New year, new resolutions

With such ridiculously miserable rates of achievement, the logical question to ask isn8217;t how we can better reach our goals, but: Why do we even bother making them to begin with? Are we just hopelessly stupid?

It8217;s a journey of human optimism that originates in the subcortical structures of the brain. Those would be the regions that busy themselves with food and sex and fighting and smoking and saying yes to all the things that make us immediately feel good.

8220;We don8217;t typically think about other animals having self-control struggles,8221; says Angela Duckworth, a doctoral candidate who studies this issue at the University of Pennsylvania. 8220;Dogs don8217;t grapple with 8216;I want to do this but I shouldn8217;t.8217; 8221;

Well, the evolution of dogs pretty much stopped with the subcortex. Humans, on the other hand, went on to get a sophisticated frontal lobe, the brain area that controls reason and other higher order functions. 8220;That8217;s what says, 8216;I should eat whole wheat bran, not doughnuts,8217; 8221; says Duckworth.

Hence, the battle of the resolution. The older brain is strong and ingrained. But the newer part is what defines our humanity. At some deep level, says Duckworth, we realise that 8220;continual resolutions are better than none at all,8221; because they are what prevent us from losing all resolution, hauling off and eating until we throw up on the carpet. We make resolutions because they keep us human.

One day, we won8217;t eat the doughnuts at all. Hope springs eternal.

8220;Hope springs internal is more like it,8221; Lionel Tiger says coyly. Tiger is an evolutionary anthropologist at Rutgers University and the author of Optimism: The Biology of Hope.

Tiger8217;s research explores why people continue to make resolutions they won8217;t keep and think positively despite massively bumming contrary evidence. 8220;As hunter-gatherers, we had no choice but to be optimistic,8221; he says. 8220;We had to wake up each day and say, 8216;Boy, it8217;s a better day than usual to catch an antelope.8217; 8220; We had to say that every day, even when we8217;d eaten nothing but grass for three weeks. Optimism was around to counteract our own intelligence. If we didn8217;t overestimate our chances, we wouldn8217;t have even bothered to get out of the cave in the morning.

We make resolutions because they keep us alive.

8220;Human beings,8221; says Tiger, 8220;can8217;t afford to be too cynical about their own behavior.8221;

And New Year8217;s Day is the opposite of cynicism. Always has been, way back to the beginning of resolutions in ancient Babylon. On the Babylonian calendar, the new year coincided with planting season; farmers resolved to return all borrowed plows and such. Later, Romans embodied the fresh-start concept of the day with Janus from which we get January, the two-faced God who simultaneously looked forward and backward. One hoped the view ahead looked better than the one behind, and resolved to improve his own life.

We innately seek opportunities for fresh starts that are tied not to our own resolve but to the sun, the seasons, the calendar. New Year, New You and all that jazz. It8217;s why dieters write off a whole day after an Almond Joy for breakfast.

But here8217;s the thing about when we were making those Roman resolutions: We were drunk. We were all still a-stupor from our New Year8217;s Eve celebrations, jacked up on the Roman equivalent of tequila shots and holding our bellies from one of those binge-and-purge feasts.

It8217;s very similar to the Advil that marks New Year8217;s Day.

8220;People tend to make resolutions after periods of debauchery,8221; says George Loewenstein, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University.

Again with the cortices: 8220;The part of our brains that is uniquely human can recall past behavior,8221; says Loewenstein. 8220;But it8217;s very cognitive. . . . What it can8217;t do is remember what you felt like8221; the last time you broke your resolution. The desperation. The lack of dignity. The digging in the garbage for the used coffee filter.

We make these New Year8217;s pledges not because we forget that we8217;ve failed, but because we think we have outsmarted the failure 8212; that this time, we can do better. Tomorrow is another day! And so, resolutely, we resolve.