Grinding and Loving: Two Approaches to Installing Plumbing

Introduction
A few months ago I bought an older house. I knew it would need a bit of work before I could rent it out. As is the case with any old house, it's turned into even more work than I'd originally thought. Although not part of the original plan, I've had to rip out the entire downstairs bathroom: Walls, floor, plumbing, fixtures, and all. And, to access the bathroom plumbing, I had to rip out the kitchen plumbing which is on the other side of the bathroom wall.

Area formerly known as the bathtub and shower.

Water under the subfloor due to leaky bathtub drainpipe (conveniently located under the cast-iron tub).

Drain pipe for the bathtub.

Anyone who owns a home will attest that plumbing problems are the most expensive and stressful. They're stressful because, unlike many problems, they usually need to be addressed immediately. If your toilet or shower drain is plugged or leaking, you're not going to wait a few weeks to call someone. This is in part why they're so expensive to fix.

Plumbers know that you need the problem fixed NOW and as such, when you call them they can pretty much charge whatever they want. In most cases, it's not like you're going to call two other plumbers, wait for them to fit you into their schedule just to give you a quote, then pick the one you want. You need your toilet now. Also, plumbers charge an upfront service fee just for showing up (likely to prevent bargain hunters taking up their time)....All this feeds back into the stressfulness of having a plumbing problem. Anyhow, you get the point:

Plumbing problems=baddo baddo.

As a landlord, the majority of my annual expenses are for plumbers. I'm tired of paying plumbers so I've decided to learn how to do it. It's not like I never tried before. I've tried to handle plumbing problems several times but it rarely goes well. I always end up with a small leak in one place or another no matter how many times I try to readjust the pipes and fittings.

This time, however, I've vowed to learn how to fix household plumbing problems.

At this point you're probably wondering what the title of this post has to do with anything.

Bear with me. We're going on an a philosophical ramble about plumbing and the meaning of life...

So, Like, What's Your Philosophy?
Anytime a philosopher, anywhere in the world, answers the question, "so, what do you do?" the inevitable follow-up is, "so, like, what's your philosophy?". I'm going to set aside the fact that to an academic philosopher this is a bit like asking a chemist what their chemistry is. I'll go, instead, with the colloquial interpretation.

I can't say I have a coherent life philosophy but aside from a variety of extrinsic factors, I believe succeeding at anything worthwhile requires a substantial exercise of will. In fact, I believe this to be the single most important intrinsic variable. You must be willing to struggle, to persevere--in short--to grind if you wish to achieve anything of significance.

You commit yourself wholly to one end and you don't deviate. Your goal is to overcome.

Nietzsche was the ultimate grinder. For him, the good is "whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself." Happiness is "[t]he feeling that power increases--that resistance is overcome." (The Anti-Christ)

Outwork and out-suffer. When other people quit--don't.

See the path to every goal as a war of attrition.

Overcome.

Grind.

Battle of the Kitchen Sink
The kitchen has a double sink. Not only was the P-trap leaking but one sink leaked too. Water had made a small path between the drain fitting and the sink itself. Fixing the sink would require removing the drain fitting.

A drain fitting.

This was before I'd made my vow.

I called a plumber. I needed a drain pipe unclogged anyway so I thought while he was there I'd get a quote on changing the drain fitting and installing a new P-trap assembly.

P-Trap Assembly

The plumber quoted me $320.00.

Admittedly, for a variety of reasons, the P-Trap assembly for my kitchen wouldn't be as straight forward as the one pictured above. But still...

Fuck

That.

That was the moment of commitment. I'm tired of paying plumbers hundreds of dollars for things that I see them do in under an hour.  In that moment, I focused my will on learning how to fix household plumbing. I don't care how long it takes me to fix this gottam sink. I'm going to work on it until it's fixed.

Let me pause to say that the people at Home Depot plumbing department are awesome. I brought in pictures and asked them what to do.

It turns out you need a special tool to remove or install a drain fitting. I bought one. You need plumbers' putty. Check. P-Trap assembly with extension. Check. Coupling to transition from 1" pipe to the 1 1/2" main drain pipe. Check. PVC glue. Check. Various connectors and washers. Check, and so on.

I sat down under the sink and resolved not to leave until I fixed it. 

It was slow, frustrating, and smelly.

And I kept bumping my fucking head on this fucking pointy knobby thing on the bottom of the sink basin.

Fuck! 

It didn't take long before I remembered why I stopped trying to do plumbing and instead called plumbers.

What About Love?

We're often advised to "dig deep" and "persevere" if we want to succeed. Like I said above, success is often a matter of being willing to grind.

But there's a (perhaps) more enlightened view I sometimes espouse. We've all heard the expression "it's about the journey not the destination." In other words, learn to fall in love with the process and you won't have to suffer.

Why should I see plumbing as an obstacle to overcome? Why not immerse myself in the experience. Find pleasure in acquiring a new skill. 

Approach challenges playfully. When your first attempt to assemble the P-trap still leaks, smile: Here is an opportunity to learn the finer points of plumbing--to discover! 

People don't assemble puzzles to self-inflict suffering. The process of solving a puzzle itself is fun! Treat life's challenges as puzzles to be solved. This is the key to success!

Like all advice, it's easy to give to others. Not so easy to apply to one's self in the heat of battle (under a sink).

Wisdom consists in recognizing what we can and cannot control. I can't control much of what happens: i.e., whether the P-trap needs replacing or if my first attempt leaks. But I can control my attitude toward it.

I'm not doomed to suffer for my goals, nor to merely endure. It's my choice to adopt that attitude toward my challenges. I have the power to approach my challenges as opportunities to learn and to grow!

Barf. 

