Weekend Update

I spent most of the weekend moving Aria from my house to her new apartment. This involved fetching a futon + frame from Broomfield, her scattered belongings about my house, and various items from her former home while her husband wasn't present (including, passively aggressively, the shower curtain). We had a "welcome home" ritual in her new living room on Sunday night. She hadn't set up her bookshelf yet, so we used the constituent cinder blocks and bricks to support candles and icons. We did a word association exercise that managed to produce "Mutual Investment Fund" and several hairy chests. Timing is everything; it snowed today. In transporting a carload she managed to blow out a tire and drive from Folsom and Arapahoe to 28th and Glenwood (3-4 miles, I think) on the rim of her husband's car. He had been negligent about filling the tire with air, so there's another piece for the fight recipe. Pictures forthcoming.

You know how the Wal*Mart stereotype is 70-year-old guys standing at the door to greet customers? Imagine the same concept for Abercrombie and Fitch. But instead of geezers, it's two pretty boys without shirts and showing their boxers. Pictures forthcoming.

Edit: On Saturday night I went to an Irish music concert at the Niwot Grange. It was a benefit for the relief fund for victems of the Overland Fire that destroyed 16 Jamestown homes. No pictures forthcoming.

I read for my final ΤΒΠ initiation as a student and also spoke at the banquet. I think I did pretty well, given my lack of preparation, but probably went on too long. The point I wanted to emphasize is the basic existentialist question "Who are you, Trevor?" I also wore a suit and top hat. Pictures forthcoming.

Nightline tonight was pretty cool. The father of the first U.S. casualty in Iraq this year is visiting as a peace activist. He set a crucifix in the sand where his son died. And to add to the poetry of the moment, his son's name was Jesus. I stayed home from work today to get some schoolwork done. Was astoundingly inefficient, probably from waking up early all weekend to move stuff. No pictures forthcoming.

I'm attending The Blind Boys of Alabama with Mavis Staples and John Medeski at The Boulder Theater. Tickets are $30 (including tax) and the show's guaranteed to rock. The cool thing about Eclectic Paganism is I can groove to gospel without committing to Christ. Pictures hopefully forthcoming.

The annual Winter Solarbration, aka the Winter Solstice Revels, is on Saturday, December 20th. It's a totally awesome party with easy social dancing, a Mummer's Play, Pagan feel (though it's a cultural, not religious, holiday celebration), and the ever-haunting 1000-year-old Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance. Now there's a nonverbal ritual to conjure by. It'll send shivers up your spine all the way home. Many pictures forthcoming.

Interest Haiku #7: Weakness of Will

Weakness of Will -
I know what to do
Motivation not present
Incontinance sucks

I'm the only person with this interest, though a few people are interested in the Greek version, akrasia and several (mainly Christian?) users and communities are interested in self-control. Also related are willpower, and incontinence, though I doubt these people have the same thing in mind.

It's a subject that's familiar to most people, but it doesn't receive a lot of attention. Since at least Plato, philosophers have asked "Is knowledge sufficient for virtue?" That is, if a person knows that X is the right thing to do, will he do X? I think the answer is clearly "no," but it seems that most philosophers (Plato included) try to redefine "knowledge," "right," and so forth so that the answer is "yes," because that gives us higher hopes for our ethical theories.

Suppose you're on a diet. You know you shouldn't eat chocolate cake for dessert, and you tell your friends "I'm not going to have dessert." But then the waitress comes over and asks if she can get you anything else, and you blurt out "I'll have the chocolate cake." What's happened? Do you (momentarily) not believe that you shouldn't have chocolate cake? Doubtful. Did you talk yourself into thinking chocolate cake isn't fattening? (It's okay! I had Subway!) Maybe. Did one voice in your head say "I don't want any dessert" and another voice shouted "I want the chocolate cake!" and took over your executive function? This seems more likely. This is an example of weak will.

Weakness of will is a problem with lack of action as well. You're watching TV and Entertainment Tonight comes on and you say "I really should get up and do homework so I don't fail this class." But then you don't get up. You know you need to do homework. You know Entertainment Tonight is not a good use of your time. You don't even care about Michael Jackson. You're motivated not to fail, because then you'll have to retake the class. But you can't get your body lifted off the couch. This is another example of weak will.

Sophomore year I took a "Philosophy and Literature" course where this was the main topic of discussion. It was at 9:30 AM, so I didn't grok as many of the nuances as I'd have liked, but the issues stewed in my mind for a while. I wrote a one-act play which involved a guy and his shadow as separate characters. I'm a slacker, so I haven't posted it in the 3.5 years I've had available. Will do so soon, however. The next year, I took an "Ethics and Psychology" seminar and wrote a pretty good paper that I presented the next year at the Rocky Mountain Student Philosophy Conference. My argument was that we don't have a good framework for discussing (weakness of) will, so I drew some preliminary distinctions. For instance, it's important to distinguish actions based on the amount of conscious control we have over them. I used substance addiction as a recurring example, though I had trouble finding good research on substance abuse qua willpower. One cool thing about the paper was the meta-section, where I described my process of writing the paper while suffering from a lack of self-control.

I encourage my wonderful readers to post a comment describing a personal account of weak will (in haiku form, if you like). You can talk about a time when you knew what you should do but did something else. Or you can talk about a time when you knew what you should do but didn't do anything. Or you can talk about a time when you knew what you shouldn't do, but did it anyway.