Maxims #90 – Immanuel Kant

Go to the Index of 120 Philosophers Squared

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was born in Prussia and is known as a German philosopher. He was an idealist seeking reality as mediated by the mind and had an impact on ethics, metaphysics and astronomy.

Immanuel Kant, philosopher of reality mediated by the mind

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Probaway Maximizing on Immanuel Kant

1. To be fully human, you must do human actions.

2. Act in compliance with your self-made law that fits the moment and postulate that everyone could act that way in that situation.

3. But you are not required to act in any situation in any specific way if some other way would comply with your first law.

4. In a world of ends, everything has a trade price in equal things, except for dignity, which alone is of infinite value and can not be traded away.

5. The end is accurate foreknowledge of behavior; it proceeds from a sensation of physical facts to concepts, ideas, knowledge, then wisdom.

6. All of our learned knowledge begins with perceived experiences.

7. Our knowledge begins with experience, but these can be mistaken in their observations or corrupted in their minds’ analysis of the facts.

8. What can I know with certainty? What can I do that will succeed? What can I hope for when there are many things over which I have no control?

9. Science is made visible with predictable natural actions, but wisdom also predicts future human behaviors.

10. Do you or I have any true knowledge of ourselves or others, or do we see only appearances driven by our preconceptions?

11. The unknown processes which brought us into existence deserve the same veneration for what they have denied us as for what they have given us.

12. If religion and law are exempted from a free and public examination, they can not expect the same respect as science, which permits these inquiries.

13. All thought must relate to us and our sensibilities and intuitions because there is no other way to communicate these things.

14. From the crooked stuff from which humanity is made, it is impossible to create anything genuinely straight.

15. A man who lies annihilates his dignity and is no longer accepted as a whole man.

16. Two strange things are worked into our natural being: a reverence for the starry sky and the morality within us all.

17. We make ourselves worthy of being happy by doing kind things for other people and animals.

18. I don’t need to live happily, but I must live honorably.

19. Seek the respect of honorable men, and ignore public clamor.

20. A man breaks the law when he violates other people’s rights, but he disregards his ethics if he thinks of profaning others.

21. It is reasonable to help others in their quest for a good life and unreasonable to hinder anyone from attaining one.

22. People buried deep in ideological absurdities are to be privately pitied rather than publicly ridiculed.

23. We can observe a man’s hidden beliefs towards people by watching his treatment of animals.

24. Moral conduct is pleasing to all societies, but all the other religious attempts to please them are seen as superstition and nonsense.

25. Modern life is easy for people with money, and all they need to get their annoying work done for them is some cash.

26. Maturity is the capacity to use one’s native intelligence without a mentor and a provocateur’s guidance.

27. Nearly all men and all women should avoid attempting to seek maturity, for it is not only tricky but dangerous.

28. Few have escaped the problems of immaturity by solitary cultivation of their minds.

29. Our men have been made as tame as domestic animals who dare not tug at their leashes, which teach them the narrow limits of their security.

30. Humanity’s life and freedom are to be achieved by adopting humanity as the ultimate end and replacing personal self-interest as the goal.

32. Every man rebels at becoming a slave to another man’s wishes, and his choosing to value humanity above himself must be made agreeable.

33. There must be a seed for every good thing to be developed in a man’s character, but without those seeds, we must cultivate his love of honor.

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COMMENTS:

Kant demands far more of humans than they are capable of delivering. Even the most intelligent and perfectly educated person can’t even for a moment obey him. Humans are individually too slow to learn and cultural transmission of wisdom is too piecemeal for his dictums to function.

Kant’s ideas function only as a fantasy inside of human minds. Outside of the mind, in human physical reality, his fantasy reality fails. It feels good, like the idea of a perfect life after death, but it is too complex for living people to apply. People need maxims they can apply and to cultivate habits that improve their lives.

