"Nothing in excess": good advice? (Venue A: Caffè Nero)

THE VENUE: Caffè Nero

It's winter so we will meet indoors for the next few months.

When we meet indoors, we run the same event in two locations: Caffè Nero and Starbucks, so as to provide capacity for as many people who would like to attend, without overwhelming any one venue. Thus, there will be two events published, and you can choose which one to attend. Please don't sign up for both. This event is for the Nero location.

We meet upstairs at Caffè Nero. An organiser will be present from 10.45. We are not charged for use of the space so it would be good if everyone bought at least one drink.

An attendee limit has been set so as not to overwhelm the venue.

Etiquette
Our discussions are friendly and open. We are a discussion group, not a for-and-against debating society. But it helps if we try to stay on topic. And we should not talk over others, interrupt them, or try to dominate the conversation.

There is often a waiting list for places, so please cancel your attendance as soon as possible if you subsequently find you can't come.

WhatsApp groups
We have two WhatsApp groups. One is to notify events, including extra events such as meeting for a meal or a drink during the week which we don't normally put on the Meetup site. The other is for open discussion of whatever topics occur to people. If you would like to join either or both groups, please send a note of the phone number you would like to use to Richard Baron on: website.audible238@passmail.net. (This is an alias that can be discarded if it attracts spam, hence the odd words.)

THE TOPIC: "Nothing in excess": good advice?

My thanks to Richard for suggesting his week's topic and providing the introduction.

"Nothing in excess" was one of the pieces of advice inscribed at the entrance to the Oracle at Delphi. (We considered another piece of advice, "Know thyself", in October.)

Do we agree with the advice? Indeed, is it so wise that we should govern our December partying by reference to it?

In favour of the advice

It looks correct by definition. Excess is too much, and too much is more than one should have.

An excess of food, drink, or any other indulgence may be fun at the time, but there may be pain the morning after, or regret years later at long-term health consequences.

Excessive indulgence may distract us from opportunities to fulfil our potential. We only live once, we have to make trade-offs, and excess looks like it would often be the wrong trade-off.

There is often an appropriate measure of any characteristic or activity, not too little and not too much, that looks like the path to a flourishing life. Aristotle had a doctrine of the mean. In pleasures, be temperate: do not be insensible to them, but do not overdo them either.

Against the advice

There may be an important psychological and social role for going completely wild now and then. It lets us explore our limits, and learn something about what we (and our friends or colleagues) are really like. On the other hand, perhaps we should not go wild too often. Maybe the advice comes back in the form "Don't be excessive in the number of days of excess".

The argument that excess will be regretted the morning after, or years later, assumes a certain pattern of evaluation of what happens at different times. The future matters. But could we say that only the present mattered much, so that the future should be given very little weight?

There are some kinds of extreme that do not look excessive. Great dedication to a career, or a sport, or an intellectual pursuit, perhaps to the exclusion of most of the rest of life, can be the way to high achievement. But does this argument work only for extremes that lead to praiseworthy achievement, or could it be extended to becoming the world's greatest party animal?

What about excess that indirectly leads to achievement? Diogenes of Sinope lived disgracefully in a barrel and in excessive poverty, and became the leading emblem of the powerful philosophy of cynicism. Caravaggio lived a life of brawling and misbehaviour, and gave us paintings of genius. Baudelaire drank too much and gave us amazing poetry. Perhaps Nietzsche was right to emphasise the need for the wild Dionysian impulse, to be blended with the rational Apollonian impulse, if great art is to be produced.

Here is an article on the Dionysian and the Apollonian as seen by Nietzsche. He was particularly concerned with Greek tragedy, but we can apply the contrast much more widely than that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Tragedy