On Going On Diet

My piece for the Pub:

Aside from fashion and cosmetic products, one way to enhance feminine beauty for women is perhaps going on diet. In this skinny era, far too many women depart from the classical ideals of feminine beauty and often find themselves complaining that their waists are too wide, legs too short, and sometimes even breasts too small. Unlike ancient times, chubbiness is no longer an indicator of physical virtue, but rather, an offensive deviation from an ideal proportion that runs contrary to the Golden Ratio.

How much determination they need to resist the temptation to salivate towards a box of Belgian chocolate; how much courage they may have to show to devour a piece of strawberry cake regardless what a scientific formula about sugar and fats may have to reveal. To fill their stomach with the tiniest amount of sugary product is to lay down the very foundation of obesity. It's almost as if a piece of candy may easily lead women to avoid the verdict of a full-length mirror and possibly deny them of the opportunity to appear on a Vogue magazine.

Yet this aesthetic assault which women have so rigorously practised is hardly the sole evidence of masochism. Humans are both independent and dependent creatures. If women are willing to suffer from this assault, it might be because men tend to be seduced by this concept of slimness as well. According to most men, physical beauty of women can be measured according to an objective standard, a view that is so influential on women that it has become their own. In order for a woman to be beautiful, the contour and the shape of a woman have to be symmetrically balanced, waists narrow, breasts not flat, bottoms slightly larger, and legs thinner so as to make them seem longer. This view seems to suggest that there is a mathematical basis of beauty, hence the faces that successfully appear on the front cover of magazines are necessarily rather than subjectively pleasing.

What's more is that the rigours of going on diet may bear a certain wisdom that comes from ancient Greek philosophy. In ancient Greece, self-control was of the utmost importance. Inscribed on thousands of vases and ceramics was the guidance on how people should maintain their diet. Socrates once said to one of his companions Epigenes, "You've got the body of someone who just isn't engaged in public matters." He then suggests, "You should care for your body no less than an Olympic athlete." Apparently, physical training was part of the duty of a Greek citizen. The ancient Greeks believed that physical self-control could eventually lead to self-control of the mind which was a necessity if one were to participate politics. Hence modern women may be said to draw wisdom from the ancient Greek philosophy not in order to participate in politics, but instead to nurture their reasoning abilities. How easily a masochistic practice may be mistaken to be self-indulgent.

However, ruminating over the schism between aesthetic perfection of femininity and culinary delight, is it really impossible to reconcile these two ideals? Are women to rely on bases, mascaras, eye liners and such which could chisel a dent from their bank accounts to meet the criterion of absolute beauty? Do they have to be committed to a self-inflicting diet in order to wear bikini and lingerie?

The fact that most women spend a great deal of fortune on cosmetic products, fashion, and diet programmes has risked inspiring an unfair neglect of their habits of eating and a misguided enthusiasm towards artificial inventions. If their appreciation of dessert and junk food is liable to rupture their physical beauty, it is not because these things are inherently harmful, but because women have never quite got the ability to savour what they eat rather than taking in too-big quantities, given the fact that we are living in a society that encourages us to get several things done within a day. The stomach needs time to register fullness, and through taking our time while eating, we may slowly reduce our overall consumption which will prevent obesity. Slower eating not only helps us to productively realise how much food we really need, but also enjoy life while we are eating. We should not forget that the best kind of food is to be enjoyed through our manner of absorption instead of the extent of our consumption.

Those who have known me long enough should testify that I'm not very far from being a skeleton. So eating slowly must work. Therefore, women should eat all they want. Only through eating what they like and enjoying it, they can become slimmer.

W

Why We Are Better Left Unhappy

Recent scientific survey suggests that happiness may be linked to our genes which come in either long or short versions. It says that people who inherit the long versions of the gene are generally happier and those with the short versions tend to be more pessimistic. Thanks to modern science, parents of the forthcoming generations may look up to a better future, whose children might finally be genetically engineered to live a fulfilled life instead of one being constantly filled with anxiety and despair . What’s more promising is that it might as well put an end to the age-old philosophical debate of how happiness may be attained. Sooner or later, we should no longer feel guilty of not having finished the works of Plato, Epicurus, and Cicero which we have bought years ago.

