In this dialogue, Socrates and José discuss the pros and cons of alcohol and cannabis consumption and then Socrates goes on to argue that you don't actually want to have fun in life.
Personae: Socrates, José
J: Oh, hi there, Socrates! What’s good?
S: As in “What is the good?”
J: Haha, no man, as in “How are you doing?” You look kind of tired.
S: I was up late last night, to tell the truth, José.
J: Really? What were you up to?
S: I was at Agathos’ place for one of his symposia, you know how it goes; he had his slaves serve some of his finest wines while we chitchatted about this and that. At some point – people had already gotten unbelievably wasted – Phaidros started a discussion about the nature of love.
J: As one does in that kind of situation.
S: Yeah, I think he was just kind of horny, to be honest. Anyway, I don’t really recall much of what he said, or anyone who spoke after him, for that matter. I only dimly remember that Aristophanes just went on and on about how people used to be balls or something.
J: Balls?
S: Yeah, you know, spheres.
J: Ah yes, I know that one. Doesn’t he claim that people used to be merged in homo- or heterosexual pairs of two that form spheres that could move at incredible speed which made them so powerful that Zeus at one point had to divide them into two distinct people? And that this is why we search for a partner for our whole life, to find the missing half?
S: And I thought he wasn’t making sense because he was drunk. Turns out, his theory is just nonsense.
J: Well, I think it’s quite a beautiful picture of love. It illustrates…
S: Yeah yeah, no man an island. Spare me, José. I’ve had a whole evening of just that. Anyway, guess who shows up just as I’m about to leave.
J: Who?
S: Alcibiades. And he’s drunk as fuck.
J: Ah right, aren’t you having an affair or something?
S: Yeah, we had an affair. Past tense. It’s been over for months, but he just doesn’t get the message. So, as I was saying, this guy is completely shitfaced, right? Completely out of it. Can barely stand upright. Man, I’m telling you, he had to hold on to the pillar next to him so he wouldn’t fall over. And then he starts this whole sermon about how the two of us are destined for each other, how Aphrodite appeared to him in a dream, all that jazz. His words are barely intelligible because he is slurring his speech so badly.
J: Oh boy.
S: Exactly. Anyway, I saw that drunk drama was imminent, so I desperately did what I could to shut him up. I just started to give a speech about the nature of love myself.
J: What did you say?
S: Something along the lines of how true love isn’t sexual but intellectual or something like that.
J: True love is intellectual? Dude, if you’re not interested in Alcibiades anymore, just tell him straight up.
S: As if I hadn’t tried that already. Dude, I swear this guy just won’t listen. Anyway, I just kept talking for a while and as soon as Alcibiades had sort of calmed down and the conversation had moved on, I took leave and went home. I think I’m done with these symposia, they’re all the same and I’m getting sick of it.
J: That’s what the hung-over have been saying since the discovery of alcoholic fermentation. Lighten up, Socrates. I bet you will change your mind as soon as the next symposion is announced.
S: I’m not hung-over, I didn’t drink last night.
J: What do you mean, you didn’t drink? Are you telling me you had to sit through that whole shit show while you were sober?
S: Yes, I am.
J: Okay, but why would you do that? Isn’t that the point of a sym-posion? I mean, it literally means “together-drink”.
S: Every time you use a hyphen to make an etymological point, Heidegger has a shattering orgasm in hell.
J: No, but I mean it. The whole concept of a symposion is about drinking in society and shooting the shit about philosophical deepities. Not drinking means taking away the essential element that makes the whole enterprise worthwhile in the first place.
S: It might be that alcohol is a necessary anaesthetic to endure all the stupid bullshit touted on such occasions, but that doesn’t really count as an argument in favour of drinking, does it? It’s like saying that I need to wear glasses that distort my vision when I go to an art gallery full of shitty art so that I don’t see how truly shitty it really is.
J: Jesus Chrysler, calm down, will you?
S: And the obvious alternative would be to stop attending exhibitions with shitty artwork.
J: You don’t like drunk discussions, I get it. And I will gladly grant you the point that alcohol rarely serves to improve the quality of a philosophical debate. But why must everything always be optimised in this way? What’s the harm in a bit of tipsy foolishness? Doesn’t it relax you to take a break from your grim and often dull every-day life just every now and then? Sure, I wouldn’t want to be the sober one at a party full of drunk people either, but I don’t think alcohol is the problem in that situation. Neither is it all the drunk people. I think the problem is rather the misfit between your state of mind and the circumstances, and I furthermore think that you are responsible for this misfit. For, after all, you could have either altered your mind by drinking or sought out different circumstances.
S: In other words, you are saying that marvelling at shitty art through distorted lenses makes for good fun?
J: If you insist on sticking with that metaphor.
S: And what if it doesn’t?
J: What do you mean, what if it doesn’t? Most people enjoy themselves on such occasions, Socrates. You’re the odd one out here.
