The Art of Manliness - What Happened to the Idea of Self-Control？

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.620 as long as humans have existed we've had to choose between our lower and higher desires

00:00:15.100 between what we want in the moment and what we want in the long term as long as humans have

00:00:19.600 existed we've had to exercise self-control while exercising self-control has always been part of

00:00:24.460 the human condition our ideas about it have changed through the ages as have the number

00:00:28.300 of obstacles to doing so my guest charted the course of these changes in his book temptation

00:00:32.880 finding self-control in an age of excess and he takes us on a tour of them today his name is

00:00:37.800 daniel axed we begin our conversation with the definition of what self-control is we then

00:00:41.860 discuss our freudian psychology and the scientific study of self-control took it from being something

00:00:46.260 the ancient greeks and romans considered an essential virtue of character something you

00:00:50.380 shouldn't or even couldn't exercise we also talk about what it is about the modern age that makes

00:00:55.060 self-control uniquely difficult to put into practice when our conversation with how despite

00:00:59.300 the addition of complexities and hindrances self-control remains a fundamental resource in

00:01:03.280 a flourishing life and daniel shares practical tips for preserving yours by changing your environment

00:01:08.180 so you actually don't have to exercise self-control as much after the show's over check out our show

00:01:12.760 notes at awm.is slash self-control

00:01:14.740 all right dan axed welcome to the show thanks so much for having me brett so 11 years ago you wrote

00:01:41.820 a book called temptation finding self-control in an age of excess is also sold under the title

00:01:46.940 we have met the enemy as well i'm curious what was going on in your life back in 2011 where you're

00:01:53.180 thinking i really need to take a deep dive into the history and the science of self-control

00:01:58.500 that's a great question i need to go back a ways if you don't mind and mention that i had a gentleman

00:02:04.780 was an uncle by marriage who was quite overweight and extremely so and at that time it was it was

00:02:11.740 really quite rare he was an outlier and he had a very early stomach reduction surgery and you know

00:02:18.640 gastric bypass type of thing they used a different technology in those days but in any case i ended up

00:02:24.080 writing a novel about a man who goes through that and is transformed physically and is unrecognizably so

00:02:30.740 and the novel got some good attention and so people started coming to me to write about these matters

00:02:36.520 and think about these matters and i realized that there was a great deal going on that posed challenges

00:02:42.780 to our ability to regulate our appetites in a society that valued freedom and individuality and all of

00:02:49.800 those good things which i happen to value and so i ended up delving into it on a number of fronts and

00:02:55.160 writing a book about it yeah you so you start off the book i thought it was really interesting

00:02:58.660 you talk about all the problems we have in our current society that you can attribute to a lack

00:03:05.920 of self-control so one is obesity is one what are some other things you were seeing at the time that

00:03:11.240 you're like well this is just a lack of self-control yeah i mean really when people are free i mean they

00:03:16.840 can get in trouble in all kinds of ways you can get in trouble with alcohol you can get in trouble with

00:03:22.200 drugs you can get in trouble with food you know there are a whole bunch of behaviors cigarettes

00:03:28.660 obviously are a very dangerous habit to have tobacco generally after i wrote the book we had the opioid

00:03:35.800 crisis and gambling has been increasing the availability of gambling has been growing before i you know some

00:03:44.340 years ago when i was young there was gambling in nevada and then new jersey came along and that was

00:03:49.920 mostly it other than you know your neighborhood bookie but by the time i wrote the book there was

00:03:54.640 some form of gambling in a large number of states not to mention lotteries and now all these years

00:04:00.460 later we have professional sports gambling spreading and available you know on your phone in everybody's

00:04:06.600 pocket so we went from the difficulty of having maybe to go all the way to vegas or or something to

00:04:12.960 being able to just take out the phone in your pocket and place a bet and and so there are a lot of

00:04:17.720 opportunities in some ways there's a lot of opportunities for fulfillment for pleasure in our

