Any reader of this blog (yes, you) will appreciate how important food is to me. Perhaps my desire to consume food is ultimately not good for me. Then again, the desire is there and it requires satisfying. Doing things that are not always good for you, or leastways not wholly good for you, is an interesting subject. People who suppose we have something called free will, and I think there are a lot of people who do suppose that, think that the answer is simple: don’t do things which are bad for you and do do things which are good for. Paradoxically, I think there is also a simple answer as to why people do things which are bad for them, and that is that their desire to do the “bad” thing, outweighs the desire to do the “good” thing. Then, when we add into the mix the notion (however debatable) that there is no free will, we can logically and reasonably assert that “desires” simply “occur” and we are not in control of that occurrence. The desires will ensure that we behave as those desires determine, irrespective of what may actually be in our best interest. Any current desire is a function of a lifetime of experiences, mixed with a heady cocktail of genetic material from our parents, which started our life off (and, as it happens, even those genes keep evolving and changing depending on various environmental factors). And, to assume “we” are responsible for that is clearly folly (blame the parents if you want, and they can blame their parents, and so on back to some amoeba, or Adam if you prefer, or God, if you want to blame someone of stature, however pointless that is). This, of course, does not mean that everything is hopeless and we should simply all give in, as it were, and declare that no-one is capable of doing anything other than capitulating to badly conceived desires, especially those which may result in harm to ourselves or others. Circumstances may well “occur” which counter unhelpful desires. So complex is our nature, that there are a myriad of reasons as to why we find that our innate self (notice I don’t say “soul”) contains within it other drivers which, given time and the right conditions, may conspire, as it were, to set us on a better, or more fruitful course of action. However, what I have concluded is that sentiments of pride, or shame, are illusory and we should not waste time dwelling on them from our own point of view, or equally importantly, from the point of view of sitting in judgement on others. How does this relate to the above breakfast, you may ask? Well, it may not look so healthy, but it actually represents a New Year’s resolution to, for one month only, exclusively consume a vegan diet. So, it can be said that whoever “I” am, then, at this moment, despite an ongoing desire to eat the finest bacon, or other fat-laced delicacies, I also possess a slightly superior desire to please my partner, and to prove to myself that I can avoid all meats and dairy produce for one month only. And this is where it starts, on New Year’s Day (another human construct, which I will debate on another day). Oh, and by the way, I am not doing this because it was my will to do it, but because that’s what my latest soft machine programme, updated by that fascinating mix of genes with the latest experiential input, has determined I must do.