Vice

This category is about the things we do to ourselves, the habits and compulsions and so-called vices, and what I have learned about them from observation and from life. Addiction, indulgence, the patterns people fall into, and the question of what a genuinely good life requires.

I have watched people wrestle with various vices, and I have done my own wrestling. What interests me is not moralizing about them but understanding them: why they take hold, what they offer, what they cost, and what actually helps a person move past the ones that are doing damage.

The posts here approach the subject plainly and without preaching. I am more interested in what is true about how these things work than in scoring easy points about willpower.