Pharrell Williams' and "The New Black"

Howard University Professor Isn’t Super Impressed with Pharrell Williams’ ‘New Black’ Comments

June 18, 2014 4:23 PM

Pharrell Williams (Fred Dufour/Getty Images)

By Brian Ives

Pharrell Williams raised a few eyebrows over his statements about race in a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, particularly his use of a term “the new black” — and a prominent professor at Howard University isn’t really buying it.

The superstar said in the Winfrey interview that “The new black doesn’t blame other races for our issues. The new black dreams and realizes that it’s not a pigmentation; it’s a mentality. And it’s either going to work for you, or it’s going to work against you. And you’ve got to pick the side you’re gonna be on.”

He discussed this same topic in his GQcover story: “This is the new black. Oprah Winfrey: That’s the new black. She’s a black billionaire. President Obama: He is a black American president. Regardless of what you think about him, this is his second term. That’s the new black. LeBron James: the first black man ever shot on a Vogue cover, a black man. Me: a guy that’s written a song at 40! Nominated for an Oscar, four GRAMMY awards — at 40! That’s the new black!”

Response to his term “the new black”  has been strong, inspiring the twitter hashtag#whatkindofblackareyou, and The Root offering  “25 Alternatives to Pharrell (or Any Other Celeb) for Insights Into ‘the New Black,’” listing links to people and organizations “Who care about these things, study these things, talk and report and write and educate on these things all the time — not just when Oprah asks.”

Dr. Greg Carr, Howard University associate professor & chair of the department of Afro-American Studies, reacted to Pharrell’s “new black” theory in a new interview (via HBCBuzz) — and doesn’t seem impressed.

“My first impression is, this is a young man who is an excellent marketer,” Carr said. “I don’t think that Pharrell believes that there’s a ‘new black.’ Perhaps there’s a new opportunity. If he thinks there’s a ‘new black,’ I think  a quick perusal of history, particularly style makers and culture keepers in black communities in this country, will reveal very quickly that that’s been an ongoing conversation since enslavement.

“It’d be interesting to visit Pharrell — and others — in, say, 30 years from now… and see if perhaps he might be more conservative.”

Dr. Carr was asked if it is possible for African-Americans to be aware of the past and not have it  have a major influence on life today — and he says it’s not structurally possible.

“For every heroic individual who succeeds, there are countless others who continue to struggle and be oppressed in their system,” he said. And he points out that while there are successful African-Americans, that has been the case for a long time: “Even during enslavement, you had a tiny fraction of black folks who had negotiated some space for themselves, to exist in the system. Same thing during Jim Crow. Same thing today.”

He poses a question to those who have tasted success on Pharrell’s level: “Are you really attempting to live a life that improves conditions for other people, beginning with the people that you come from? Or, are you just trying to enjoy your life, provide for yourself and your family, and have some fun before you close your eyes?

“The spectacle of blackness has always been something that society has grasped and wanted,” he continued. “We can go back to the 1840s. One of the leading performers in this country was a guy named Thomas ‘Daddy’ Rice, who used to blacken his face, he called himself ‘Jim Crow.’ He was one of the biggest performers in this country for doing dances that he said black people did.

“Fast forward 170 years, and you go on the Billboard charts. Is there anyone bigger than Robin Thicke? No! Do we see Miley Cyrus twerking? Yes! What does that mean?  Blackness has always been a commodity. And there have always been individuals who represented that kind of titilating proximity to blackness that people have wanted. So us being on GQ covers and being billionaires, that’s almost predictable. As Greg Tate wrote, ‘The thing about blackness, people want everything from blackness… but the burden.” Pharrell is saying, ‘Look at Obama.’ Yeah, look at Obama! And look at education. Look at Obama, and look at the prison-industrial complex. Look at Barack Obama and ask yourself a question: what has improved for the masses of black people in the six years of the Obama presidency. But people like his style! They love his wife’s style! The kids of beautiful, the mother-in-law’s in the White House. That’s improved the life of one family.”

Pharrell has not responded to Dr. Carr’s comments.

A Good Man That Will Be Missed

Richard Jaeggi dies, Gandhi Brigade founder

Richard Jaeggi. Photo by Julie Wiatt.

