Adam’s Peace

This is the third 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.

Jeff Lilly has also blessed us with his own special take on the word Temperance in his Word of the Day blog. He discusses the origins of the word, its actual meaning, rather than what appears in the dictionary, as well as its phonosemantics, or how the sounds of the word affect our thoughts on a deep level.

Well, enough introducing other posts. On with the show!

The largest obstacle to feeling peaceful is to have emotions that tear you down.

Feeling stress about paying bills, anxiety about an upcoming performance review, or anger at a person driving slowly in front of you are all examples of emotions that directly harm your ability to be at peace.

What keeps us from feeling at peace most often, though it is rarely talked about and is difficult to overcome, is the underlying depression of addiction.

How Addictions Affect Us

Spider Robinson once wrote a short story titled “God is an Iron.” In it, he describes some very obvious ironies associated with our bodies. Namely, those things which give us the most pleasure also happen to be those things which have the greatest potential to destroy our lives. Drugs and alcohol top the list of addictions that ruin our lives, of course, but you don’t need outside chemicals to become chemically dependent; your body produces enough drugs as it is, in the form of hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, and adrenalin.

Now, each of these chemicals are very powerful and, (I believe, since I’m so nerdy) rather interesting, but explaining their roles in forming addiction is beyond the scope of this article. These chemicals form the core of what is happening inside of our brains from a chemical standpoint, but these chemicals are most certainly not bad… Without them we simply wouldn’t be able to think at all, much less experience joy and inner peace.

That these chemicals also serve to create addictions, which destroy joy and peace, just happens to be a very funny irony, unless, of course, you are stuck in an addictive spiral. Then, it is deadly serious.

So, we all know that smoking can kill you… eventually. That is, of course, bad, even with the “eventually” tacked on. What’s worse isn’t that you’ll die… Living will kill you… eventually. The worst part about smoking is what it does to you on a day-to-day basis.

The first thing that being addicted to nicotine does, is when you wake up in the morning, you are hungry. Food, however, doesn’t stop the hunger… Smoking does stop the hunger, though. Second, this hunger comes back in about an hour, maybe even sooner. In fact, the only limit to how often you get these hunger-cravings is how well your body can tolerate a poison… The healthier you are, the more often you get a hunger-craving. Putting off your next cigarette only makes you suffer… After all, you are actually hungry, even though food won’t help this specific hunger. Relieving these cravings by smoking also makes you suffer as well. Your heart races, but you don’t have enough oxygen in your blood stream to actually give you any energy, so you become anxious and lethargic at the same time. This is definitely not a comfortable feeling. Often, you are required to be outside when you smoke, so the weather plays a large factor in how you feel.

I have literally stood outside in blizzards, in hail, and in torrential rains, as well as in hurricane winds, just so that I could get rid of a cigarette craving. What is worse, though, is when the weather is extremely hot or extremely cold… In hot weather, you become physically ill, especially when it is dry, because cigarettes are very good at dehydrating you. When it is cold outside, a cigarette only increases the chill, because the nicotine pushes the blood up to the surface of your skin, cooling you off even more. Then again, a person who has gone a few days without food would also stand outside in such extreme weather, if only to eat their fill.

Now, I’m telling you this for two reasons. One, well, we have all heard the ads that say that cigarettes kill… but death isn’t the least of a smoker’s worries. Today’s anti-tobacco scare tactics just aren’t honest enough, and aren’t short-term enough. Seriously, if you think death is bad, just wait until you have to live with smoking. Two, it’s to show that the problems with addiction aren’t just the big crash at the end. You suffer during the addiction far more than you suffer when the ‘real world’ catches up to you.

Let’s take an addiction to online games for an example, since I’ve been quite addicted to those as well.

The big crash at the end of online gaming is when everybody leaves you, you are fired from your job, your house is foreclosed on, or you are evicted from your apartment, and you end up homeless. There have even been cases of suicide where the person attributed their decision to something that happened in the game.

Yeah, that’s an extreme example, but so is lung cancer in the case of smoking. That’s the “big scare” that everybody says just couldn’t happen to them, yet it happens all the time.

What about the short term effects? Well, reduced strength from sitting at a computer for extended periods is one effect… There are few feelings that are worse than to look down and notice a beer gut, even though you have been sober for years. There are few things that are more humiliating than to be unable to see your toes, because you haven’t walked further than around a store and around its parking lot during your twice-weekly Mt. Dew and Fritos runs even since you first logged on.

