Am I Intemperate? 6-25-2010

Aristotle has me asking the above question. He describes the temperate person this way:

...He finds no intrinsic pleasure in any {bodily pleasures}, suffers no pain at their absence, and has no appetite for them, or only a moderate appetite, not to the wrong degree or at the wrong time or anything else at all of that sort.... Nicomachean Ethics, Book III Chapter 11 §8

Well, there are women (CC and KA and A) who do provoke carnal thoughts. (Do not worry, the youngest is 38.) Oh, well. Maybe that is what the proposed sentence of 151 months is actually for - instilling temperance into my life. 

About education and temperance, Aristotle wrote: 

... The [repeated] exercise of appetite increases the appetitie he already had from birth, and if the appetites are large and intense, they actually expel rational calculation. That is why appetites must be moderate and few, and never contrary to reason.... Nicomachean Ethics, Book III Chapter 12 §7

I say this points to a lifelong education. The education begins at home with the family and should continue through school and into the wider world until death. 

While the government considers me a particular sort of fiend, I can go days without sex when I could not go an hour without a cigarette. This was something I share with my father. Losing a lung finally got him to stop smoking. I have COPD. I suspect my lungs will stop some time during my 12 years in prison. Those are the breaks, folks.

sch

[And as my luck would have it, those lungs did not stop. I also notice I did not answer my question. Here is the answer from 2022: I was intemperate about work and money; to the point of being obsessive about money;tobacco was, as mentioned, an intemperance; the internet was another source of intemperance. I was inconsiderate towards women; they were an interesting entertainment, a diversion, from work. sch 12/19/22.]