What Happened to the Idea of Self-Control？
Episode Stats
Summary
As long as humans have existed, we ve had to exercise self-control. While exercising self- control has always been part of the human condition, our ideas about it have changed through the ages, as have the obstacles to doing so. My guest charted the course of these changes in his book, "Temptation: Finding Self- Control in an Age of Excess," which is also sold under the title We Have Met the Enemy.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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as long as humans have existed we've had to choose between our lower and higher desires
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between what we want in the moment and what we want in the long term as long as humans have
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existed we've had to exercise self-control while exercising self-control has always been part of
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the human condition our ideas about it have changed through the ages as have the number
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of obstacles to doing so my guest charted the course of these changes in his book temptation
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finding self-control in an age of excess and he takes us on a tour of them today his name is
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daniel axed we begin our conversation with the definition of what self-control is we then
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discuss our freudian psychology and the scientific study of self-control took it from being something
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the ancient greeks and romans considered an essential virtue of character something you
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shouldn't or even couldn't exercise we also talk about what it is about the modern age that makes
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self-control uniquely difficult to put into practice when our conversation with how despite
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the addition of complexities and hindrances self-control remains a fundamental resource in
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a flourishing life and daniel shares practical tips for preserving yours by changing your environment
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so you actually don't have to exercise self-control as much after the show's over check out our show
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all right dan axed welcome to the show thanks so much for having me brett so 11 years ago you wrote
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a book called temptation finding self-control in an age of excess is also sold under the title
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we have met the enemy as well i'm curious what was going on in your life back in 2011 where you're
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thinking i really need to take a deep dive into the history and the science of self-control
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that's a great question i need to go back a ways if you don't mind and mention that i had a gentleman
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was an uncle by marriage who was quite overweight and extremely so and at that time it was it was
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really quite rare he was an outlier and he had a very early stomach reduction surgery and you know
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gastric bypass type of thing they used a different technology in those days but in any case i ended up
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writing a novel about a man who goes through that and is transformed physically and is unrecognizably so
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and the novel got some good attention and so people started coming to me to write about these matters
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and think about these matters and i realized that there was a great deal going on that posed challenges
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to our ability to regulate our appetites in a society that valued freedom and individuality and all of
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those good things which i happen to value and so i ended up delving into it on a number of fronts and
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writing a book about it yeah you so you start off the book i thought it was really interesting
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you talk about all the problems we have in our current society that you can attribute to a lack
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of self-control so one is obesity is one what are some other things you were seeing at the time that
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you're like well this is just a lack of self-control yeah i mean really when people are free i mean they
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can get in trouble in all kinds of ways you can get in trouble with alcohol you can get in trouble with
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drugs you can get in trouble with food you know there are a whole bunch of behaviors cigarettes
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obviously are a very dangerous habit to have tobacco generally after i wrote the book we had the opioid
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crisis and gambling has been increasing the availability of gambling has been growing before i you know some
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years ago when i was young there was gambling in nevada and then new jersey came along and that was
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mostly it other than you know your neighborhood bookie but by the time i wrote the book there was
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some form of gambling in a large number of states not to mention lotteries and now all these years
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later we have professional sports gambling spreading and available you know on your phone in everybody's
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pocket so we went from the difficulty of having maybe to go all the way to vegas or or something to
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being able to just take out the phone in your pocket and place a bet and and so there are a lot of
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opportunities in some ways there's a lot of opportunities for fulfillment for pleasure in our
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society which is marvelous but there are along with that a lot of opportunities to to go very far wrong
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the gambling thing is interesting so here in oklahoma we have there's uh the tribes have casinos
