Week 88 Update

At 05:30 I stepped on Mr. Scale and he said, "185.5 pounds!" It has been cold the last couple of days and the thermometer was sitting at 31° this morning.

I finally hit my exercise goal this week, and earned over 30 aerobic points. :^) In fact I made it up to 38 points, which I am very happy with. I made it to the gym on Saturday, Tuesday, and Thursday, and I walked 2 miles on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

On both Tuesday and Thursday, Dotti and I got up an hour earlier than usual and made it to the gym in the morning before I had to go to work. I spent both days on the basketball court running different drills that kept me moving the whole time, and left me really exhausted at the end of an hour. I wrapped both of my knees for the time at the gym, and just wrapped my left knee for my walks. So far my knees have not been too sore!

I weighed in at 185.0 last Saturday and I ate 53.0 points. My weight went up to 186.0 on Sunday, so I held it down to 46.5 points. My weight held steady at 186.0 on Monday, so I ate 43.0 points (my low day for the week). My weight dropped to 184.5 Tuesday morning. I ate 52.0 points on Tuesday, and that brought me back to 185.0. I tried 46.0 points on Wednesday, and Thursday morning I was at 185.5. I ate 48.0 points and Friday morning I was down to 184.5. I ate 48.0 points again yesterday and today I weighed 185.5.

My points-per-day average, moved up from 43.43 last week to 48.07 this week. My average weight moved down slightly from 185.50 to 185.29.

My water consumption dropped from 109.71 ounces last week to 84.57 ounces per day this week. Still that is plenty of water. :^)

This Week in Books – returned by request. :^)

I listened to Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley and read by Michael York. I think this book does a great deal to dispel the theory that happiness is the only thing that people should worry about. If happiness is the most important thing, then the society that Huxley created in London, hundreds of years in the future, is quite logical, and sound. (The phrase, "I don't care as long as they're happy!" comes to mind.) All of the people, or at least 99.99% of them were happy, 99.99% of the time. There was no reason to be unhappy. Each person was tailored for his own line of work. If he was to be doing lowly manual labor, with no mental challenges, he was "adjusted" during his embryo days, by genetic selection, chemical manipulation, and oxygen deprivation to produce in him a low enough IQ (Epsilon Level) to where he would be perfectly happy in his work. Perfectly happy! If he was scheduled for slightly more challenging work, he was allowed to develop a bit more along the normal path before being stunted (Delta Level). And so on, (up through Gamma and Beta) until you reach the ones who were genetically selected for intelligence, and then allowed to develop normally (Alpha), and who did the brain work in the society. If they were of exceptional ability they were called an "Alpha Plus," and a genius would be an "Alpha Double Plus."

In addition to the genetic and developmental control, there was "conditioning" that went on constantly during childhood, for all of the casts. During their sleep period, a speaker under their pillows continually poured out conditioning phrases that would program the people to think in a politically correct way. (The political correctness training done to our own children in our society, while quite effective, is not up to the level in the Brave New World, at least not yet.) Thousands and thousands of repetitions of all the important ideas were given to each child. And each child's programming was directed specifically at his own cast. If he were an Epsilon, he would be taught that all the other casts worked much harder than he did, and that he was very lucky to be an Epsilon. Each cast was taught to like its own color (Alphas wore gray, Betas wore Mulberry, Deltas wore Khaki -- Michael York pronounced it Kar'-Key, Gammas wore green, and Epsilons wore black.) and to despise the other colors. Class-consciousness was part of everything in their lives. Each cast was taught to know its place in the society, and to be perfectly happy there.

There were many other aspects of the society intended to create an artificial but unshakeable stability. Monogamy was conditioned out, and promiscuity was conditioned in, and not only expected, but demanded by social etiquette. (Most of the females were sterilized during their embryo stage, and the rest were strongly conditioned to use contraception, so pregnancy was rare, and always terminated if it did occur.) The point being that no long term relationships and deep commitments would be tolerated, avoiding the potential instability that such relationships might introduce. (No jealousy, no fighting, no stress, no anger. There was no need for heroes or heroics of any sort.) If life produced any momentary unhappiness there was soma, a drug that if taken normally had no aftereffects (such as hangovers, headaches, or physical addiction), and that would take away any momentary discomfort someone might be feeling.

