So the mind-body problem has provided philosophers with fodder for rambling since... well, they began to ramble. Plato (with whom I have a somewhat difficult relationship) favoured the elevation of the rational mind over the sensory body, very roughly speaking. Most philosophers, with the exception of hedonists (who are fun, if you're in that sort of mood), tend to take a similar line. Listen to the mind, not the body.
However, this tends to create issues when your mind is as fucked up a place as mine happens to be. Hence the new strategy: listen to the body, because the mind has no idea what it's on about.
Take this afternoon, for instance.
Body: I'm hungry. Feed me.
Mind: What? You've had breakfast and lunch and a snack and even a naughty sweet. I can't feed you now, we need to save calories for later or we'll go over!
Body: But I'm hungry!
Mind: You just ate!
Body: But you only gave me a hundred and fifty calories. Zoom, it's gone.
Mind: Where? Why has it gone? Get a grip. If I feed you now, you'll be starving later when I'm trying to sleep and then neither of us will be happy. You don't need more calories, you've had plenty.
Body: I've had seven hundred. And you took me swimming for an hour this morning. And then walked me for three miles. And you want to take me dancing all this evening. I. Need. More. Food.
Mind: Why??
Body: Because you're starving me with your stubborn numerical obsession. Now shut up.
Mind: But-
Body: No. Really. Shut up. Go and buy me a sandwich.
So it turns out I should listen to my body more often. It talks more sense than I give it credit for.
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