A plan for a living
The rise of Stoicism
Stoic psychological techniques
Stoic advice
Stoicism for modern lives
A Stoic reading program
A plan for a living
Our culture provides an endless stream of distractions so people won’t ever have time to think about their grand goal in living. If you lack a grand goal in living, your lack a coherent philosophy of life.
Without one, there is a danger that you will mislive.
Suppose you can identify your grand goal in living. If you lack an effective strategy for attaining your goal, it is unlikely that you will attain it. Thus, the second component of a philosophy of life is a strategy for attaining your grand goal in living.
The goal at the pinnacle of this hierarchy is the goal that we should be unwilling to sacrifice to attain other goals.
For almost everyone, the default philosophy of life is to spend one’s day seeking an interesting mix of affluence, social status, and pleasure. What might be called enlightened form of hedonism.
Stoicism and Zen have certain things in common. Both stress the importance of contemplating the transitory nature of the world around us and the importance of mastering desire, to the extent that it is possible to do so.
The goal of the Stoics was not to banish emotion from life but to banish negative emotions. Stoics were courageous, temperate, reasonable, and self-disciplined. They also thought important for us to fulfil our obligations and help our fellow humans.
We are unlikely to have a good and meaningful life unless we can overcome our insatiability. One wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have. To wish, if only for a time, to be the person we are, living the life we happen to be living.
The Stoic claim that many of the things we desire, most notably, fame and fortune, are not worth pursuing. That we should turn our attention to pursuit of tranquillity and what the Stoics called virtue. A state marked by the absence of negative emotions such as anger, grief, anxiety, and fear, and the presence of positive emotions, in particular joy.
We should distinguish between things we can control and things we can’t, so that we will no longer worry about the things we can’t control. Also to practice Stoic techniques to prevent people from upsetting us.
Finally we will become a more thoughtful observer of our own life, trying to identify the sources of distress in our life and thinking about how to avoid that distress.
The practice of Stoicism doesn’t require us to set aside blocks of time. It does require some periods of reflection but they can be fitted into odd moments of the day like while being stuck in traffic, or lying in bed waiting for sleep to come.
On assessing the “costs” of practising Stoicism you should realise the costs associated with not having a philosophy of life. The danger that you will spend your days pursuing valueless things and will therefore waste your life.
The rise of Stoicism
Philosophy takes an interest in life
Before Socrates, philosophers where primarily interested in explaining the world around them and the phenomena of the world, doing science. Although Socrates studied science as a young man, he focused his attention on the human condition.
In Greece and Rome, the rise of democracy meant that those who were able to persuade others were most likely to have successful careers in politics or law. Parents sought teachers who could develop their child’s persuasive ability.
Parents might have sought the services of sophists, whose goal was to teach pupils to win arguments.
Alternatively, parents might have sought the services of a philosopher. Philosophers taught persuasive techniques, but unlike sophists, they eschewed appeals to emotion. Besides teaching their pupils how to persuade, they should teach them how to live well.
Philosophers acted as live-in tutors. Parents who would not afford a private tutor would have sent their sons to a school of philosophy.
Most religions, after telling followers what they must do to be morally upstanding and get into heaven, leave to people to determine what things in life are and aren’t worth pursuing.
This is why the followers of the various religions, despite the differences in their beliefs, end up with the same impromptu philosophy of life, namely, a form of enlightened hedonism. Similar jobs, similar career ambitions, same degree of whatever consumer products are currently in vogue.
Early Stoics were interested not only in philosophy of life, but in physics and logic as well, they though these areas of study were inherently entwined.
There were other schools like the Cereniacs, that thought the grand goal in living was the experience of pleasure and therefore advocated taking advantage of every opportunity to experience it. Or the Cynics, who advocated for an ascetic lifestyle: If you want good life, you must learn to want next to nothing. Stoics fell somewhere in between. People should enjoy the good things life has to offer, including friendship and wealth, but ony if they did not cling to these good things.
The first stoics
Zeno of Citium (333-261 BC) was the first Stoic. Zeno’s father was a merchant of purple dye. As a result of shipwreck, Zeno found himself in Athens and took advantages of the philosophical resources of the city. Became the pupil of Crates the Cynic.
