This is in an 'abstract' essay that I wrote back in October, for school. My teacher is a really hard grader, and I ended up getting a 91 (Sounds like I was the only A in the class) and praise on it from her. I just wanted to share it here because it looks like Liberal Arts is coming back to life? (:
Moderation: The Dusty Balance
I’ve come to notice that modern societies are based on more. Who has more money, more power, more leisure, entertainment, time, beauty and food. This obsession with more leads to a greater want of more of it, and also shows a lack of moderation. In the dictionary, moderation is defined as “the quality of being moderate; restraint; avoidance of extremes or excesses.” But it’s a lot more than a definition; it’s dividing the subject up into portions, and then rationing it. Moderation is not abstinence, or binging; those are its extremes. Moderation instead is the balance between those extremes, and can be manifest in things like entertainment and dieting.
As evident from societies and the demand of more, moderation is a seldom-practiced principle. I’ll admit, that I don’t live by it all the time. One of my favorite bands isn’t very popular, so they aren’t played on the radio. I’ve listened to them on the internet before, but not often because it’s too time consuming to wait for the player to load. Plus, there are only a couple of songs up anyway. After two years of waiting, they finally came out with their CD. My friend knew I liked them so she bought it for my birthday. I was ecstatic. I listened to it every chance I could, mostly when I should have been doing homework. I knew every lyric, every verse, everyone’s voice, every meaning behind the song, and if it had it, every music video. But after a while, I got tired of that CD. Knowing it front to back made it boring. It wasn’t very long before every track on the album sounded just like the one before it. Thus, I hardly played it anymore and instead put a different CD in rotation. Because I went to an extreme, my feeling toward that CD that I was so happy to have, changed. If I kept my listening in balance, I would appreciate every song like I did before I had the CD, and the first time I heard their album, because I wouldn’t have overplayed it.
Moderation is something that can be applied to almost anything, such as in dieting. The most popular way I see it is in the moderation of food. I know someone that lives by this principle. She started losing weight in the summer of last year, and never felt deprived. She lost one-third her weight by following that one principle. Not Jenny Craig, or South Beach, or Atkins or anything that boasts how “fast and easy” it is. Her favorite foods then, are still her favorites now. She just enjoys them differently. She believes in scheduled “free days,” that follow one rule: “things that should be eaten in moderation, eat them today.” She believes that free days are good for metabolic reasons, but also for sanity. The reason so many people fail on their weight loss endeavors is because they abstained from their favorites for too long. Think about it, if the best thing in the world to someone was soda, and they cut it completely out, they would crave it intensely. And if they were lacking “will-power” (and that’s what they would blame it on — it’s really just a craving) and they were around it one day, they would drink all of it because after a long abstinence, a binge is common. If favorite foods are kept in moderation, abstinence doesn’t occur, and neither will a binge. The initial thing a nutritionist will actually recommend to an individual that is morbidly obese is to eat as usual, but cut it in half. Such a step is taken to avoid a wave of cravings, and after that first phase, then and only then will healthier eating habits be enforced.
Moderation has been a stressed theme in documents throughout history. In the bible, for example, alcohol is viewed as a gift from God that makes life more joyous. However, drunkenness is viewed as a sin. Joy and sinning are two extremes. Balancing between these extremes, as believed in the bible, is moderation. Aristotle believed in ethical knowledge, general knowledge that’s concerned with the question of virtue. A part of his ethics that he believed was moderation. He believed that every ethical value is between excess, and deficiency. For example, stress isn’t unfavorable as long as it’s between excess and deficiency. Too much stress to an individual and it’s detrimental to their overall wellness. Too little, and they’re lazy and don’t have goals in life. It should be added that Aristotle made exceptions to crimes like adultery and burglary; that they should never be done. Over the course of history there are often disagreements with the teachings of someone else. Like in science, the correct model of an atom has been changed many times. If one principle has been expressed throughout history, and nobody has yet to disagree, it must be correct. Therefore it should be significant in someone’s life.
The dictionary and I both agree that moderation is the restraint and avoidance of extremes, and how temperance is just as important as avoiding insufficiency. In a society where “more” is, for some reason “better”, it is hard to live by moderation. Moderation sounds like the perfect plan, but its fatal flaw is that some don’t possess the patience for it. I know I wouldn’t have had the patience to only listen to that CD once in a while. I know that some people wouldn’t have the patience to wait for their scheduled free day to satisfy a craving. But as difficult as it is to follow, the principle is a virtuous way to live a life. Such as been expressed throughout history and the works of Aristotle. Moderation is the balance between abstinence and binging. It will also make life more enjoyable. Have you noticed that ice cream will taste sweeter, or that song will sound better, if you haven’t indulged in it for a while?