Day Four of Five

Others blogs on Fasting bear testamony to this-- that Day Four is much like Day Three. A little happier (for having come this far,) and the little surprised (at the unexpected ease of it).

Quae nunc abibis in loca**

Mr. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize today. Mostly surprised, if pleasantly so.

We in the West make peace out to be a goal in intself. The Nobel committee hopes that, for Obama, now Peace will be THE GOAL.

Peace, as Scorate's Arate, the Tikun Olam for the Jews, is a symptom of all things being right. It's like with Dietetics-- it is wiser to focus on the means rather than the end. You do the right things-- Fast when it is right, eat when it is right and what is right, and you end up with "Health". A focus on appearance of Health, on the other hand, leads to fads, alternate periods of gluttony and starvation, and other manner of excesses.

Hope Obama, wise as he is, uses this new mandate to pursue just policies, and not ones reactive to these awsome external influence.

**Into what places will you now depart (from Hadrian, by Maria Yourcenar)

Day Three of Five

Today blended into yesterday. Not much by the way of surprise.

Tomorrow I have to play host again. So I will have to eat a salad. No getting around business need. Unless I lie and say the fast is religious. Which it is not.

I will still count it as a 5 day'er. You may not agree.

The First Five Day Fast Begins

I am expecting this to be not such a big deal. However, I would much rather go in over prepared, than come out chastised for hubris. This fast ends Saturday. This will give my body the chance to explore more of the new territory, and for the mind to get used to the idea of fasting.

To take the fuller advantage of this time of fasting, I will also practice meditation to reflect.

Other than that, life as usual-- and happy for it :)

Not So Obscure: Thoughts on the eve of the new fast

In one of my recent comments on this blog I invoke Aristotle's Four Cause Theory-- that an effect has four identifiable causes;

1. Material Cause: the material of which the effect is made (a statue of stone, so the material cause of a statue is stone)
2. Efficient Cause: the (physical?) agency that marshals the effort to shape the material (human arms that chiseled the statue)
3. Formal Cause: The design that artists mind, or the program that drives the agency in (2) above.
4. Final Cause: The purpose that motivates the final cause. For the statue, it may be the need to satisfy a customer.

The Supreme Court recently heard a case on the patentability of software. As you'd see from the list above, it is unclear where "software" lies among (2) and (3) above. I hold that patent laws have been seen in the US justice system to apply to the "efficient cause". In the case of software, is it the efficient cause or the formal cause of problem solving? I'd say that is the nub of the issue.

I hold that it is the efficient cause, and so should be patentable. Red Hat lawyers, on the other had, do not. They argue,

"the Supreme Court and lower courts had held that abstractions couldn't be patented and that a patent needed to cover an abstraction incorporated into a particular machine, or be a process that "transforms a particular article into a different state or thing," Tiller wrote."

The wording "an abstraction incorporated into a particular machine," suggests they believe the machine is the efficient cause, the code the formal cause. And therefore a machines is patentable, and software not patentable.

This just to illustrate that these philosophical concepts are more applicable than we credit them. And that fasting is productive of philosophical thought.

The First Five Day Fast

After three 2 day fasts and a 3 day water fast, I am ready for a 5 day Upvas.

A Hypothesis

Fasting is beneficial not (just) because it is indirectly the Cause of pleasureable Effects, but because it is related to Conciousness. Fasting is an act of awareness.

Joy: A Teleological Examination of Fasting

What I have done with the pursuit of fasting, is pursue self control. Fasting is not fun. So is it for its intrinsic value we fast, or is there an extrinsic value attached to it that propagates its practice?

I will start where undergraduate philosophising leaves us-- we fast because it brings us Joy. Not because it gives pleasure-- surely there is more pleasure in eating. And not because it makes us Happy-- in the sense that happiness is, in my mind, associated with a smile.

Now Joy, it is different. Notice how the Christian faith talks of Joy in Christ-- not Pleasure, and not Happiness. The reason is, that Joy can be experienced through pain (the permanent Joy of parenting is very different from the impermanent pleasure of it), and Joy can reside in a sad heart (I was joyed at giving blood to a severely injured friend but was, at the same time, sad. At his condition.)

The wise seek the telos to everything. The teleological explanation for Fasting, then, is Joy.

What is the teleological explanation for Joy?

I side with Schopenhauer-- Joy is produced by activities and experiences that increase our chances of survival as a species. As a species, not just as an individual. Whence the Joy in parenting and in blood donation. And in religion. And in Fasting.

So by what mode does Fasting increase the chances of survival? The obvious, corporeal answers, and not entirely a specious one, is based on control. It is so trivial that I will not belabor it.

A more abstruse ratiocination links Fasting to a Spiritual Final Cause, or purpose, or telos. This purpose is also shared by Religion, Meditation, Yoga, and Worship. I will leave that analysis to later.

However, to conclude: In my subjective analysis, as mentioned above, there is a direct link between Fasting and Joy. Clearly, fasting has intrinsic value.