BY BILL BROWN

[UPDATED 5/28/14] Richard Jaeggi, community activist, Gandhi Brigade Youth Media founder and executive director, and former Voice columnist, passed away Saturday morning, May 25, due to complications after surgery. Jaeggi fell ill over the May 10-11 weekend and underwent surgery for a brain tumor the following Tuesday, according to Jaeggi family statements. He was 60.

Founded in 2005 the non-profit Gandhi Brigade uses “video and other digital media as a tool to engage young people in the life of their community and to use the power of communication to transform the  world,” according to the website.

Richard Jaeggi. Photo by Diana Kohn.

In his Gandhi Brigade bio Jaeggi wrote, “Before devoting myself full time to the building of the Gandhi Brigade I ran several community technology centers in Washington DC. I have made a living as a cabinet maker, a carpenter, a network administrator, a construction employment trainer, and as a cook on an oil supply boat. I spent two years in Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer where I met my wife.

“I like to make things, swim, ride my bicycle on the local trails, and throw goofy parties that often involve fire. I am married to Yoshiko Zenfuku and have three children, Lisa, Daniel, and Isaac. I have lived in Silver Spring for 16 years and care deeply about my community.” Born in New Brunswick, NJ, he moved to the Washington DC region in 1986.

Prior to the Gandhi Brigade he worked in Washington DC in the field of community technology; first at For Love of Children where he set up the New Technology Center and then at the Howard University Center for Urban Progress where he set up technology centers at Cardozo High School and the Park Morton housing complex. After earning a Masters degree in Religious Studies he served in Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer where he helped build village water systems. He met his wife Yoshiko there.

Yoshiko and Richard Jaeggi. Photo by Isaac Jaeggi.

He took a four year sabbatical as a self-employed cabinetmaker and a stint as a network administrator. He was also the director of Tallahassee Habitat for Humanity and later a co-founder of Skill Builders, a construction training program at Manna.

He was active in civic and church groups: the Christ Congregational Church Board of Social Witness – as co-chair (’08-’10), the Silver Spring Town Center Steering Committee (’01-’05), the Presidents Council of Silver Spring Civics Associations, as coordinator (’01-’03)

He was also a member of the Town Center Working Group (’00), vice president of the Indian Spring Civic Association vice president (’99-’03), member of the Community, Arts, and Facilities subcommittee of the Silver Spring Steering Committee (’97), member of the Economic Subcommittee of the Silver Spring Development Steering Committee (’96), and co-founder of the Silver Spring Neighborhood Arts Project (’95).

Jaeggi with the “Book of Turf” he made for people to say their goodbyes to the artificial turf. The turf was a temporary covering until the Silver Spring community center and plaza could be built, but the public grew to love it. Photo by Julie Wiatt.

Jaeggi wrote a Voice column about his home town Silver Spring “The Big Acorn.” He ended the column around the time he got involved in youth issues and the Gandhi Brigade.

In his August 2005 column entitled “Three Heroes” he wrote about his rolemodels. “And so it is that I, a man entering the last third of his life, continue to steer my life, for better or worse, according to the patterns set by this odd pantheon of heroes: a terrorist, a madman, and a religious fanatic.”

He admired Robin Hood, he said, for his “audacity wit, and a flagrant disregard for authority.” His “madman” hero was “Señor Don Quixote, who determined that the only life worth living was one of uncompromising service to the highest ideals.”

But Mahatma Gandhi had a “place of honor in my pantheon of heroes.” He wrote,”Gandhi a pacifist, was anything but passive. He was a warrior pure and simple—and a fighter for truth and justice.”

A memorial service to celebrate his life and honor his memory will be held Saturday, June 7th, 10:00 AM at Christ Congregational Church in Silver Spring, 9525 Colesville Rd, Silver Spring, MD. In a statement posted on the Ghandi Brigade’s Facebook page the family said they will attend the Gandhi Brigade’s Youth Media Festival this Saturday, May 31, and ask “those who feel moved to come participate, donate or just enjoy the event that my father worked so hard to organize for his community and it’s youth should please feel free to do so.”

Word of his passing spread across Facebook over the 3-day weekend. At-large county councilmember Marc Elrich posted the news on his page, calling Jaeggi “a tireless champion for children” and a “wonderful advocate.”

Photo by Isaac Jaeggi.

Elrich wrote “I don’t think I ever saw him not smiling, and he was infectiously enthusiastic and passionate about this labor of love he’d embarked on.”