S: And what if they don’t?
J: What do you even mean “what if they don’t”? Ask anyone of the other attendees what they think of yesterday evening. Sure, they will probably say that they should have drunk less or whatever, but their account of the evening will likely be much for favourable than yours. They simply had a fun time on a Friday night, end of story. Or would you go as far and doubt that?
S: I think I would indeed.
J: Look, Socrates. You’re not making sense. I see that you’re trying to do the virtuous thing here by abstaining from alcohol and look, if it works for you, man, that’s great. But your lifestyle is so austere that it would put even a Spartan to shame. Honestly, give yourself a break from time to time and, who knows, that might even increase your ability to act virtuously when you’re sober.
S: I’m afraid you’ve got this whole thing backwards. You’re framing the matter as if there were a trade-off between what is good and what is fun such that we do what we ought to most of the time so that, occasionally, we can cut ourselves some slack and do what we enjoy, even though we know that what we’re doing is not virtuous.
J: Yes, and I also claim that the fact that it’s not virtuous to get drunk doesn’t pose a moral problem as long as it isn’t actively pernicious.
S: Well, but…
J: Yeah yeah, I know what you’re about to say, there are many circumstances in which it isn’t harmless at all, with all the violent crime and drunk driving and what have you. All the organ damage…
S: And brain damage in particular.
J: … and brain damage, sure whatever. Look, we all know these risks, but I would still think it a reasonable assumption that the benefits of occasional and moderate drinking outweigh the potential costs by a large margin for almost every one of us.
S: And I, on the other hand, still maintain that your risk benefit calculus doesn’t add up because we are generally confused about the benefit we actually get from drinking.
J: So, you are saying that people think they are having fun while they really aren’t?
S: Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying all along.
J: Okay, but how is it even possible to be confused about the sensation of having fun? I mean, let’s assume I’m hallucinating being on a party. Or better yet, that I’m having a dream of being on a party. And in this dream, I’m having the time of my life. Now, in what sense can this experience be said to be illusory? Sure, I have not in fact been on a party. But the sensation of pleasure or enjoyment itself can clearly obtain independently of whether or not there was indeed a party as the real cause of my sensation.
S: In other words, you might be confused about the cause of your enjoyment, but not about the experience of enjoyment itself.
J: That’s what I’m saying.
S: But I claim that this happens all the time. Have you never had the experience of talking yourself into liking something although you knew on some level that you didn’t actually like it all that much?
J: Not that I could recall.
S: Okay, I’ll give you an example. Imagine you’re going to the theatre with a friend, and let’s say they are a really cultured person and now they are taking you to see some two-hour long post-modern dance performance centred around the subversive potential of the human scream. As you’re making your way to the exit after the performance, you’re toiling to come up with a coherent interpretation of the piece. Maybe it has rendered visible the inherent volatility of your discursively constituted personhood as a privileged Mexican cis male. As you are about to share this thought with your friend, they open their mouth and say “Well, those were two hours of my life I’m never getting back. What a waste of money.” Suddenly, you are overcome by a feeling of relief. On introspection, you find that you found the whole presentation kind of dull all along and are only now able to admit it to yourself. In other words, you thought you enjoyed yourself, when in fact you didn’t and now that the external pressure of appearing like a sophisticated intellectual has dropped away, the veil of illusion is lifted, and you see your boredom for what it is.
J: I think your analysis is wrong-headed. Presumably, it is not the sensation of pleasure itself, which is an illusion, but rather your opinion about the sensation. In other words, you have a sensation of boredom and an additional opinion about this sensation that sort of overrides the negative or unpleasant character of the sensation.
S: I agree with what you’re saying, and I don’t think that you are contradicting me. If the illusion is created by an attending opinion about your sensation of boredom, so be it. All I need you to concede is that people can be confused about whether they are enjoying themselves or not. And if you concede this general point, I can perfectly well make the claim in the particular case of alcohol that people are confused about how much fun they actually have when they are drunk.
J: Okay, I see how people might talk themselves into liking art because they feel like they’re supposed to. But being drunk just seems like pretty straightforward fun to me. There is no attendant opinion that has to override the experience in order for me to like it, as far as I can tell.
S: I do agree that the matter is more subtle in so far as you need to introspect more clearly in order to see that you actually don’t like being drunk whereas not liking art and pretending to do so is pretty obvious at first glance. But the two cases only differ in degree. Just pay attention next time you’re drunk, see how your body feels, how the nausea builds, and how you get tired as soon as you stop getting more drunk, how much you actually enjoy the drunk conversations you end up having, and all the rest.
J: Man, I really don’t see what you’re complaining about. I get it, my body feels a bit weird after four beers. What’s the big deal? It’s part of the experience and I don’t really mind when I’m having a good time. It’s just plain fun.
S: But what is fun?
