Health and Socratic Method

Health, Potlucks and the Socratic Method

By John Taylor; 2007 Apr 03

Yesterday I drove to Leamington to pick up my sister-in-law Jitka's possessions, as she is moving back to our area. She stayed on for a couple of days, so I drove alone there and back. Mapquest and Google Maps predicted that it would take four hours each way and it did, to within twenty minutes, including rest stops; my odometer said the trip took a total of 659 kilometers, including at least twice where the directions of these internet services steered me wrong. On the way there I listened to an audio book of John Paul Jones reading the Book of Matthew, and with the car loaded up on the way back my MP3 entertainment was a doctor named Weil reading his book about breathing techniques for better health, plus a reading from Will Durant's entertaining accounts of the lives and thought of some philosophers, including Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer, from his book, The Story of Philosophy.

Last week the New York Times had a series of features on the state of cancer research. One article reviewed several simple and cheap cancer remedies that are being ignored by corporate funders because they cannot be patented and turned into money makers. In another article, a researcher pointed to a basic creative problem with the way the biological sciences are being funded. Instead of putting money into innovative new approaches to solving the problem of cancer, money instead is being thrown at better ways to do the same old thing. An old boy's network sees that symptoms only are treated while possible cures are ignored.

Since old ways of doing things do not involve cures, and new ideas are just too risky to justify before narrow, short-term minded funding agencies, small wonder that cancer research is in the doldrums. I can offer a local example, an Ancaster woman whose teenage son died of testicular cancer has been publicizing this new cancer danger, one that has tripled over the past three decades. Testicular cancer is now the third leading cause of death among adolescent boys (car accidents and suicide are numbers one and two). How did this happen so quickly? Why is this particular cancer suddenly so dangerous? It is a testament to the corruption of science that although biology now receives far more funding than physics, the actual goals of medical science are not being addressed.

Sometimes, I must say, I berate myself over my newfound concern for health. I think to myself, this is just a sign that you have hit the big five-oh, Johnny. Ten years ago you could not have cared less about statistical dangers as indicated by mortality and death rates. Mention big public health issues like cancer rates to, say, the very teenage boys who are in danger of testicular cancer, and you can bet that their eyes will blear over before the words are out of your mouth. Go to a nursing home and you will get a rapt audience, even though they are not the ones in danger. Old folks care, while those who stand most to benefit, the young, are tuned out.

But then last week I was finishing off reading Xenophon's memoirs of Socrates and came across the following paragraph, which is something like the second to the last in the book. Xenophon here is summing up what Socrates taught, in other words, what we now know as the "Socratic Method," by far the most powerful and influential educational technique in history. Part of it, you will notice, is what Baha'u'llah said about avoiding learning that begins and ends in words, but read what Xenophon then says very carefully:

"Socrates inculcated the study of reasoning processes, but in these, equally with the rest, he bade the student beware of vain and idle over-occupation. Up to the limit set by utility, he was ready to join in any investigation, and to follow out an argument with those who were with him; but there he stopped. He particularly urged those who were with him to pay the utmost attention to health. They would learn all it was possible to learn from adepts, and not only so, but each one individually should take pains to discover, by a lifelong observation of his own case, what particular regimen, what meat or drink, or what kind of work, best suited him; these he should turn to account with a view to leading the healthiest possible life. It would be no easy matter for any one who would follow this advice, and study his own idiosyncrasy, to find a doctor to improve either on the diagnosis or the treatment requisite. (Or, "to find a doctor better able than himself to 'diagnose' and prescribe a treatment congenial to health.")

So paying attention to the state of your own health, and to how your work and health are interacting with one another is central to education and personal development. It is philosophical to do it yourself, to be your own first doctor, as well as do what a guidance counselor in high school does, make sure you are going down the right path. Each of us must scrutinize our health from cradle to grave because it is right, it is central to living an examined life, it is the Socratic Method.

Perhaps health is so boring to the young these days because teachers have not made it visible enough. The process is inherently interesting. In a world run by teachers using the Socratic method every means possible would be taken to make the state of one's own health visible. Just as billions are wasted researching non-cures for cancer, so billions are spent making attractive advertising presentations to youth to influence them to similarly selfish, unproductive ends. Why not put some of these wasted funds into writing the software "dashboard" display of the state of one's body. This would picture one's risk factors and health indicators in an interesting way. It is not quite the totally integrated dashboard that I have been proposing, which would also be a web portal and link to financial and other "dials," but it would be a start. With their body's health displayed every time they enter the Web, young people would be in a position to compare their health to the average in their circumstances, and understand where their health is leading now, soon, and decades from now.

Lately I watched a film about high school football players in Texas. So violent is this elite sport that the poor boys start off in perfect health but are systematically weeded out, and even those who survive intact are partly maimed, if not complete basket cases. They regard the compromise of their health as a small price to pay for being heroes in the eyes of their community. I could not help but think that in a few years when such health displays as I have been imagining become available on the net, this ridiculous state of affairs is bound to change. For one thing, the community itself will stop looking at it as a good thing to whack bodies. They will see that there are sports, such as chess and table tennis (my chosen sports), that you can play and benefit from without injury from cradle to grave.

Here is Xenophon's account of Socrates reaction when he saw people mixing their dishes (another immoderate practice that Baha'u'llah condemns in the Lawh-i-Tibb).

"Another time, seeing one of the company using but one sop of bread to test several savoury dishes, he remarked: Could there be a more extravagant style of cookery, or more murderous to the dainty dishes themselves, than this wholesale method of taking so many dishes together? -- why, bless me, twenty different sorts of seasoning at one swoop! First of all he mixes up actually more ingredients than the cook himself prescribes, which is extravagant; and secondly, he has the audacity to commingle what the chef holds incongruous, whereby if the cooks are right in their method he is wrong in his, and consequently the destroyer of their art. Now is it not ridiculous first to procure the greatest virtuosi to cook for us, and then without any claim to their skill to take and alter their procedure?"

How Socrates would react to a modern hotdog eating contest is best left to the imagination. In any case I wrote an essay earlier this year asking, "Are Pot Lucks Un-Baha'i?" In view of this anecdote of Socrates I would say that potlucks are not only un-Baha'i, they are also unsocratic and un-philosophical. But Socrates is not finished. He points out the dilemma that the modern gourmand is in, eating large portions reduces rather than enhances the enjoyment of good cuisine, and starts a habit of overindulgence that is hard to limit.

"But there is a worse thing in store for the bold man who habituates himself to eat a dozen dishes at once: when there are but few dishes served, out of pure habit he will feel himself half starved, whilst his neighbour, accustomed to send his sop down by help of a single relish, will feast merrily, be the dishes never so few."

So, paying attention to our health and what we are eating should not be the exclusive province of the old, it should be our constant concern.