Grinding vs Loving

"Focus on the journey not the destination" :)  :)  :)

"See this as an opportunity to grow and learn!"  :)  :)  :)

"Getting angry and frustrated isn't going to help. Just relax and see it as a puzzle to be solved" 

Yay! So much fun!

It's so easy to say. Especially when it's someone else who's suffering to overcome something.

When I am struggling to achieve a goal--be it in school or fixing plumbing--I catch myself grinding. It's my default way of being. My instinct, in the face of adversity, is to see it as a test of my will. I grit my teeth and grind through it. But we're all different psychologically. I know people who are natural lovers. They're usually engineers or computer programmers. They love problems. Or maybe just certain kinds. 

Life throws all sorts of problems at us and we rarely get to choose the kinds of problems we get. If you end up with one that can't be made 'fun', what are you going to do if you never learned to grind? 

On the other hand, if gritting your teeth is the only way you know how to deal with life's challenges, what kind of life is that? Sure, it's romantic to suffer for what you love but a life of suffering doesn't seem like one we should aspire to. At the end of the day, you might have an impressive list of accomplishments but did you enjoy your life?

Obviously life isn't all about pleasure but certainly more is better than less--all else being equal.

Grinding and Loving

So how should I live my life (or plumb, for that matter)? Should I be the ends-oriented grinder who, like a Nietzschian, says the

"[t]he formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal"?

Consider another view: For Aristotle, habits are central to character formation and the overall quality and nature of our life. Of course, knowing which habits to choose is not always so easy. We criticized the enchanted process-lover because there will be times where she encounters challenges that likely can't be faced with a smile. Without having practiced tenacity and perseverance she might fail in the face of long-term or extremely demanding challenges.

But the enchanted process-lover has a reply.

By repeatedly practicing to carefully select our emotions as we face challenges we become better at it. So, it is true that the unpracticed 'lover' will likely encounter challenges in the face of which they can't modify or maintain their attitude. But this isn't true of someone who has a lifetime of practice doing so. If every time you've encountered a problem you consciously selected a positive or playful attitude then it will come naturally in a variety of circumstances. You'll also be able to sustain it over long periods. 

You are what you do repeatedly; i.e., you are your habits. When I approach a challenge by grinding or see it as a battle of wills, I'm further entrenching this pattern into my character. When I approach a problem playfully this too is further reenforces a behavior and becomes part of my character. So, when I face a problem, challenge, or goal I'm not just choosing my approach for this challenge, I'm also choosing how I'll face my future challenges.

This is a key insight from both Plato and Aristotle. There are no individual acts. Every act is an act of creation. You are creating your character. And your character influences future behaviors in response to whatever life throws your way. Actions are parts of a life-long process of character creation (and destruction).

Your behaviors emerge from your character. The arrow points the other direction too: Your behavior influences the nature of your character. And finally, the nature of your character determines the quality of your life.

Plumbing and Living Wisely

The long-term character-forming effects of how I approach a particular challenge are an important consideration for the the nature of one's life. Ok, but this still doesn't tell me how I should approach any particular problem or goal. Certainly, not all goals can or should be approached playfully, and even if they could, not all circumstances allow for it. One must also know when to put their head down and grind through a difficult challenge...like a major plumbing project or a dissertation.

Wisdom consists in knowing when to grind, when to love, and when to love to grind. 

Pictures of my Plumbing

I maked a complicated P-trap...

Not so simple double-sink P-trap to drain.

P-trap to PVC.

PVC to drain.

Source of the leak.

I thought I might just attach a new drain assembly but the threads were all gone...

So I cut of the elbow hoping to replace it with a rubber elbow...but this was the inside of the pipe. Pipe's gotta come out.

Which means the bathtub has to come out...

And so does the floor.

Well, that was just one of the plumbing challenges. I'm almost done with the custom tile shower I'm building. I'll post pics when it's done.

Annual Fitness Post: How to Be Aristotle in the Gym

Introduction

I always enjoy writing my annual fitness post. I’m frequently surprised by how much I learn about fitness each year even though I’ve basically been involved in it my whole life. Before we get started here are my past fitness posts for future reference:

Injury Prevention without Giving Up Intensity or Gainz

How to Be a Vegetarian, Low-Meat, or No-Meat Athlete

The Most Efficient Workouts
Injury Prevention through Powerlifting Breathing Technique

How to Deal with Motivation Problems
http://missiontotransition.blogspot.ca/2012/01/no-nonsense-fitness-guide.html
http://missiontotransition.blogspot.ca/2010/10/nutrition-rant-simple-vs-complex-carbs.html
http://missiontotransition.blogspot.ca/2010/06/i-was-planning-on-attacking-some-recent.html
http://missiontotransition.blogspot.ca/2010/07/health-and-nutrition-part-2.html
http://missiontotransition.blogspot.ca/2010/07/health-and-nutrition-part-3-hopefully.html

I often like to mock click-baity headlines in my posts. However, in this year’s post I find myself actually believing that what I’m about to discuss in this post IS the “one weird trick” that will allow you to achieve your fitness goals. 

Let’s Start General…

Across many life activities distraction from connected devices is a major problem. This shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone with a smart phone. I spend a significant amount of time contemplating how to avoid digital distraction in my own life and have only met moderate success. In my teaching I also try to establish classroom culture and conventions to minimize the possibility of digital noodling. 

The way I see it, digital distraction is a genuine threat to quality of life. It pulls us out of the activity we are doing and prohibits the deep engagement necessary to make that activity meaningful and, hence, worthwhile. Also, genuine learning requires deep engagement and concentration. In short, if you’re doing something while your mind is elsewhere, you’re only getting a fraction of the benefit: You’re leaving money on the table.