J: Wow, so now you’re pulling that old trick on me? Right, when I define “fun” as a pleasurable experience related to joy or whatever, you’ll ask me to define “pleasure” and “joy” and you’ll just keep pressing me to define my terms until I can’t give you a satisfactory account of what “being” and “truth” means or whatever and then make it look like you won the argument.
S: No, I’m serious and I’m not asking you to give a conceptual definition. I’m asking you to look more closely at what you presume to be drunk fun. I bet that all you find is contracted excitement and some restless craving to get more of whatever it is you’re feeling.
J: But maybe then fun is just a kind of mental phenomenon that disappears under close introspective scrutiny. Maybe some sensations lose their essential character when you stare at them too closely. You’re having fun exactly until you ask yourself how much fun you’re having right now. Well, then don’t ask, I would say. Just because fun falls apart into its phenomenological constituents when you zoom in your attention on it doesn’t mean that the phenomenon doesn’t exist in the first place or isn’t as pleasurable as it seems on first glance. Long story short, maybe fun is a gestalt so that it would be wrong-headed to look for the “fun essence” among the sensations that make it up.
S: But even if you don’t investigate the sensation of fun, the negative consequences of the experience can still be felt.
J: What do you mean, the negative consequences?
S: Okay so, imagine you’re joking around with a friend, you take turns making funny remarks until you laugh so hard that you start to feel somewhat uncomfortable. Now, what does it feel like to come down from this state of excitement? The muscles in your face and abdomen are cramped up, notice how you have to look away from your friend so you can sigh and release some of the internal pressure you have accumulated by emotionally overextending. You don’t even have to look closely to see the unpleasant mini-hangover that follows this experience. Does this description resonate with you in any way?
J: Sort of, but what are you saying here exactly? That every pleasant sensation is followed by a mini-hangover and therefore should have been avoided in the first place? Even if this is so, maybe it is just the necessary price to pay. No lotus without a stalk, right? It might very well be that there is no pleasure in this world untainted by at least a tiny bit of pain, but this doesn’t show that all instances of pleasure had better be avoided in the first place. I mean, your theory implies that I shouldn’t be joking with my buddies anymore, this is grounds enough for me to dismiss it.
S: Okay, so first of all, I’m not extending my argument to include any kind of positive sensation. All I’m saying is that many sensations which are supposedly pleasant turn out differently on close inspection. You will be surprised to discover that their actual character is quite different from what you had expected and then you will automatically stop striving to have these sensations.
J: Do you have another example? Your descriptions are kind of vague, no offence.
S: Sure, imagine there is a party scheduled for Friday. As you come home from work that day, you’re trembling in anticipatory joy in expectation of all the good things to come. You’re supposed to show up at ten, but it’s only seven and you don’t know what to do in the meantime. Reading is no option; you’re not concentrated enough for that. So, maybe you put some music and open a beer or whatever. You feel energised and your mind is racing. Are you satisfied? Is this what happiness feels like? Isn’t it just restlessness and dissatisfaction in disguise, masquerading as joy? Finally, it’s time to leave. You arrive at the party and it’s sure nice to greet everyone, you get away from the initial chitchat to open yourself another beer and go dancing, but this gets old after a bit, so you go outside again and roll yourself a cigarette for what else is there to do? And the restlessness never stops, your craving drives you to the next drink, the next change of scenery, the next cigarette, but the moment when you finally arrive at this mysterious place that pulls you from afar, it simply never comes. Yet, you’ve already gained so much emotional momentum that you wouldn’t manage to step of the hedonic treadmill, even if you still had the presence of mind to try. The party becomes less and less fun, until you decide it’s time to go and make your way home, intoxicated and numb. Was it worth it? And what had you actually been looking for?
J: Yeah, I can kind of relate to that, but isn’t that what makes parties to exciting? That there is a lot going on and you’re drinking and smoking with your friends? I still don’t think you’re making a convincing case, I have to say.
S: Fine. I’ll try and make this more relatable to you. So, earlier you said that drinking makes sense because the benefits outweigh the costs. And surely it is a reasonable rule of thumb that you should clarify the reasons why you want to take a given drug before you take it. So, what does alcohol do for you? How does it enhance the situation? A straightforward way of finding this out is to do what you would have done, but without actually drinking and then pay attention to any sense of lack you might notice. What I found, for example, is that some of my relationships simply depend on alcohol.
J: Well, that is certainly too strong of a statement, don’t you think? You’re not an alcoholic, after all.
S: I don’t think it is. I have a lot of acquaintances with whom I could have superficial conversations while we were both drunk, but as soon as I couldn’t rely on alcohol anymore to create a connection between us, I didn’t have a single topic of interest in common with them. Just replicate the experiment and see for yourself.
J: Okay, I agree that not everyone you’re having a shallow conversation with at a party is your friend and your life probably wouldn’t be terribly impoverished if you could never converse with them again. So what?