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but also we have a state-sponsored lottery like a lot of other states do and i thought that was funny
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i noticed the other day when i was in a quick trip you know you have to check out you see all the lottery
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tickets then i also saw an advertisement about there's a state agency now where there's a phone
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number you can call if you have a gambling problem i just thought that was ironic that okay we created
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this agency to create the lottery but then we had to create another agency to help people with their
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gambling problem at the same time that's very common we have it in new york state as well that
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sort of thing but what's very interesting there are so many aspects to this that are interesting but
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with respect to gambling what i like is that in quite a number of places there are no gambling
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registries for example in some states and canadian provinces you can sign yourself up for an irrevocable
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period of time to be barred from casinos and in fact there was a fascinating legal case in i can't recall if it
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was british columbia or one of the other western canadian provinces where some gamblers had lost very
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large sums of money after registering themselves to be barred from these casinos and they then snuck
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into the casinos and lost all of this money and then sued the casinos claiming that the casinos had
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been negligent in not barring them so you know it's a very difficult problem it's sensible to try to use a
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technique of this kind and yet so many of them can be circumvented it's very hard to bar yourself
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from doing something like this and it's just a back and forth that we're always going to have to
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cope with in a free society and the more things that we permit the more we're going to have to
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control ourselves well another issue you're writing this book right after the the great recession
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yeah and you attributed you know you could partly blame a lack of self-control on the the recession
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because you had banks making loans that they probably shouldn't have made people taking on leverage
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they probably shouldn't have and it's because they just wanted more even though they probably
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shouldn't yeah i mean look there's just no denying it i mean it's so many of our excesses you know could
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be prevented by some prudence and some self-control well i'd like to maybe for this discussion we can
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talk about how the ideology of okay you need to constrain yourself in order to live a flourishing life
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how did that go from a good thing to where you're kind of giving into your wants is a is preferred but
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before we do let's talk about just kind of definition like how do you define self-control
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because i think a lot of people when they hear they think okay i know what self-control is means
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there's something i want to do but i don't want to do it i'm not going to do it when you were writing
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this book what kind of definition did you settle on that's a great question and i would say and you
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know conversationally i would say that it is the ability to or the willingness to or both to honor
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one's more considered desires let's put it that way in the book i talk about two levels or two kinds
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of desire that you might have you know i just if my wife brings home a delicious pie or something i
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just want to sit down and eat the whole thing and that might be a first order desire that i have
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but a second order desire a more considered desire i have would be to be healthy and stay trim
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and not hog all the pie so that there's some for her or if our boys come over or something
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and so if i can adhere to that self-control would be the ability or the effort to adhere to that more
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considered desire so maybe i'll have a piece of pie and a cup of coffee and that's the end of it for now
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and you know there are those like the philosopher harry frankfurt who has said that really this is what
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makes us human harry frankfurt said that if you don't have those considered desires you know or
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you don't honor them in any way or very much then you're what he called a wanton and a human is someone
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who honors those desires because after all if my neighbor has i don't know some great patio chairs
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and i boy i covet those i mean i don't go over and swipe those you know even if nobody's looking and
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i can put them on the other side of the house that's just a bad thing to do i don't do it so
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harry called them wantons and you know the greeks and others throughout history have had a similar
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disdain for people for this kind of thing people regarded as a lack of character you know that it
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almost meant you couldn't be trusted if you couldn't honor these more reasonable or these
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considered desires if you didn't have them even so that's i guess the longer answer that you may want
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but how i look at self-control no yeah i've heard that that first order wants or first order desire
