Adam’s Peace

This is the second post in the Pragmatic Peace series. The first post in the series, Defining Pragmatic Peace, also contains an ever-updating list of posts in this series.

In this article, I hope to lay a foundation of understanding about pragmatic peace that will allow people to begin applying its principles in their own lives. We’ll cover the first step on gaining a practical sense of peace in your own life, as well as explain mental addictions and how easy it is to fall into them.

Step 1: Decide It. Do It

The first principle and step of pragmatic peace is to make a conscious decision and, based on that decision, take action now. Even if that decision is to do a non-action, such as waiting, just make a decision.

Deciding and taking action are two separate acts, but they must be done together in the same step if they are to work.

Action without a decision will only keep you on the track that you’re on now, which is usually the one that society has imposed upon you. The problem with that is, usually, society doesn’t care about your own joy, just everybody else’s joy, so with everybody keeping the status-quo, nobody really achieves true happiness.

Deciding without taking action is probably the more insidious, and more common, approach that the dime-per-dozen self-help books give. These books urge you to prioritize your life, to make decisions on what is most important to you, then pep you up so that you feel good about making these decisions. What the average person then does, however, is quickly slip back into their old habits, never actually taking action based on these new decisions.

So, the most important step is to take conscious action. Make a plan and implement it.

Step 2: Refine

While you’re putting your decision into action, you will most likely notice what works right away, as well as what doesn’t work. Don’t wait until your plan is complete before you start refining it; correct what is obviously wrong mid-stream.

For those who have not repressed their egos yet (and I won’t urge anybody to repress their egos for a while, that is actually an advanced step), this step may be hard. Well, my advice here is to turn the ego against itself. Is it better to be right, or be correct? During the beginning steps, it is alright to let your ego grow, as long as you are actually managing it.

If you notice something wrong, it is usually tempting to hide it, holding out and hoping that the problem will fix itself. While some problems do fix themselves over time, whenever you have the urge to hide the problem, it is best to fix it now. By fixing the problem right away, you can keep your ego well fed by pointing out how flexible you’re being, and how successful you are at fixing the problems.

Don’t go on a witch hunt for the problems yet, though. Just fix the problems as they come along. This second step, while important, is more passive than the first or next. Simply keep an open mind as things develop, and be ready to change even your deepest assumptions.

Step 3: Re-Aim

After you have made your decision and put it into action, and you have worked out the kinks so that your new project is running smoothly, it is time to tear it apart and study how it works, then throw in some new hypothesis and see how things change.

Following the first two steps, a person can usually get themselves to rate their competence at any activity at around a 7 out of 10. It’s good, it’s still average, and it takes a lot of hard work to get to a 7… But then, how does someone get from rating themselves at a 7 to rating themselves at an 8? Usually, the problem lies inside of the foundation of the activity, and all too often, the only way to replace a foundation is to tear down the entire building.

How would you rate your relationship with your spouse or significant other? How would you rate your job performance? How do you rate keeping your environment healthy? On a scale of 1 to 10, most people give themselves a solid 7, but they have no idea how to increase it to an 8. They are doing the best that they can, but they freely admit that they could do more.

Well, with your relationships, the answer is to examine why you’re in the relationship in the first place, and work on improving its foundation, such as by improving communication. Yes, that sounds simple, and most people recognize that it is very hard… It is easier said than done, but it is also easier done than imagined. What you need to do, in the case of relationships, is learn how both you and your partner communicate. Men (generally) relieve stress by internalizing it and studying it in solitude, so to help a man relieve his stress, give him space, with the option of an open ear. Women (generally) relieve stress by sharing it with friends, so to help a woman relieve her stress, give her an open ear, especially a non-judgmental one.

Since there are exceptions to every rule, and these stress relieving methods are imposed by society more than they’re imposed by genetics, the easy way to tell how a person relieves stress is to study how they attempt to relieve other people’s stress. If a man’s first reaction to noticing that you are stressed is to ask you more details, then when he shows stress, open your ears and reserve judgment for those people who are stressing him out. If a woman clams up when she sees you under stress, give her the space that she wants, and she’ll come out of it refreshed and ready to tackle more problems.

The next step is vitally important to any pragmatic approach to any project:

Step 1: Decide It, Do It

That’s right, the next step is to do the first step again, except, this time, hopefully you’ll have more experience.