However, if we survey the history of philosophy, we may be tempted to discover that a range of philosophers who would disagree that happiness might not be actually worth pursuing. If happiness should not be confused as an object of desire, it is because happiness might harbour within us a sense of primordial optimism, forcing us to muddy the true schema of ourselves. Think of the self-help books in the franchise bookstores. Rather than helping us to realise our limits, self-helps books tend to fool us into thinking that we may eventually overcome all sorts of obstacles and aspire to greatness if we are willing to summon the desirable versions of ourselves through an optimistic temperament.

The problem of fierce optimism is that we may be easily invited to assume tomorrow will be much like today. It leads us to cast aside our tragic awareness of life and favour an absolute trust in science. But science can so far only offer us knowledge, not value judgements. In this age bombarded by a wide range of scientific techniques, we tend to think that roads and highways are mysteriously traffic-free and smartphones were invented to simplify our lives. But the reality, unsurprisingly, is always cruel. However fast our vehicles may become, however user-friendly our smartphones may seem, the traffic lights nevertheless provoke our anger while we are on the way to work and smartphones, on the other hand, have us suffer from a psychological assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on almost anything.

Behind the tendency to feel happy lies the danger of ignoring what life actually constitutes. Our hope to adjust our temperament to an optimistic one through genetics hints at a refusal to accept life is inherently frustrating. It easily generates in us a satisfactory feeling of what life naturally throws at us. It takes away our motivation to strive for the better, our ability to change what is, and thereby denying us of the liberty to invest our hopes in perfection.

Yet the value of pessimism is far more arresting. If pessimism is a more vital ingredient to a fulfilled life, it is because it allows us to grow wiser. Our happiness depends not on the commonly cherished things on earth: friendship, romantic love, beauty etc., but rather, things like intervals of separation and the endurance of loneliness. It is through our experience of pain and suffering we become wise of how we should live. It helps enforce moments of contemplation, pushing us to acquire a better sense of reality and placing pain in a more proper context, just like only when we stump a nail on the ground, we may have the awareness of pain, thus becoming wise to the fact that human bodies are fragile.

It’s because we are at the mercy of mortality, we may reflect on our regrets and take on a bigger to quest to compensate what we are previously reluctant to do. It’s the fact that life is short and might end at anytime we try to savour the moments we spend with our loved ones and fortify them within our souls. Pessimism grants us permanent access to certain emotional textures which could not have been arisen without loneliness, frustration, and despair.

Instead of consciously looking for solutions to cure sadness, we need to learn to be productively unhappy and let it become a seed for actual happiness. Happiness is always founded on sadness. To be sad is to be happy. So what does that say about science? It means even if we possess the technology to make ourselves happy, we should still let nature decide the fate for us. It’s better not to have full control over our destiny.

W

The Lessons of The Bohemians

Thanks to capitalism, the bourgeois ideals have successfully forced us to arrive at an objective assessment of what success is. A life of success has been defined by what we do rather than who we are. Our inability to purchase a brand-new Mercedes suggests that we are losers in the game of life, placing us at the grass-root level in the pyramid of social hierarchy. Hence the modern idea of success necessarily aligns with economic reward. Our incapacity to bring out the best of us through material articulation is a forceful reminder of the fact that perhaps we have not worked hard enough or that we are far from being lucky to be born with God-gifted talents, because a meritocratic society is ultimately just and fair.

If meritocracy is based on an objective evaluation of who can be rewarded, we might then easily come to the conclusion that destitution of money is not merely pitiable, but also deserved. To display our sympathy towards the poor is therefore to expose our emotional vulnerability, because the poor are destined to be unsuccessful. In the early 19th century, however, there emerged a group of people called the bohemians whose traditions have been passed on down to this day. What distinguishes them from the ordinary mortals who surrender to the bourgeois system is their distaste for business and material success. They lack the usual patience to engage in meaningless conversations concerning money, deal with insincere handshakes, and bureaucracy. Rather than associating the modern idea of success, they take pride on being poor, as a unique characteristic to stand out from the flock (because being poor indicates moral goodness rather than human greed). They tend to cultivate their intellectual adequacy and emotional sensitivity. Their allegiances are to the arts and emotions.

