Trolling through the news, an article caught my attention. It stated, “When your best intentions go south, new research suggests that it wasn’t the devil that made you do it. It was your brain. Will power, the study found, is a finite resource, one that can be easily depleted.”
The article goes on:
“Our results suggest self-control can be diminished by use,” Hedgcock tells us. “People have a hard time resisting temptation after prior acts of self-control. This can negatively affect people’s ability to maintain attention, resist tempting snacks and resist purchasing on impulse.”
What we’re dealing with, in philosophico-anthropological terms, are the sensible appetites. Generically, we all have simple inclination toward sensible good and away from sensible evil (the concupiscible appetite) and an impulse to contend with anything that gets in our way, either by inhibiting the pursuit of a good or by presenting a positive threat (the irascible appetite). The specific passions of the first are love and hatred, joy and sadness, desire and aversion. The latter’s hope and despair, courage and fear, and anger.
Many people see a sharp division between reason and passion, the head and the heart. And it is understandable enough, most of us experience, with some degree of frequency, what St. Paul described with such precision in Romans 7. Basically, we do what we know we shouldn’t, and we don’t do what we know we should. But it is an unfortunate misconception to see the emotional life as something to be smothered with the pillow of reason. Nonbelievers often perceive Christianity as life’s great party-pooper, a termagant that threatens a slap across the mouth for the slightest peep from the emotions. Similarly, those in the Church often have the idea that true sanctity means waving bye-bye to the enjoyment of life’s good things, and learning to love things which are painful, boring, or painfully boring.
As a rational animal, man’s emotional life is regulated by reason, but not in the way we might think. The Christian ideal of the perfectly integrated person is not the unfeeling and unresponsive stoic. This would be one extreme, and an injustice to human nature. On the other hand, a life ruled by passion is equally inhuman—it reduces man to the level of a beast. In St. Thomas’s terminology, reason controls the appetites “politically” or “royally” rather than “despotically.” The will–man’s rational appetite–can either command or excite the sensible appetites toward a true and authentic good and resist the motions of the sensible appetites toward what is only meretricious. In other words, a properly ordered will (one that leads toward good things in good measure) following closely on the heels of right reason (one that perceives and presents to the will goods really perfective of the human person) goes a long way to putting the passions in their place (which is not, emphatically, squashed way down into a virtual black hole). All of the faculties and powers of man—reason, will, and appetites—ideally link arms and move in lockstep toward the Ultimate Good Himself.
“Hedgcock suggests that when the well of self-control runs dry, the only way to fill it back up is with time. In other words, give yourself a break.” OK, it’s no surprise that when one is physically or mentally tired, or feeling just a bit of self-congratulation for passing up that second preprandial G&T, there tends to be a correlation to other acts of indulgence. But we can also note that virtue—a stable disposition to act well—can seep into the passions as well. Self-control is easier when a person is otherwise virtuous and in possession of an informed conscience.
Even the saint experiences passions, passions that become more purified and ordered, loving and hating, hoping for and fearing the right things. So, to sum it up, it’s not about discipline, but about love. The good (and Godly) man lives–and loves–well.
June 14th, 2012 | 10:28 am
Popular readings of social psychology increasingly suggest that we are infinitely susceptible to propensities to err (morally or otherwise)–in the form of heuristics and biases or responsiveness to situations rather than to internal norms (the attack on “character”).
Hence the popularity of behavioral economics, “nudging” and various forms of “decision frame architecture”–altering situations we face so as to increase the probability of our responding properly–generally by means of government action. Witness the mayor of NY’s recent move to ban the sale of large sodas.
This approach to human frailty seems to me both too optimistic (decision frames that encourage the right choice aren’t going to be sufficient for virtuous behavior) and too pessimistic (our resisting temptation isn’t merely a function of its more or less beguiling presentation). Wonder if you would care to comment?
June 15th, 2012 | 4:16 am
[...] Control Yourself!, on recent scientific research and the nature of willpower. [...]
June 15th, 2012 | 9:56 am
When you say “Control yourself!” to someone, to what or whom are you speaking? If the self is an undivided entity, how can it control itself? I find the idea of the “self” being a conglomeration of multiple entities fascinating. I don’t know that it is possible for the self to control the self. It is possible for one part of what we call the self to achieve control over another part of what we call the self, but that is different from controlling oneself.
I used to be significantly underweight, and I could not imagine why people allowed themselves to be fat. Just limit your intake! Now my metabolism has changed, and I am constantly fighting to keep my weight down. When faced with something delicious and loaded with calories, I often eat it, and shortly thereafter think, “Why in the world did I eat that?” Who is the real me? The one who chose to eat, or the one who, a few minutes later, regards it as an unwise choice?
I remember reading a study once in which experimenters gave groups of people a test of what was right and wrong, and one of the groups was sexually aroused at the time they took the quiz. (Don’t ask! I don’t know how they did it.) The sexually arouse people were significantly more tolerant of immoral or even taboo practices in their responses. It is not that they were faced with any temptations that they couldn’t resist. It was just a questionnaire. But they actually thought differently because they were sexually aroused.
I have quoted this review from Scientific American of Cordelia Fine’s A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives many times, but here it is again:
June 16th, 2012 | 2:38 pm
More efficacious than “giving” oneself “a break,” which I, and milions, have found, is the process of “turning it over,” as suggested in the “12 Steps” of healing-what-ails- us, based in the practices of 1st- century Christianity, an unsung co-founder of which, a Catholic priest, Fr. Dowling. (Ok, so he was a Jesuit ;)) The book of letters between them both is, THE SOUL of SPONSORSHIP.
Here’s what he helped codify, as Bill W.’s Mentor/
Spiritual Director:
1) We admitted we were power-less over the “cunning, baffling and powerful” (the over-powering of virtue)______ (fill in the blank) and that our lives had become “unmanageable” (by your own definition thereof).
2) Came to believe that a Power Greater than Myself (beyond MY will, intellect) could restore us to sanity (reason-able-ness).
3)Made a DECISION to turn our lives and our WILL over to the CARE of (a loving) God…
The rest of “How It Works” can be found in the “Big Book” in Chapter Five (online as well).
It will sound very familiar to you. We only need apply it.
It works!
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