Here’s a hypothetical situation… Let’s say that you are already well into the throes of an online gaming addiction… Just imagine that, then ask yourself, what was your brother thinking of you when you were last on the phone with him? Sure, you haven’t seem him for years, since he’s been off “playing” soldier and getting a college education. So what if you were in the middle of a guild raid of the Lair of Bagu Ragshod when you were talking to him, and you can’t remember what he said half a minute ago… He used to play these games, so he’ll understand, right?

Sadly, this actually happened to me… I’ve recently moved back to my home city, and the first time that I had a chance to talk to my sister, who I’ve seen twice over the past eight years, she told me within the first five minutes of the conversation that she was playing World of Warcraft right then… She promptly continued playing, saying a couple of words per minute, and completely ignored the fact that maybe, just maybe, I would have liked to know what happened to my sister over the years.

How about business opportunities? You can’t exactly write a book, much less outline one and do basic research, if the majority of your time is spent trying to click fast enough to “kill” a computer controlled rat.

The worst part is, a part of your mind stays active while you’re playing those games, and that part isn’t concentrating on the game. That small part of your mind, which just won’t shut up, is telling you exactly what it is that you aren’t doing. It’s reminding you that the dishes aren’t piling up in the sink, because they’re all stuck on the computer desk. It’s taking an inventory of your clean clothes, because it is so much easier than taking an inventory of your dirty clothes. This small section of your brain is forming goodbye cards to send off to your friends, knowing full well that you’ll never actually get out of the game in order to write these letters down.

In short, when you are addicted, you know that there are some parts of your life that are very wrong.

The problem is that this extra stress from knowing that things are bad usually only serve to push you further into your addiction.

Breaking Addiction

I’ll keep this section short, because there is only one method that actually works.

Once you have become addicted, now matter what you are addicted to, the only way to stop being addicted is to stop the addictive behavior. There is no “cutting down.” That only stretches out your suffering, causing you to want your addictive behavior even more. Since, if you are cutting down, you have already given yourself permission to do it again… there is no end.

The only trick is to take a deep, long look inside yourself, figure out honestly what the addiction is giving you, including any good things, and make a decision. If you decide to quit, then be aware that you are also fighting a physical addiction, as the dopamine and oxytocin need to flush themselves out of the part of the brain that was built around the addiction. You will hunger for the addiction, even if it is just some silly online game, just the same as you hunger for food when you wake up in the morning.

Fortunately, unlike our “addiction” to food, withdrawal from an activity is rarely fatal. Just eat celery to take the edge off the hunger, and be aware that you’ll still feel hungry, even after eating.

Warning: Withdrawal from alcohol and certain other drugs can be and often are fatal. If you are addicted to a chemical other than nicotine or marijuana, seek professional advice. I repeat, withdrawal from alcohol and certain other drugs can be fatal.

Preventing Addictions (Here’s the good part, for those who have just been skimming so far)

While it is possible to overcome addictions, it is far, far easier to keep from becoming addicted in the first place.

You not only prevent the Big Crash by not being addicted, but you can avoid the short term misery that being addicted brings. Best of all, you can still enjoy the potentially addictive activity.

This doesn’t work on chemical addictions, such as from smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, or doing drugs… The best way to avoid these addictions is to not even start the cycle. I’ve learned the hard way, and now that I’ve lived both with and without these chemicals, I would never go back, no matter how strong the random craving may be. Thankfully, these cravings are appearing less and less often, so for those who are struggling with giving up these addictions, there is hope.

But, for activities that have the potential to be addictive, the key is temperance.

Writing in this blog is potentially addictive for me, as is participating in message boards. Unfortunately, I crossed the line with message boards, so I can no longer enjoy sharing my words in such forums. Programming is also potentially addictive, as is playing single player computer games.

Eating comfort food is another potential addiction, which thankfully I have not crossed the line on. Watching television is another addiction which is rampant in society, and I’ve noticed that hiking can also bring out an almost obsessive side to me.

The key with temperance is to do many different tasks for different reasons. There are many different types of pleasures, and each pleasure can easily lead to addiction.

Here’s the problem with pleasure, though. Without pleasure, we can not experience joy, but if we become addicted, we also lose our chance to feel joy.

So, we clearly can not abstain from pleasure entirely. Doing so would definitely take the joy out of life. We can’t seek individual pleasures fanatically either, because of the threat of addiction, which takes the joy out of life as well.