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second order desire distinction before and the way one way i had it i've heard it put is okay the first
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order desire is like the thing you want right it could be like okay the pie and then the second order
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desire is you want the thing you want right like you you actually do like that considered desire you
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actually want to eat the pie like the example of you know first and second order desires being out of
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a line an extreme example is addiction right yeah where you have okay someone wants the drug right
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they viscerally want the drug whether it's cocaine opioids alcohol nicotine whatever but then there
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could be they second step back and like actually i don't want it like it makes me feel bad i don't
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want to so addiction is a perfect example of those things being out of alignment right that's right and
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in fact there's much to be said about addiction but one point i would make along the lines that we've
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been discussing is that you can also see this not just in terms of having conflicting desires in the
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present but you can see it in in a kind of temporal way that is in terms of my absolute immediate desire
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it's absolutely to have pleasure now but there's some later self that will have to pay the price for
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that and to what extent do i honor the interests or desires of that later self that would prefer to be
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thin or not hung over or not impoverished because i've gambled away all my money on nfl football or
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wherever i've done it so you're you're absolutely right well let's talk about how our ideas about
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self-control have changed over time and what i love about your book is that you take readers through
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this sort of you know a cultural tour of the idea of self-control and you have an entire chapter
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devoted to the ancient greeks and i love this because first i love the ancient greeks
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but one of the things i love about the greeks is that they thought about these complex nuanced
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you know psychological ideas and they just come up with a single word that would encapsulate it
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and the greeks had this word for self-control and it was akrasia so tell us about akrasia
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right weakness of the will and that is uh something they were very aware of i mean the wonderful thing
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about the greeks as you imply is that when you turn to them you find all of our dilemmas all of
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our all of our issues and concerns they wrestled with all of it and they did so with with great
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clarity and even poetry so it's interesting to look at how they coped with these issues and it's
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interesting to bear in mind how they lived they lived in in smaller communities people knew each other
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but you know you were seen by servants and and you were seen by neighbors and spouses and so forth
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it was a small world and so they paid a lot of attention to this plato and aristotle in particular
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paid attention to it plato had the idea that what we did when if i said you know i'm not going to eat
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that whole pie but then i went ahead and did it he said well i just changed my mind you know because
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he didn't think anybody could knowingly do something that they felt was a bad thing to do so i just changed
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my mind and for a while i thought it was a good idea and then i finished eating and maybe i realized that
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it wasn't and aristotle i think had a more sophisticated or cynical view and cynical is the
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wrong word but he had a more sophisticated view in which and he said that as someone put it reason is
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dragged about by desire you know and so you have these simultaneous these conflicting desires and he
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really expected us to be disciplined and to both plato and aristotle felt it was important you know but
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aristotle expected us to be disciplined and to be accountable for ourselves and to to find the mean
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and he didn't mean just divide everything right down the middle he said you know use judgment use a
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kind of practical wisdom to determine which pole you should be near how much should you eat no pie
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should you eat the whole pie where do you belong in there and i might add on a practical level which i
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guess we'll talk about in a while practical matters but you know it's it's always easier abstinence is
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always easier than temperance so it's in some respects it's easier to have no pie than just one small
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piece but in any case the greeks were on this they had a whole bunch of different distinctions
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you know aristotle for example talked about the continent man who restrained his desires versus the
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temperate man who he didn't have desires that were all that powerful say for gambling or for
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whatever infidelity or any of any of that sort of thing and so they made they made a whole bunch of
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these distinctions aristotle in particular but the main thing is they understood that this was a human