If the bohemians don't think material success indicates the glory of a person, it is perhaps because being financially unsuccessful suggests that one has directed his energies to other activities that might prove more fruitful, cherishing values that might be undermined by the mainstream culture which actually are more vital to human civilisation. What is valuable about this part of the Bohemian philosophy lies not in preventing us from suffering financial assault, but in the ability to realise our own limits. Of course, to realise our limits is to risk hampering the potentials that might lay beneath us. But if an architect can work with the materials available to him, why, then, can't we accept our own limits and explore our potentials within them? Why can't we place focus on ourselves rather than the herd to understand who we really are? Do we really have to be like Bill Gates and Steve Job?

We need to realise where we belong to. To discard what our nature limits is to become self-indulgent (because forgetting our limits may seduce us to be overly optimistic about our own abilities). Understanding our limits not only allows us to become humble, it also allows us to discover what we are actually good at, urging us to be specific instead of being generic, hence nurturing our own potentials at their best. Therefore, we are likely to amount to failure in some aspects of life. But accepting failure also indicates the fact that we are all unique. Instead of acknowledging that we are obedient drones, the humility to accept failures affords us a better sense of reality about ourselves, providing us with a ruinous defence mechanism against illusions and arrogance, anxiety and rage, incompetence and self-contempt.

Prompted by financial necessity, too many understand the value of entertainment and neglect the value of leisure. Stretching out on the ground and letting the grass caress my bare feet would be considered one of the most unproductive activities in the modern era. If leisure offends the bourgeois values, it is perhaps because leisure is in violation of the fundamental law of what anchors to capitalism, seeking to destroy the inevitable contract between economy and productivity. Therefore, merits not measured in money are regarded as useless.

If only financial merits may be considered useful, could we then easily conclude that what the Bohemians do proves unimportant in the modern era? Can we not say that their pursuit of the arts is useless merely because writing poetry and understanding Shakespeare are unable to afford them a decent condo? If the Bohemian lifestyle is to be established on unshakable grounds, perhaps a philosophy which dated back to the sixth century B.C. emerged on a different continent might offer a better understanding of the Bohemian lifestyle.

The philosophy is Daoism. The founder of Daoism, Laozi, might be regarded as one of the first prototypes of the bohemians. In his celebrated work "Dao De Ching", he dedicated several chapters in defence of uselessness or idleness and articulated its value in a rather obscure language:

“We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.

We turn clay to make a vessel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.

We pierce doors and windows to make a house; And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.

Therefore, just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognise the usefulness of what is not.”

These were not haphazard and reckless articulations of what is valuable about uselessness. This verse in Dao De Ching laid a well-developed philosophy, an arresting claim that risks ascribing a more proper value to what is useless and undermining a misguided enthusiasm of what is useful. It invited us to reconsider the notion of usefulness that inherently contained in things which may on the surface seem useless. Though taking a leisurely stroll in the park deprives us of the chance to invest in the stock market, it actually allows a contemplative habit of mind to flourish and nurtures deep friendship. Though reading poetry may spare us of the opportunity to acquire an eminent position in the business world, it fosters a family of life-cultivating emotions which are of supreme importance to friendship and romantic love.

Hence Daoism recovers a sense of justification for the Bohemian lifestyle. It paradoxically gives weight to what seems useless, forcing us to readjust the values we commonly regard as unproductive. Though the Bohemian lifestyle is unable to allow us to grow richer in cash, but it allows us to grow richer in intellectual adequacy and emotional sensitivity.

The Bohemians suggest an alternative way of living which deviates itself away from the bourgeois mainstream. Their role lies in opening our eyes, in sensitising our awareness of what is around us, and in inculcating in us an appreciation of objects whose qualities are previously neglected. Moreover, we tend to be more productive during leisure. It's not just because it makes allowance for periods of contemplation about life, it's also because we are able to escape from the monotonous everyday rituals enforced by the bourgeois society.

A life dedicated to the Bohemian lifestyle gives us something new, something refreshing. It restores in us a better mental functioning to which deep, sophisticated thoughts are anchored. The lessons? We have devoted too much time in doing "something" rather than nothing. And only after we submit our thinking to the bourgeois philosophy, we amount to ultimate failure.

W