One way to look at this process, as so many people like analogies, is to see it as firing a fully automatic rifle. Most people have heard of the Ready, Fire, Aim approach to projects, where you make a few preparations, try the task full-scale, then adjust it when you fail… Well, this is great, if you’re only trying the task once in a while. If, however, you are diving into a project full-scale, you probably don’t have the luxury to review all of your mistakes, adjust your entire system, and try again.

When working with fully automatic rifles, there is a problem of muzzle drift, because the recoil from each shot pushes the barrel. Each round that exits the weapon goes just a bit further away from the target. The military corrects this by insisting that each shot grouping has no more than twelve shots, but for the sake of analogy, imagine that you have to fire off one hundred rounds each time you fire… The first couple will be on target, but as the rounds fly out, you’ll get further and further away. With so many rounds flying, though, you can see where they are hitting, and you can adjust without letting go of the trigger. Eventually, you’ll run out of ammunition, have to reload, take aim again, and this time, you’ll know where to expect the first dozen rounds to hit. As you reload again, you’ll gain more and more experience, until you have a fair system in place of resetting and keeping the vast majority of your bullets hitting close to your target.

Sounds great, for a project management system

So, why am I writing about pragmatic peace as though it were just some simple project? Well, your entire life is a project. The goal of this project is your happiness, and I’m assuming that your most deeply felt happiness comes in the form of peace.

I really can’t think of a larger, or more important project than a person’s life, so it is important to treat it with respect. Like any large project, a person’s life can be separated into several smaller (though still considerably huge) projects, such as their job, their relationships, their spirituality, maintaining their environment, and their fun activities. Even though we can’t pick a new life and start all over again (that would be cheating), we can choose our smaller projects. We can choose to be entrepreneurs, or choose to work a menial task at a major retail chain. We can choose who to have relationships with, and how we treat those people. We can make decisions on any of these projects (and, of course, take immediate action based on those decisions), including making decisions on our health. There are some problems that we just can’t fix outright, such as an amputated leg, but we can overcome those problems, such as by using a prosthetic leg. There are very few problems that we can’t overcome, if we pursue a solution rationally and completely.

The Obstacles

There are many obstacles that keep people from living a peaceful life. In my first post in this series, I mentioned the biological problems of pursuing peace simply by sitting still. The human mind is just as wondrously complex as the human body, so with that complexity, it is just as difficult to find peace by keeping the mind at rest as it is difficult to find comfort by remaining still.

Most of these problems come in the form of mental addictions. Fortunately, with few or no physical cravings involved, it is easy to overcome these mental addictions, if only we can recognize them and understand just why they are harmful.

The Addictive Cycle

Each addiction has a very clear cycle. The first time we experience something, we get a sense of happiness. As we try that experience more often, we get increasing happiness from it as our skill improves. After a time, our happiness starts to wear off, so we strive to increase the experience, by increasing the frequency, duration, or intensity, or a combination of those. The more that we increase the experience, though, the more used to it we get, and eventually, even the most extreme versions of the experience no longer bring us happiness.

I experienced this cycle with playing online role playing games, specifically EverQuest. It eventually got to a point where I would get depressed while playing the game, but when I wasn’t playing it, I had very strong urges to play, almost as bad as my cigarette cravings, which were a full-blown physical chemical addiction.

Now, it wasn’t clear why I was getting depressed at the time. I certainly don’t want to risk restarting that addiction in order to study its negative effects. I do, however, know of a mental addiction where it is very clear as to why it provides less and less happiness the more that you gain.

Addiction to Money

That’s right, money is addictive. Or, more correctly, earning money is addictive. When you don’t have much money, every little bit of it helps to increase your happiness, because it is being spent on filling your basic needs. At a young age, when most of our money is spent on sugar and toys, we quickly equate money with pleasure. When we move out of our parents’ house, we use money to pay our rent, buy groceries, and occasionally fill our need for entertainment, so we equate money with joy. At these stages, money is extremely powerful, and if a 5% increase in pay can improve our quality of life so dramatically, what if we increased it even more?

So, we do what is necessary to earn more money… Perhaps we graduate from college, or we work extra hard at our jobs in order to earn a promotion. Eventually, we reach that magical point where we can fill all of our needs with money. (Remember that pleasure is a human need, ironically enough.) This magical point is where it all starts to go downhill. You see, money’s only power is to decrease suffering. It can not increase people’s happiness beyond the point of being well fed, comfortably sheltered, and entertained. Most people try to push their happiness up by buying more entertainment, but just as my experience with EverQuest shows, entertainment can be just as addictive as any drug, complete with the eventual depression.