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affliction a part of the human condition and they understood that it can be an expression of character
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so they they had i thought a sophisticated awareness of these issues you know and you talk about the reason
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they were likely so focused on self-controls that their democratic form of government this idea they
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believed if you wanted to have a democracy that's led by free people you needed to have people who
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were in control of their base desires yeah i think that then as now if you want to have a thriving
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democracy and you want a free people those people need to be able to regulate themselves in some way and
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that in turn requires some kind of education some kind of conditioning toward values some kind of
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social structures that make it possible you know it's it's almost impossible to do this kind of
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thing successfully all alone i i'm not sure that can happen so i think that democracy is absolutely
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dependent civil society is absolutely dependent on the ability of individuals to regulate their desires
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so the greeks self-control is important you move into the romans and an important philosophy for a lot
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of romans was the philosophy of stoicism and they seem to take this idea of self-control and just
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like put it on steroids absolutely you know that was central i think to the stoic conception of a
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virtuous life and you know each of us bore the weight in a sense of his own well-being his own outlook
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the only thing you could control was your response to things and this was pretty much the highest value to
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them and you know that carried forward i mean all the way across the centuries i mean through the
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puritans the victorians and so forth all of whom have a bad name now there are a bunch of party poopers
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and so forth but they did understand certain things about human nature you know the way that we can go off
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the rails the way that society can become disorganized and violent and inhospitable to its members and to the
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future all those things can happen if we don't regulate ourselves and subordinate our desires to
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some extent to tomorrow and to the needs of others well yes okay the stoics had emphasis on self-control
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as you said this got carried over into christianity where a lack of self-control became a sin a lot of
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you look at the seven deadly sins a lot it's all about people who who lacked self-control they gave
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into their their gluttony their lust their vanity etc we're going to take a quick break for your words
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from our sponsors and now back to the show okay so for most of western history self-control has
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really been important you can see this in other cultures as well if you look at in chinese culture
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asian cultures confucianism was all about controlling yourself and making sure you're doing the right
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thing in this certain social context you can see the similar things in hinduism as well but in the 20th
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century you had this guy named freud who he's put into motion a radical change of how we think about
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self-control what was freud's ideas and how do they influence what we think about self-control
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well i guess you could say that freud's real emphasis i guess aside from freud was and his lust for
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renown freud's real emphasis was was autonomy we might say you know and he wanted to liberate us
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from taboos and constraints that we had perhaps internalized that we didn't believe in or that were
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oppressive to us or that were contrary to our deepest needs needs that were not illegitimate you know
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for love or whatever and that was valuable that was a valuable contribution by freud but autonomy can
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eventually become licensed and that was a problem another important aspect of freud's work was the
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rise of faith in the importance of the unconscious and you know you go down that road and it's very easy
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to come to the idea that maybe we don't have any conscious control over our behavior you know
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maybe it's all mysterious it's all predetermined maybe there's not even any free will and so you
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could see that that he was a kind of a portal to a different outlook a different way of living
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and ideas that were both at once beneficial and dangerous that's true of so many things i suppose right
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of money and and alcohol and so many things that are both good and bad and so you know people took
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these ideas and and ran with them or kept the parts that were most convenient and here we are
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yeah so i mean one idea i think people have taken from freud and i think i think freud would say well
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yeah you just misinterpreted this idea that i had was you know neurosis is caused by repression
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right so the whole point of therapy is like okay you're supposed to like maybe figure out what's
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causing the repression you can release it well i think people have taken this idea that well