Distracted Fitness: You’re Losing Precious Gainz!

The implications of digital distraction for fitness should be obvious. Depending on the gym I’m in I’ll often see up to 2/3rds of people texting and scrolling between sets. And while on the cardio machines, it’s even worse. 

I won’t go so far as to say it’s the only ingredient for success, but you simply cannot make worthwhile progress in your fitness if your mind and body aren’t working together when you train. Every top bodybuilder, fitness model, and athlete I’ve ever trained with will talk about the importance of the mind-body connection when they’re training. (Bodybuilders will say ‘mind-muscle’ connection—same, same).

Try imagining for a moment an Olympic athlete checking their social media while they are in the middle of a training session. This would be insane. Even if they're catching their breathe between intervals, they need to be focussed on what's next and assessing what they just did. 

Success requires total engagement. Every time you glance at your digital device you’re pulling your mind out of what you’re doing. This constant engagement, disengagement, and reengagement never permits the deep emersion necessary for worthwhile results.

Of course, you aren’t training for the next Olympics but you are training to get particular results, aren’t you? I mean, why the heck are you there if you’re not? And if you don’t have any goals, get some! 

The bottom line here is intensity or as some philosophers have called it, passion. You are at the gym for a reason and that reason isn’t to check your social media account. Take a just one measly freakin’ hour away from your phone to fully engage in training your body. Commit to it. I see so many people essentially wasting their time in the gym.

If you want to get more out of your gym time, practice mindfulness. 

But How?

Let's begin with the painfully obvious: Leave your freakin' phone in the locker room. ("But I need if for my music." Buy a freakin' ipod, you maroon!). 

Moving on...

When I’m lifting weights I’m doing several things. First, I’m paying attention to my breathing. Second, I’m paying attention to what each muscle is doing. Do each repetition with a conscious and deliberate contraction of the target muscle(s): squeeze at the top and stretch at the bottom. 

Slow down. 

Pause at the bottom of the movement and make sure you have the correct muscles engaged before you begin the repetition. Focus your mind on contracting those particular muscles. At the peak, squeeze; then pause just enough to stop the momentum of the movement. If you can't feel which muscles are contracting, you're just moving the weight up and down. It's not the same thing.

Make everything deliberate. 

Fitness is a form of meditation. Just because lifting weights or doing cardio isn’t steeped in Ancient Wisdom woo, it should be just as meditative as yoga. At its best it is discovery and contemplation of your physical self. You are learning and creating what’s possible for your body to do and become. You are forging and strengthening the connections between the mental and physical aspects of your self. 

On the cardio machines, I like to do interval training or set the machine to random. Regardless of which one I’m doing I set goals for my rate (rpm or steps/minute). If I don’t set goals I can never push myself beyond my comfort zone. In the long term this means I can never improve my fitness level; or if I do, my improvement will be far below what it could have been. 

At the ‘random’ setting I like to give myself a minimum rpm that I don’t allow myself to go below regardless of the resistance. When I can achieve my time interval at that rpm, I either raise my target rpm or increase the overall level of resistance. I want to know how far I can push and develop my body. I treat my training time as a journey of self-discovery and creation.

Aimless and distracted training rob me of this fruit.

I also pay close attention to my breathing and posture: Doing so is yet anther way of developing and achieving knowledge of my physical self. So many people have no awareness of what their body is doing or how it is positioned.

Aristotle in the Gym

Aristotle is probably the most plagiarized philosopher in history. Most self-help and management books are basically cheap rip-offs of his ideas.

At the core of Aristotle's Ethics is the idea that you become what you do repeatedly. Otherwise stated, you are your habits. 

The lesson here is simple and familiar, but invaluable. To change aspects of yourself, change your habits. Find people who you want to be like and adopt their habits in respect to those aspects you want to become. 

Aristotle’s philosophy doesn’t just apply to particular skills or professions but—and most importantly—to character. 

If you want to become courageous you have to do courageous things. If you want to become generous, you have to do generous things. 

I see a lot of people generally unwilling to push themselves. These individual surrenders accrue over time to form a habit which manifests, in the long term, as satisfaction with mediocrity. No one should be content with mediocrity. It's a waste of a life.

Sadly, when done repeatedly, mediocrity becomes a habit and part of one’s character. I see so many students unwilling to push themselves mentally to produce truly excellent work. I see people in the gym satisfied with merely showing up and going through the motions. 

Aristotle and the ancient Greeks would have had a fit. A good life—one worth living—is one that is lived excellently; that is, in the pursuit, development, and actualization of our human virtues (i.e., excellences)… 

This tendency toward mediocrity has many causes--some blameworthy, some not. But I contend that distracted living is a big one and, fortunately, one we can legitimately control. People will say they want to be great at x, y, or z but when it comes time to do the work they can’t get themselves to do it. The more they fall prey to distractions the more engrained this trait—this unwillingness to push—becomes in their character.

It’s the Small Things

There’s a happy flip-side to all this. We aren't stuck with poor character traits. We can practice toughness and become tough. Frankie Edgar, a UFC fighter, is known for his mental toughness. He has a reputation for being the mentally toughest fighter in the entire organization. He’s undersized for his division but still became the champion. He has an indomitable will. No matter how badly he has been losing a match he never quits. When asked what makes him so mentally tough, he replied that “[he] practice[s] mental toughness every single day.”

He suffers no delusion that he can train in the comfort zone; i.e., quitting whenever training gets a bit too hard, and then on fight night magically become mentally tough. This kind of thinking is pure fantasy and only happens in movies.

Edgar, the unwitting Aristotelian, offers us some great advice for all aspects of life—whether it’s to a student who wants better grades, someone looking to get in good shape, a musician who wants to become great or whatever. Every time you quit mentally you are contributing to the formation of a habit which in turn becomes part of your character. 