00:04:22.900 society which is marvelous but there are along with that a lot of opportunities to to go very far wrong

00:04:28.800 the gambling thing is interesting so here in oklahoma we have there's uh the tribes have casinos

00:04:33.500 but also we have a state-sponsored lottery like a lot of other states do and i thought that was funny

00:04:38.280 i noticed the other day when i was in a quick trip you know you have to check out you see all the lottery

00:04:42.220 tickets then i also saw an advertisement about there's a state agency now where there's a phone

00:04:48.540 number you can call if you have a gambling problem i just thought that was ironic that okay we created

00:04:54.020 this agency to create the lottery but then we had to create another agency to help people with their

00:04:57.720 gambling problem at the same time that's very common we have it in new york state as well that

00:05:02.360 sort of thing but what's very interesting there are so many aspects to this that are interesting but

00:05:07.480 with respect to gambling what i like is that in quite a number of places there are no gambling

00:05:14.140 registries for example in some states and canadian provinces you can sign yourself up for an irrevocable

00:05:21.880 period of time to be barred from casinos and in fact there was a fascinating legal case in i can't recall if it

00:05:31.260 was british columbia or one of the other western canadian provinces where some gamblers had lost very

00:05:37.180 large sums of money after registering themselves to be barred from these casinos and they then snuck

00:05:45.200 into the casinos and lost all of this money and then sued the casinos claiming that the casinos had

00:05:52.100 been negligent in not barring them so you know it's a very difficult problem it's sensible to try to use a

00:06:00.520 technique of this kind and yet so many of them can be circumvented it's very hard to bar yourself

00:06:06.940 from doing something like this and it's just a back and forth that we're always going to have to

00:06:11.660 cope with in a free society and the more things that we permit the more we're going to have to

00:06:16.240 control ourselves well another issue you're writing this book right after the the great recession

00:06:20.680 yeah and you attributed you know you could partly blame a lack of self-control on the the recession

00:06:26.620 because you had banks making loans that they probably shouldn't have made people taking on leverage

00:06:31.320 they probably shouldn't have and it's because they just wanted more even though they probably

00:06:35.140 shouldn't yeah i mean look there's just no denying it i mean it's so many of our excesses you know could

00:06:42.600 be prevented by some prudence and some self-control well i'd like to maybe for this discussion we can

00:06:48.140 talk about how the ideology of okay you need to constrain yourself in order to live a flourishing life

00:06:53.060 how did that go from a good thing to where you're kind of giving into your wants is a is preferred but

00:06:59.400 before we do let's talk about just kind of definition like how do you define self-control

00:07:04.040 because i think a lot of people when they hear they think okay i know what self-control is means

00:07:07.880 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

00:07:13.760 this book what kind of definition did you settle on that's a great question and i would say and you

00:07:19.820 know conversationally i would say that it is the ability to or the willingness to or both to honor

00:07:26.580 one's more considered desires let's put it that way in the book i talk about two levels or two kinds

00:07:33.580 of desire that you might have you know i just if my wife brings home a delicious pie or something i

00:07:38.620 just want to sit down and eat the whole thing and that might be a first order desire that i have

00:07:42.500 but a second order desire a more considered desire i have would be to be healthy and stay trim

00:07:48.880 and not hog all the pie so that there's some for her or if our boys come over or something

00:07:53.920 and so if i can adhere to that self-control would be the ability or the effort to adhere to that more

00:08:01.400 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

00:08:06.760 and you know there are those like the philosopher harry frankfurt who has said that really this is what

00:08:13.020 makes us human harry frankfurt said that if you don't have those considered desires you know or

00:08:19.360 you don't honor them in any way or very much then you're what he called a wanton and a human is someone

00:08:25.920 who honors those desires because after all if my neighbor has i don't know some great patio chairs 0.99

00:08:31.800 and i boy i covet those i mean i don't go over and swipe those you know even if nobody's looking and