The Cynics had little interest in philosophical theorising. They advocated for a rather extreme philosophical lifestyle. The ancient equivalent of what we today call the homeless.
Zeno decided that he was more interested in theory than Crates was. Combining lifestyle with theory, the way Socrates had done.
He went off to study with Stilpo, of the Megarian school. He also studied Polemo at the Academy and around 300 BC, he started his own school of philosophy. He had a mixed lifestyle advice of Crates with theoretical philosophy of Polemo. He incorporated the Megarian school’s interest in logic and paradoxes.
His followers were called Zenonians, but because he was in the habit of giving his lectures in the Stoa Pikile, the became know as the Stoics.
One thing that made Stoicism attractive was its abandonment of Cynic asceticism: The Stoics favoured a lifestyle that, although simple, allowed creature comforts.
Those who studied Stoicism started with logic, moved onto physics, and ended up with ethics. Their interest in logic was a consequence of their belief that man’s distinguishing feature is his rationality. Logic, after all, is the study of proper use of reasoning
Students would sharpen their skills of persuasion by learning logic.
Students doubtless appreciated explanations of the would around them and that’s why the studied physics too.
Stoic ethics in contrast, is what is called eudaemonistic ethics. It is concerned not with moral right and wrong but with having a “good spirit”, that is, with living a good, happy life.
Many readers will equate having a good life with making a good living, like having a high-paying job. Stoics tho, thought it possible for someone to have a bad life, despite making a very good living.
Stoics would seek “virtue” in order to have a good life. But in modern days, “virtue” invites misunderstanding. What Stoics referred with “virtue” meant their excellence as human beings. To live as we were designed to live, in accordance with nature. Were were designed to be reasonable.
Since nature intended to us to be social creatures, we have duties to our fellow men.
The primary ethical goal of the Greek Stoics was the attainment of virtue. The Roman Stoics retained this goal, advancing a second goal: the attainment of tranquillity. Stoic tranquillity was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.
For Roman Stoics, the goals of attaining tranquillity and attaining virtue were connected, as serenity is the result at which virtue aims.
Attainment of tranquillity will help us pursue virtue. Someone who is distracted by negative emotions such as anger or grief, might find it difficult to do what his reason tells him to do. The pursuit of virtue results in a degree of tranquillity, which in turn makes it easier for us to pursue virtue.
Roman Stoics has less confidence than the Greeks in the power of pure reason to motivate people. They concluded that by sugar-coating virtue with tranquillity, they would make Stoic doctrines more attractive to ordinary Romans. There is also a possibility that by accentuating tranquillity in their philosophy, might have been trying to attract students away from the Epicureans. People don’t need to be convinced of the value of tranquillity.
Roman Stoicism
Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius were all Roman Stoics. Seneca was the best writer. Musonius offered advice on how practising Stoics should eat, wear, behave toward their parents or even how to have sex. Epictetus specialty was analysis, and explained why practising Stoicism can bring us tranquillity. Marcus’s Meditations searches Stoic solutions to problems of daily life.
Epictetus told his students that a Stoic school should be like a physician’s consulting room and that patients should leave feeling bad rather than feeling good. He invited his audience to examine themselves.
Marcus observed, in his Meditations, that “the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing”.
The unpopularity of Stoicism among modern individuals could be cause of these same individuals rarely see the need to adopt a philosophy of life. They tend to spend their days working hard to be able to afford the latest consumer gadget, in the resolute belief that if only they buy enough stuff, they will have a life that is both meaningful and maximally fulfilling.
Stoic psychological techniques
Negative visualisation. What’s the worst that can happen?
By asking us this question we may prevent things from happening.
If we think about these things, we will lessen their impact on us when, despite our efforts, they happen. Misfortune weighs most on those who “expect nothing but good fortune”.
If we go around assuming that we will always be able to enjoy the things we value, we will likely find ourselves subject to considerable distress when the things we value are taken from us.
We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. This is called hedonic adaptation.