Habits are default behavioral responses. They eliminate deliberation. 

Developing mental toughness requires practicing mental toughness every day. In a fight, Edgar doesn’t decide that *now* he’s going to be tough. There’s no decision to make. He already is.

In Book 2 of the Ethics, Aristotle explains the nature of and relationships between virtue, habit, and character:

Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name (ethike) is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit. 

The idea is that no one is born with particular moral virtues of character or of intellect. True, people have dispositions but this doesn’t undo the central claim that our character is mostly cultivated through habit.

Back to the Gym: 

If you want to be mentally tough you must practice mental toughness.

When you’re on the cardio machine and your rpm drops below the minimum rpm you set for yourself, you are faced with a choice: You can say to yourself, “waaah! this is hard, I’m going to slow down” or you can say to yourself, “challenge accepted.”

We all experience such moments of choice. It may seem like a small insignificant choice. You’re just riding a damn cardio machine. How can slowing down possibly affect your life in any significant way?

But, if there is any truth to what Aristotle says, it is precisely these small choices that affect, nay, generate the nature of our lives and character. Every action, positive or negative, contributes to habit formation. Which habit are you going to cultivate? Mental toughness or resignation and satisfaction with mediocrity? There are no neutral actions.

The more we quit, the easier it is to quit. The more we rise to the challenge, the easier we are able to. Habit removes deliberation and replaces it with character. We are the habit. That is, the virtue or vice comes to constitute our character.

The challenge to live excellently appears great but do not despair: Rejoice! Aristotelian philosophy offers us hope. Moral virtues like courage and mental toughness aren’t generated by infrequent momentous acts nor are they genetically determined. Instead they are cultivated through the small seemly insignificant choices we make every day. 

Excellence is easily within everyone's grasp. 
[Ok, Aristotle would have disagreed with universal claim the last sentence but who cares...I'm trying to leave you feeling hopeful and sell you my new Quantum Spirit Inspiration book and seminar!)

Summary

The above lessons have both wide and narrow application. Broadly we can apply the following lessons to live better:

1. Eliminate digital distractions.

2. Don’t multitask. 

3. Set up your environment such that deep immersion in your activity of choice is possible. 

4. Identify the character traits you want to have and do small things every day that embody that trait. 

For the gym:

1. Leave your phone in the got-tam locker room.
2. Make every action conscious and deliberate.
3. Pay attention to your breathing and posture.

For School (things I do and am trying to do better):

1. When doing a writing assignment unplug your modem.
2. If your writing requires online sources, download them into PDFs then unplug your modem. 
3. Put your phone in another room while doing work.

Qualifications

Some times life throws a lot of shit at us and merely surviving another day is a feat in itself. In times like these, pushing yourself to the limit could be counter productive. It might rob you of the energy you need to get through your day. On the other hand, winning small battles is a way to rebuild our self-esteem. Fitness usually takes place in a controlled environment where success is a simple equation: More effort=more success. Outside of the gym, all sorts of confounding factors creep into this otherwise simple formula. If you're looking to regain a sense of control over your life, doing so in a controlled environment might be a good way to go. 

A final qualification has to do with the nature of your work day. Some people have extremely demanding jobs--periodically or consistently. They have to be at 100% intensity all day. For people with these sorts of jobs, the gym is often a place to relax. It's an escape from the intensity of work. If your job requires long and intense days, pushing yourself extra hard in the gym might make working out unpleasant for you. If that's the case, it's better that you're showing up without maximizing than not showing up at all. Aristotle famously advocated the doctrine of the mean. That is, any trait in excess is harmful.

A Defense of New Year's Resolutions (That THEY Don't Want You to Know About)

Introduction
Around this time of year my news feed is infected with click-baity articles or facebook statuses about how New Year's resolutions are stupid or bad or whatever and "I'm better than people who make NY resolutions because I recognize that every day, NAY! every second! is an opportunity to redefine myself for the better. So there, you philistines! Shield thine eyes from the light of my transcendence!" 

Anyway, here are a few counter click-baity responses to internet self-righteous anti-NY resolution sentiment. 

Reasons for NY Resolutions THEY Don't Want You to Know About
Reply 1: Fuck you. Get over yourself. 

Reply 2: This may seem odd coming out of a philosopher's mouth but maybe it's cuz it comes from experience: Too much reflection on how to live can be a bad thing. It takes you out of 'just living'. While you're thinking about how you ought to live, life is passing you by--one missed experience at a time (#gradschool). Descartes himself--of the Meditations--reprimands Princess Bohemia for being over-reflective. (Of course in this case it was cuz she had a devastating challenge that he couldn't answer, but let's pretend that it was for some other reason). 

Also, didn't Socrates famously say that the unexamined life is not worth living? True. But it doesn't mean you need to examine it all the time. You have to have experiences to examine in the first place.

OK, so there you have it. Too much navel-gazing can pull you out of your life. You emerge from your contemplative state only to find you've missed out on living. 

Where was I going with all this? Ah, yes. It's actually not a good thing to be reflecting all the time, and so having culturally agreed upon reminders to do so is helpful: No need to do it all the time. You'll be reminded at least once a year to do so and you'll probably do it on your birthday too--especially for each birthday after 30 (e.g., "Where the fuck did I go wrong?""How do I undo this mess?"). 

Make Resolutions and Keep Them Using This One Weird Trick! (Motivational Speakers Hate Me!)
Having resolutions as a social practice leverages the social resources that will make us more likely to keep them. (I said "more likely", not "guaranteed".) Many scienticians agree that the most powerful motivational forces are social forces and NY resolutions engage these forces in various ways. 