S: But what is alcohol doing for me in this situation? Is it dumbing down my own perception to the point that I don’t suffer as much when I’m having shallow conversations? Is this its benefit?
J: Well, you’re framing the whole thing pretty negatively. I think I mainly drink because it acts as a sort of social lubricant. Granted, this is not an original point to make, but my interactions just become smoother and more enjoyable, simple as that.
S: And what is keeping your conversations from being smooth when you are sober?
J: I don’t know, I don’t get stuck emotionally to the same degree, I guess. Alcohol makes me get out of my own head, it makes me less self-conscious.
S: Ah, so it’s supressing your fear.
J: Haha, oh boy, yeah sure, Socrates. Come on, just because you can give a negative spin to every one of the benefits of drinking doesn’t prove that it’s all just bad.
S: I’m trying to make a more general point here. In all cases, alcohol is doing something for you which you aren’t doing for yourself in that moment. It makes a boring or shallow conversation enjoyable or at least acceptable, it helps you dampen your fears when you don’t want to overcome them, it gives you the self-esteem that you lack, and so on. You could take responsibility for your conversations, choose your interlocutor more carefully, make an effort to come up with interesting topics, to try and really understand the other and engage them, to get over yourself and expose yourself in order to make authentic contact, or think of an interesting group activity that is pleasant even when you are sober. Or you can just drink, or smoke weed and let the drug take care of it all. Just delegate the responsibility to the substance. Although it is of course an illusion that this is even possible because the drug does a mediocre job if you assess it honestly. It is an insufficient substitute for the real deal and leaves you dissatisfied and despondent.
J: Okay, now your talking sense, at least kind of. So, you’re saying that we basically outsource certain responsibilities to alcohol and that it would be better to learn to do these things ourselves. Look, man, it sounds like an admirable project and if you ever reach a stage in your character development where you yourself can provide all the things whose absence we compensate for by drinking, more power to you. But I still believe that this vision is not something one has to live up to in order to have a good life.
S: Again, I’m not claiming that anyone has to or ought to live up to this standard. I’m claiming that they want to, but don’t know yet.
J: This still just seems like a weird thing to say.
S: It’s not so weird, when you think about it. I’m merely claiming that if you were to inspect more closely your actual emotional responses to the various activities that you habitually undertake, like drinking, like smoking and so on, would find that a lot of them don’t stand the test of careful scrutiny. It is as if you suddenly realised that you’re holding a hot potato in your hand. You wouldn’t drop it because it is the right thing to do or because it would make you more virtuous, but because it’s painful.
J: Because the costs outweigh the benefits.
S: If you will.
J: And what makes you so sure that your case can be generalised? Isn’t it a mistake to conclude that alcohol must have the same negative effects on others which it has on you?
S: Well, first, I don’t think it is such a strong claim that all humans are more alike than they are different and that we therefore drink alcohol for roughly the same reasons. But you are of course right in so far as someone else might not have the same negative effects as I do, or their effects might be less pronounced, thereby rendering the cost benefit analysis of drinking more favourable. But my general point is not that alcohol in unpleasant for everyone, although I have a strong hunch that it is. As I said, my point is rather that many of the supposedly fun things in life turn out to be disappointingly painful on closer inspection. And this is especially true for drugs. Although psychedelics probably are a different case.
J: Literally no one saw that coming.
S: But alcohol is an interesting drug in this regard because barely anyone actually weighs the pros and cons of drinking. It’s simply the default. If you say you don’t do drugs, chances are pretty high that you drink, and nobody thinks you’re contradicting yourself by saying that. It’s not like we drink because we’ve consciously decided to, but because it’s just what one does.
J: And you think the same goes for weed, I suppose.
S: Sure, weed is such a strange drug, man. And it’s not that it’s not fun. Quite the contrary, you can have a shit ton of fun on weed, so much so that you can have the time of your life doing something as banal as watching fail compilations of YouTube. You can completely outsource the responsibility to create an entertaining or interesting situation to weed and you can do it so completely that you lose any ability to do this on your own. No wonder many stoners lose any motivation to go out and take action outside of their own bedroom. Or their parents’ basement, as the case might be. Why would you, when you can make music more enjoyable than it ever could be, food taste better than it ever could in your sober life just by smoking a joint?
J: Okay yeah, I see what you mean and I’m not particularly into weed myself, but one the other hand, I’ve also had some interesting and valuable experiences on weed which almost had a spiritual character.
S: Right, I mean, it can act similarly to a psychedelic for example by bringing up unprocessed feelings when you’re high, but, contrary to psychedelics, I feel like it completely distorts your cognitive grasp on things, so you constantly get lost in delusional though patterns without seeing them as such. Also, while weed intensifies your emotional sensibility during the drug experience itself, your emotions are completely dampened down the next day.
J: Sure, you feel like someone has put you in a box of cotton.