It would appear that Kant’s most famous maxim is flawed. “There is, therefore, only one categorical imperative. It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” 1. It is impossible to have agreement on what that universal law would be, even for sophisticated philosophers. 2. It is impossible for normal humans to remember to apply such a complex idea when involved in the complexities of their lives. 3. It is replacing God and society’s laws with their own thoughts of the moment, which is condemned in both cases. 4. It means nothing beyond: do what you need to survive as a living being, and for your species’ living DNA to survive. In this view Kant’s morality predates Darwinian morality.

“But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.” Sometimes, actually usually, we see but we do not perceive. And this is generally true with every step of human thinking. Thus, to perceive doesn’t mean to understand, and to understand doesn’t mean to apply that understanding and that understanding applied to a single case doesn’t necessarily develop into guiding principles, and those principles don’t necessarily grow into wisdom, and that wisdom doesn’t necessarily transmit to humanity at large. We humans need more easily applied maxims like the Golden Rule – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or alternately the Silver Rule – Don’t do to others as you would not have them do unto you. Or if you can rise to what Jesus actually said, KJV “All things what so ever ye would that men should do unto you, do so even unto them, for this is the law and the prophets.” That word “should” becomes the difficult thought, but Jesus defines it as, “Help others to live, and to live more abundantly.”

“The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men.” This requires a universal government, a single Legal Sovereign Power which has only a few powers, but chief among them is the power to limit population to the carrying capacity of the environment via peaceful means.

“Human freedom is realized in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself.” When one considers this an absolute then humanity must include all the people who will come into life in the future. Thus the living individual’s ultimate responsibility to humanity and to those future people is to create a society in balance with Nature, so that there will be a decent future world and the necessities available to humanity such that it may thrive.

Sage tip #61, Always be careful.

Tags

Always be careful., Avoid unnecessary risks, Delphic maxim #61

Always be careful.

All the 147 Delphic maxims created in the 6th century BC are sensible and intended to help the person hearing them read from stone stelae or hopefully after a while learning to read them. These stone stelae were chiseled in Delphi and are now thought, at least by me, to have been sent to every city in the world known to the Greeks. It was a way to help Greek-speaking people to be part of a larger community, and to impress on them and the communities they resided within ways of behaving that would help them thrive. Also, it made possible for people the world over to learn the basics of the Greek language, and to become more moral people. The stelae are all gone now, probably because after the Greeks faded in political and religious power they were seen as a threat to local politics and culture. Fortunately, they did survive in other written forms.

#61. Always be careful. Seems like a strange suggestion to be giving to people to help them thrive. Everyone while growing to adulthood encounters enough scrapes and bruises during childhood games to learn to be careful. It seems strange then that when we travel through a public place we can easily observe people doing risky things. We can see people walking with difficulty and suffering from some form of injury. We don’t see the seriously injured because they don’t come out in public very much, and we don’t see the people killed by an unfortunate accident because they are dead and buried.

I am frequently amazed at the sloppy driving of distracted people. Such things as bouncing off of the lane markers on the left side, only a half-minute later to bounce off of the right side markers. Here in Bend, Oregon, dangerous activities are promoted, and the more dangerous the activity the more prestige is attached to performing it.

My dwelling on this subject isn’t going to change anyone’s mind, or behavior, but it makes me feel a little better that at least I put up the idea. Yes, I do know people who have died because of bike accidents, falling accidents, car accidents, gun accidents, and they weren’t stupid people.

It only takes a moment of carelessness to end your existence permanently; therefore, Always be careful is listed in the Greek 147 Golden Rules of Behavior.

