Perhaps it’s just a failure of willpower. If I were a stronger person, I could shut my eyes and ears to the inducements of things I don’t really want anyway and carry on, free to be myself, unencumbered by desires that impel me that way and that.
What?
Moreover, as I write this, I’ve got a small bag of the stinkiest sweet-smelling pot in the file cabinet next to me that is just begging to be sampled. And it’s a snow day, too, and I’ve got most of the work I need to get done already done.
I’m always trying to balance my half-hearted knee-jerk asceticism with a proper appreciation for my appetites.
One of the Aristotelian moral virtues is “temperance,” which sits in the mean between the associated vice of excess—gluttony—and that of deficiency—something like insensibility, essentially the inability to take any pleasure in the sensual pleasures.
I don’t want to be a pig, but I don’t want to be a dried-up prune, either.
Maybe just one small toke.
posted by Professor Dave at 2:03 PM
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