How Chicken Keeps Us Moderate
I was out on my own, driving around in the sudden 30-degree, ultra-windy night (for reference, it was 70-degrees at 2 pm). Listening to my Ideal* CAKE album, I felt the pang of homesickness.
(*the Ideal CAKE album is a 12-song playlist [12 being the average track number of a CAKE album], in which each track has been selected according to its position on the original album [the first five tracks from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th positions on thier respective albums, and the last five tracks in the same manner], except for the middle two tracks, which were drawn from a pool of all tracks between the first and last five. Carl took issue with my method, but agreed that it was a satisfactory selection.)
I made a resolution not to eat fast food this year, which I have broken twice now; once because I was stoned and forgot, and tonight because I'm stoned and 7 weeks is a long time. But I thought about the Jesus-directed mission of our favorite fast food establishment, and realized that Chick-Fil-A keeps us behaving within moderation.
Assuming, as Socrates would, that we are all upper-middle class stoners with an affinity for CAKE and fried chicken, it is natural that we identify "The Good Life" as getting high, driving the Chick-Fil-A and listening to CAKE. The Good Life can be said to consist of four things : more than one person, inhaling marijuana smoke, listening to CAKE and eating the chicken, and that any things outside of these four things is said to be auxiliary goods.
And given that the combination of these four things is the ideal state, and that no incomplete combination of the components will be as good, we find ourselves forgoing the lesser forms of good. If the Chick-Fil-A is closed, one might merely stay in, catch up on sleep, or play Mario Party. If one is out of weed, one might just go home for dinner and regroup later. If nobody remembered an iPod, one might turn around to get it, or drive somewhere else in spite and confusion. And, lastly, if one is alone, one might scrap the whole gig altogether.
Because we hold out for the ideal combination, the alignment of the stars, we find ourselves doing the things that we love in moderation; a sign of great maturity. For if we were to be moderate only with those things that we do not care about, one might falsely proclaim high moderation on their part. But to defy those most satisfying components is to practice complete mastery of the self.
Thank you, Hellenistic Philosophy. Thank you, S. Truett Cathy. Thank you, Jon McCrea. Thank you, Cannabis indica. Thank you, Carl. It will be too long before I see you all together again. With this grief in mind, I eat White Castle.
-Alan
(*the Ideal CAKE album is a 12-song playlist [12 being the average track number of a CAKE album], in which each track has been selected according to its position on the original album [the first five tracks from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th positions on thier respective albums, and the last five tracks in the same manner], except for the middle two tracks, which were drawn from a pool of all tracks between the first and last five. Carl took issue with my method, but agreed that it was a satisfactory selection.)
I made a resolution not to eat fast food this year, which I have broken twice now; once because I was stoned and forgot, and tonight because I'm stoned and 7 weeks is a long time. But I thought about the Jesus-directed mission of our favorite fast food establishment, and realized that Chick-Fil-A keeps us behaving within moderation.
Assuming, as Socrates would, that we are all upper-middle class stoners with an affinity for CAKE and fried chicken, it is natural that we identify "The Good Life" as getting high, driving the Chick-Fil-A and listening to CAKE. The Good Life can be said to consist of four things : more than one person, inhaling marijuana smoke, listening to CAKE and eating the chicken, and that any things outside of these four things is said to be auxiliary goods.
And given that the combination of these four things is the ideal state, and that no incomplete combination of the components will be as good, we find ourselves forgoing the lesser forms of good. If the Chick-Fil-A is closed, one might merely stay in, catch up on sleep, or play Mario Party. If one is out of weed, one might just go home for dinner and regroup later. If nobody remembered an iPod, one might turn around to get it, or drive somewhere else in spite and confusion. And, lastly, if one is alone, one might scrap the whole gig altogether.
Because we hold out for the ideal combination, the alignment of the stars, we find ourselves doing the things that we love in moderation; a sign of great maturity. For if we were to be moderate only with those things that we do not care about, one might falsely proclaim high moderation on their part. But to defy those most satisfying components is to practice complete mastery of the self.
Thank you, Hellenistic Philosophy. Thank you, S. Truett Cathy. Thank you, Jon McCrea. Thank you, Cannabis indica. Thank you, Carl. It will be too long before I see you all together again. With this grief in mind, I eat White Castle.
-Alan
posted by Alan Orlanski at 12:53 AM
2 Comments:
Not to burst your philosophical bubble, but the Good Life and moderation model you set out here is more Aristotlean than Socratic. Aristotle sets out the virtues as moderate balances between excess and deficency, as you seem to do here, and living in moderation in this manner leads one to the Good Life.
Socrates (or Plato speaking through Socrates) does not so much say what the Good Life is but what the Good Itself is. The Form of the Good is a sort of knowledge of the Truth of the world and how things work. To come to this noesis, a philosopher must go through much training and contemplation. Once reaching the point where he understands the Forms, the philosopher will be happy and seek to do nothing other than contemplate the world.
I lost the game
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