S: Right, and guess what, this makes for a great suppressor of unwanted emotions. It also eats up a lot of your intellectual potential.
J: Your intellectual potential?
S: Well, you can’t honestly tell me that you are working on full capacity the day after you smoked weed. It takes you at least a day to recover and you’re just not as smart during that period of time as you would otherwise be.
J: Same goes for alcohol, I guess. But come on, this is what I meant earlier when I said that you have this tendency to constantly optimise everything. Do we always have to work on 100% capacity?
S: No, if you need a break, take a break. But smoking weed is a bad deal because it leaves you more exhausted than before and also, I claim that you’re trading your capacity for intellectual work, or at least a substantial chunk of it, for something you don’t actually want.
J: Because people actually don’t want to smoke weed, the just don’t know it yet, I suppose?
S: My point exactly.
J: And what should people do instead, according to you, meditate?
S: For example.
J: Heck, Socrates! I’m repeating myself here, but I don’t think this kind of hyper austere self-discipline is for everyone. What ought we to do according to you then, work hard all day and meditate whenever we are exhausted? Ora et labora? Always plough the hardest field? Is this your idea of a treat after a long day of work? To work some more, but this time on the meditation cushion?
S: Dude, look. Do what you want, play with your pet, take a walk, put on some music, practice guitar, talk to a friend, take a nap. Whatever. But be honest with yourself why you do the things you do and how you feel about them. And chances are pretty high that meditation and spending time with your pet will pass the test, whereas smoking a joint won’t.
J: Boy, those are the kinds of things I’ll do when I’m retired. Then I’ll move to a lake in Switzerland and take up water colour painting.
S: Sounds nice!
J: I was obviously being ironic.
S: I know. I wasn’t.
J: All I’m saying is that if you try and convince people to trade their occasional booze buzz for water colours by the lake, it will be a tough sell.
S: No, what I mean is…
J: Yeah yeah, we actually already want to take up water colour painting. All of us. We just don’t know it yet. Instead, we get high and watch cats on skateboards online.
S: You know, I couldn’t have summed up my position any better myself.
J: Okay, so here is something I don’t understand. You’re saying that we’re all constantly doing things we don’t really want to do and that we know we don’t want to do them on some fundamental level. So, we do we keep doing them? Just because we don’t look closely enough?
S: That’s one of the reasons. But I would also claim that they provide an escape from some unpleasant sensation that we seek to avoid.
J: Ah, I had already wondered when the Buddhist sermon might set in.
S: Haven’t you noticed it’s been a Buddhist sermon all along?
J: I had a hunch. Anyhow, what does the Buddha preach? Tell me.
S: Interestingly, he preaches just what modern psychology has found, only 2500 years earlier.
J: Therefore, reincarnation truly exists? Isn’t this how the religious argument usually goes?
S: Do you want to hear it or not?
J: Sure, go ahead.
S: So, when you show some behaviour that is satisfying some need of yours, you receive a dopamine hit as a reward. Thereby, your brain tells itself to repeat the same behaviour in case similar circumstances arise in the future.
J: Isn’t this just behaviourism 101? So, you perceive some stimulus, you show a certain behaviour, your need is satisfied, you get a dopamine hit and by virtue of this hit, next time you see the stimulus you show the same behaviour.
S: Exactly, and it works both ways. So, when you respond to a stimulus with a behaviour and it is somehow disadvantageous for your needs, for instance when you endure some pain as a result of your behaviour, your brain signals to itself not to respond like this in the future.
J: Right.
S: And to complicate matters slightly further, you can either get a reward from your brain by obtaining something you like or by taking away something you don’t. The first is called positive reinforcement, the second negative reinforcement and both increase the likelihood for your behaviour to occur in the future.
J: Yep yep, I think I still have the basics down. Now tell me, why don’t we all paint by the lake shore?
S: José, José, truly a man of infinite jest! Well, when we feel some unpleasant sensation and then show some behaviour that distracts us from it, the sensation is temporarily suppressed. In other words, the negative stimulus is removed. And those are all the necessary ingredients for negative reinforcement, so your brain rewards you with a dopamine hit and you do the same thing next time around, which provides you with another dopamine hit. Thus, the cycle continues until it grows into a full-blown a habit. Which is to say, an addiction. The function of the behaviour then is not to be satisfying on its own, but rather to distract you from the unpleasant sensation itself.
J: Okay, but could it not still be the case that drinking is the right call?
S: How so?
J: Well, even if it is as you say and drinking had mostly negative consequences, could it not still make sense to drink if these consequences outweigh the negativity of the stimulus we avoid by drinking? Granted, now that I say it out loud, it doesn’t sound like the healthiest coping mechanism out there.
S: And I would agree. Also, and here you finally get the nugget of Buddhist wisdom you’ve been craving for so long, the claim is that you always fare better by enduring the original unpleasant stimulus instead of engaging in an avoidance behaviour. This is so because on the one hand, the unpleasantness of the stimulus you avoid decreases the more often you confront it, and on the other, the reward value of your avoidance behaviour decreases, too.