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if neurosis is caused by repression just don't repress anything and just give into your basis
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based desires and just like do whatever you want and you know if it feels good do it and that's led
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to this sort of a shift from self-control is good to well self-control is actually bad you actually need
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to not be controlled very well put i i couldn't have put it better i mean an example in that arena
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that i recall in the book is anger you know there was this hydraulic theory sort of of anger and many
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other things that goes back to freud that you know if we if we didn't vent the anger it would turn inward
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and we would have ulcers or we would be repressed or we would eat our liver out or whatever phrase you
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want fanciful phrase you want to use but that's not really how anger seems to work in fact anger seems
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to feed on itself and and great displays of anger only seem to lead to even greater anger and in fact
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controlling our expressions even seems to reduce anger you know so there is you know it works in
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the mind and the body it work in both directions but in any case that idea did take hold that you know
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you had to you had to let these things out and you probably could you lay that at freud another thing
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i mean even even talk therapy freud was if not the inventor then and early i mean people always
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sought to speak to other people about their problems but freud created a kind of a structure
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for this that implied that thwarted desires had to do with disease and that helped the whole disease
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model to to spread i think so he played important roles in a number of respects in helping to change
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attitudes about the here and now and i might add it's possible for a long time we undervalued the
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present but it's hard for us to recall how hard life was in the past and how important it was for
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people to be pretty tough with themselves you know things have changed quite a bit so not only okay
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with freud we had the introduction of this idea that okay maybe you have desires in yourself in the
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unconscious that you don't have any control over maybe you should give in to them so you don't develop
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neurosis another thing that happened that caused a shift of how we think about self-control in the
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20th century and 21st century is the where we we got we were able to get scientific with self-control
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before self-control is mainly a thing that philosophers and theologians thought about
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now you had scientists we had neuroscientists cognitive behavioral scientists geneticists looking
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at self-control and this kind of some of the stuff it chips away but what we think about so
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self-control so for example some research has shown that executive control or self-control
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is hereditary correct yes that's quite correct it's it's associated with conscientiousness
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most things are at least partially hereditary and self-regulation seems to be one of those things
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in addition there are episodes through history that have helped us to see that certain parts of the
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brain are more implicated than others i mean it's it's obviously a very complex arena but there's one
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particular episode that i talk about in the book which is the famous case of phineas gage who i think
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he was a railroad guy was uh trying to blast through rock and an explosion drove a huge a big steel rod
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right through his head and it came in underneath the cheekbone and went out through the front of his
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his head and amazingly he survived this but there was damage to the front of his brain an area we now
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know is highly important in terms of what's called executive function and gage survived this he had a
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wonderful doctor who helped him overcome the infection at a time before antibiotics but gage was a changed
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man he was completely different before the accident he had been known for his reliability and patience
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and um this employer thought he was great he was a supervisor and i think his men thought he was
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terrific as well afterwards he became a guy who was consumed only with his own desires he became short
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tempered he became unreliable he wandered he led a completely different life and he seemed to be
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every people commonly use that kind of expression he's a changed man and this was a an early episode
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that helped to make it clear how important that frontal area of the brain is in in these kinds of things
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well yeah another example you gave it similar to phineas gage there's a guy you know decade or so ago
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where normal guy just kind of laid back nondescript but then suddenly he just like his sexual drive just went out of
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control started looking at porn a lot and he got to the point where he was molesting his daughter i think
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and his wife finally turned and was like this is someone's wrong with this guy what ended up happening
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they discovered there was a tumor in his brain that was basically pressing some part of his prefrontal cortex