He notes Jaeggi’s party-with-fire aspect, also “And then there was the amazing ball of fire making it’s way through this Rube Goldberg contraption he and his buddies made, that marked the New Year with a glorious fire that went off in the back yard.”
Jaeggi’s and the Ghandi Brigade’s Facebook pages filled with posts expressing sorrow, shock, and homage.

A Brief History of White Privilege, Racism and Oppression

My Brother's Keeper - Are Good Programs Enough?

Nicholas Turner

Mar 6, 2014

Last week, in a joyous yet sobering White House East Room meeting, President Obama announced a long awaited initiative—My Brother’s Keeper—intended to improve opportunities and life outcomes for young African American  men and, by extension, our communities. He was flanked by some of these young men who would benefit and a cast of philanthropic leaders.
 
As someone who has dedicated the entirety of his professional career to improving the fate of young men of color, it was hard not be thrilled with the President’s sincere commitment and his use of the bully pulpit. In the late '80s and early '90s I worked at Sasha Bruce Youthwork, a Washington, DC youth services organization, where I was an outreach counselor for teens who were in trouble, out of school, or “doing dirt,” as they used to say. And for close to 10 years, on and off, I’ve worked at Vera. From both these experiences, I know there are both individual responsibility and structural dimensions to challenges confronting young men of color.
 
President Obama and the philanthropic partners who have signed on to invest $200 million over the next five years promise to find the programs that improve life chances for young men of color and to replicate them. I couldn’t agree more and we should laud the effort. As Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason said in her blog post about the initiative, it is designed to help every young man who “works hard and plays by the rules” have a chance to reach his full potential. Hard to argue with that.
 
But I also hope, as Mason’s blog post suggests and as others have observed, that the initiative’s architects will focus their firepower on more than deserving individuals and good programs. They should also look deeply at changing the structural factors—government policies and practices, among them—that are leading contributors to poor long-term outcomes for our young men. There are efforts around the country they can learn from and seek to replicate—such as, how New York City and New York State have begun to stanch the flow of kids into expensive and ineffective upstate detention facilities, and work with them close to home, close to family. They can look to the good work of a few brave and leading prosecutors, like John Chisolm of Milwaukee, who have changed case acceptance and supervisory policies in order to reduce disparities that resulted in more people of color being further ensnared in the justice system.
 
The President told those assembled in the East Room that government can’t fix the problem by itself. True enough. But there is a lot government can and should do to rectify unfair and unwise policies and practices—the structural determinants of inequity and blocked opportunity. Vera has a long track record of helping government do just this, and we will continue to do so with even more vigor and commitment in the coming years. I hope this element of the challenge is something that the architects of My Brother’s Keeper take to heart.
 
After all, it is not just about helping the rule followers. We also need to address some of the rules of the game.
 

Kim Novak's Bid to Be Twice as Good

Hollywood's respectability politics are much the same as any other kind of respectability politics.

TA-NEHISI COATES

Here's a fairly great piece from Amanda Hess on how we judge actresses in their youth, and how we expect them to disappear when they age:

...81-year-old Vertigo star Kim Novak—who was roundly mocked for turning up onstage, two decades after her last movie, exhibiting extensive plastic surgery—might as well be dead. As comedian Rob Delaney cruelly joked: “Will they have time to edit Kim Novak into the In Memoriam section?” Even Matthew McConaughey’s mother, who last night aspired only to the role of proud parent, was eviscerated for rocking a keyhole-neck gown that gave the world a peek at her cleavage, which apparently only young women are allowed to possess. Twitter commentators deemed the view “leathery,” “ancient,” “inappropriate,” and “terrifying.”
So how ought an actress age? Throughout the evening, 67-year-old Sally Field (who appeared as a presenter) and 64-year-old Meryl Streep (nominated for August: Osage County) were compared favorably to Minnelli and Novak for daring to age “gracefully” and “naturally.” But we don’t know what Streep and Field do to maintain their looks—all we know is that they have successfully navigated Hollywood’s dual requirement to look amazing post-60 while never signaling that they’ve worked at it. That means avoiding obvious plastic surgery, but it can also mean spending your life investing in the habits, trainers, diets, creams, and treatments that add up to a “natural” look in old age. (Dodging illness and disability—Novak survived breast cancer in 2010—surely doesn’t hurt.)