First, choosing your goals is a combination of an individual and social act.  The goals we choose are individual to us but they are also often the result of social feedback we've been getting over the year. If you're a student and your professors keep telling you that you need to work harder, this might be a sign that you should work harder. If your friends keep telling you that you don't hang out enough with them, maybe this is sign that you could be a better friend.  If people seem to avoid conversations with you this might be a sign that you need to be a better listener or need to consider your words more carefully. I'm not sayin'....I'm just sayin'...

Resolutions are also social in that we look to others as possible models for the types of behaviors and goals to pursue. It doesn't mean we're going to mimic someone else exactly. Looking to others we admire (or despise!) gives us a point of departure to craft a goal suitable to ourselves and our particular circumstances. It's a way to activate our imagination such that we can see possibilities for ourselves.

As I mentioned, many scienticians agree that the most powerful motivational forces are social. If you publicly declare your goals (to friends, family, to every damn person on social media, or all of the above) you won't want to look like a dumbass by failing. Social pressure can be used to your advantage. Fear of shame is an excellent motivator. But fear of public shame isn't the only possible benefit from publicly declaring your new goals. If you aren't surrounded by a bunch of assholes, some of the people to whom you declare your goals can (gasp!) offer you encouragement and actually help you stay on track in those moments where your own willpower subsides. Confiding our resolutions to (carefully selected) others creates a support network that can help us actually achieve our resolutions.

Of course, some of you are thinking, "I don't need nobody to help me with my goals. It's all about survival of the fittest and I can handle my shit."  Ok, maybe you can. Good for you. You're Jesus. Now, go back to reading your Ayn Rand books in the corner.

The bottom line is that while it's true in theory ("here goes the philosopher with his got-tam theory...") that we can reflect on our attributes and projects at any moment, in practice (that's the science part!) most of us don't. The collective tradition of doing so around New Year's provides a periodic reminder for us to reflect on our past year and the things we'd like to change or accomplish in the upcoming year. A healthy practice to my mind...

I Know I'm not Perfect But How Do I Pick My Resolutions? Use These THREE Weird Tricks!!!!!
For the most part, I think most of us, upon even the most cursory reflection, are aware of where we need "work". It is mostly a matter of committing to the change you want to see. That said, here are a couple of general ideas inspired by a few philosophers for how to pick some resolutions. The first involves self-directed resolutions and the second is other-directed resolutions. 

1. Aristotle: For Aristotle and most of the ancient Greek philosophers, virtues were not only a means to a good life, they were necessary components of a good life. That is to say, you can't have a good life unless you develop your virtues. Quick aside, for the Greeks, a good life meant a "flourishing" life. So, if a flourishing life is something that grabs your fancy, think about a virtue or two that you could further develop. Here's a list of the classic virtues: courage, temperance, liberality (generosity), magnanimity, proper ambition, patience/good temper, truthfulness, friendliness, and modesty.

2. Sartre/De Beauvoir: Sartre says we construct meaning in life through our projects. So, what's to prevent me from creating meaning through morally abhorrent projects? Nothing. You can derive meaning from evil projects, but this wouldn't be an ethical life. The ethical constraint on life projects for Sartre and De Beauvoir is that they must be in the service of freedom. To understand what this means in practical terms we need to take a quick step back and ask why freedom is important in the first place. 

Without going too deeply into it, freedom is morally important because it is necessary for self-actualization. And self-actualization is necessary for a shot at a life worth living. If your own opportunities and resources that are helpful for self-actualization are morally important than so are those of others (unless you think there's something metaphysically special about you). This means that your life project ought to involve in part helping those with fewer opportunities and resources for self-actualization than you. People who live in poverty or don't have access to a good education or healthcare, etc have on average greater barriers to self-actualization. An ethical life is one that includes both working toward undermining those barriers and helping the individuals affected by the barriers. 

In terms of a NY resolution, Sartre and De Beauvoir would say you ought to resolve to include in your core life activities efforts towards helping others gain access to the resources that facilitate self-actualization. In short, find a social cause to include in your life project. Resolve to serve others.

3. Suzan Wolf: We all want a life that is worth living but what does that include? Whatever it is, it requires activities that are meaningful and fulfilling. We might think that if an activity is meaningful it's also fulfilling and vice versa. Suzan Wolf argues that meaningfulness and fulfillment can come apart. 

Let me illustrate. You can have a career that is very meaningful yet not personally fulfilling. Perhaps your parents groomed you to be a doctor or something. You were too young to know how you'd feel about actually being a doctor so now that you are one, you do it. It's meaningful work. You save lives. You cure the sick (contrary to what the idiots at Alt Mama or TinFoilRUs say). Yet, strangely, you don't feel fulfilled. The idea is that despite the fact that an activity or career is meaningful, not everyone will find it fulfilling because of differences in our individual constitutions. 

Conversely, you can find an activity fulfilling yet it is not meaningful. I love to watch UFC. I find it really fulfilling. I feel great after watching people knock each other unconscious.  Is this a meaningful way to spend my time? Probably not.  

So here's an idea for a resolution. Try to align your life projects in terms of meaningfulness and fulfillment. If your career or some central aspect of your life is meaningful but unfulfilling, find a way to make it fulfilling. If you can't, think about finding a new fulfilling activity that is also meaningful. Conversely, if your job or some aspect of your life is fulfilling but isn't meaningful, see if you can make it meaningful. Sometimes this won't be possible and so you might consider changing to an activity in which the two attributes align. 