Moving on to version 19, How to do for others

Tags

Evolution of an idea, Evolution of kindness, Family survival, Personal survival, Species survival, Survival through dispersal, Ultimate happiness

The reworking of this attempt at creating a working way of behaving during one’s life has gone through more revisions than the number in the title implies, and yet there are concepts that must be blended into the compact statement to approach an ideal existence. One of those behaviors that are generally known as The Golden Rule must be included; however, the Golden Rule as generally stated needs a tiny change of the spelling of one word. It is changing that word back to the spelling and the intent of the meaning that existed since the King James Bible, which was published in 1611. “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” Since about 1940, the usual English language translations have changed the word should to would. The problem with that is that you are only expected to treat others at your presently existing level of social development. However, the word should challenges you to treat others at a level even better than you expect them to treat you. Creating the habit of treating others as you believe they should treat you challenges you to be a better person than you presently are, and thus as you behave in that way you do become a better person. However, treating others as you would have them treat you creates habits that reinforce and make rigid the behavior you learned as a child. Treating others as they should treat you helps you to become a happier, healthier and wiser person, as well as helping others to have those qualities too.

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Version #19

We find hope and give kindness by:

1. —discovering the orderly nature of our Universe, so we can help ourselves and others benefit from everything that it makes possible.
2. —striving to physically survive as individuals, families, and a species by seeking opportunities to live and thrive in various unique places.
3. —creating an ideally balanced human society, so you and I and everyone else can have a meaningful life in a sustainable world.
4. —being accepted as dedicating our wisdom to the great tradition of alleviating the suffering of all living beings.
5. —helping one another use our abilities for our own and others’ well-being by treating them a little better than we treat ourselves.
6. —appreciating that we as a fellowship of people expressing diverse views are more likely to discover wonderful new ways of living with one another.
7. —making a habit of giving attention to other people and acknowledging their need for appreciation in a cooperative existence within our shared world.

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I like this 19th version because it explores kindness and cooperation a little deeper than the previous versions.

Moses’ Ten Commandments compared to Jesus’ Beatitudes.

Tags

Evolution of an idea, human survival, Jesus' Beatitudes, Moses Ten Commandments

Moses lived some six hundred years before his Ten Commandments were written down about the year 830 BCE in what is known as the Elohist document. ( See, 1st Presbyterian. Bishop John Shelby Spong – Unbelievable page 211.) There are three versions of the Ten Commandments: Exodus 34 – Deuteronomy 5, – and Exodus 20 the usual version. Here is a brief list.

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Ten Commandments from the Bible
I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
Honor thy father and thy mother
Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor
Thou shalt not covet (neighbor’s house)
Thou shalt not covet (neighbor’s wife)
Thou shalt not covet (neighbor’s slaves, animals, or anything else)
You shall set up these stones, which I command you today, on Mount Gerizim.

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That list is derived from the Jewish Elohist scholars and appears to be a truncated one culled from the commonly known much longer list published on stone-stelae at Delphi, Greece, created by The Seven Sages. Those stelae were sent to all cities in the known world where there were Greek-speaking people.

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That is a copy of yesterday’s opening to this blog, but today’s will be a little different because Spong on page 191 of Unbelievable writes of the parallels between Jesus’ life and message as being patterned after Moses’ life and message. “All three of these gospels were originally created we now recognize, to provide Jesus stories for the seasons and Sabbaths of the synagogue’s liturgical year. That is why the story of the crucifixion was told against the backdrop of the Passover and why Matthew placed what came to be called the Sermon on the Mount against the synagogue’s observance of Shavuot, or Weeks, the day set aside to celebrate God giving the Torah through Moses at Mt. Sinai.”

That and the following pages show many parallels between these two men’s lives, but what was significant was that each of them went up a mountain to receive God’s message and then presented what they found as a set of ideals to be lived by the believers.  Moses gave the Ten Commandments, and Jesus gave the Beatitudes and His Golden Rule. This parallel becomes apparent when the list of parallels are presented by Spong. Without his observation, I wouldn’t be making this one, but the Beatitudes is an ascending scale presented to help people move from a lowly state of meaning existing in God’s Heaven on Earth up a staircase of grander skills and responsibilities until they themselves were in a Heavenly state created by their own actions.

See the development of this idea in previous posts on the subject of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Helping others up the staircase to Heaven.