Here’s what I’ve done. I have a very rough schedule for my time on the computer… No more than fifteen hours per week, split into three hours a day for five days, with two days off completely. I have such a strict schedule with my computer time because I have so many computer-based activities which I have gotten extremely close to being addicted to, and even some where I’ve crossed the line. I haven’t cut my time off entirely, though, because I still get pleasure while I’m on the computer.

I also have one hour per day devoted towards cleaning, because cleaning is a hidden pleasure. Doing the cleaning itself may not be much fun, but looking back gives me a surge of pleasure that is well worth the work that I’ve done.

I have five hours per week devoted to watching TV… which only gives me room to watch my five favorite shows, since they are all one hour long.

The rest of the time, and any time that I don’t use on the computer, with cleaning, or watching TV goes towards working, spending time with my wife, and finding new and interesting ways to spend my time. (An “addictive” relationship is called love, and unlike most other addictions, relationships are usually healthy.)

So, how do you set up your own schedule?

Well, first of all, realize that it is arbitrary. Your first schedule should be made up on the spot, without too much thought. You can (and should) always refine it as you see what is and isn’t working. Don’t worry about getting it right the first time.

Second, be flexible. I don’t know one week from the next which days I’ll be spending on the computer, or what days I spend entirely with my wife.

Finally, figure out what your really enjoy doing, make a short list (no more than 10 items), and figure out what you should be doing, and put these on another short list. Be as general as you can, so that you can be flexible.

Here is the first draft of my list, as an example:

I enjoy working on the computer, watching television, and spending time with my wife.
I should clean more often, spend more time with my wife, and find other ways to have fun. I should also continue to work, at least until I can start my own business.

It turns out that each of these can be pleasurable experiences… if I make certain that I’m in the right frame of mind when I’m starting them. Do not think of the items on your “should” list as items that you are being forced to do. Think of them as items that enhance your pleasure, just as salt, while unappetizing by itself, enhances the flavor of food.

Next, write down what tasks have a pre-set schedule, such as working and watching your television shows. Since we can’t change the times that televisions shows are broadcasted, or when our boss wants us at our desks, we have to work around them. Then, look at each item on the “enjoy” list, think of how long you would like to spend doing that task each day and chop that time in half. Keep in mind that you’ll be revising this list later, as you get more feedback, and in the big scheme of things, one week of “missing out” really isn’t missing out at all.

The next step is to take the items on your “should” list, and expand them to fit the remaining available time. If this means cutting into the time that you had previously reserved for your “enjoy” activities, then so be it. Remember, each list only lasts for one week.

Finally, give yourself two days off to find other things that make you happy. Then, when those days come, actually go out and experiment with new things. (Remember: drugs, alcohol, and tobacco aren’t worth experimenting with… If you want, I can tell you all about them, so there wouldn’t be any need to experiment.)

Next week, look at your list, scratch out minor details, write in corrections, and try it all again, for about two months.

At the end of the two months, go through and completely re-evaluate your work. Throw out anything that takes you further away from joy, and add in what you think might now bring you pleasure. Honestly look at the tasks that you are keeping, and ask yourself why you are keeping them. Finally, draw up another list, and keep editing the minor details as you go along.

The first list should take no more than 30 minutes to draw up, and no more than 5 minutes to review each week. The second list should take no less than 30 minutes to draw up, which (barely) gives you enough room to be brutally honest with yourself. Ideally, though, the longer that it takes you to draw up the second list without being distracted, the better.

My second list is coming due this next weekend, and I’m hoping to spend no less than two hours on it.

Have you noticed the Pragmatic Method in writing this list? Simply make your decision, and as time passes, make minor adjustments. After a while, make the major changes based on what you’ve learned, then make your decision once again, continuing the cycle.

Remember, your goal is Temperance. Do not remove pleasure from your life entirely, but be careful not to over-seek pleasure, or that specific pleasure will be gone forever.

Conclusion

To recap, we discussed how addictions ruin our lives, not only by giving us our Big Crash, such as lung cancer with smoking, or homelessness, joblessness, and friendlessness in the case of online games, but also by wrecking our day to day lives, leaving us with less and less pleasure as time passes.

We also covered the most important first step towards having a pragmatic sense of inner peace… Using temperance to keep ourselves from ever being addicted.

Now, I have another twenty minutes of computer time today, so either I’ll be playing Guitar Hero, or I’ll forfeit these minutes in favor of spending my time with my wife… decisions, decisions, decisions…

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 is Part 1 of the Pragmatic Peace series.