00:08:37.560 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

00:08:42.640 harry called them wantons and you know the greeks and others throughout history have had a similar

00:08:46.900 disdain for people for this kind of thing people regarded as a lack of character you know that it

00:08:52.380 almost meant you couldn't be trusted if you couldn't honor these more reasonable or these

00:08:57.280 considered desires if you didn't have them even so that's i guess the longer answer that you may want

00:09:02.520 but how i look at self-control no yeah i've heard that that first order wants or first order desire

00:09:09.140 second order desire distinction before and the way one way i had it i've heard it put is okay the first

00:09:13.980 order desire is like the thing you want right it could be like okay the pie and then the second order

00:09:18.820 desire is you want the thing you want right like you you actually do like that considered desire you

00:09:25.300 actually want to eat the pie like the example of you know first and second order desires being out of

00:09:31.540 a line an extreme example is addiction right yeah where you have okay someone wants the drug right

00:09:36.960 they viscerally want the drug whether it's cocaine opioids alcohol nicotine whatever but then there

00:09:42.960 could be they second step back and like actually i don't want it like it makes me feel bad i don't

00:09:47.480 want to so addiction is a perfect example of those things being out of alignment right that's right and

00:09:54.420 in fact there's much to be said about addiction but one point i would make along the lines that we've

00:09:59.800 been discussing is that you can also see this not just in terms of having conflicting desires in the

00:10:05.940 present but you can see it in in a kind of temporal way that is in terms of my absolute immediate desire

00:10:12.460 it's absolutely to have pleasure now but there's some later self that will have to pay the price for

00:10:19.920 that and to what extent do i honor the interests or desires of that later self that would prefer to be

00:10:26.940 thin or not hung over or not impoverished because i've gambled away all my money on nfl football or

00:10:34.300 wherever i've done it so you're you're absolutely right well let's talk about how our ideas about

00:10:39.740 self-control have changed over time and what i love about your book is that you take readers through

00:10:44.960 this sort of you know a cultural tour of the idea of self-control and you have an entire chapter

00:10:51.580 devoted to the ancient greeks and i love this because first i love the ancient greeks

00:10:55.020 but one of the things i love about the greeks is that they thought about these complex nuanced

00:11:00.640 you know psychological ideas and they just come up with a single word that would encapsulate it

00:11:06.780 and the greeks had this word for self-control and it was akrasia so tell us about akrasia

00:11:13.760 right weakness of the will and that is uh something they were very aware of i mean the wonderful thing

00:11:19.580 about the greeks as you imply is that when you turn to them you find all of our dilemmas all of 1.00

00:11:24.800 our all of our issues and concerns they wrestled with all of it and they did so with with great

00:11:30.440 clarity and even poetry so it's interesting to look at how they coped with these issues and it's

00:11:36.060 interesting to bear in mind how they lived they lived in in smaller communities people knew each other

00:11:41.440 but you know you were seen by servants and and you were seen by neighbors and spouses and so forth

00:11:47.720 it was a small world and so they paid a lot of attention to this plato and aristotle in particular

00:11:54.220 paid attention to it plato had the idea that what we did when if i said you know i'm not going to eat

00:11:59.940 that whole pie but then i went ahead and did it he said well i just changed my mind you know because

00:12:05.380 he didn't think anybody could knowingly do something that they felt was a bad thing to do so i just changed

00:12:12.300 my mind and for a while i thought it was a good idea and then i finished eating and maybe i realized that

00:12:16.900 it wasn't and aristotle i think had a more sophisticated or cynical view and cynical is the

00:12:24.480 wrong word but he had a more sophisticated view in which and he said that as someone put it reason is

00:12:30.320 dragged about by desire you know and so you have these simultaneous these conflicting desires and he

00:12:38.900 really expected us to be disciplined and to both plato and aristotle felt it was important you know but

00:12:45.440 aristotle expected us to be disciplined and to be accountable for ourselves and to to find the mean