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and as soon as they removed the tumor everything went back to normal yes i recall that yes and in fact if i recall
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correctly at one point it grew back and he had to have it treated or removed again and at such times
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he again he was just he did things that would have been absolutely inconceivable and it's a very
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interesting and rich area i mean defense attorneys in murder cases have increasingly tried to make an
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argument that the defendant the accused had some kind of brain disorder or brain problem or insufficient
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development in the brain or something of that nature to mitigate culpability for a murder and
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it hasn't really i don't believe that it's gotten a lot of traction in the courts because you know i'm
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not a lawyer but people have all kinds of problems when they commit crimes and but you're absolutely right
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so it's clear that there's no mind body distinction it's clear that there is an important dimension of this
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that is just a physical manifestation of of our the way our brains are made you know and related to
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this idea of looking or thinking about self-control through this more biological lens is the way our
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ideas around addiction and substance abuse have changed you know now we have you know more questions
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as to the extent of how much you know control or agency people have over those things that's a it's a very
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interesting area and it raises the question of the disease model which has been expanding over the
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years so that if you have an addiction say to alcohol that would be considered a disease and if
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you have an addiction to opioids maybe that's a disease and there are difficulties with that model
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that model makes sense in some ways but in some ways it does not and but what we can say is by expanding
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the realm of disease we narrow the realm of agency you know after all if somebody gets a disease whatever
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it is crohn's disease or something you know that's that just happened you know what can you do but it's
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a little different with these other things i mean when we have a friend who has an alcohol problem and
00:26:12.620
want to help that friend we might say to that friend it's very important that you get help you know
00:26:17.340
because the drinking is out of control and you have to get some help and implicit in that suggestion
00:26:22.620
is the idea that maybe there is some agency there because after all if they are completely
00:26:27.740
a slave of compulsion how could they get help how would help do any good they are completely without
00:26:33.660
agency in the face of a disease now you know on the other hand some of these things seem so
00:26:38.940
intractable that it's hard not to turn to that model but that is something that's been expanding and
00:26:44.620
over the years you've noticed in the media you'll see rhetorically all kinds of addictions we started
00:26:49.420
out maybe with alcohol as a disease and addiction to drugs were a disease but you then come to
00:26:54.700
addiction to your ex-lover or addiction to television addiction to shopping there was
00:27:00.300
just a whole range of things that represent an expansion of this realm and that they do raise
00:27:07.180
questions about you know how far are we going to take this or whether there is at any point some agency
00:27:13.260
involved in our lives okay so given that our genes can affect how much self-control we have
00:27:18.380
can make us more conscientious or less conscious than other people tumors can affect us brain damage
00:27:23.500
can affect our self-control you talk about how hormones can weaken our self-control like when
00:27:28.540
men have are high in testosterone they are more likely to take risk etc what does that say about
00:27:33.260
self-control do we really have it that's a great question maybe that's the essential question you know if
00:27:40.220
i were to put a gun to your head and say don't blink you will blink no matter what eventually you may
00:27:47.740
try not to for a few seconds but sooner or later you're going to blink you know but if i put a gun
00:27:53.020
to your head and say don't eat another piece of pie or don't place another bet or don't have another
00:28:00.540
cocktail as long as i'm standing there with that thing you won't do it so they're just there is some
00:28:06.700
essential difference between behaviors that are fully compulsory and those that are or involuntary
00:28:14.060
shall we say and those that are to some great extent voluntary and it's important not to elide that
00:28:22.140
because as the economists know people do respond to incentives you know and certainly the incentive of
00:28:28.940
that gun i pointed at you is going to affect your behavior but similarly if we impose much higher taxes
00:28:35.660
on alcohol places that have tried this have found somewhat surprisingly that drinking goes down
00:28:42.060
that alcohol purchases actually do have some price sensitivity so in a number of european countries
00:28:48.220
they have much more expensive alcohol some of these countries have greater drinking problems
00:28:53.180
or have had than than we do so you know again and again we do see that that people respond to
00:28:59.100
incentives and so i think that there is you know there's reason there's reason for optimism that
00:29:05.580
there's a lot that we can do in this arena if we if we know how to go about it yeah i think this goes
00:29:12.460
to the question does free will exist i i've you know people say well no free will doesn't exist all
00:29:17.180
determined by genes and hormones social situation blah blah whatever but i mean i think it'd be hard to
00:29:22.700
live in a world where we didn't assign responsibility for you know people for their actions they
00:29:27.820
committed a crime was well they didn't really they didn't have any choice that they were sort of
00:29:32.300
destined to do that and that wouldn't probably not lead to a great place yeah i just i don't see
00:29:38.940
how that can be anything more than a kind of academic position because i mean there are professors
00:29:45.500
who hold that view and then expect their students to study for tests and give them grades based on