Here is the “Table of Contents” for the entire series:

• Part 2, Beginning Pragmatic Peace, discusses the pragmatic method, as well as how to recognize addictions.
• Part 3, Temperance: Pragmatic Peace

Before I can go on any long discussions on how to pursue pragmatic peace, we first need to understand exactly what pragmatic peace is. To do this, I’ll give each word’s ‘pragmatic’ definition, then combine the two.

Pragmatic

The word, pragmatic, is closely related to the word practical, with a couple of minor differences. Without getting into a discussion of its origins and evolutions as a word, we’ll take the pragmatic approach when looking at the word pragmatic.

First and foremost, when you’re looking at something pragmatically, you’re asking, “does it work?” After you have figured out if it works or not, then you take steps to optimize how it works.

For example, there are several pragmatic approaches to washing a car, as well as several approaches that just don’t work. You can fill a bucket with soap and water, grab a rag and a hose, and just start washing the first part that you come to… It’s pragmatic, because it works eventually… but the second time you wash the car using this method, it is no longer pragmatic, because, hopefully, you’ll have more experience, and you will have seen a better way to wash the car. Instead of just washing the first part you can touch, instead, you’ll start washing at the top, so that the dirt doesn’t wash down onto a previously clean spot and make it dirty again. Each time, you’ll learn something new from the previous attempt, until you find the most effective and efficient method… In a nut shell, that’s the pragmatic approach.

In order to be pragmatic, though, you need to have a fair idea of what doesn’t work before you try those methods. For instance, washing a car with sandpaper wouldn’t work, because it would take off the paint as well. That doesn’t mean that, once you find one method that works, you should only and always use that method… just keep an open enough mind to entertain radical ideas before trying them out to see if they work. If you’re not sure, start a small scale experiment. If you’re still not sure, then make a decision and stick with it until you have more evidence. If the evidence later tells you that you’re on the wrong path, well, it’s never too late to start again.

So, the pragmatic approach is like the scientific method, with one big exception… If there isn’t enough evidence, make a decision anyways. If you’re wrong, you’ll find out that you’re wrong a whole lot more quickly than if you never made a decision in the first place.

Peace

When most people think of peace, they think of a calm, tranquil scene, such as sunset at the beach, sunrise in a forest, or some other still moment. There is, of course, political peace, which is most often defined as the lack of war. To most people, peace is the lack of action.

I say, that’s absolutely wrong. Peace isn’t about sitting still… otherwise, the roaring of the ocean at sunset would be taking peace away, not adding to it. The growing trees in the forest and their swaying limbs would disturb the peace, rather than enhance it, if peace were about sitting still.

So, then, what is peace? Simply put, it is deliberate and constant activity. There is certainly nothing deliberate nor constant about war, no matter how people try to justify and dignify it. There is more to the definition of personal, inner peace, but I’m already approaching this from its pragmatic side, so I’ll leave the nuances for later, when they matter.

Imagine sitting on your couch, only listening to your breathing and the beating of your heart. At first, you would feel calm and at peace, because every part of you is moving deliberately and constantly. Eventually, though, (and this is especially true of us Americans) your mind will wander and you’ll get bored. This boredom comes from your mind no longer moving deliberately, due to lack of stimulation.

Let’s say that we can overcome this boredom by practicing meditation. Next on our list comes our bladder filling up. The body has been deliberately, peacefully extracting waste from the blood stream, storing it away to be disposed of later… Well, now the body can no longer store more waste, so your sense of peace is interrupted by a call of nature.

Imagine that you can somehow overcome these frequent interruptions to urinate (without going into details, please. I don’t want anybody to describe how to build a better catheter in the comment sections. While it’s an interesting exercise, it just isn’t pragmatic). The next interruption to peace comes in the form of hunger. We can begin to see just how difficult having a sense of inner peace can be to achieve if we just sit still, even if we discount a person’s own drives and ambitions. Finally, sitting on a couch for extended periods of time, strapped to feeding and waste disposal tubes would leave our muscles weakened so that any movement becomes painful, and leaves our skin so ravaged that sitting still is also painful.

Certainly, peace and stagnation are not compatible. Change, then, is necessary for peace, but only if that change brings us joy.

Pragmatic Peace

Putting both of these terms together, we get, as our working definition, a pseudo-scientific study of change, emphasizing action and experimentation, with the purpose of increasing our lasting joy.

I say that it is pseudo-scientific, because joy and peace are subjective. What brings me joy may not bring you joy, so it is impossible to get the same results from the same experiments.

In my next post, I’ll discuss some basic human requirements for pragmatic peace, along with the most common, and most ironic, pitfalls that keep us from feeling any sense of lasting peace.