J: What is that supposed to mean, the reward value of the avoidance behaviour decreases?
S: Well, initially, you get the dopamine hit after you show the behaviour. But as time goes on, you get a more pronounced hit whenever you’re confronted with the stimulus that triggers the behaviour. This is to say, you get the dopamine hit before the behaviour. At the same time, however, the dopamine hit in response to the behaviour gets weaker and weaker.
J: So, in short, the reward decreases, and the anticipatory joy increases over time.
S: Right, and the discrepancy between the satisfaction we predict and the satisfaction we experience grows ever larger. When I was quitting weed, there was a long period when the drug had already stopped having pleasant effects, but nevertheless I would be very eager to smoke next time around because the anticipation was so strong.
J: If this is how our reward system works, it seems like a pretty bad design to me.
S: Quite the contrary. It is a bad design if your goal is lasting happiness, but an excellent one if you want to motivate your primate ass to seek out enough food and mates to spread your genes. But you are right, of course, upon reflexion it seems pretty ludicrous to rely on this mechanism in our search for satisfaction.
J: I see. So, how do we get of the hedonic treadmill then, to use your words? Can’t wait to paint by the lake!
S: We’re getting there, José. Don’t you worry! I mean, one of the most effective ways of stopping is just to pay close attention to the negative consequences of your behaviours. One of the most efficient programs for smoking cessations, for instance, explicitly tells people to smoke and to then pay attention to the sensations caused by their smoking. And a lot of people quit.
J: Right, and I suspect you would recommend meditation as a way of learning to pay close attention?
S: Exactly right.
J: You’re getting predictable, old man. Always the same advice.
S: What can I say? I’m a one-trick-pony. Anyway, I would say that meditation can teach you how to pay attention purposefully in your daily life which is a pretty strong tool for changing your habits.
J: Okay, but maybe I just want to live my life and not go around and neurotically zoom in my attention on any sensation that presents itself over the course of my day to see how much I really enjoy it.
S: Yeah, but even if you don’t make this kind of investigation your priority, your bad habits will just naturally melt away as they are exposed to the bright sunlight of your ever clearer consciousness.
J: So poetic…
S: Whatevs, bro. Dis just how I roll. Haters gonna hate.
J: Word!
S: As I was saying, meditation doesn’t just train you to concentrate wilfully. While you’re sitting on the cushion, you will also be confronted with all the negative stimuli you don’t want to feel so that you can get used to them and don’t have to rely on your avoidance behaviours. It’s a type of exposition therapy, really.
J: Wow, now you’re really doing a bad job of advertising your lifestyle. So, you basically sit down and wait for all the negative feelings to arise so that you can get desensitised?
S: That’s exactly right.
J: Doesn’t really sound like a whole lot of fun to me. But then again, you’re not really into fun either, are you?
S: I suppose you could put it like that.
J: Did the Buddhists at least come up with a catchy name for this desensitisation process?
S: It goes by the name of “purification”.
J: I feel like the head monk in charge of marketing should just resign at this point. Sounds absolutely gruesome.
S: Let’s say it’s an acquired taste. And, of course, you start reaping the benefits pretty quickly.
J: Like what? Not enjoying a drink with your buddies anymore? Now, that sounds like a goal worth striving for.
S: You can make fun of me all you want, José. I still think this is what we all actually want, if only we knew.
J: Yeah, I know, you keep repeating it. Anyway, do you know the tale of Antiphon and Coracles?
S: Erm… Help me out here.
J: I first heard it from Aristophanes, and he had heard it from Baryphonos of Crete, who heard it from... Anyway, so Antiphon and Coracles are twins and the only two children of the swift-footed Brachythos, the king of Salamis and brother to the famous…
S: Dude, I don’t care who’s related to whom here. This isn’t the Bible. Just get on with the story.
J: Okay okay, so Antiphon and Coracles are both pretty depressive dudes, right? Always have been. Then, the story goes, they both fall in love with the same woman, Charmedina, the daughter of the local blacksmith, Aretergos. But then Coracles is the first to a move and the two get together. So, Antiphon is terribly jealous and, on the night of his brother’s marriage, travels to the holy mountains of the Sinai desert to find Totechthanu, the Egyptian shaman who dwells on top of the vulture-invested heights of Ichthun. Totechthanu is a notorious master of the black arts and, in return for the gold Antiphon had taken from his father’s treasury, agrees to curse his brother, Coracles. Henceforth, all insects close by take an immense interest in Coracles’ nostrils. Flies, wasps, bees, beetles, hornets, bumblebees, butterflies, moths; they all try to land on his upper lip or the tip of his nose to dive into the depths of his nostril as if it were a fragrant flower’s blossom. Of course, Coracles’ calm days are over. Only now he notices how plentiful the insects abound on his father’s island. He walks the streets of his hometown hastily, covering his face with a special mask crafted by his father-in-law, the blacksmith, whipping his arms at the incoming bugs in every instant, much like a horse would whip its tail. This forces him into a state of constant industriousness, which keeps him on his feet, but on the other hand, also grants him no time to ruminate on the grim thoughts as had been his habit all his life. Though constantly driven by the intrusive insects, he is more active, more productive, and, in an unexpected way, happier than ever before. His brother Antiphon, on the other hand, is now without a task, his attempted revenge has been futile, the object of his romantic sensibilities has been removed from his reach, his brother, who used to be his trusted companion in his depressive reveries, is now constantly occupied and away from home. Thus, Antiphon sees no other way but to throw himself off a cliff into the depths of Poseidon’s humid realms and drown his sorry ass.