Relat

Getting 

I've spent the past couple of years thinking about the "twice as good" notion in the black community, and the bindings that we put on young black boys so that their country will not kill them. Of course "twice as good" ultimately means half as many arrive, and those who do receive half as much. Let us dispense with self-congratulation and great men. The question is not, "What did Jackie Robinson achieve in spite of racism?" It is, "How much more would he have achieved without it?" An ethic of "twice as good" divorced from any complaint, divorced from history is "Go for self" and can have no effect whatsoever upon a justice system, upon voter ID laws, upon asset forfeiture, upon Wells Fargo. The masses of the plundered will never be respectable to those who plunder them. The essence of plunder is disrespect. They can never respect you. They hate you, sir.

And I think these ideas only incidentally relate to who we call "black" and who we do not. Black people are older than white supremacy. And plunder is broad.  The female body, always marked as a field for plunder, illustrates the point.  The double standard that demands that black boys play classical music and comport themselves like Barack Obama, is comparable to the double standard that asks one thing of Jack Nicholson and another of Meryl Streep. Kim Novak also got The Talk...

When Novak entered the industry in the 1950s, studio executives made her cap her teeth, bleach her hair, shrink her body with a strict diet and exercise regime, and perpetually paint her face with the help of a personal makeup artist. I wonder where she got the idea that she mattered for her looks?

Novak's failure to absorb and fully implement this awesome wisdom makes her a target for humiliation and ultimately, maybe not death, but banishment from the public stage. 

We should probably stop bragging about Jackie Robinson, and remember that he died young. We should probably cite Ginger Rogers mostly as damning evidence. We comfort ourselves with individuals who get over, ignoring the broad masses who—necessarily—cannot. I think we should pause before noting that Sally Field is "aging well." Most of her fellow human females will not. That is because the very notion of "aging well" is riven with all our notions of who owns their body and who does not. 

Of course Baldwin knew:

The people, however, who believe that this democratic anguish has some consoling value are always pointing out that So-and-So, white, and So-and-So, black, rose from the slums into the big time. The existence -- the public existence -- of, say, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. proves to them that America is still the land of opportunity and that inequalities vanish before the determined will. It proves nothing of the sort. The determined will is rare -- at the moment, in this country, it is unspeakably rare -- and the inequalities suffered by the many are in no way justified by the rise of a few. [Emph. added]
A few have always risen -- in every country, every era, and in the teeth of regimes which can by no stretch of the imagination be thought of as free. Not all these people, it is worth remembering, left the world better than they found it. The determined will is rare, but it is not invariably benevolent. Furthermore, the American equation of success with the big time reveals an awful disrespect for human life and human achievement.

Forgive me if I have distracted, in any way, from Amanda Hess's piece. You start thinking and you're not sure what will come out. 

Stay Black. And Die.

Posted on 18 February, 2014 by Panama Jackson

In the days that have passed since the Jordan Davis/Michael Dunn mistrial verdict on the count of murder in first degree, the following picture has been circulated frequently via social media. Put a pin in that, we’ll come back to it.

Before we go further, let me go ahead and say this upfront. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not even qualified to be a paralegal and I’ve never been to or seen an Everest College campus or student. So I’ll concede that my legal acumen is subpar, but I do have a really hard time understanding how you can be convicted of attempted murder for spraying a car but not be convicted of the success of your attempts.

While I don’t understand it, I see how it happened. While watching news coverage on Friday evening of the jury deliberations via the Jane Velez-Mitchell show on HLN, they were taking callers. One of the callers, clearly an older white male stated what I feel is an unfortunate but not surprising sentiment shared by many folks paying attention: why did the boys in the truck drive off then come back without taking him to the hospital? It is the belief of quite a few people that somehow, someway, those boys dumped of the gun that made this man feel scared for his life enough to dump 10 shots into a Durango at fairly close range. Somehow, this man (and a few other callers) seemed very disinterested in the psychopathic nature of Mr. Dunn, just the behavior of the youth that caused Mr. Dunn to fear for his life. Emphasis mine and intentional. Causation is a b*tch.

Which leads back to the picture and the message therein. Simply, white folks and Black folks have different “important” talks with their sons. This is true. It was true before the recent spate of high profile deaths by Black males at the hands of white people and it will be true if we never have another Black man die in the same fashion again.