Last month on December 17, 2018, in a post about the book Unbelievable by John Shelby Spong, a previous Presbyterian Bishop of Newark, NJ, I mentioned the Beatitudes from Jesus, Sermon on the Mount. In that sermon, Jesus’s goal was to give people access to a better life, that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. He presented to his congregation a staircase to Heaven that is presently known as the Beatitudes. The idea that each person on that staircase could help others below them to step up was presented and here are some ideas on how that can be done.

Matthew 5:3-11 King James Version (KJV)
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (The implication is that even people who are poor in spirit, that is emotionally dead, are living in a world where theirs can be the kingdom of heaven. Even they can ascend the staircase! The people with whom they can relate to emotionally are those that are themselves mourning. Thus it is that the people who can most help the desperately poor in spirit are the mourners.)

4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. (And who shall be most capable of helping those who mourn? The meek may not be quite so desperate as the mourners but they are close enough that can communicate with them and form helpful emotional bonds and personal alliances.)

5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (This step up is based on the physical acquisition of property and a more stable relationship with psychological and personal physical survival, and those at this level are capable of helping those still locked in a state of mourning.)

6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Those who have acquired an abundance of the things of the physical world, and stable family relationships, grasp for even more, for things beyond personal property such as status and public recognition, and they can do this by gaining responsibility for those below them, and thus the possibility for helping them.)

7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. (These people who are successful at gaining public status and power in the form of lordship over people, such as judges and royalty are in a position where they can grant mercy if they choose to do so. They are in a condition where they can obtain the benefits of the standard Golden Rule – Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. To give mercy is to set oneself up to obtain mercy.)

8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. (This is a steep staircase because few of us are ever in positions where we can grant mercy in a meaningful way but if we are ever there we can benefit from those who are pure in heart because they can now see God. That may be a distant entity, barely perceptible, but real.)

9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (To be a peacemaker between people is a challenge and to be a peacemaker between contending groups goes back to the major premise of this whole line of reasoning. That these people might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. Ending conflicts and wars gives tremendous benefits to all humanity and those who do it deserve to be called Children of God.)

10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (We now move into concepts that only those willing to risk death need concern themselves, but some do and are persecuted by the authorities for their attempts to project their view of righteousness into public affairs. Time Names Person of the Year for 2018: Jamal Khashoggi and Other Journalists, some of whom including Khashoggi were just honored with such a fate. Murdered.)

11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. (In this category we may expect to find the Christian martyrs of bygone eras. These were people who got embroiled in public conflicts over which they had great interest but little control. )

12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” (Perhaps being persecuted is part of the job of founding a new religion and Jesus willingly stepped forward and paid the price.)

The Stoics of that Roman era, like Seneca, didn’t fare much better, being required by the Emperor to commit suicide.

How to climb the staircase to heaven.

Tags

Beatitude, Beatitudes, Jesus, Sermon on the Moun, Staircase to Heaven, The Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount was given by Jesus after a short walk from the town of Capernaum to a site above the Sea of Galilee. The sermon begins with a staircase starting from a lowly place and going to a heavenly one. It then gives many illustrations along the path to heaven and then a general procedure for walking along that path and up those stairs. Jesus offers his Golden Rule, and it is a bit different in words from what are usually translated as the Golden Rule, but it is absolutely different in its meaning and power. Observe that each beatitude is an inner state, linked to a response and that they are an upward progression toward a heavenly condition.

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Matthew 5 King James Version (KJV)

5 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

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Matthew 7 King James Version (KJV)

11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

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The Beatitudes are the staircase to heaven, and Jesus’ form of the Golden Rule, which includes the word “should,” creates the thoughts and actions that train your inner-self habits with the abilities needed for the ascent.
The word “should” is often translated as “would” because “would” is easier to understand as it is on everyone’s level and easier to do because it demands little of the person; just be nice to others.

The word “should” challenges you to strive to reach the next level of being.