Hedonic adaptation happens with consumer purchases or even our relationships. Once people fulfil a desire for something, they adapt to its presence in their life and as a result stop desiring it.
One key to happiness, is to forestall the adaptation process: We need to take steps to prevent ourselves form taking for granted. We need a technique for creating in ourselves a desire for the things we already have, to learn how to want those things.
Stoics recommend that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value, negative visualisation. To periodically stop to reflect on the possibility that this enjoyment will come to an end. If nothing else, our own death will end it.
Besides contemplating the death of relatives, the Stoics think we should spend time contemplating the loss of friends, to death, perhaps, or to falling-out.
Among the deaths, we should contemplate our own, to live each day as if it were the last. Periodically reflecting on the fact that we will not live forever. Instead of converting us into hedonists, will make us appreciate how wonderful it is that we are alive and have the opportunity to fill this day with activity.
The Stoics goal is not to change our activities but to change our state of mind as we carry out those activities. As we think about and plan for tomorrow, to remember to appreciate today.
Doing so can dramatically enhance our enjoyment of life.
We should also contemplate the loss of our possessions. Spend time thinking of all the things we have and reflecting on how much we would miss them if they were not ours.
Stoics are by no means in favour of keeping people in state of subjugation. They would work to improve their external circumstances, but suggest things they could do to alleviate their misery until those circumstances are improved.
The regular practice of negative visualisation has the effect of becoming full-blown optimists.
We often see an optimist as somebody that sees the glass half full rather than half empty. A Stoic would not only appreciate that the glass is half full, but also express delight on having a glass at all. Things would not have to stop there, a Stoic could even appreciate how great glass vessels are, they are cheap, durable, and impart no taste. What a miracle!
Hedonic adaptation has the power to extinguish our enjoyment of the world. To take things for granted rather than delighting in them.
There are people who seem proud of their inability to take delight in the world around them. They’ve got the idea that by refusing to take delight in the world, they are demonstrating their emotional maturity. It’s foolish to spend your life in a state of dissatisfaction when satisfaction lies within your grasp, if only you will change your mental outlook.
We can practice negative visualisation by paying attention to the bad things that happen to other people. We can imagine that the bad things that happen to us happened instead to others (projective visualisation). Imagine someone breaks one of our cups, instead of getting angry, imagine how would you react if the cup wasn’t yours and you wanted to calm down the host.
It is a mistake to think Stoics will spend all their time contemplating catastrophes. It is instead something they do periodically: A few times each day or a few times each week a Stoic will pause enjoyment of life to think about how all this, all these things that enjoy, could be taken away.
Furthermore, there is a difference between contemplating something bad happening and worrying about it. Contemplation is an intellectual exercise that we can conduct without affecting our emotions.
Periodic episodes of grief are part of the human condition.
At the same time as the practice of negative visualisation is helping us appreciate the world, it is preparing us for changes in that world.
Enjoy what we have without clinging to it. By practicing negative visualisation, we cannot only increase our chances of experiencing joy but increase the chance that the joy we experience will be durable, that will survive changes in our circumstances.
We need to keep firmly in mind that everything we value and the people we love will someday be lost to us.
If we think about things that happen for the last time, knowing that things cannot be repeated, they will likely become extraordinary events.
By contemplating the impermanence of everything in the world, we are forced to recognise that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent.
The dichotomy of control. On becoming invincible
Give up the rewards the external world has to offer in order to gain “tranquillity, freedom and calm”.
Almost every philosopher and religious thinker agree that if what you seek is contentment, it is better an easier to change yourself and what you want that it is to change the world around you.
If you refuse to enter contests that you are capable of losing, you will never lose a contest.
Wanting things that are not up to us will disrupt our tranquillity. If we don’t get what we want, we will upset, and if we do get what we want, we will experience anxiety in the process of getting it.
Consider winning a tennis match. No matter how much you practice and how much hard you try, you might nevertheless lose a match. You have some control, but not complete control.
Epictetus’s dichotomy of control as a trichotomy: There are things over which we have complete control, things over which we have no control at all, and things over which we have some but no complete control.
