Happy New Year 2009 image courtesy of zltgfx at flickr – reproduced under a creative commons licence.
There are quite a few cultural constants of New Year’s Eve – fireworks (and the illegal ones in my neck of the woods certainly woke me up with a bang at midnight), revelling, and resolutions, the topic of today’s post. I haven’t traced the origins of the custom, but it makes intuitive sense that the social rhythm of time would prompt reflection and introspection and a desire to make a new beginning at the most significant turning point of our secular calendar. Perhaps time off work also contributes. No doubt there’s an aspect of secularisation in this cultural moment – examination of conscience and a resolution for amending the self have been part of a huge constellation of mindsets and practices in the West for a very long time, as Michel Foucault taught us.
From a sociological point of view, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts about freedom are interesting here. Merleau-Ponty pointed out that we adopt, and test against our surroundings, a set of dispositions and practices oriented towards the world – something similar to what Pierre Bourdieu subsequently dubbed a habitus. And that word’s not chosen lightly, because as over time we make certain choices, we shift the field for making subsequent choices – aware or unaware, we pursue a certain direction. We’re part of that lifeworld in which we choose, and can’t really stand apart from it. And over time, the “sedimentation” of those choices can narrow our sense of the possible. Probably one of the reasons why another stock cultural truism of the New Year is that resolutions are doomed to fail is that we over-estimate the degree to which individual will alone can reshape our behaviours and attitudes. Not surprising in a deeply individualist society (and some of that sense of the choosing self also harks back to the dissemination and transformation of the confessional urge).
The best way to make a resolution stick, of course, is actually to change the field of forces at play – and thus a work of imagination and re-imagination is required. There’s also more chance of success if a new direction is something that takes into account the collective and intersubjective dimension of our intentions’ path through the world. Maybe the distinction between tactics and strategy is a useful one for thinking about all this. So, it’s not terribly surprising that resolutions often fail or peter out.
But enough of the sociologising! I tend to be a fairly future-oriented person, but also hopefully a realistic one, so I like to think in terms of shifting my situation towards a particular goal and setting that goal as a horizon, recognising that I’ll never completely get there and that one has to tack and adjust to a dynamic set of circumstances. So, since I ended 2008 happier and healthier than I’d been for some years, I’d like to try to keep it that way! On the work front, I’m looking forward to settling in further to my new half-time job as a researcher with the Smart Services CRC, to covering the Queensland election for Crikey and to a few other exciting opportunities that are either at the conceptual or planning stages. Working in fields I’m deeply interested in conduces to the health and happiness things, of course, and I’m vowing to learn from past mistakes and not take on too much, because a slower pace of work over the last six weeks or so has re-opened my eyes to all the other fabulous things I can be doing, and the pleasure of doing them in good company.
Two “traditional” resolutions are on the table, though. One is to cut down on smoking, which I think is more realistic than giving it up in a flash. The other is to take an actual holiday – one which doesn’t involve tacking on a bit of socialising and sight seeing to an interstate work trip. Whether or not I achieve these goals is probably a matter of how I can work – and work with others – to reconfigure the whole pattern of my everyday life, as I’ve been implying above! But my fingers are crossed.
Probably one of the reasons why another stock cultural truism of the New Year is that resolutions are doomed to fail is that we over-estimate the degree to which individual will alone can reshape our behaviours and attitudes.
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True. But mostly it’s cause we’re slack.
That too!
Not to mention the fact that the resolutions themselves are based on cultural scripts (losing weight, improve social relationships of various kinds, etc.). All these resolutions are supposed to generate some more or less defined individual / social good through acceptable means (one’s individual hard work and determination) which points to Merton’s conform attitude in his social strain framework and some of them might involve consumption.
If you remember, last year, Jeremy Freese challenged himself through the threat of sanctions: he set out to work out a certain number of days during the year and if he failed, he would have to give a sum of money proportionate to the number of days he had fallen short to an organization he despised (he settled on the G.W. Bush Presidential Library). I don’t know how it ended but the power of such self-imposed negative sanction might have done the trick!