What I've suggested is no easy task, it means fundamentally rearranging important aspects of our lives. But if we seek a life worth living, it's hard to see how such a life is possible without consistently striving to fill our lives with activities that are both meaningful and fulfilling. This requires making room for them by letting go of those activities where both qualities don't overlap. It won't happen over night. It's a process and an approach to living that requires careful reflection on the various ways we fill our days. 

And New Year's is as good a time as any to start....

Aristotle and Plato: Hey, Dummy! You Don't Know What You Want!

Introduction
Aristotle and Plato make the same puzzling claim: You can be mistaken about what you desire. Consider the following example: You're looking at a delicious piece of chocolate cake.  You say to your friend Aristotle, "I really want to eat that cake."  Aristotle be like: "No, you don't." You be like, "Dude, yes I do. Aristotle be like, "No, you only believe you want the cake. You don't really want it. You're mistaken."  You be like, "Dude, I think I know what goes on in my own head better than you. Inside my head right now is a little homunculus screaming 'I want cake! I want cake!'  I know because I'm in my head, and you're not in my head."  Aristotle be like, "Dude, like I said, you believe you want it but you're mistaken. You don't want it."  You be like, "Dude, how can you say I don't know my own internal mental states? That's...uh...mental. If you put me in an fMRI machine right now, you'd see a desire state. That's me desiring that piece of chocolate cake!"

Anyway, eventually you eat the cake and it was delicious.

Part 1: Human Nature, Rationality, and Human Good
So, how do Plato and Aristotle argue for this seemingly puzzling view that you can be wrong about your own internal states? We're going to have to lay a little groundwork first before we can make sense of the view.  Bear with me...

First of all, everybody wants "goodness".  That is, nobody really desires bad things.  We all aim our action at the good.  And the good for humans is happiness.  So, whenever we act, we are aiming at happiness (which is "the good" for humans).  This part's important so let me repeat.  No one intentionally acts in a way to make themselves unhappy.  We can be mistaken about what will make us happy but no rational person would intend to make themselves unhappy.  Otherwise stated, all actions intend to aim at happiness.

You might reply by pointing to examples of self-destructive behavior.  Aristotle (and Plato) would answer in two ways. First of all, people who engage in such behavior believe that it will relieve them from whatever is bothering them. They are aiming at happiness, they are just mistaken about how to achieve it. An alcoholic drinks because he thinks it will bring him closer to happiness than staying sober and thinking about his problems.  An emo dresses in black and listens to emo music because they believe this will bring them closer to happiness than not doing this.

The second response would be that if a person truly aimed at unhappiness, that is, they actually deliberately tried to try to make themselves unhappy, then this person would not be rational. And so, the qualifier: No rational person would deliberately aim at unhappiness.  Stated in the affirmative: All rational people aim at happiness.  In short, everything humans do (so long as they're rational) is intended to bring them happiness (or at least get us closer).

Qualification: Aristotle's Happiness vs Psychological/Emotional Happiness
Entire libraries have been written on this topic but I'll give you the super-duper condensed version: Aristotle doesn't mean emotional happiness as we often mean today. His use of the word is usually translated as eudaimonia which means "flourishing".  Eudaimonia can also be thought of as "a meaningful life".  Of course, some degree of emotional happiness will be a component of a eudaimonic life--it's hard to do a lot of the other important things if you're chronically depressed--but it is not the ultimate end of our actions. The ultimate end is a meaningful/flourishing life. For a full post on this topic...

Note: for the rest of this post I'll use 'good', 'happiness', 'meaningful life', and 'flourishing life' interchangeably. 


Ok, where were we? You might already be beginning to see that what we've covered so far can give us some tools to explain why you can be mistaken about your desires.  The answer will be something like: Everyone genuinely desires (eudaimonic) happiness. You believe that being famous, rich, pleasure, power, etc.. will get you there and so you desire and pursue those things.  However, those things won't actually get you a meaningful/flourishing life and so you are mistaken about what you desire.  You don't desire being famous and rich, you actually desire a (eudaimonic) life and are mistaken about what will achieve it.

Part 2: Why Are We Mistaken? Beliefs vs Knowledge
Aristotle and Plato differ in their account of how we come to know the good but they are united in that you can't live a (eudaimonic) happy life without knowing what the good is. To know the good takes years of study and most people don't undergo this rigorous training and so they have mistaken beliefs about what the good is. They believe it's pleasure, fame, wealth, power, honor, etc...

There's an important difference between belief and knowledge.  Beliefs can be both true or false but knowledge is always true.  You cannot attain knowledge without rigorous study and, as I said above, most people don't undertake this training and only have beliefs about what is good.  Since they only have beliefs about the good, they're likely to be mistaken.

Part 3: Putting it All Together
Ok, so how is it possible to be mistaken about what you desire? Of course everyone who reads this blog knows what the good is.  It's all those other people who don't read my blog that merely have beliefs about what's good. Now, imagine you're walking around with one of those pin-heads and they're like "Oh! I want that shiny thing! It'll make me sooooooooooooo happy!"

Now, as a true philosopher you know a few important things: (a) you know what is truly good and thus necessary for a meaningful human life; (b) you know that your pin-head friend's action is intended to bring them happiness, that is, like all rational humans all actions aim at happiness; (c) you know that shiny things don't contribute to a meaningful flourishing life (happiness); (d) it follows that your friend doesn't really desire the shiny thing because what they really desire is happiness and the shiny thing won't achieve that. Thus, they are mistaken about what they desire.

In short, in so far as they're rational, they desire happiness not "shiny thing". The fact that they skipped out on philosophy class prevented them from acquiring knowledge of the good. Thus, they only have beliefs--rather than knowledge--about the good and are consequentially mistaken about the content of the good, which in turn leads them to believe that something that doesn't bring about happiness will bring about happiness.