S: That’s quite the story.
J: Yeah, and you know who did live happily ever after? Coracles. Guess why?
S: Did you just tell me the whole story only to make the point that our everyday preoccupations and desires keep us from depression and suicide?
J: Yeah, I mean, it first seemed like the insects were the problem, right? But if it hadn’t been for the bugs, he wouldn’t have…
S: I get it, your story’s silver lining wasn’t exactly hard to extract. You could have just made the point in the abstract, to save us some time.
J: Yeah, whatever. So, what do you make of it?
S: Okay, first let me remark that there is some truth in the notion that you sometimes just need some shit to do in order to lift yourself out of a depressive rut and change course.
J: Don’t you usually say that we need to work through our psychological conflicts and unprocessed emotions?
S: Yes, and I still think you need to work through your stuff. But it’s also true that even well-adjusted people can get depressed when they stop doing anything and moreover, when you engage in practical matters and try to make it all work, you’ll have to confront a lot of the emotions you’ve avoided until then in the process. So, I’d say that working through your stuff and making your life work are overlapping or at least mutually supportive endeavours. That’s also why cognitive-behavioural therapy is less superficial than a lot of people are inclined to think.
J: Yeah, I can relate to that. I’ve got this friend who just never does much of anything because he thinks he needs to release all of his trauma first. He just uses his psychological issues as a pretext never to start anything.
S: But does he work on his issues then at least?
J: Yes, he sure does, but then he also self-sabotaged a lot by doing drugs he knows are bad for his mental health or by alienating the people in his self-help circle.
S: Whoops, yeah sounds bad.
J: So, this means you agree with my point?
S: Not so fast. I do agree that practical projects can serve a vital purpose in curing your depression as long as people don’t become workaholic. So, in this sense our every-day preoccupations and desires keep some people from killing themselves.
J: You’ve got such a grim way of putting things sometimes.
S: Look, dude, you brought it up. Anyway, where I don’t agree is that this is true for most of us, and also, I think it’s obvious that there are many other ways out of psychological misery. I mean, the silver lining of your story is just super-pessimistic. You’re basically saying if only we were to abstract from our immediate sensual desires and preoccupations then life would not seem worth living, therefore, we are lucky to be driven by them.
J: Well, what do you think would happen if we didn’t have our desires and preoccupations anymore? I mean, what remains?
S: What do you mean, what remains?
J: What I mean is, let’s say I take inventory of all my habits and examine them in the way you advise. What remains? What behaviours are we left with? Will we simply sit in a chair, stare at the wall, and get up only to eat and poop? Is that what we all want deep down within? Or were you serious about watercolours painting by the lakeshore?
S: I don’t think so, but it is not an unreasonable concern you’re raising there. And to be fair, it sounds a bit as if I’m describing symptoms of depressive anhedonia. After all, depressed people don’t find pleasure in any of the usual activities either and if they were told to simply filter those out which they find unsatisfying, they would end up laying in their bed all day. And this is probably pretty much exactly how they end up there. And I also admit that it’s not all that obvious what to do instead of the usual things. For me, at least, there was this transition period where most of my formerly cherished activities had already stopped being all that enjoyable but hadn’t been replaced yet by new ones.
J: And what has taken their place now?
S: Good question. I can only give you a roughly Petersonian answer. Take as much responsibility in the different domains of your life as your level of competence permits and when this has made you more competent, take more responsibility.
J: Simple as that.
S: It’s simple, but it ain’t easy, as they say.
J: Yeah, but is it simple, though? I mean, what does it mean to take responsibility? For what?
S: Well, you can take the “clean up your room” slogan as a metaphor, but you can also take it literally. Start with what you know to be wrong or in need of fixing right now. It’s not like you need a complete vision of what the good life looks like before you can start making improvements. And then take it from there. As you advance, your vision of the direction in which you want to move is successively updated, which in turn enables you do define the desired states you’re striving towards ever more clearly such that you are able to fix the different things in your life ever more intelligently. Just stay within the confines of what you are able to do as this is what will give your life meaning and transform you to become who you are.
