Opinion Masquerading as Stoic Philosophy

I will remind everyone that we live in a world of rising carbon dioxide levels and we humans are having lung/breathing issues and human energy production (common overeating) already. This suggests that the world is over populated unless we cut our production of carbon dioxide considerable. This means a throttling of live style, or returning to a population where the carbon dioxide level near level or less that 300 ppm. aka 1960 level of population.    

Opinion Masquerading as Stoic Philosophy

So there is this old philosophy which was created within a less evolved culture, some 2300 or is it 2700 or 2000 years ago. It had some guidelines on how to live, and different sages and authors had different guidelines, some of which are mutually exclusive. So a modern professor can pick from the various translation and documents and come up with a list that he likes, and say it is stoic doctrine, yet the belief may also be found elsewhere. So is it Stoic, if the Stoics copied it from elsewhere?  

https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2017/02/27/the-stoic-pledge/

I think it is wonderful that someone would take the time to document what they actually believe. I do hope that this is what they actually do, not just what they would like to do. 

To live by virtue is all fine and good, but until the total list of virtues is listed and explored, and each virtue is defined well enough to live by, it is just talk. These people had the habit and the regulation of exposing all deformed children, and any ungifted when the ungifted was recognized, even against the mothers wishes. Men did not dare challenge the City state. Exile or death was often the other choice. How do we rationalize this with Stoicism unless Stoicism was but a minor philosophy? Now, I think that living by virtue is a good thing, but it is the selection of the virtues that becomes the real issue.

Second issue is vegetarianism. No culture has had success as vegetarian, although many adult individuals do survive at strict vegetarians. Modern vegetarian mothers produce a high frequency of autistic children. As some autism relates to short neuron column spacing, it may be related to the protein and fat supply during early growth, conception to two or three years. I coach archery, and some are very slow or never do develop muscles. These people have always turned out to be either vegetarians or dietetics. The senors are frequently on stations also that dis troy muscle growth. For these reasons I have doubt that vegetarianism is good for active people, but I do not care what others actually do. I do not have the right to push my views onto others, but I do have the right to express my views, and if you get huffy or are offended, it is your problem.

"V. I will reject nationalism and any other kind of parochial view of humanity. My creed is that of cosmopolitanism."

and Paul "Examples include adherence to in-group doctrine, hostility to and claims of superiority over out-groups, and seeking out evidence (and company) that reinforces rather than challenges our existing beliefs."

We may need to make substantial change in our lives if we grew up and worked under tyrants until we obtained logical independence. Our views, beliefs, values may need to be adjusted multiple times in our lives for our survival. In some professions, that take guidance or direction from government, rejecting nationalism is just not an option. What I am getting at is some rules cannot be rationally applied for some people. That is not saying that these are not good rules in theory.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that some guidelines are just not applicable to some lives, and some realities. It is apparent we humans are due a major die off, and that decision, or the decision to live, will be made by each individual, group, Provence, Country.

Trump is trying to shut down immigration. Is that so bad to stabilize the US population, even if the expressed political reason is wrong? How much political following would he get if he said, "the Co2 is rising. We need to stabilize or cut our population, but we do not want to cut our lifestyle, which produces half of the Co2. So we could let those refugees die overseas, and we need to increase our defense systems to be able to prevent the brown hoards from taking over and we need to block them from coming in. Let them die off elsewhere." 

But I live in Canada, and am old. It is the younger generations problem now. As the philosophy professors become increasingly irrelevant to society, all we need do is ask how irrelevant is what they say to my life?   



       

Free Will and Eating

Free will and eating are not necessarily incompatible even when they seem to be. For the most part, the amount we eat, when we get hungry, are beyond our normal control. It is only when we are trying to "lose weight" that how much we eat and when becomes an issue and we try to bring this instinct under our direct control that we experience this difficulty, long term. The regulation of eating is an instinct, always has been and likely always will be. It is outside of our control, outside of free will, and in that zone that we can only influence. There in lies the problem. And yet we may think we can control it, yet few with a weight issue can control it. Many people say we should be able to control it, but that is a fiction, a collective fiction.

Is there any doubt about the human's inability to control our intake of food?  Just look around at all the overweight people. I doubt that anyone wants to be overweight. They are eating beyond there needs, but do not have the ability to control their eating. This can occur by desiring a specific food, or enjoy the feeling that sugar, insulin, or something else brings, just as the alcoholic enjoys the feeling that alcohol brings, at least in the early days of drinking. There was something in our early days of overeating that we liked about overeating. We may no longer enjoy it the same way, or we do, but the weight is a problem. Many of us still enjoy the food, it may be our only enjoyment left, but we need to give up the food for health reasons. We may just enjoy food.  In fact, it may be our only enjoyment.