I’d forgotten about that – as negative incentives go, that’s quite a powerful one!
Well, I haven’t made any New Year resolutions, but I haven’t smoked since some OPs at the News Year’s Party I went to. I’ve got the money to buy cigarettes but the corner shop is closed till the sixth so it means a walk of sevral kilometres into town and back. The bus is on holiday schedules, I have no idea when it comes but I know its probably only about twice a day, once early in the morning and once in the late afternoon, if last year is any guide. The joys of living in Armidale at Xmas time.
mark
for godssake, merleau-pontys idea of freedom as occurring in embedded and sedimented worlds of meaning is so not the same as bourdieus ‘habitus’. a little precision please
mersenne, I think there’s an affinity there – I’m not saying the ideas are “the same”. Forgive the lack of precision, but I’m not writing a journal article and I’m consiously writing for a different and much broader audience. If I were writing a social theory blog, no doubt I’d go into more detail and sharpen conceptual differences (and point out some similarities which I think are under-appreciated), but that’s not what I’m doing here. Anyway, I’ll take the criticism on board and amend the wording in the post, but I would respectfully suggest that getting bogged down in an argument about intellectual trajectories – which I’d be happy to do at another time and in another place – is not what I want to do here. It might be worthwhile to consider the context of this blog, which isn’t an “academic” one.
Mark, the only way to take a holiday is just book the ticket regardless of whether you can afford it, or how how busy you are, otherwise something always feels more important. Ya gotta make it a priority.
Thanks, Fine! I’m actually contemplating a retreat sort of holiday – catching the bus up to Toowoomba and shutting myself away from it all with a pile of books and taking my camera because there’s some fantastic architecture up there… I’m a bit limited as to how far I can retreat because I don’t drive, and I wouldn’t mind somewhere that’s smallish but still has a bit of the urban about it – and there’s some nice restaurants up there!
How about a holiday in Vietnam Mark? RMIT have a campus there and you might even get formally paid to visit and report there. Or even informally subsidized by a whip-around here as our roving reporter. You’ve pretty much nailed Oz for us – now daily into Asia!
Mark, SocProf’s suggestion has been implemented for anyone keen to try it out here. Yes, it’s called ’stikk.com’, it was established by two Harvard economists, the website is as funny as a fit, and it also works. Nothing like the fear of having to give money to something you hate in order to provide good incentives!
Nicotine patches are very useful if you want to give your lungs a rest. Quitting isn’t easy, so take whatever help you can get. Good luck.
Thanks, Jan. The one time I did give up – for nine months – I used patches for about 3 months. Later attempts saw me tear them off after about three hours! The thinking seems to have changed from “use gum or patches and never have another cigarette” to a recognition that it’s probably better if people use gum or patches to help cut down before stopping entirely. So I’ll be giving that a go!
Mark, the patches do work. I stopped for over a year after the fourth time I used them. But then one falls among people drinking beer and smoking …
Cigarette bans in bars make that less of a problem, Paul! I smoke less when I’m out drinking now…
Can I register a mild objection to ‘as Michel Foucault taught us’? I’m a full-on fan of Foucault, but all he did, like any other philosopher, was to put before us a set of principles and prescriptions (in the pharmaceutical sense of the word) with which we can agree, or disagree. He wasn’t God: he sometimes right, sometimes wrong. He didn’t unleash a universal, unalterable truth on the world. (Come to that, did God?)
Certainly you can register that objection, Rob!
I’m not saying he articulated some universal truth. Nor would he have – he was very cautious about what the role of the intellectual was, and I suspect would be very disheartened by a lot of “Foucaultian” work – “gosh! I can analyse work organisation in a call centre along the lines of the panopticon” – I’m the owner of a Foucaultian introduction to Human Resource Management, which I think makes that point!
