So you're at the gym, doing your aerobics and strength training. Some yoga or Tai Chi or other stretching. A dip in the pool or hot tub (not the BPI faculty lounge but the one at the gym) and a shower. Ahh. Almost done.
Just finish it off by ducking into the ice cream shop for a banana split with three scoops of ice cream, chocolate and strawberry syrup, and candy sprinkles, and ...
... wait. That feels good. But does it help?
More below the fold....
Feels Good, But Does It Help?
This week Morning Feature looks at progressive advocacy in terms of "what feels good" and "what helps." Sometimes those two are the same, but sometimes they're not. Yesterday we asked whose interests we advocate, noting that it's impossible to know if your advocacy is succeeding unless you know whose interests you're advocating, and recognizing that we don't all focus on the same interests. Today we'll explore some common advocacy traps, situations where doing "what feels good" doesn't help our clients, even when your client is yourself. Saturday we'll examine ways to better know and focus on "what helps."
Note: It's been a rough couple of days here at Casa Crissie. Herself's father died Wednesday, and we lost Woofie the Younger yesterday. So today's Morning Feature is thinner than usual: asking questions and inviting your insights. Also, the Janitor Professor of Astrology didn't feel humorous, so there are no Kossascopes this week. My apologies.
There are four possible response sets for "Does it feel good? Will it help?" Two are easy cases: "yes-yes" and "no-no." It's easy to do things that feel good and help, and easy to avoid things that don't feel good and won't help.
Then there are the hard cases. Tomorrow we'll look at "no-yes," things that don't feel good but would help. We should do them because they'll help advance the interests we advocate, but we may not do them because they don't feel good.
Today we'll look at the converse, "yes-no," things that feel good but don't help. We shouldn't do because they don't help advance the interests we advocate, but we often do them anyway because they feel good.
Next door to the health club....
"Why do they have an ice cream shop next to a gym?" I mused as a friend and I walked to her car.
"Duh," she replied. "Because they make a ton of money from people who are hungry after a workout."
I nodded. "Well sure, there's that. But why spend 90 minutes working out, then undo everything you've accomplished with that banana split?"
"Because it feels good!"
I'd like to note for the record that she and I did not go to the ice cream shop for a banana split with three scoops of ice cream (vanilla bean), chocolate and strawberry syrup, whipped cream, two maraschino cherries, and candy sprinkles. Oh, and those tiny chocolate chips. No nuts, please. Well, okay, if they're chopped cashews. Yes, one each. And two diet sodas. (And stop smirking.)
Yes, it felt good. I could argue that my friend and I were both active athletes who'd just burned off a lot of calories and needed to replace some energy. Besides, we'd earned it, right? As a species, we're good at rationalizing things that feel good, and the smarter we are, the better we rationalize. Then reality thing kicks in, right about the time those jeans "shrink in the dryer" and the bathroom scale erupts in howls of maniacal laughter. (Which part of "stop smirking" was unclear?)
Ideally, my friend and I were advocating for our bodies' interests, trying to stay trim and fit and flexible and healthy. In practice, we should have skipped those banana splits. They felt good, but they didn't help advance the interests we were advocating.
Meanwhile, back at the political ranch....
We're prone to the same mistakes in political advocacy. We talked about one example Monday. Dissecting Gov. Sarah Palin's framing of President-as-Warlord - "We need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law" - would be more helpful for many progressive interests, but it feels better to giggle about the notes on her palm. I did some of it too.
And sometimes we need to do what feels good, to cheer ourselves up, or to build and maintain camaraderie. So long as that doesn't work against the interests we're advocating, that's fine to a point. But then we need to get back to working on the things that help advance those interests.
Some questions:
How important is it to you that your political advocacy feel good?
How do you catch yourself when you're tempted to focus on what feels good at the expense of what would help advance the interests you advocate?
And finally ... how can we best discuss situations where your advocacy feels good to you and you think it helps, but others in our progressive coalition disagree?
They aren't easy questions with One Correct Answer. As progressives I think we need to be about what helps more than we're about what feels good, but neither is always clear. Ultimately it may be more important that we work together in whatever we're about. That both feels good - we need each others' support - and it helps.
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Happy Friday!