00:29:51.020
how they performed and i just don't know how life can go on on that basis i mean i don't know how we
00:29:56.540
can have a legal system i don't know how we could we would bother with incentives i mean people i've
00:30:02.780
talked briefly casually to some people who hold those views and they live sort of just the same
00:30:09.260
as the rest of us they act as they certainly act as if they have control over their actions and in fact
00:30:15.260
they seem to have a great deal of control over their actions they're very often the most highly and
00:30:20.700
carefully self-regulated individuals you know people with advanced degrees and so on and you
00:30:26.700
know if they they need to research school systems they do so carefully or buying a toaster oven whatever
00:30:32.140
it is they don't just say well it's all predetermined and whatever i do i do so you know it's hard to take
00:30:37.820
that terribly seriously but i do think it's a somewhat corrosive idea that as it filters out you know into the
00:30:44.300
world it's very unlikely to be helpful okay so let's summarize where we've been here because we've covered a lot of
00:30:49.660
ground so self-control in ancient times was seen as a virtue and then a lack of self-control was seen
00:30:55.100
as a character defect or even a sin but then various factors changed our ideas of self-control
00:31:02.060
first freud freud gave people this idea that repression might be unhealthy and then also we've
00:31:09.260
been able to scientifically study self-control and we've discovered you know various biological
00:31:16.140
factors that can make it harder for some people to exercise self-control and you know adding these
00:31:22.620
nuances it isn't necessarily a bad thing you know it's helped us understand that self-control can be
00:31:28.220
complex i mean we can be more pathetic maybe for some people because it's just going to be harder for
00:31:33.100
them but at the same time you know we still have free will and there's a need for self-control
00:31:39.420
so if you want to live a flourishing life you know like stay out of debt stay off drugs don't become
00:31:44.940
obese you know you have to exercise self-control but something else you highlight in the book is that
00:31:51.580
even though we still need to exercise self-control there are aspects of our modern environment that's
00:31:57.100
made it uniquely hard to do so so what's different about our environment today several things have
00:32:03.500
changed number one there is a change in in our set of beliefs of taboos and social constraints and
00:32:10.140
religious practice and the whole ideology that we should defer gratification or we should deny ourselves
00:32:18.220
that that whole ideology has weakened considerably you know since in the past half century i would say
00:32:24.060
i don't think anyone can deny that and tradition has weakened people are mobile different kinds of
00:32:30.780
families more people live alone which is disinhibiting in itself so a number of customs and social factors
00:32:37.260
and so on have been disinhibiting in this way another thing is technology and this has been enormous
00:32:44.220
technology has helped to make us richer technology has made things more available in the example
00:32:50.700
there's an example as i recall that i have in my book that you know maybe a hundred years ago
00:32:55.340
you know it took hours you to get a roast chicken you had to chase the chicken around the yard and wring
00:33:00.380
its neck and pluck it and all this kind of thing and now you can just sort of drive through you know
00:33:06.380
el pollo loco or kentucky fried chicken or popeyes or somewhere and get whatever you want in fact now
00:33:12.380
you can have it delivered you can take your phone out of your pocket and just tap tap and it shows up
00:33:16.860
and the cost of that chicken has absolutely plummeted you know it may be the chicken used to take you
00:33:22.460
several hours work to earn now it takes you five ten fifteen minutes and that leads me to the third big
00:33:28.220
factor which has been capitalism which is uh certainly a system that whose virtues i recognize
00:33:34.220
i don't see a better alternative but it's a system that is constantly trying to give us what we want
00:33:41.100
and it's a very dangerous thing sometimes to be able to get what you want and it's a it's a kind
00:33:45.580
of a bifurcated system because in our role as workers we're asked to show tremendous restraint and
00:33:53.500
channel our appetites or set them aside but then in our role as consumers you know with sort of
00:33:58.780
jekyll and hyde in our role as consumers we are we're encouraged in every possible way to throw over
00:34:04.860
all restraints and all concern with tomorrow and so these factors i think have made it much easier for
00:34:13.180
us to answer to let's call them instinctual needs or desires that we have rather than our more considered
00:34:20.940
desires for ourselves and those are big changes i think okay so we've talked about how the idea of
00:34:25.820
self-control has been chipped away in the 20th and 21st century so we have that problem we have this
00:34:31.020
problem where we live in an environment where there's just we have a lot more freedom we can get whatever
00:34:35.260
we want at a click of a button we can gamble from our phones we can buy stuff from our phones we can
00:34:40.460
you know get porn from our phones i mean whatever we have instant access to so what do we do
00:34:47.580
to steal our self-control like what is the research day what did you discover and how we can become more
00:34:53.340
self-control given that our environment is more we have more temptations well so i'm going to reveal
00:34:59.020
my age you know and say that is the six what they used to call the sixty four thousand dollar question
00:35:03.900
you know how do we cope and the good news and i think it's quite good news is really there are some
00:35:09.580
very simple techniques available to anybody that can help enormously in this arena you know and
00:35:17.180
the main concept to accept is a kind of humility willpower alone is rarely enough you really shouldn't
00:35:23.900
count on it you know i mean you may be able to resist i don't know a second piece of pie or something
00:35:29.900
will you be able to resist embezzling ten million dollars if you are absolutely sure no one will ever
00:35:34.300
know about it that's a different question so don't rely on willpower the best thing you can do and bf
00:35:40.460
skinner and many others understood this very well is to control your environment you can't affect your
00:35:46.540
genes of course you can't choose your parents but you can choose your environment which is the other half
00:35:52.780
of it and the other part of it anyway and that can be enormously beneficial if you want to lose weight
00:35:59.020
or control your weight or eat a healthier diet don't have ice cream in the house you know if you
00:36:05.100
don't want to drink or don't want to drink much you know don't have that stuff in the house don't go near
00:36:09.980