Moral of the story: Don't be a fool. Stay in philosophy school.

Objections and Replies Coming Next Post

Aristotle's Virtue Ethics: A Common Misunderstanding

The first question of philosophy is "how should I live my life?"  Sometimes this is also presented as "what is the good life?" because the trivial answer to the first formulation is "the best way possible."  However you want to frame it, it eventually boils down to the same thing.  For the purposes of this article, I'll frame it as "what is the best possible way to live?".

For the ancient Greeks, in order to answer the motivating question you need to answer a prior question: what is the good?  The idea here is that before you can figure out what a good life is you need to figure out what "good" is, then you'll want to live the life that most partakes in the "good."

As it turns out, there are two types of "good": intrinsic and instrumental.  Let's begin with the latter by using an example.  Money is an instrumental good because we don't seek it for itself, rather we seek it for the goods we can trade it for.  We seek money because with it we can get the things we're really after like vacations, food, nights out, etc... If we were stranded on a deserted island and had a bunch of money, the money would have no value at all (except maybe as toilet paper).  This shows that money has no intrinsic value; that is, it has no value itself.  It only has instrumental value (i.e., it only has value in so far as it allows us to get other things that we really value).

To summarize, something has instrumental value if we value it only because it gets us things that we really want.  The things we really want have intrinsic value: we don't want them in order to get some other thing.  Common examples of things that have intrinsic value are love, friendship, happiness, and health.  We don't value these things because they get us some other thing; we value them simply for what they are.  They are intrinsically good.

Notice that some things have both intrinsic and instrumental value.  For example, love and friendship have intrinsic value (we value them for themselves) but they also have instrumental value: they bring us happiness which is a purely intrinsic good.  We don't pursue happiness for any other reasons. It's not valued as a means to some other end. Happiness is the reason why we pursue everything else and so we say it is a purely intrinsic good.

Incidentally, by happiness Aristotle did not mean pleasure or any other emotional states. He meant something very different from what we mean by it today, but let's set that aside for the moment and assume his position:  For now, all you need to know is that by "happiness" Aristotle means the process of developing and realizing human excellences. To put it another way, happiness isn't an emotional state but a way of being.  Assuming this is the case, then everything we do ought to be directed at this end if we want to live a good life.

To summarize up until now: We want to know how we ought to live a good life.  In order to answer that question we need to figure out what the chief good is; that thing for which all other things are pursued. Knowing this will allow us to direct our actions.  As Aristotle says:

Will not the knowledge of [the chief good] then have a great influence on life?  Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? 

That chief good is happiness.  So, if we want to live a good life we ought to pursue things that will lead us to happiness.

In a moment, we're going to come back to this instrumental-intrinsic distinction and Aristotle's definition of happiness but I want to discuss a question that motivates most of moral philosophy, why should I be moral? The answer to this question (for the ancient Greeks) is directly related to the first question of philosophy and its prior question regarding the nature of the good.

Depending on our conception of "the good" our answers to why we should be moral will differ.  For example, if I define the good as "whatever brings me pleasure" then there doesn't seem to be any strong reason for me to be moral and none at all where self-interest and morality diverge. The only reason I would have to be moral would be to avoid the consequences of people perceiving me as immoral.  Of course, there are many cases where our personal self-interest happily lines up with what is moral and so in these cases I'd derive instrumental goods from being moral (because it serves my own ends, gives me a good reputation, etc...). We want to know if I'd acquire some good from acting morally even in situations where I don't stand to benefit in any obvious way.

Let's break this down (wika-wika).  Plato, in a passage of The Republic called "Glaucon's Challenge," asks whether acting morality has any intrinsic value; that is, in addition to the times when acting morally serves our own interests (i.e., has instrumental value) does acting morally have any value above the instrumental goods it gets us; i.e., Is there any reason to value being moral even when there are no instrumental reasons for doing so? 

Two other ways of framing this issue make it clear:  If you could act immorally yet always be perceived as acting morally and never get caught (i.e., get all the instrumental benefits of acting morally without any personal costs) would you personally be missing out on any good?  Or if you acted morally but were perceived as acting immorally, would you gain anything of value? This is Glaucon's challenge to Socrates:  Does acting morally have any intrinsic good or is it purely an instrumental good.

In one of my favorite passages in all of philosophy, after giving his argument, Adeimantus (Glaucon's brother) says

For the things said indicate that there is no advantage in my being just, if I don't also seem to be, while the labors and penalties involved are evident.  But if I'm unjust, but have provided myself with a reputation for justice, a divine life is promised.  Therefore, since as the wise make plain to me, 'the seeming overpowers even the truth' and is the master of happiness, one must surely turn wholly to it. [my italics]

In other words, the instrumentalist position is pretty compelling.  If I want to give myself the best shot at achieving happiness, it's more important to appear to be moral than it is to actually be moral. The costs of acting morally are great, especially if one is going to be perceived as immoral while doing so, and the benefits of appearing moral (even if you aren't actually being moral) are great. What good does the "pretend" moral person miss out on that the real moral person gains? Or does he not miss out on anything?

Here's where we have to take another detour in order to answer the question.  It will seem round-about but bear with me (and Aristotle).

What is the function of a cup?  This may sound like a strange question but if we interpret this question the way the Greeks used the word "function", it won't sound so strange.  "Function" should be understood as "the attributes that make a thing the sort of thing that it is."  When I ask "what is the function of a cup?" I'm asking, what properties make a cup a cup, and not something else?  I'll add that even under this definition of function, E-40's lyrics "we out here trying to function" don't make much sense to me.

