So I’m reading this Daily Beast article about picky eating, which is one that could only have been written in the past 10 years ago or so. It refers to picky eating, meaning people who have subsisted on, say, solely French fries for years on end, as an eating disorder. Not a habit, not a predilection. But a disorder.
To a certain degree I’m sympathetic with this. People in the article talk about how any other kind of food makes them gag. People with autism and other developmental disabilities often have problems handling sensory information. Can’t these people just have a touch of that same issue? I can’t touch velvet, myself. Or velour. Or corduroy. It absolutely literally makes me gag. I avoid touching velvet where practicable (which, as it turns out, is pretty practicable).
But then the article says:
They can’t “just try it,” as many say they’re pressured to do. (“That’s like telling an individual with Parkinson’s disease that they could stop shaking if they just tried to hold themselves still,” Amber Scott says.)
Um, no. I can touch velvet. It’s just extremely, extremely unpleasant for me to do so. I may gag, I may even puke. But I can do it. This is not at all like telling an individual with Parkinson’s to stop shaking. And indeed, people with sensory issues are often successfully treated with gradual habituation.
People tend to talk about actions as if they are absolutely free or absolutely out of our control. If you are obese, you are either a lazy glutton or you have a disease. But often, these things are just really really hard. Much harder than proponents of a total libertarianism (I’m talking will here, not politics) would have you believe, but not totally impossible. The price of losing weight is, as Dr. Saunders discussed, extremely high. One basically has to devote one’s life to it. It may well not be worth it for the vast majority of people. But that is not the same thing as saying it can’t be done.
David Brooks has a somewhat odd column today basically making this point. But then he goes on to say that trying to create a situation so that it’s easier for you to break unhealthy habits is Machiavellian.
You can change your own personal habits. If you leave running shorts on the floor at night, that’ll be a cue to go run in the morning. Don’t try to ignore your afternoon snack craving. Every time you feel the cue for a snack, insert another routine. Take a walk.
This research implies a different character model. If the 19th-century model implied a moralistic captain steering the ship of the soul, the new character model implies a crafty Machiavellian, deftly manipulating the neural networks inside.
To be an effective person, you are supposed to coolly appraise your own unconscious habits, and the habits of those under your care. You are supposed to devise oblique strategies to alter the triggers and routines. Every relationship becomes slightly manipulative, including your relationship with yourself. You’re marketing to yourself, trying to arouse certain responses by implanting certain cues.
This is sort of disturbing. I’d just emphasize something that peeps in and out of Duhigg’s book but that is often lost in the larger advice culture. The important habitual neural networks are not formed by mere routine, nor can they be reversed by clever triggers. They are burned in by emotion and fortified by strong yearnings, like the yearnings for admiration and righteousness.
If you think you can change your life in a prudential way, the way an advertiser can get you to buy an air freshener, you’re probably wrong.
As the Victorians understood (and the folks at Alcoholics Anonymous understand), if you want to change your life, don’t just look for a clever trigger. Commit to some larger global belief.
I agree that cute little triggers are not going to change our deepest habits. But there are two problems with this. One is that he gives no reason to think that committing to a global belief (which the beginning of the article implies is religious) is necessary for giving you yearnings for admiration and righteousness.
I am also puzzled by his description of self-appraisal and desire for change as “manipulative.” Understanding your weaknesses and learning to avoid your temptations is a cornerstone of virtuous character development dating back to Aristotle. In general it is admirable to teach young children. But if you have a sexual attraction to children, the moral thing to do is to have enough self-awareness to avoid teaching and putting yourself in a situation where your will power alone may not be strong enough to overcome your temptations.
You only have a limited amount of will power. Deciding what you need it to use it for, and how to conserve it to use it efficiently, is not Machiavellian trickery, but an important part of maturity.
“You only have a limited amount of will power. Deciding what you need it to use it for, and how to conserve it to use it efficiently, is not Machiavellian trickery, but an important part of maturity. ”
A thousand times, this. Improving yourself ought to be on your list of things to do, but being aware of your limitations and putting your self-improvements on a reality-based track is necessary to prevent yourself from going totally crazy.
This is where burned-out first time parents come from. This is where heart attacks at 40 come from… trying to be all things, to all people (including yourself), at all times. You can go the other way and become a monk, of course, but that’s simply a matter of compressing “things that you do” into a small enough sphere that it’s possible to be excellent at all of them.
I’m much too Jack-of-all-Trades, myself, to go that route. I’d be terribly unhappy at it.
I’ve got a vid of someone nearly barfing after just pretending to eat a green pepper. Apparently vegetables/fruits don’t get along with him.
Apparently vegetables/fruits don’t get along with him.
green peppers and brinjals have their own barf factors that dont have anything to do with eating other vegetables.
Hint: it has to do with the texture and consistency of the flesh.
Parkinson’s Disease is a bad analogy because sufferers are literally incapable of controlling their tremors. This kind of profoundly picky eating is probably more like anorexia nervosa insofar as patients with anorexia are physically capable of eating. But it would be silly to say that anorexics should just try to eat more. There are behavioral therapies for anorexia, and they don’t work unless the patient tries, but the essence of the disorder is that unstructured trying alone isn’t enough. These patients need a more systematic approach to regain control of their behavior.
Lindsay, if I didn’t make adequately clear in my post, I totally 100 percent agree with you. By really hard, I mean really really really hard, and often needing outside advice and support.
Brooks doesn’t understand Machiavelli in the context of his own times. If he did, he wouldn’t make the comparison. Nor does he understand neural networks or how they are trained.
You have confessed to an aversion to velour and other such fabrics. You can, if pressed, make contact with them, your inner revulsion notwithstanding. I go out every morning with my girlfriend’s dainty husky dog, who waits for a a quiet moment and gracefully deposits her turds in the snow. I pick them up in a plastic grocery bag, reflexively gagging every single time I do it. It’s not like I can’t pick up her poop or you can’t touch these fabrics, we just have some revulsion.
A childhood in the desert, living through the harmattan wind has given me a deep aversion to powder on my skin. It horrifies me. I was almost smothered in dust on several occasions. I can’t abide it on my girlfriend’s face. But I don’t freak out over it. I know it for what it is, no different than some of my PTSD symptoms. Create small enough feedback loops, come to terms with reality and perception, hey, anyone can overcome these thoughts.
David Brooks is an effete. Neither of us needs some Global Belief. We aren’t living in some realm of miserable compunction or aversion. It’s not a question of morals or some inner captain of our souls. Time and tide have given us our preferences and aversions. We cannot master ourselves. We can, if we are willing, come to terms with our own selves, and become our own friends.
What kind of Global Belief does David Brooks think a person needs to quit smoking or stick with a new exercise program? Sure, we all want to be admired by others and feel good about ourselves, like Brooks says. But how does that conflict with Duhigg-style behavior modification?
Brooks’ example of AA is weird because you don’t end up in AA unless your behavior modification strategies have already failed spectacularly. But most people can adjust their drinking habits on their own, with relative ease. If they see that drinking is getting in the way of their goals or creating problems in their lives, they can recalibrate their habits. That flexibility is arguably what separates your average drinker from an alcoholic.
There’s a lot more Duhigg-style behavior modification in AA than Brooks seems to realize. Sure, for some people, joining AA is tantamount to getting religion. But a lot of people use AA as more as a way of creating new habits. Got a craving? Instead of taking a drink, go to a meeting. Feeling lonely? Don’t drink, call your sponsor.