More on self-discipline and privilege

I think the comments below yesterday afternoon's post are really terrific.  Camassia asks if this post has anything to do with Lent, which of course it does, except that in my excitement yesterday I forgot to mention anything about Ash Wednesday!  And La Lubu wrote:

"It's a privilege to be able to take your body for granted enough to be able to think of how your choices affect others, rather than how your choices affect you. I mean, altruism is good and all, but sacrificing  your body for the good of others is something women are taught from a very early age. Frankly, I like the "selfishness" of being able to make choices for my body that are good for me, y'know?"

Absolutely. One of the reasons why I can celebrate self-discipline so enthusiastically is because I came to it as an adult, and I came to it by choice! My wonderful family taught me to mind my manners, but they never insisted that I exercise much in the way of self-restraint as a teen or a young adult.  I was expected to be kind, to be polite, and to work hard in school -- but I was also given a tremendous amount of freedom to make my own choices about what I wanted to do with my body.  Beyond studying hard and proper manners, there were precious few "have-tos" in my youth.  I'm grateful for that.  In some sense, I suppose, it was a privileged upbringing.

Like so many secular folks raised in relative freedom and prosperity, I began to establish my own rules for intense self-discipline in my twenties.  I began, as so many women and men do, by restricting food intake.  Controlling what you eat is, for many folks, the first step towards both greater autonomy and greater self-control.  (In my mid-twenties, I counted calories obsessively, and promptly dropped to 144 pounds by Christmas of my 26th year.)  Being so thin gave me a brief feeling of power (odd for a man, not odd for a woman), but I quickly tired of it.  I began to eat more, and transferred my discipline from my eating to my exercise.  I ate to satiety, but also exercised like a fiend.

I've spent a lot of time with my fellow marathoners, triathletes, and other endurance enthusiasts.  Most come from similar backgrounds to my own.  Most are very interested in leading structured, disciplined lives -- frequently because in childhood or early adulthood, they lived without such rules.  (The number of ex-alcoholics and addicts in ultra-running is enormous; those whose lives have been most chaotic tend to be drawn to the intense structure their sports demand.)

Of course, the problem with all of this wonderful calorie-counting and heart-rate monitoring and long trail runs/century rides is that it can end up being a self-indulgent activity for the few.  Endurance sports make immense demands on time -- and, once one climbs on a bicycle, on money.  The benefits are inner peace,  a trim, lean physique, and a resting heart rate south of 50 beats a minute.   But it's hard to see how endurance sports and calorie restriction automatically make the world a more just and livable place for other human beings and animals!

That's why I think it's vital that self-discipline and restraint must be about more than achieving individual excellence. It must be in the service of others as well.  And those who are in the best position to begin to exercise that kind of restriction on their desires are often those who have spent years indulging themselves.  In practical terms, that means the message of constructive self-discipline has to be directed more towards men than women, more towards those of means than the poor.  Those who have been most wasteful and unrestrained are those who most need to "hear the message."

My sport doesn't make me a better human being.  But it was in endurance training that I first learned what it was to suffer and persevere, and those skills translate well, I think, into a lifestyle of modestly sacrificial self-restraint for the benefit of the earth and those who live on it.
 

Comments

[joe]

Off subject, but covering topics you have been posting on lately: privilege, self-restraint, and self-discipline, I have wondered why your socialist values don’t come more into play? Many things you regard are a privilege to you, those same privileges are what others work hard to obtain, and even others can only wish for. But you language, actions, and solutions to these issues are based on capitalistic privilege—not socialism. You applaud socialism and deride capitalism. You fly around the country to run when you can run in your “backyard”. You have a $2000+ bike when a $1000 or less bike would give you a greater workout and enable you to donate the rest to folks who need helmets. Socialism, ideally so “they” say, would ensure more people are feed and with balanced nutrition; yet, it is capitalism that enables you to even think of maintaining a vegan diet. I am not calling you out as a hypocrite, please don’t misunderstand that. But if the ills of Western capitalism are such as you have scorned, why consider the privilege and charity of the same. If I wanted to enjoy the benefits of a capitalistic economy and value socialism at the same time, I would first give up 50% of my income to charities of my choice and then worry about how I am going to maintain a vegan diet, $2000+ bike, and flying around the country/world, I almost forgot the clothes. The virtue of privilege may then become more self-apparent and someone like myself might understand what your talking about, especially regarding self-restraint and self-discipline.