Today was productive, sort of.

It was one of those pleasant days like they always are for me, I guess. My Tuesdays begin at Dudley’s with a conversation which today was about the Declaration of Independence. It was read aloud in its entirety and then we discussed it and the application of those principles to today’s general political situation.

If you are ever a facilitator of a general discussion group meeting, this subject will probably lead to a good conversation. My participation was totally taken up with observing the people and their interactions and their realization that they were talking in depth about something that was very important. I only tried, with some difficulty, to insert one word into the conversation and that was that I had read somewhere that in Jefferson’s early rendition had been given to Franklin for his suggestions. Franklin changed, “… life, liberty and the pursuit of property.” to  ” … life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

That wasn’t discussed further, but I drifted off into a reminiscence for a while on the subject of how a single word embedded in a grander statement had changed the whole world. My favorite one is from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount; his Golden Rule makes sense when you have read the opening Beatitudes, as it is written in the King James Version – “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” The word should is of key importance because it challenges the person to move to a higher state of being as is defined in the Beatitudes.

Unfortunately, nearly all of the various modern translations change the word should to would. Thus you are by that view recommended to treat others as you would have them treat you. That is okay, but it doesn’t challenge the person to move to a higher state of moral and spiritual being, and only asks them to operate at the level of development that they already inhabit. That isn’t asking much; it is easy to explain, and easy to do. It is so easy a child can do it.

But, by my view, that is totally degrading Jesus’ message to a mundane farce and not the foundation of a great moral and progressive religion. It certainly isn’t such a profound message that an intelligent man would sacrifice his life to get it published locally to his friends. He would know that that easy message is probably in the thoughts of every human being even in the most remote hunting communities. Treat others well and they will probably treat you well, and don’t treat others badly and they will probably not treat you badly.

Jesus’ message was infinitely more profound and I suspect that even Theodore Parker, the Unitarian Heretic may have missed its essence.

Sage tip # 15, Empower your friends to do good deeds.

Tags

Doing unto others, Empower humanity, Empowering others, Seven Sages of Greece, Treat others better than you treat yourself.

The 147 suggestions attributed to the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece are so brief and so ancient, and so much from an alien culture that they must be interpreted to have a cogent meaning to a modern seeker of a proper relationship with their personal life. Tip #15 – Empower your friends to do good deeds – is in agreement with my latest reach into providing workable methods for creating a better world for oneself, for one’s species, and for all life. In brief that develops from the mild Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Which progresses to a stronger statement, King James Version, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” The more demanding word is should which means that you should help others to live and to live more abundantly.

That moves the sought-for goal of improvement beyond the level already achieved by the follower of the weak form. That level only recommends treating people in a way that is comfortable at one’s present level of personal moral development. The stronger form challenges a person to reach beyond their present level. It makes that suggestion in an abstract way and leaves up to the person practicing that idea to make up their own mind how their actions might be applicable to that word should.

When discussing this problem with my friends I have responded several times to the ancient challenge of stating the essence of one’s religion while standing on one foot. Tuesday I stood on one foot in front of thirty people and immediately toppled over. I was wearing Crocs, a very thick-spongy-soled style shoe, and was having so much trouble balancing that a friend immediately came to my rescue and provided a shoulder for support. Whereupon, I said, “Treat others better than you treat yourself.” Everyone had a good laugh.

I wish that event was an example of, “Empowering your friends to do good deeds” because she certainly did one for me, but I hadn’t toppled intentionally so any empowering that occurred was accidental and not a spontaneous action on my part. For a habit to have become effectively part of one’s personality it must be triggered automatically by the situation, like a reflex, only a learned response. That didn’t happen in this example.

It was relatively easy to mentally practice holding out one’s hand toward a pile of grocery store candy to fend it off, but empowering friends to do good deeds requires a spontaneous situation where that other person’s opportunities are seen and a situation brought into being where they can perform some spontaneous good deed. Hmm, this will require some new kind of mental practice to develop the habit. Earlier today I did demonstrate to some friends how to create a habit, and over the course of an hour made that habit spontaneous when an unanticipated prompt happened.