Epictetus claims that we have complete control over our opinions, impulses, desires, and aversions. However, he may be wrong, we may have no control over a spontaneous desire, but we have control on how do we decide to act. These things belong to things over which we have some but not complete control.
We have complete control over the goals we set for ourselves. Obviously we don’t have complete control over whether we achieve any of them.
We have complete control over our core values.
We also have complete control over our opinions, as our opinions are “up to us”.
The reward for choosing our goals and values properly can be enormous. We have it in our power to assign value to things, we have it in our power to live a good life.
We have complete control over our character. We are the only ones who can stop ourselves from attaining goodness and integrity. There is nothing stopping us cultivating sincerity, dignity, industriousness, and sobriety; nor is anything to stop us from takings steps to curb our arrogance, stop lusting after popularity, and to control our temper, to stop grumbling and to be considerate and frank.
On the things we have no control at all, it would be foolish to spend time and energy concerning ourselves with such things.
Along these lines, people might conclude that Stoics will be passive, withdrawn under-achievers; depressed individuals who might not even be able to rouse themselves from bed in the morning. This is a misinterpretation of Stoic principles, more to follow.
The things over which we have complete control are the goals we set for ourselves. Be careful to set internal rather than external goals. A goal for playing tennis won’t be winning a match (external), but to play to the best of our ability in the match (internal). Since our goal wasn’t winning the match, we will not have failed as long as we played our best.
Playing to our best of our ability in a tennis match, and winning a tennis match are causally connected. The Stoics realised that our internal goals will affect our external performance. With the goal of winning, we arguably don’t increase our chances of winning.
Epictetus’s advice
We should concern ourselves with the things over we have complete control. For example, the goals we set for ourselves and the values we form.
We should not concern ourselves with the things over which we have no control at all. For example, whether the sun will rise tomorrow
We should concern ourselves with the things which we have some but not complete control, but we should be careful to internalise the goals we form with respect to them. For example, whether we win while playing tennis.
It might be possible for someone, by spending enough time practicing goal internalisation, to develop the ability not to look beyond their internalised goals. Even if the internalisation process is a mind game, it is a useful mind game.
Now that we understand the technique of internalising our goals, we can explain what seems a paradoxical behaviour for Stoics. Although Stoics value tranquillity, they feel duty-bound to be active participants in the society in which they live. But such participation clearly puts their tranquillity in jeopardy.
Stoics goal was not to change the world, but to do their best to bring about certain changes. Even if their efforts proved to be ineffectual, they could nevertheless rest easy knowing that they had accomplished their goal: That had done what they could do.
Fatalism. Letting go of the past… and the present
One way to preserve our tranquillity, is to take a fatalistic attitude toward the things that happen to us. According to Epictetus, we should keep firmly in mind that we are merely actors in a play written by someone else, the Fates. Regardless of the role we are assigned, we must play it to the best of our ability. Rather than wanting events to conform to our desires, make our desires conform to events.
To do otherwise is to rebel against nature, and such rebellions are counter-productive, if what we seek is a good life. We must learn to adapt ourselves to the environment into which fate has placed us and do our best to love the people with whom fate has surrounded us. We must learn to welcome whatever falls to our lot and persuade ourselves that whatever happens to us is for the best.
The ancients were not fatalistic about the future. Stoics did not sit around apathetically, resigned to whatever the future held in store; to the contrary, they spent their days working to affect the outcome of future events.
We need to distinguish between fatalism with respect of the future and fatalism with respect to the past.
Stoics advice us to be fatalistic with respect to the past, to keep firmly in mind that the past cannot be changed.
Stoics also advocate fatalism with respect to the present. We cannot, through our actions, affect the present, if by the present we mean this very moment. As soon as I act to affect what is happening right now, that moment in time will have slipped into the past and therefore cannot be affected.
Stoics were advising us to be fatalistic, not with respect to the future but with respect to the past and present. Making us learn to be happy with whatever we’ve got.
We can either spend this moment wishing it could be different, or we can embrace this moment. With the former, we will spend much of our life in a state of dissatisfaction; if we habitually do the latter, we will enjoy life.