00:12:51.400 and he didn't mean just divide everything right down the middle he said you know use judgment use a

00:12:57.560 kind of practical wisdom to determine which pole you should be near how much should you eat no pie

00:13:02.980 should you eat the whole pie where do you belong in there and i might add on a practical level which i

00:13:08.320 guess we'll talk about in a while practical matters but you know it's it's always easier abstinence is

00:13:13.900 always easier than temperance so it's in some respects it's easier to have no pie than just one small

00:13:19.740 piece but in any case the greeks were on this they had a whole bunch of different distinctions

00:13:24.800 you know aristotle for example talked about the continent man who restrained his desires versus the

00:13:32.740 temperate man who he didn't have desires that were all that powerful say for gambling or for

00:13:39.520 whatever infidelity or any of any of that sort of thing and so they made they made a whole bunch of

00:13:45.120 these distinctions aristotle in particular but the main thing is they understood that this was a human

00:13:50.140 affliction a part of the human condition and they understood that it can be an expression of character

00:13:55.840 so they they had i thought a sophisticated awareness of these issues you know and you talk about the reason

00:14:01.580 they were likely so focused on self-controls that their democratic form of government this idea they

00:14:07.840 believed if you wanted to have a democracy that's led by free people you needed to have people who

00:14:12.560 were in control of their base desires yeah i think that then as now if you want to have a thriving

00:14:21.200 democracy and you want a free people those people need to be able to regulate themselves in some way and

00:14:30.200 that in turn requires some kind of education some kind of conditioning toward values some kind of

00:14:37.800 social structures that make it possible you know it's it's almost impossible to do this kind of

00:14:43.820 thing successfully all alone i i'm not sure that can happen so i think that democracy is absolutely

00:14:50.600 dependent civil society is absolutely dependent on the ability of individuals to regulate their desires

00:14:57.520 so the greeks self-control is important you move into the romans and an important philosophy for a lot

00:15:03.820 of romans was the philosophy of stoicism and they seem to take this idea of self-control and just

00:15:08.720 like put it on steroids absolutely you know that was central i think to the stoic conception of a

00:15:15.520 virtuous life and you know each of us bore the weight in a sense of his own well-being his own outlook

00:15:23.160 the only thing you could control was your response to things and this was pretty much the highest value to

00:15:29.420 them and you know that carried forward i mean all the way across the centuries i mean through the

00:15:35.000 puritans the victorians and so forth all of whom have a bad name now there are a bunch of party poopers 1.00

00:15:40.500 and so forth but they did understand certain things about human nature you know the way that we can go off

00:15:46.320 the rails the way that society can become disorganized and violent and inhospitable to its members and to the

00:15:54.760 future all those things can happen if we don't regulate ourselves and subordinate our desires to

00:16:00.660 some extent to tomorrow and to the needs of others well yes okay the stoics had emphasis on self-control

00:16:07.440 as you said this got carried over into christianity where a lack of self-control became a sin a lot of

00:16:13.240 you look at the seven deadly sins a lot it's all about people who who lacked self-control they gave

00:16:18.980 into their their gluttony their lust their vanity etc we're going to take a quick break for your words

00:16:24.460 from our sponsors and now back to the show okay so for most of western history self-control has

00:16:34.780 really been important you can see this in other cultures as well if you look at in chinese culture

00:16:38.800 asian cultures confucianism was all about controlling yourself and making sure you're doing the right

00:16:44.220 thing in this certain social context you can see the similar things in hinduism as well but in the 20th

00:16:50.280 century you had this guy named freud who he's put into motion a radical change of how we think about

00:16:58.420 self-control what was freud's ideas and how do they influence what we think about self-control

00:17:03.760 well i guess you could say that freud's real emphasis i guess aside from freud was and his lust for

00:17:13.540 renown freud's real emphasis was was autonomy we might say you know and he wanted to liberate us