So, seeking money for the sake of seeking happiness is self destructive, after you have met your basic needs.

Self Help

Self help books, websites, podcasts, etc., do two things. First, they get you to think of your problems in a slightly different way. Well, at least, the good ones do this.

Second, self help programs get you to feel good.

Can you see the addictive potential yet?

Have you already experienced that addiction? I certainly have. In some ways, I’m still struggling from it.

The biggest danger of self help programs doesn’t come from their advice. It comes from an incomplete understanding of what causes us to feel happy, both on the part of the writer as well as the reader. I’ve seen useless drivel come from the worst of these sites and books, who seem to be concerned only with a person’s immediate pleasure. I’ve seen some true gems stuck in amongst the strangest of theories of reality. There is only one place, however, where I’ve seen a truly pragmatic approach to increasing our happiness over the course of our entire lives, and that comes from Albert of Urban Monk. (I’ll have a link to the particular series of his that I’m referencing in a later post, where I discuss how to move from a state of suffering to a state of joy.)

Sugar

Yep, food is addictive.

Unfortunately, withdrawal is fatal.

Seriously, though, have you ever heard of people call a specific treat “comfort food?” It’s comfort food because they are well into the addictive cycle, and, unlike a purely mental addiction, such as to money, computer games, and sky-diving, these comfort foods are also physically addictive.

Now, I could get into the blood chemistry of carbohydrates, explaining the role of insulin, and the inability to digest lipids unless you’re literally starving, but I don’t want to write another factually deficient diet book. We can all recognize that, if we use food to comfort ourselves, then the more that we eat, the fatter we get… The fatter we get, the worse we feel… The worse we feel, the more we eat…

There is a pretty clear addiction here, but besides attacking the food alone, we need to attack all three sides of this problem. Not only should we eat healthier food (high in fiber) while ignoring the hype about carbs being evil, we also need to attack the fat directly by exercising, and attack the addiction by doing other activities that make us feel good.

By the way, yes, some carbs are evil. But, without having a glycemic index tattooed to our arms, it’s hard to know just how evil each specific carb is. It’s much more efficient to eat more fiber. Acidic foods (oranges, not orange juice) and unsaturated fats are also good for us, but please stay away from the saturated fats. Yes, people do lose weight on high-protein diets, but they still die just as young as they would if they didn’t go on those diets, if their protein comes from greasy burgers and bacon.

Overcoming Addiction

Here’s the good news again. It is possible to overcome each of these addictions (with the exception of our addiction to Dihydrogen Monoxide, more commonly known as hydrogen hydroxide… uh, I mean hydric acid… er… well, if you write it out in chemical notation, it’s pretty clear what danger is inherent in Dihydrogen Monoxide withdrawal.)

All that you need to do to overcome an addiction is to stop the addictive activity.

Yes, I know that it is actually much harder than how I made it sound. I should say that the only way to overcome an addiction is to stop the addictive activity. I was an alcoholic, and once I crossed the line from social drinker to addict, I could never drink again without getting cravings to get completely smashed out of my mind. As a smoker, each and every cigarette nearly guarantees that I’ll smoke another one. The only good cigarette is your last one. When playing online games, well, the cravings come back, just as strong.

The trick, then, is to stop yourself from getting addicted in the first place. If I had restricted my drinking in the beginning, I would probably still be able to drink without such bad cravings. The key is to practice temperance, which I will cover in the next post in the series.

Summary:

So far, we’ve discussed the pragmatic method of managing a project, which is a modified ready-fire-aim approach. We also discussed addictions, which are one of our biggest obstacles to feeling peace and joy, though we’ll discuss just how these addictions hurt us later. Most importantly, we can now recognize addictions in our own lives, and recognize potentially addictive behaviors.

The current plan for the future posts is to cover how to keep from being addicted in detail by using temperance, followed by another post on how to break existing addictions. After this sub-series on addictions, we’ll continue on examining our needs as humans, including our subjective and objective needs. After we have mastered our needs and addictions, we can work on bringing ourselves above the levels of suffering, seeking and understanding joy.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 9:55 am and is filed under Pragmatic Peace, Addiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.