To put it all on the table and go Captain Obvious, there has always been a different set of rules for Black people and white people. I remember my father teaching me the most important lesson of my even now to date. He sat me down and said to me quite clearly, “(Panama), your mother is white. You are not.” I never had any identity issues after that. But what followed was a string of conversations about what it meant to be a Black man in America. What was most interesting is that I didn’t even live in America while I was receiving these conversations. Near my home in Bad Homburg, Germany (right outside of Frankfurt) was this huge field. My father would tell me to come with him and we’d make the long walk to the field and walk around and he’d fill me in on life. Sometimes it was about the birds and the bees, but many times it was about what life looks like for people like us.

I imagine those conversations have been happening for 100s of years at this point. Because it’s always been different. Hell, my father STILL manages to drop those nuggets of information when its relevant. It’s why most Black males (and Black people) have such a healthy distrust of the police. Its also not just the police, either. It’s what happens AFTER the police do police things to us. It’s the knowledge that your freedom is pretty much like a car window. You can roll it up and lock your doors, but its just a piece of glass. If somebody wants to break into your car, it takes nothing to get into it. Your freedom is fragile and easy to destroy. And once its been tampered with, you realize that everybody else gets the opportunity to destroy you regardless of the facts. The numbers of people released due to the Innocence Project illustrates that very clearly. As a Black male, you spend your life doing your damnedest trying to NOT end up in the system at all. Well, most of us do. You figure if you just live your life right then you should be okay. And that probably is the situation.

But its when we’re robbed of the potential of the Black community that we’re reminded just how fragile that freedom is. Which is why we have to have those talks in the first place. Those talks wouldn’t have prevented that situation. In fact, the necessary talk in Florida is probably to tell all Black males to avoid all interaction with white men. But that’s just not realistic, is it?

I also saw this other picture all over social media. I think this one is a bit unfair. Nobody is going to want to hear this but it’s not just “white vision” glasses that see this picture. While I’m happy that we can all rally in our community behind miscarriages of justice in the courtroom, and Black boys do matter, many Black people view certain Black males in the exact same fashion as white people do – sometimes for the same reasons, sometimes for different reasons. I get the point being made, and perhaps its unnecessary to even point out that Black folks are just as guilt of this stereotyping, but my point is that we have some work to do on our own. We’re mad that Black boys don’t matter, but to some degree, we’re just not pulling the trigger on them. That’s food for thought for that ass.

And I’ll be the first to admit how conflicted I can be. It’s like the scene in Crash where Ludacris’s character is going on about how unfair it is to be stereotyped as a thug who is about to commit a robbery…and then commits a robbery because he’s exactly who they think he is. It’s the justification for paranoia: If I’m right then I’m right; but if I’m wrong, I could have been right, so I’m still right because maybe I’m not wrong. While this doesn’t hold up in court (or at least shouldn’t), I know many people who not only live by this credo, they are married to it til death do they part. Interestingly, none of them feel Dunn was right in any way, shape, or form.

“I don’t have to do sh*t but stay Black and die.” I’ve heard this statement more times that I can count. Usually stated in some form of defiance after somebody attempts to tell another what to do. Rarely is it meant to be prophesy. It’s supposed to be dying on our own terms as God intends. Not at the hands of another who doesn’t respect your life or even acknowledge that it exists.

Stay Black and die. Okay. But we probably need to amend those talks not only to include the police and the justice system to “boy, you don’t have to do anything but stay Black and try not to die at the hands of white man who will not be held accountable by those police or that justice system I already told you about.”

Yeah. That.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST

Excellent Advice!!!

Read this if you want to be happy in 2014

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By Scott Adams, Published: January 2

I have no expertise whatsoever on the topic of happiness. But I do have a knack for observation and simplification. That’s what I do for my day job as the creator of Dilbert. Today — as some of you are already backtracking on those New Year’s resolutions — I’m going to strip out all of the mumbo-jumbo around the topic of happiness and tell you the simplest way to get some.

You’re reading this in the business section because every bit of what follows on the topic of happiness is relevant to your career, especially if you have entrepreneurial ambitions. You’ll need all the good health, good looks and mental energy you can muster to influence people and survive the long hours. As luck would have it, the good habits that make you healthy and energetic help to make you happy at the same time, so it’s a double win.

As far as I can tell, people usually experience the sensation of happiness whenever they have both health and freedom. It’s a simple formula:

Happiness = Health + Freedom

I’m talking about the everyday freedom of being able to do what you want when you want to do it, at work and elsewhere. For happiness, timing is as important as the thing you’re doing. For example, your favorite food is useless to you if the only time you can eat it is when your stomach is already full. But if I offer you bland food when you’re starving, you’ll feel as if you won the lottery. The timing of things matters.