J: Look, I do resonate with Peterson’s account, even though his pathos strikes me as a bit over the top at times. But, again, you’ll have a heck of a time to sell this idea to people. Just stop doing all the things that you think are fun and start optimising your life. Who wants that?
S: I think, the contrary is true, everyone actually wants that. And nobody wants to rot away in front of their computer watching hours and hours of Netflix on end or throw away their life stoned on their couch or drunk talking Bullshit with people they wouldn’t enjoy talking to in a sober state of mind. It’s just not worthwhile and deep down within you know it on some level. Just get your act together, stop doing the things that make you feel bad and start doing the things you find satisfying. Voilà.
J: Look, no offense but this whole responsibility ethics seems kind of outdated to me.
S: How so?
J: I don’t know, it just smells of 19th century’s naïve belief in ever-lasting human progress.
S: And what ethical views would seem more up to date to you? That making an effort on the job is nothing but neoliberal self-exploitation? That trying to lose weight when you’re 200 pounds is only a proof of your own internalised fatphobia? That trying to make your marriage work helps perpetuate the system because the classical nuclear family is the building block of the capitalist method of production? That trying to stay in good health is succumbing to bio power, as Foucault would have it?
J: You know that he intended it as a purely descriptive theory, right?
S: Well, that doesn’t stop people from using the concept to criticise anyone who works out or tries to eat healthy. Look, my point is that most moral assumptions implicit in our current worldview of ideology or whatever are just plain cynical. Any attempt to improve something is suspected to be an instance of optimisation and thus a manifestation of neoliberal power structures. I once knew a guy who took pride in not cleaning his room because he considered this too bourgeois.
J: Yeah, but just because you know one guy who did whatever doesn’t prove all that much.
S: No, but I’m making a general point here. If you undermine all values, there is nothing left to take responsibility for. After all, what else is responsibility but the recognition that it is your obligation to improve something according to a certain value?
J: Okay look, I’m not subscribing to this nihilist view of things either. And obviously you should make an effort to improve your life, but I rest my case. You just need to unwind from time to time and have some fun. I mean, isn’t this why we actually take responsibility? To increase the total amount of pleasure in our life? For instance, when I work on my education, aren’t I doing so because this will afford me a good job and money to pay my bills and, when all is done, have some fun in my leisure time? Isn’t the maximisation of pleasure always the end goal of our behaviour and the ultimate justification of our values?
S: I don’t think it is. Otherwise, why would it then be so hard for a lot of people to retire? Why aren’t they using all of their free time to have all the fun in the world? Why do people go out of their way to work pro bono in some homeless shelter or what have you? I think it’s because chasing cheap thrills just isn’t scratching the itch. But taking responsibility is.
J: Man, I don’t know. It just sounds like a pretty conservative world view to me.
S: How so?
J: I mean, aren’t the conservative types usually really focused on personal responsibility? Isn’t that their whole schtick, that you just need to make more of an effort, that anybody can make it, that when you find yourself on the margins of society or at its bottom, it’s because you didn’t make good use of the opportunities you were granted? Doesn’t this view completely ignore the extent to which we are determined by the societal structures?
S: I do agree that the way our society works can impose narrow limits on what we can and can’t do to improve our situation in life. But this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t try. I see a lot of people who have just sort of given up to even try, who have grown resentful and bitter. And I’m barely seeing anyone who’s living up to his or her potential.
J: Man, that’s just such a tired neo-liberal self-optimisation slogan. “Live up to your true potential.” You can’t really be regurgitating that slogan with a straight face.
S: No, I mean it. Put it however you want. Make the best of your situations by use of the tools you have at your disposal. Here, does that sound better?
J: Yeah, but as I said before, your position seems to rely on an overly naïve idea of human progress.
S: And your position relies on an overly pessimistic view of what is possible if we really tried our best. And I think your pessimism is entirely ill-founded because trying your best really works out most of the time. It might be less fun, but it surely is more meaningful.
J: Now you’re preaching again.
S: Yeah, but I’m just sick and tired of chasing the same old cheap thrills over and over. Hedonism is just a shit ethics.
J: Shout-out to Epicurus!
S: No, but you know as well as I do that his philosophy doesn’t correspond to what we commonly mean by hedonism nowadays.
J: I know I know, I was making a joke.
S: I see.
J: Well, anyway! I’m still not entirely convinced that I should drop all of my fun past-time activities and adopt the monk-like lifestyle you’re advocating. But what I’ll say is, if you ever have to move to Sparta, you’ll have no problem fitting in.
S: I appreciate it. Look, I know I can seem a bit preachy at times but do me a favour and just run the experiment and see for yourself.
J: Sure, next time I’m having a blast, I’ll be sure to dissect every last tiny micro sensation and report back to you. But for now, I’ll have to go, I’ll see you around.
S: Alright, take care.
J: You too, Socrates!
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