00:17:21.100 from taboos and constraints that we had perhaps internalized that we didn't believe in or that were

00:17:28.160 oppressive to us or that were contrary to our deepest needs needs that were not illegitimate you know

00:17:36.220 for love or whatever and that was valuable that was a valuable contribution by freud but autonomy can

00:17:44.280 eventually become licensed and that was a problem another important aspect of freud's work was the

00:17:52.280 rise of faith in the importance of the unconscious and you know you go down that road and it's very easy

00:17:58.640 to come to the idea that maybe we don't have any conscious control over our behavior you know

00:18:05.980 maybe it's all mysterious it's all predetermined maybe there's not even any free will and so you

00:18:12.180 could see that that he was a kind of a portal to a different outlook a different way of living

00:18:17.400 and ideas that were both at once beneficial and dangerous that's true of so many things i suppose right

00:18:24.780 of money and and alcohol and so many things that are both good and bad and so you know people took

00:18:31.280 these ideas and and ran with them or kept the parts that were most convenient and here we are

00:18:36.640 yeah so i mean one idea i think people have taken from freud and i think i think freud would say well

00:18:41.140 yeah you just misinterpreted this idea that i had was you know neurosis is caused by repression

00:18:47.160 right so the whole point of therapy is like okay you're supposed to like maybe figure out what's

00:18:52.280 causing the repression you can release it well i think people have taken this idea that well

00:18:56.640 if neurosis is caused by repression just don't repress anything and just give into your basis

00:19:01.960 based desires and just like do whatever you want and you know if it feels good do it and that's led

00:19:07.860 to this sort of a shift from self-control is good to well self-control is actually bad you actually need

00:19:13.240 to not be controlled very well put i i couldn't have put it better i mean an example in that arena

00:19:19.440 that i recall in the book is anger you know there was this hydraulic theory sort of of anger and many

00:19:26.360 other things that goes back to freud that you know if we if we didn't vent the anger it would turn inward

00:19:31.680 and we would have ulcers or we would be repressed or we would eat our liver out or whatever phrase you

00:19:38.160 want fanciful phrase you want to use but that's not really how anger seems to work in fact anger seems

00:19:44.100 to feed on itself and and great displays of anger only seem to lead to even greater anger and in fact

00:19:52.380 controlling our expressions even seems to reduce anger you know so there is you know it works in

00:19:57.740 the mind and the body it work in both directions but in any case that idea did take hold that you know

00:20:02.900 you had to you had to let these things out and you probably could you lay that at freud another thing

00:20:08.540 i mean even even talk therapy freud was if not the inventor then and early i mean people always

00:20:13.920 sought to speak to other people about their problems but freud created a kind of a structure

00:20:21.020 for this that implied that thwarted desires had to do with disease and that helped the whole disease

00:20:29.360 model to to spread i think so he played important roles in a number of respects in helping to change

00:20:36.220 attitudes about the here and now and i might add it's possible for a long time we undervalued the

00:20:43.420 present but it's hard for us to recall how hard life was in the past and how important it was for

00:20:51.320 people to be pretty tough with themselves you know things have changed quite a bit so not only okay

00:20:58.420 with freud we had the introduction of this idea that okay maybe you have desires in yourself in the

00:21:03.920 unconscious that you don't have any control over maybe you should give in to them so you don't develop

00:21:08.800 neurosis another thing that happened that caused a shift of how we think about self-control in the

00:21:15.320 20th century and 21st century is the where we we got we were able to get scientific with self-control

00:21:21.200 before self-control is mainly a thing that philosophers and theologians thought about

00:21:25.140 now you had scientists we had neuroscientists cognitive behavioral scientists geneticists looking

00:21:30.980 at self-control and this kind of some of the stuff it chips away but what we think about so

00:21:35.520 self-control so for example some research has shown that executive control or self-control

00:21:42.560 is hereditary correct yes that's quite correct it's it's associated with conscientiousness