The same principle is true for exercise. If you exercise when you’re in the mood for it, you can enjoy the workout. But if you can only exercise after a long day on the job and a grueling commute, you might hate it. There’s a right time and a wrong time for nearly every activity, from sleep to sex to paying bills. Matching your mood to your activity is a baseline requirement for happiness. The good news is that timing is relatively controllable, especially in the long run.

If you’re just starting out in your career, it won’t be easy to find a job that gives you a flexible schedule. The best approach is a strategy of moving toward more flexibility over the course of your life. That quest could take the form of badgering your pointy-haired boss into letting you work from home one day per week, or it might mean going back to school to learn a skill so you can run your own business. In my case, it means waking up several hours before the rest of the family. There isn’t one formula for finding schedule flexibility. Just make sure all of your important decisions are consistent with an end game of a more flexible schedule. Otherwise you are shutting yourself off from the most accessible lever for happiness — timing.

We can’t ignore the role of money in all of this. Money can’t directly buy happiness, but it can give you more options, and that’s an important part of freedom. So don’t give up too much income potential just to get a flexible schedule. There’s no point in having a flexible schedule if you can’t afford to do anything.

Knowledge, not willpower

The second part of the happiness formula is health. It’s never a good idea to take health tips from cartoonists, so check with your doctor if anything here sounds iffy to you. I don’t know how many people have died after reading health tips from cartoonists, but it probably isn’t zero. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

The most important thing to know about staying fit is this: If it takes willpower, you’re doing it wrong. Anything that requires willpower is unsustainable in the long run. And studies show that using willpower in one area diminishes how much willpower you have in reserve for other areas. You need to get willpower out of the system. I’ll show you some tricks for doing that.

My observation is that you can usually replace willpower with knowledge. That isn’t an obvious point, so I’ll give some examples.

Imagine you are hungry and I offer you a delicious but unhealthy dessert. It would take a lot of willpower to resist. Now imagine the same scenario, but I simultaneously offer a healthier food option that is also delicious. Suddenly it is easy to pick the healthy alternative over the dessert. The dessert was only irresistible when the alternative was starving. So the trick for avoiding unhealthy foods is to make sure you always have access to healthy options that you enjoy eating. Your knowledge of this trick, assuming you use it, makes willpower far less necessary.

Now imagine I offer you a choice of pasta or a white potato. And let’s say you enjoy both to a similar degree. Which do you choose? If you have only a basic understanding of nutrition — similar to what most people have — you might say it’s a toss-up. You’ve heard carbs are bad for you and that’s where your knowledge ends. But if you knew that pasta is far lower on the glycemic index than a white potato, you would make a far healthier choice that requires no willpower at all. All it took was knowledge.

And while you’re eating your pasta, feel free to pile on the parmesan cheese. Cheese adds calories, but the fat content will help suppress your appetite, so you probably come out ahead. If you didn’t already know that, you might end up using willpower to avoid cheese at dinner and willpower again later that night to resist snacking. A little knowledge replaces a lot of willpower. Is there anything else you should know about diet? Let me give you a quick quiz.

Did you know that sleepiness causes you to feel hungry?

Did you know that eating peanuts is a great way to suppress appetite?

Did you know that eating mostly protein instead of simple carbs for lunch will help you avoid the afternoon energy slump?

Did you know that eating simple carbs can make you hungrier?

Did you know that exercise has only a small impact on your weight?

If this is the first you have heard any of those facts, and you are sporting some extra pounds, you probably have a knowledge gap that feels to you like a shortage of willpower.

Learning to loathe french fries

Speaking of knowledge, I’ve recently discovered that my cravings for certain foods can be manipulated. That surprised me because I thought my food preferences were baked into my DNA. I once loved french fries with an almost insane passion. But after I started noticing how drained and useless I felt after eating simple carbs, french fries became easy to resist. Knowledge weaned me off french fries when willpower could not.

I also learned that I can remove problem foods from my diet if I target them for extinction one at a time. It was easy to stop eating three large Snickers every day (which I was doing) when I realized I could eat anything else I wanted whenever I wanted. I can give myself that kind of permission because I’ve trained myself to enjoy relatively healthy food and to always have it nearby.