I do think he was the first person to really trace the enduring cultural impact of the practices of confession – but happy to be corrected if someone got there before him. Certainly his interpretation isn’t perfect, or not subject to criticism, but as I was implying earlier, I’m pretty much schematising in this post.
Mark @ 15,
trouble being I tend to drink in peoples’ houses much more than I drink in pubs as I don’t like crowds or drunken strangers much.
I drink in people’s houses too, Paul, and that’s when I smoke up a chimney, particularly if they have a back deck!
I smoke a lot as well when writing at home.
Ah, yes. writing. As all writers who smoke know that’s the big one. And it does help. But its shocking for your health.
A word of warning. If. like me you handwrite most of your stuff first before putting it onto computer (where you make endless changes), a severe attack of COPD leaves you almost too weak to form the letters on the page. Once I get to that stage I ring an ambulance.
In all seriousness, Mark, though I still smoke, and much too much than I should in my condition, I can only urge you to get back on the patches fast, and give up. I’m saying this even though I’m well aware how psychologically difficult it can be, even when you’ve beaten the physical addiction (which is the easy part, now that we have patches and chewing gum, though the chewing gum makes me sick on the stomach) and how the most annoying thing about successfully stopping smoking is you don’t know what to do with your hands, you’re so used to. having a cigarette in them. Any moral support I can give that will help you stop, I gladly offer. Believe me, you don’tr want to end up like some of the old codgers I’ve seen in hospital. (Or even like me in my present state, which, being perpetually sedentary since birth, I would half-jokingly describe as half-all right.(But I can’t go swimming or bush-walking any more. No breath.)
Well, after many attempts during my 30s, of varying degrees of failure (Including stopping for 18 months around the birth of my daughter) I finally kicked it on my 40th birthday. 5 months now!
This time I know its for good. I know that because Ive been overseas and back without smoking. Airports and overseas work trips were a big ciggie times for me in the past.
The writing thing is a big one, and frankly, if you were still doing the PhD, Id say dont even bother trying Mark! But now’s a good time.
I’m mixed on smoking and writing. Certainly, the first few weeks – granted. You’ll be crap at writing. But looking back, the last book I wrote (as opposed to edited) was when I wasn’t smoking before the birth of my daughter. Id otn think I ve ever felt more clear-headed. Personally, I think a lot of smokers are scattier than they think they are. You might well find you become an even better writer – but you have to forget the first fortnight at least.
I can tell you, its a blessed relief to be a non-smoker. The moments of craving still come, but they pass quickly.
Ive been using the gum – but one thing that really fun eg if you’re completely smashed and sitting in a pool of 8 smokers is the plastic ciggies they have these days. Ive had it once – its was great – hits the back of the throat just like a ciggie, and gives you something to wave around and punctuate the air with!
Gum addict since sometime early last year.
Takes a few weeks – just chew ‘em as you would smoke ‘em – sometimes chaining, other times going without all day etc. The mint/beer combo – you get used to – way better than getting used to the Emphysema/COPD and Big C combo.
Patches give you this constant nicotine high – which isn’t how you smoke, lozenges, gum etc are more similar in dosage pattern to smoking.
The pathways of getting your nicotine through the lungs mostly, are like old bullocky tracks, but once your brain gets used to acquiring it’s nicotine fix through the mouth, it settles down. 90% of the addiction is nicotine – not hands/oral/blowing smoke rings etc. Although that is 10% of good fun gorne.
Good luck.
Mark, I’ve spent the last two years watching the lifelong-chainsmoker husband of one of my closest friends die slowly of lung cancer at (only just) 54. I never want to watch anything like that again, to say nothing of the suffering of his wife and 20-year-old daughter, during and after. Just stop. Just do it. I speak from experience here (and I was a very heavy smoker for almost 20 years); it is possible.
Hypnotherapy works totally when it works at all; have you tried it?