We might answer that what makes a cup a cup is that it is something that holds fluids and it something that is easy to drink from.  The degree to which a cup fulfills its function (i.e., has the properties that make it a cup), is the degree to which the cup is a good cup.  For example, a cup with a leak in it (i.e., doesn't hold fluids "excellently") isn't as good a cup as one that does doesn't leak at all. Similarly, a cup that's really awkward to drink from isn't as good a cup as one that is really easy to drink from.

Notice also that if something doesn't hold fluids or can't be drunk from, it isn't a cup! (You are welcome for the profound philosophical insight; it's what we do!).  The moral of the story here is that the more excellently something fulfills its essential functions (i.e., exhibits its defining properties), the more excellent that thing is as a such-and-such AND to the degree that something fails to exhibit excellence in its defining features, that thing is not a such-and-such.

So, why are we talking about cups? Wasn't this supposed to be about moral philosophy and Aristotle? Allow me to try to explain how this fits into the puzzle:  We want to know what it would require to live a maximally good life.  But, if we want to know what a maximally good life is, we need to know all the possible good things there are for humans.  This way, like the archer, we can "aim" our actions at them.  If it turns out that being moral is one of them and has intrinsic value (not merely instrumental) then we're not going to want to skip out on this good because that would mean excluding ourselves from the maximum good possible.  We'd be leaving a piece of the good out.

Before moving forward it's important revisit Aristotle's notion of happiness.  Happiness is the process of developing and realizing human excellences. To put it another way, happiness isn't an emotional state but a way of being/living.  Happiness, the highest good, is the process of actualizing the qualities that make us human and not something else.  To put it simply: happiness=the greatest good for humans=development and exercise of excellence in those features that make humans humans rather than something else.

In order to figure out whether moral virtue has intrinsic goodness we're going to have to figure out what the function of a human being is because we need to know what we need to be excellent at to achieve maximum human goodness/happiness.  (Remember by function we mean "the defining features of a human/that which makes a human a human, and not something else).

This brings us back to the humble cup. How did we distinguish between a good cup and a less good cup or not cup?  We said it was according to how much something possesses its essential features (i.e., fulfills its "function").  As with the cup, if we are to distinguish between a good human and a less good human, we're going to need to know what a human's essential properties are because maximum happiness will require maximum actualization of those essential properties.

Ah! At this point hopefully some light bulbs are turning on in regards to how everything is going to fit together.  Let's see if we can figure out how the intrinsic/instrumental good distinction, the "function" of a human, happiness, morality, and the good life all fit together. First let's ask what traits make a human a human.  For Aristotle this is the capacity to reason (and guide our actions according to reason) and live in large communities (i.e., we are "political animals").

The degree to which we are able to live in large communities will depend in large part on our moral virtues. If everyone just runs around acting only according to self-interest ("but I gots mah rights! don't tell me what to do!") without any consideration for others (i.e., not being morally virtuous), then that community will be dysfunctional and those people will not be able to fully develop and exercise important parts their essential human-ness.

Conversely, if everyone exercises moral virtue, the community will flourish along with the particular individuals that inhabit it and people will have a good shot at fully developing their essential features. Maximal development and exercise of the human virtues is the greatest good for humans and this is what happiness consists in.  People in a dysfunctional community don't and can't maximally develop the essential features of human beings.  Consequentially, they are cut off from full happiness.

Aside: It comes as no surprise to an Aristotlean that the rise of the tin-foil hat "individual-rights-trump-everything" dogma correlates strongly with the demise of community and with it human happiness.  Yeah, he called that 2300 years ago.

So, where does this instrumental/intrinsic stuff fit in because it seems like our reason to be moral, on this model, is instrumental.  I should be moral so I can be happy, right?   I initially thought this and it perplexed me.  How could Aristotle have made this obvious error?

(Another) Aside: Here's a rule of thumb for reading philosophy (and life generally).  When a thinker whose works have survived centuries and especially millennia seem to contain an obvious error, odds are you have misunderstood their position.  In philosophy we call this epistemic humility.

My mistake was to confuse the instrumental good for why we should be moral with the intrinsic good that comes from being moral.  Why should I be moral? So I have a shot a maximally good life (instrumental reasons).  How do I do that?  I have to "get" all the possible "goods".  If I don't develop moral virtue, there's no other way for me to acquiring the particular good that comes from being morally virtuous. This is the intrinsic good that comes from being moral.

I'll repeat this because it's a little tricky: We should exercise, develop and actualize our moral virtues so that we can get the full goodness necessary that makes up full human happiness. This is an instrumental reason to be good and it is an instrumental good that comes out of being virtuous, but the particular good that we get from being moral (development of our moral virtues) cannot be obtained any other way except by being morally virtuous (i.e., this is the intrinsic goodness that comes from being moral).

Let's return to the central questions: why should we be moral?  Because there is no other way to "get" the fullest human good (i.e., happiness) without actually being moral.  To repeat, we might have an instrumental reason for being virtuous (so we can be happy) but there's no way to achieve full human happiness without being morally virtuous because otherwise an important intrinsic good will be missing.  People who aren't virtuous are not exercising and developing maximum human excellence. They are not fully developed humans and therefore never have a shot at maximum human happiness. By not being virtuous they are cut off from a possible piece of full human excellence/happiness.

Just like a cup is a cup to the degree that it exhibits the properties that make it a cup and not something else, you are only human to the degree of excellence that you exhibit those attributes that make a human a human, and not something else.  The ultimate good for a cup is to possess its essential features in the most excellent way possible.  It follows that the ultimate good for a human is the same.  And since moral virtue is an essential feature of human beings, if we are to achieve ultimate human good (i.e., the fullest possible happiness) we must develop moral excellence (along with other kinds); otherwise we exclude ourselves from the fullest conception of human good/happiness.

Now, go be an excellent human being!