00:21:49.520 most things are at least partially hereditary and self-regulation seems to be one of those things

00:21:55.240 in addition there are episodes through history that have helped us to see that certain parts of the

00:22:01.740 brain are more implicated than others i mean it's it's obviously a very complex arena but there's one

00:22:07.800 particular episode that i talk about in the book which is the famous case of phineas gage who i think

00:22:14.140 he was a railroad guy was uh trying to blast through rock and an explosion drove a huge a big steel rod

00:22:22.780 right through his head and it came in underneath the cheekbone and went out through the front of his

00:22:29.960 his head and amazingly he survived this but there was damage to the front of his brain an area we now

00:22:38.460 know is highly important in terms of what's called executive function and gage survived this he had a

00:22:45.260 wonderful doctor who helped him overcome the infection at a time before antibiotics but gage was a changed

00:22:50.300 man he was completely different before the accident he had been known for his reliability and patience

00:22:57.580 and um this employer thought he was great he was a supervisor and i think his men thought he was

00:23:02.920 terrific as well afterwards he became a guy who was consumed only with his own desires he became short

00:23:11.500 tempered he became unreliable he wandered he led a completely different life and he seemed to be

00:23:17.740 every people commonly use that kind of expression he's a changed man and this was a an early episode

00:23:25.020 that helped to make it clear how important that frontal area of the brain is in in these kinds of things

00:23:31.740 well yeah another example you gave it similar to phineas gage there's a guy you know decade or so ago

00:23:37.420 where normal guy just kind of laid back nondescript but then suddenly he just like his sexual drive just went out of

00:23:45.660 control started looking at porn a lot and he got to the point where he was molesting his daughter i think

00:23:50.460 and his wife finally turned and was like this is someone's wrong with this guy what ended up happening

00:23:54.700 they discovered there was a tumor in his brain that was basically pressing some part of his prefrontal cortex

00:24:01.180 and as soon as they removed the tumor everything went back to normal yes i recall that yes and in fact if i recall

00:24:09.740 correctly at one point it grew back and he had to have it treated or removed again and at such times

00:24:15.420 he again he was just he did things that would have been absolutely inconceivable and it's a very

00:24:20.780 interesting and rich area i mean defense attorneys in murder cases have increasingly tried to make an

00:24:27.180 argument that the defendant the accused had some kind of brain disorder or brain problem or insufficient

00:24:37.340 development in the brain or something of that nature to mitigate culpability for a murder and

00:24:45.420 it hasn't really i don't believe that it's gotten a lot of traction in the courts because you know i'm

00:24:51.340 not a lawyer but people have all kinds of problems when they commit crimes and but you're absolutely right

00:24:57.260 so it's clear that there's no mind body distinction it's clear that there is an important dimension of this

00:25:03.260 that is just a physical manifestation of of our the way our brains are made you know and related to

00:25:08.940 this idea of looking or thinking about self-control through this more biological lens is the way our

00:25:14.940 ideas around addiction and substance abuse have changed you know now we have you know more questions

00:25:21.100 as to the extent of how much you know control or agency people have over those things that's a it's a very

00:25:27.900 interesting area and it raises the question of the disease model which has been expanding over the

00:25:34.060 years so that if you have an addiction say to alcohol that would be considered a disease and if

00:25:41.100 you have an addiction to opioids maybe that's a disease and there are difficulties with that model

00:25:46.940 that model makes sense in some ways but in some ways it does not and but what we can say is by expanding

00:25:53.820 the realm of disease we narrow the realm of agency you know after all if somebody gets a disease whatever

00:26:00.860 it is crohn's disease or something you know that's that just happened you know what can you do but it's

00:26:05.980 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 0.99

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 0.98

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

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00:42:52.380 support until next time it's brett mckay remind you to listen to aom podcast but put what you've heard

00:42:56.620 into action

The Art of Manliness - October 17, 2022

What Happened to the Idea of Self-Control？

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