As some-one who is suffering from the terminal effects of smoking, well said, everyone. And and admiring congratulation to those of you who have kicked the habit. Am going to try yet again completely in the next few weeks. As its all psychological with me now, it won’t be too difficult. Already I tend to samoke one week on and one week off.
Yeah, gum’s great. I dont actually care what its side-effects might be: they cant be as bad as the weed. On balance, I prefer it to smoking – can chew in cinemas, playing sport, swimming, in the shower!
That all said – MArk, what are your thoughts on how to lose some weight? I dont think Mark will mind me saying that he was considerably heavier 10 years back – and is now undeniably slim.
Yep, I’m back to being slim, Lefty E… I think there were at least three things that got me there – first off, I’m eating a very low fat diet and cut out dairy almost altogether (which I needed to do anyway being gall bladder less…). Secondly, exercising for at least 45 mins 4 times a week (I prefer a vigorous walk by the river). And thirdly, lots of work and study related stress! I don’t recommend the third thing, which it’s my resolve to minimise this year. But I must say – again – it’s a matter of reconfiguring and reforming habits and behaviours – and you reach a point where the increased benefits of feeling healthy and good give you an automatic incentive to keep it up!
Four times a week, you say?
I got belly at 35 and it doesn’t seem to shift.
Ive been riding my bike to my new job (at another of Victoria’s premier lesser universities )- maybe that will help.
My Mum had her gall bladder out in her late 30s as well. Doesn’t seem to have affected her health at all, 30 years later.
I had a few rather nasty complications, as they say!
Lefty E: I developed what could charitably be described as ‘lawyers’ butt’ at around 34 — the weight crept on slowly, and was difficult to spot because I’m 6′1″, but I realised at some point last year that I was going to be up for an entirely new wardrobe if I didn’t do something about it, pronto — including expensive stuff like a bar jacket (the bottom button no longer did up). I’ve cut out most starchy carbohydrates, and have gone back to playing recreational sport again. It’s taken 18 months, because I’ve not gone at it hell-for-leather, but I’m 15kg lighter than I was at the end of 2006, and all my clothes fit again. Don’t know whether that plant would work for others, but it worked for me.
Also I’ll echo the others here in how impressed I am at those who’ve kicked the ciggies. My brother hasn’t beaten the habit yet, and is now at the stage where it is starting to affect his health (late 40s). It’s no easy thing.
Thanks Skeptic – I tend to think beers may culpable (though they would be included under carbos, I guess).
Incidentally, here’s a trackback to me at day 3 of giving up smoking – on the writing theme: http://bitemylatte.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-40-broke-my-brain.html
Things got much better at 14 days.
LE, yes, I remember a fortnight being some kind of major milestone, too.
Alas, giving up smoking exacerbates weight iss-yews. Apart from all the food-based displacement activity, it really is some kind of metabolism retardant, apparently. If I hadn’t known I’d put on at least 10 kilos in the five minutes after I gave up (a conservative estimate, as it turned out), I would’ve quit several years earlier than I did. It’s just one more reason to put off doing it.
A friend of mine found lots of walking and eating fruit helped with giving up smoking – bit of citric acid instead of nicotine and exercise normally diminishes the desire to smoke.
But there’s no question for me that having a nutsoid life where I have to run from one workplace to another and don’t eat at regular times means smoking helps as an appetite suppressant.
Lefty E: Chuckling at the goggles and gloves imagery. My bro has all this to look forward to…
Put on guite a bit of weight each time I stopped smoking. Some of that may have been due to prednaslopone for my chest, which I was on for two years non-stop until I got a doctor who knew what they were doing.
Allen Carr’s Easy Way did the trick for me. I recommend it highly.
This New Scientist Article suggests that all such habits are socially contagious and so suggests some possible other ways to help yourself quit smoking/lose weight/stop being autistic etc.
Not sure about the last item there, but should I really be doubting such reputable science journalism!?!
Yes.