a bar think about your friends don't spend a lot of time with people who are going to do the things that
00:36:15.900
you want to avoid doing in fact the social part of this you could say in a sense is a part of your
00:36:22.220
environment but it's absolutely crucial i had a good friend who was the the son of an alcoholic
00:36:29.100
and my friend managed to enjoy a beer every day one beer every day his wife his friends everyone knew
00:36:37.900
that he only had one beer a day i think sometimes he would buy one at a time at a store if he could
00:36:43.820
and everyone knew that and if he departed from that it would be an extraordinary almost a crisis i
00:36:51.020
suppose you know everybody would kind of say oh my god what are you doing what's happening to you
00:36:56.380
and these were people he cared about and this was something that helped him to have the enjoyment of
00:37:01.500
that beer without going overboard so you have to control your environment you have to enlist
00:37:07.900
friends and family it doesn't mean that we have to live at all times under a kind of surveillance
00:37:14.220
i mean if if you live a healthy life it these problems are not as great as they may seem
00:37:19.820
but you've got to set up a structure for success you know so decide if you're going to have lunch
00:37:26.140
with a friend and you both care about this stuff you can you can agree to order for one another
00:37:32.300
because it's likely that you'll order healthier foods for someone else than yourself and you can
00:37:37.420
also order in advance or pledge in advance to order a salad rather than something that might be less
00:37:44.140
healthy there's another thing i want to mention and if you don't mind i will mention it now if i'm
00:37:49.020
going on too long let me know but there's a technique called pre-commitment that is invaluable and it
00:37:53.980
takes us back to the greeks when odysseus was on his way home to ithaca from the trojan war he and
00:38:00.780
his men on their ship had to cope with the sirens who would their magnificent song would lure men to their
00:38:06.220
destruction so odysseus wanted to hear the song but he didn't want the ship to be destroyed so he told
00:38:11.980
the men to stop up their ears tie him to the mast and he would hear the song and they would get
00:38:18.380
through the sirens that way and he did and there are some famous paintings fanciful paintings of this
00:38:23.740
this episode and the odyssey well you know you can do the same and there's a whole variety of ways
00:38:29.260
that talk a great deal about pre-commitment i mean marriage is a form of pre-commitment in a sense
00:38:34.620
tattoos are i suppose are pre-commitment in some sense committing yourself in the future to your your idea
00:38:40.300
today about what is beautiful or worthy but you you know you can go further you can um there are
00:38:45.180
even websites that will let you pledge to pay a certain amount of money if you don't get your weight
00:38:51.100
to a certain level by a certain date and that money can go to a charity of your choosing or the money can
00:38:56.780
go to what they call an anti-charity there was a writer named john bear back in the 70s who pledged
00:39:03.340
some thousands of dollars to the american nazi party if he did not lose a certain amount of weight by a
00:39:08.460
certain date and of course the nazis were anathema to mr bear and he did lose the weight because he
00:39:15.740
didn't want his hard-earned money to go to such an awful group of people so there's just a whole host
00:39:21.820
of these kinds of things that you can do to prevent yourself from going too far off the rails and if
00:39:27.660
you if you treat yourself in this way you know like uh like a sort of one of the pigeons in bf skinner's
00:39:33.340
lab at harvard or like oh my i hate to say this but almost as if you were a very sophisticated robot
00:39:39.820
you can use rewards you know i'm only going to have a glass of wine if i write at least three pages
00:39:45.500
today otherwise no wine you know with dinner there's just a host of these things that you can do i talk
00:39:51.580
about a great many of them in the book and finally cultivating habits is crucially important you must
00:39:58.300
cultivate good ones and you can solve so many difficulties and just they dissolve as difficulties
00:40:04.300
because if your habit is to do is to do the right thing the thing that you really want to do such as
00:40:10.140
to take a walk every day something as simple as that find a partner find a partner to whom you're
00:40:15.900
accountable go walking together these are simple things these are not uh rocket science anybody anybody
00:40:22.460
can do these things and i i do believe they can make a very large difference okay so kind of recap
00:40:28.780
there summarize control your environment so if you have a problem with surfing the web when you don't
00:40:32.620
want to put a web blocker on there's plenty of apps out there the iphone has you know the screen time
00:40:38.540
controls now choose your friends wisely because they're going to shape what you want and it will help
00:40:43.420
you get to where you want to be and have more self-control pre-commitments and then develop habits
00:40:48.540
brett there's one last thing i i forgot to mention that it's important and that is not to try to do
00:40:53.980
too much people who study this find that for example if you're trying to finish your your phd dissertation
00:41:01.260
and you also want to quit smoking finish the dissertation then tackle the smoking you know
00:41:07.180
barack obama knew that he he should quit smoking but i don't believe he was going to do
00:41:11.740
it while he was in the white house it was just too difficult to be president so be smart be patient
00:41:18.060
one thing at a time don't exhaust yourself trying to do everything at once and don't think that a
00:41:24.540
single lapse you had a cigarette you had a drink whatever it is is the end of the world tomorrow
00:41:29.580
is another day and you can just resume where you left off well dan this has been a great conversation
00:41:35.260
where can people go to learn more about the book and your work well thank you the the book is i think
00:41:40.300
still on still in stores still online the hardcover is called we have met the enemy and the softcover is
00:41:45.420
called temptation and i have a website just axed.com a k s t.com where there's some more of my
00:41:51.980
work and i have a book coming out later this year about american pacifists during world war ii well
00:41:57.260
fantastic well dan axed thanks for your time it's been a pleasure oh it's pleasure's all been mine my
00:42:03.100
guest there is daniel axed he's the author of the book temptation it's available amazon.com also check out
00:42:07.660
our show notes at aom.is self-control where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into
00:42:11.660
this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website
00:42:23.020
at art of manly's.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles written
00:42:27.020
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