A beginning for training to empowering others is setting up easy tasks before kids arrive.

Sage tip #105, Protect your friend’s life as your own life.

Tags

Defend your friends, Defend your self

The 147 suggestions attributed to the Seven Sages of Greece were published about the year 570 BC. That means about 550 years before Jesus gave his sermons. I have been rendering those sage suggestions into a slightly expanded modern English wording and calling them tips because that term doesn’t generate the negative reactions that God-given commandments tend to do. Even the term suggestions has a pejorative feel, so I have been using the term tips. Thus in the book Love Your Life, Sage tip #105 is currently rendered Protect your friend’s life as your own life.

When it is stated in that way the idea feels like Jesus’s Great Commandment spoken in King James Version of Matthew 22:37-40.

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

The Sages’ statement “Protect your friend’s life as your own life” (570 BC) is very similar to Jesus’ 27 AD saying, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” In both statements, the idea is to value and protect your friend’s wellbeing as carefully as you do your own wellbeing. 

That is a minimum concern we must have for our friends, and when we have the consciousness and the opportunity we should treat others better than we treat ourselves. This is a greater opportunity for personal growth than treating others the way you would wish to be treated. That weak form of the Universal Golden Rule doesn’t advance your spiritual growth; it only locks you into the level you have already reached. When you intend to treat others better than you treat yourself you must pay attention to their needs, and be aware of your needs too, and then intentionally sacrifice some part of your time, attention and other possessions to help that other person.

The reason for doing so personally expensive a thing is because that is the surest way to cultivate the habits of becoming a happier, healthier, wiser and wealthier person.

To protect your friend’s life as your own life teaches you how to protect your own life better.

You and only you are in charge of what you eat.

Tags

LOL diet is a lifestyle, Love Our Life - diet, You choose

Other people may have a lot to do what is on your plate, but you and only you are in charge of what you eat. Also, you and only you are in charge of what you do. There is an infinity of things that influence everything we do and much of the time we have very little influence over what that will be. There are forces like gravity to which we must submit, and many people will complain about how arbitrary nature seems to be. And yet, nature operates under the most fine-grained laws of behavior. It is beings with a choice of action that are arbitrary in their relationship to us, and humans are the most arbitrary of all. Yet, even with human beings, there is a lot of predictable actions and reactions that we can depend upon in almost all situations. Generally, people follow the Golden Rule, and if we treat them well they will treat us well.

It is when we come to our relationship with our own selves that we have the most flexibility and the most problems. The specific problem I have been thinking about these last few months is the food we people eat and tend to overeat. Why are people overeating and at the same time are reported to be spending five hundred billion dollars per year to eat less? Famine is the natural thing being avoided by overeating, but nearly all of the billion obese people are not facing a famine at present, and probably have never faced one in their entire lives. That they don’t want to be obese is proven by the fact that they spend so much money trying to drop the excess weight. They are asking for help. Desperately asking for help! They are not getting help, they are getting advice, but the advice is impossible for them to follow as is proven by the obvious fact that billions of people are clearly getting heavier every year. They know what is best for them but they can’t do what is best for them. Why? Their advisors spread the guilt deep and say it is because of these people’s lack of willpower. And yet, people of normal bodily weight are exerting no willpower at all to maintain their healthy status. It isn’t willpower that is lacking, it is a totally wrong approach by the diet and medical industries that is the problem. People are being told the wrong things to do.

“You and only you are in charge of what you eat” is an obvious statement and would seem to be spreading even more guilt upon obese people. It is the total number of calories eaten versus those burned by the person’s body that determines the gain or loss of weight. Probably true to the last calorie, but you can’t see calories. So what is the problem, and more important, what is the solution?

I will get to that and it will be easy and fun.