Neither the society, nor each individual's conditioning, would tolerate anyone being alone. They were always either with someone else, the television was going, music was playing, they were on a soma holiday, or all of the above. Never were they allowed to spend time with their own thoughts to brood about what is the meaning of life, or their own place in it. The lower casts were not talk to read, and were even conditioned at a very young age, through electric shock and loud noises to abhor books. The Alphas and Betas could read, because their jobs demanded it, but there were no dramas, tragedies or especially romances available (after their conditioning, they would not have even understood these genres); only stable, non-provocative state approved material. Why read anyway when you can watch fun programming like sporting events on television? All old books, of course including Shakespeare and the Bible, were forbidden, with the only copies locked up by the state, or safely hid away on one of the "savage reservations." (See below.)

For the individual, everything was focused on today, and nothing on tomorrow. Happiness for the moment was how their entire lives were run. And the herd mentality kept anyone who tried to do unorthodox things (like turning off their televisions, being alone with their own thoughts, thinking about the future, and the meaning of life, etc.) was pressured by the other members of the herd to get back into orthodox behavior. If anyone had a frown, everyone he met would counsel him to take some soma, with phrases learned during their childhood conditioning. ("You do look glum. What you need is a gram of soma. One cubic centimeter cures 10 gloomy sentiments.") Unhappiness was just not tolerated. Ever.

Because of the conditioning that he received, each member of each cast was very happy that he wasn’t a member of one of the other casts. They all were very happy in their work, because they all found it challenging and geared to their own talents. The whole world was under this political system, so there were no wars or anything to upset the complete stability of the world, or that of any of the local areas.

There were some few areas of the world, called "savage reservations," that were fenced in with high-tension wires, where "savages" lived their stone age lives as they pleased. (None ever escaped, and very few would have wanted to.) As it turned out one "civilized" lady was visiting one of these reservations, and through a strange set of circumstances ended up being stranded there, and also, unbeknownst to her, she just happened to be pregnant at the time. She later had a baby; one of the worst taboos of the civilized society she had been raised in. (Nobody had babies, all of that took place in the laboratory in test-tubes and bottles. All the children were raised complete by the state and the very words "Father" and "Mother" were considered obscene and never used in polite society.) After 25 years, she and her son are discovered by two of the main characters in the story, who visited the reservation, and who whisked the two back to civilization. The rest of the book is about how the son (named John but called "The Savage") reacts to "civilization." His mother, who was disgraced by the fact that she was a mother, goes on a permanent soma holiday. When that much soma is taken continually, it will shorten the life, and in a short time she died. His father, who had no idea that he was a father until his son announced it to him in front of a crowd of Dad's subordinates, instantly resigned his very high profile and prestigious job in complete shame, and he never showed his face again for the rest of the story.

The Savage, who had been told all his life, by his mother, how wonderful the civilized world was, found that it was not so wonderful, and naturally clashed with the happiness-oriented philosophy. He finds all that its adherents value, to be trash, and they view his set of values in the same way. In the end, he tries to break away, but society just would not let him be. As he struggled to make sense of the world, his own problems and beliefs created great conflicts in his mind, and it was hard to tell who more absurd: The Savage or the "civilized" people of "London." It ended badly for him I am afraid.

I would love to dwell on the ramifications of the concepts in this book as they apply to our own world today, but that would probably create some unhappiness, and as World Controller "Mustapha Mond" said, "Happiness is a hard master – particularly other people's happiness." :^)

1 year, 251 days OP, a lifetime to follow

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/185.5/185±2/BMI:23.19/WK-88
Weight Loss Graph/Year 1 Maint. Graph/Year 2 Maint. Graph/Success Story