[Hugo Schwyzer]

Joe, before I spend a dime on clothes or bikes or anything else, I tithe. Trust me, that doesn't come easily -- it's scary, regardless of income. Giving 10% of $1000 or 10% of 1,000,000 is an act of faith and conviction.

I do want to see democratic socialism in place, my brother. That however, is a long and arduous process. I am striving to make wise and healthy choices with my money and with my time.

Plenty of poor folks maintain vegan diets. Ask the Jains of India.

[craichead]

Isn't "democratic socialism" kind of an oxymoron?

[Hugo Schwyzer]

Hardly. http://www.dsausa.org/dsa.html

[joe]

Ah, the Lord may require 10% but what of democratic socialism? Can we assume that giving near 50% of our income an "act of faith and conviction". I'm just curious if that should be more apparent in your post or as equally so as feminism or your faith are. But, "That however, is a long and arduous process" I would say many of the goals of your feminism are just the same. If capitalism is the culprit, to various feminist's issues as you have suggested, could you not "kill two birds with one stone".

[Hugo Schwyzer]

Oh no, capitalizm isn't the culprit. Capitalism is the symptom; the disease is our own sinfulness, manifested in a failure of imagination and a failure of compassion. Thus the primary focus needs to be on changing the human heart, not just changing the system.

[joe]

There is truth to your last comment. However, a benevolent dictatorship would be best to ensure compassion and a free market economy to encourage imagination.

[craichead]

Hugo-

Not to hijack the thread here, but...

How do you resolve your Christian views with a belief in socialism? I understand the connection with seeing others taken care of and of a rejection of materialism, but I interpret much of the Bible and specifically the New Testament to be very much against the idea of a civil institution that provides for peoples' needs.

The most obvious of course is "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, render unto the Lord that which is the Lord's." Then the one that says "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath." Then of course in the Old Testament there's the whole story of the tower of Babel.

So I guess the way I interpret it, Jesus gave us all the responsibility to take on the compassionate role of providing and serving as a personal mission rather than a government mission. And when they say "Love thy neighbor as you love thyself" it's more or less telling us to love someone as you know them for real rather than as simply an abstraction.

[Hugo Schwyzer]

Yours is a classically American Protestant view of the Gospel, craichead! "Render unto Caesar" means that there must always be a clear distinction betweeen the church and the state. But it doesn't mean that Christians ought not seek to turn the state into an instrument of God's justice. (Paul makes it clear that that is what the state is.) My Mennonite side disagrees with that, calling it "Constantinianism of the Left", but I am inclined to believe, along with my brethren on the Christian right, that Christians are called to do justice and love mercy both individually and as citizens. And though the state is not perfectable, and is no substitute for the Kingdom itself, it is an institution that can be brought into line with basic Christian values.

[craichead]

I think you and I would agree on the idea that a society does have a responsibility to see that people who can't -- or won't -- meet basic needs have those needs met. Where we would disagree is on what "need" really means.

I think of this very much in terms of the New Testament and what it's basic theme was. People debate about the miracles that Jesus performed. I find them in a way more meaningful if they're thought of more as symbolic miracles.

By that I mean, if you look at it in the context of Hebrew law and teaching of the time things may not have been as literal as we sometimes accept -- ie was Lazarus truly dead, or only dead in a figuritive sense in that he was ostracized from his community and therefore "dead" to them. Did Jesus literally heal the leper or did he simply take matters into his own hands and declare the leper "healed" so that he could be considered clean and free to worship in the temple?

So viewed in that way what Jesus did was remove the power to regulate worship and a relationship with God from the hands of the Pharisees and temple priests and placed it within the hands of the individual. See what I mean? I'm in a rush and not explaining this well.

So in the end, what he was correcting was the fact that the institution of the temple and its priests had become more important than those they were supposed to help connect with God.

And so it is, the problem I find with socialism -- that in the end the institution of the government becomes the "real" thing and its subjects become the abstraction.

Maybe I should take that idea over to my own blog....