So we have arrived at this point in time, and need to understand that we have pull toward food as it does something for us physiologically that we like psychologically, that we want, and at the same time adds weight to us. So now what about that free will? we have one factor pulling us toward the food, and reason against. Instinct vs reason, which is going to win long term? This instinct lies outside of our free will zone, outside of our absolute control and only in the zone that we have influence. Our epigenetic switch has been flicked to eating to much. We need to learn to live with that.

For some of us, food is and was our only pleasure. Movement is just not comfortable, and we do not enjoy movement. The exercise fanatics think that it will become enjoyable, but that may happen to them but not to all. They may not get the pleasure from food that we do, they get pleasure from exercise, which I (we) do not. Is it that simple. Was the source of pleasure trained in, in our youth? I expect so.

So now we obese and overweight inclined people need to give up food as a source of pleasure, and get some exercise, and hopefully find a new source of pleasure within our control. Knowing that the rational mind is all we control, and we have an instinct to learn, perhaps we can utilize this as a source of pleasure. Our free will and that which we have absolute control over seam to be the same zones. Very small, and very specific. But not as big as many think, nor as sure of control. If we have no control, we can have no free will, for these two are directly related. Once we get beyond making the decision to move, we progress beyond the area that we have free will over, beyond the are that we have control over.

Three frogs are sitting on a log. One frog decides to jump off. How many frogs are left on the log? 3 Decision is not action. We have free will to the decision, not of the action of jumping. That depends on the body cooperating with our will to jump. With food we may not get that cooperation, the body instinct want what it wants. All we can do is take ourselves away from any source of food. But that too requires the cooperation of the body; if we are tired, have pains, or what ever, we may not get that cooperation.

Now we need to swim upstream, against the wrong "collective beliefs" of our culture, namely, that we should be able to use willpower to control our eating. If it were that simple. Eating is instinct/epigenetically driven. It is the collective belief that is wrong. What we can control is the opportunity to eat, not the desire. This must be learned and understood for recovery. Removal of one more mind parasite.

What do I know? no joy there. In the end we all just die anyway.   

The cause of obesity & T2D

Peter describes the process:


Once the elevated glucose from insulin resistance kills off enough beta cells then insulin levels drop, glucose levels rise, HSL is disinhibited so FFAs rise. You might even get ketoacidosis. This is type 2 diabetes. ATGL might even take a break.      The first approach to correcting it is carbohydrate restriction, so dropping hyperinsulinaemia and minimising the vicious cycle. Doing something about the kilos of linoleic acid stored in an obese person's adipocytes is an altogether longer term project.

So the second part is to stay on the diet. Keep in mind that any diet in which we consume less calories than we burn will cause weight loss and fat to come out of the fat cells to make up the difference. Also not that for the obese, a large cut is easier than a small cut. So it is about attitude, emotional control, environment, stress, and motivation to stay on the diet. Cut carbs as much as is practical, adequate protein, and as little fat as is possible to make the food taste. To the body, a major cut is a high fat diet to the body, as the fat coming from the fat cells makes up the remainder.

Motivation is mostly emotional. Logic provides the direction and emotion flicks the switch that drives us forward. It is the thought that flicks the switch that makes the difference.

Atkins had everyone on broth, and that may be the low calorie-big volume that feeds the top of the stomach. I am just not sure.

SMARTish.

After we develop the knowledge to live well, then we need the motivation to continue doing what we find difficult for the remainder of our lives, what ever that may be. Self management and recovery training is a group who works with addicted peoples to aid in recovery. The program as defined by SMART Recovery has its limitations, when dealing with food addicts mixed in with other addicts. We food addict like people have many different issues. Most other type of addicts do not accept food addicts, for they do not see food as a addictive substance, but as a simple behavior.

We are addicted to a behavior, as well as a few low dose chemicals, often those chemicals are produced inside the body from multiple food inputs. Opioid peptides are the digestion product of dairy, wheat, potatoes, gliadin proteins, and if we happen to have the enzyme to produce it. Serotonin is produced in the gut, and is displaced in with quantifies with sugar. These are the two typical methods of causing humans to "like" specific foods, and we either like it too much or are unable to produce the will power to not eat those products. Given the will power it takes to haul our obese selves around, it is not a shortage of will power issue.

The smart tools are fine, as far as they go. But those tools are not sufficient for the more severely addicted. We need more, and chemical addiction is only part of the addiction process: there is also the behavioral addiction, which is even stronger and requires different approaches. In the end, we always need to follow a thin diet, both quality and quantity. It is our thinking that gives us the ability to follow, and that is where society fails us.

The Smart algorithm needs a extension for food issues.