If you’re on a diet, you’re probably trying to avoid certain types of food, but you’re also trying to limit your portions. Instead of waging war on two fronts, try allowing yourself to eat as much as you want of anything that is healthy. I think you’ll find that healthier food is almost self-regulating in the sense that you don’t have an insatiable desire to keep eating it the way you might with junk food. With healthy food, you tend to stop when you feel full. That has been my experience anyway. In my 20s I could snarf my way through an entire box of donuts. But not once have I eaten an apple — which I also enjoy — and started in on a second apple.

One of the biggest obstacles to healthy eating is the impression that healthy food generally tastes like cardboard. So consider making it a lifelong system to learn how to season and prepare healthy foods. If you know how to make your veggies taste great, it isn’t so hard to avoid junk food. Here again, knowledge replaces willpower.

It’s easy to spot the people who are trying to use willpower instead of knowledge to get healthier. They tend to say things like this:

My goal is to lose 10 pounds.

In my experience, the fittest people have systems, not goals, unless they are training for something specific. A sensible system is to continuously learn more about the science of diet and the methods for making healthy food taste great. With that system, weight management will feel automatic. Goals aren’t needed.

I’m limiting my portion size.

You only need to do that if you are eating the wrong foods. Eating half of your cake still keeps you addicted to cake. And portion control takes a lot of willpower. You’ll find that healthy food satisfies you sooner, so you don’t crave large portions.

I’m increasing my workout to lose a few pounds.

No one can exercise enough to overcome a bad diet. Diet is the right button to push for losing weight, so long as you are active. People who eat right and stay active usually have no problems with weight.

I’m doing the (whatever) diet or cleanse.

Following a diet is hard. A cleanse is even harder. It takes effort and willpower. You’re better off learning to eat right and letting that knowledge nudge you in the right direction over your lifetime.

Hop to it

Once you get your diet right, the next topic to tackle is exercise. I’m about to share with you the simplest and potentially most effective exercise plan in the world. Here it is:

Be active every day.

Under this system, anything that gets you up and moving counts. It doesn’t matter if you’re swimming, running or cleaning the garage. When you’re active, and you don’t overdo it, you’ll find yourself in a good mood afterward. That reward becomes addictive over time. You’ll be like Pavlov’s dogs, but conditioned to be active. After a few months of being moderately active every day, you’ll discover that it is harder to sit and do nothing than it is to get up and do something. That’s the frame of mind you want. You want exercise to become a habit with a reward so it evolves into a useful addiction. When that happens, you no longer need willpower to exercise.

It’s important to remember that the intensity of your workout has a surprisingly small impact on your weight unless you’re running half-marathons every week. If your diet is right, moderate exercise is all you need. Your natural impulse to seek variety and challenge will cause you to learn more about the best practices of exercise over your lifetime. The only thing you absolutely need to get right is the part about being active every day.

When I was in my 20s I enjoyed playing pick-up games of soccer on Sunday mornings. It was terrific exercise, but it left me so sore I couldn’t exercise for several days afterward. Whoever came up with the saying “No pain, no gain” hadn’t thought it through. For me, the pain kept me from gain. These days I simply stay active every day, without pain and without the need for willpower, and I’m in the best shape of my life at age 56.

You will be tempted to quibble with some of the things I said about diet and exercise. Don’t get hung up on the details, because science keeps changing what we think we know anyway. The important point is that there are simple ways to substitute knowledge for willpower so you can ease into healthier eating and an active lifestyle. When your body is feeling good, and you have some flexibility in your schedule, you’ll find that the petty annoyances that plague your life become nothing but background noise. And that’s a great launch pad for happiness.

As you find yourself getting healthier and happier, the people in your life will view you differently too. Healthy-looking people generally earn more money, get more offers and enjoy a better social life. All of that will help your happiness.

Keep in mind that happiness is a directional phenomenon. We feel happy when things are moving in the right direction no matter where we are at the moment. The homeless guy who finds a promising dumpster is happier in the moment than the billionaire who just lost $100 million on a bad investment. It’s the direction of your life — progress if you will — that influences happiness. When you are learning more about diet and exercise it will give you the sensation of progress and control over you destiny. And that feels good compared to losing ten pounds and gaining it back.

I’ll reiterate that you shouldn’t get your health information from cartoonists. I’m a simplifier, not a doctor. All I’m offering is the idea that happiness is more accessible if you replace willpower with knowledge and you replace short-term goals with lifelong systems.

Adams’s new book is “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life.”