We cannot concern ourselves with things over which we have no control. We have no control over the past; nor we have any control over the present. Therefore, we are wasting our time if we worry about pas or present events.
We can engage in negative visualisation to reverse it’s effect: Instead of thinking about how our situation could be worse, we refuse to think about how it could be better. It will make our current situation, whatever it may be, more tolerable.
People may worry that the practice of Stoicism will lead to complacency, to be terribly unambitious. But this was not the case for Seneca, Musonious Rufus, Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius that ended up ruling the Roman Empire. They would have been satisfied with next to nothing, but they strove for something nevertheless.
Stoic philosophy, while teaching us to be satisfied with whatever we’ve got, also counsels to seek certain things in life, like striving ot become better people (virtuous) or to do our social duty.
Stoics won’t seek fame and fortune, they thought they had no real value and consequently thought it foolish to pursue them.
It’s interesting how Stoics like Seneca and Marcus were wealthy and famous, and Musonious and Epictetus renown because of their philosophic schools. People who thought not seeking success, nevertheless gained it.
Self-denial. On dealing with the dark side of pleasure
Seneca recommends that besides contemplating bad things happening, we should sometimes live as if they had happened. Like instead of merely thinking about what it would be like to lose our wealth, we should periodically “practice poverty”.
Stoics didn’t inflict this discomforts to punish themselves; rather. they did to increase their enjoyment of life. They welcomed a voluntarily degree of discomfort in their life.
This also helps us harden ourselves against misfortunes that might befall us in the future, like a vaccine.
A person who periodically experiences minor discomforts will grow confident that he can withstand major discomforts as well, so the prospect of experiencing such discomforts at some future will not, at present, be a source of anxiety for him.
This technique helps us appreciate what we already have. Someone who tries to avoid all discomforts is less likely to be comfortable than someone who periodically embraces discomfort.
Besides periodically engage ourselves in acts of voluntarily discomfort, we should periodically forgo opportunities to experience pleasure. Seneca warns us that intense pleasure, when captured by us, become our captors.
Stoics reveal their Cynic bloodlines. Diogenes de Cynic argues that the most important battle any person has to fight is the battle against pleasure.
There are some pleasures, from which we should always abstain. In particular the ones that can capture us in a single encounter, like drugs.
Stoics do also recommend sometimes to abstain from other, relatively harmless pleasures like a couple of wine in order to learn self-control.
If we cannot resist pleasures, we will end up playing, Marcus says, the role of the slave.
Stoics see nothing wrong with enjoying the pleasures to be derived form friendship, family life, a meal, or even wealth, but they counsel us to be circumspect in our enjoyment of these things. There is a danger we cling to things we enjoy, we should follow Epictetus’s advice and be on guard.
Self-denial technique is doubtless the hardest to practice. It won’t be fun saying no to things we enjoy.
Stoics can transform themselves into individuals remarkable for their courage and self-control. It might not be obvious, but abstaining from pleasure can itself be pleasant, we can praise ourselves for doing so.
Meditation. Watching ourselves practice Stoicism
Periodically meditate on the events of daily living, how we responded to these events, and how, in accordance with Stoic principles, we should have responded them.
Did someone disrupt my tranquillity? Did we experience anger? Envy? Lust? Why did the day’s event upset myself? Is there something I could have done to avoid getting upset?
Epictetus suggests that as we go about our daily business, we should simultaneously play the roles of participant and spectator. Marcus advises us to examine each thing we do, determine our motives for doing it, and consider the value of whatever it was we were trying to accomplish. We should continually ask whether we are being governed by our reason or by something else. We should likewise be careful observers of the actions of other people. We can learn, after all, from their mistakes and their successes.
Judge our progress as Stoics. We will notice that our relations with other people have changed. Our feelings aren’t hurt when others tell us that we know nothing. We will shrug off their insults and slights. We will also shrug of any praise they might direct our way. Epictetus thinks the admiration of other people is negative barometer of our progress as Stoics.
We will stop blaming, censuring, and praising others; stop boasting about ourselves and how much we know; we will blame ourselves, not external circumstances, when our desires are thwarted. We will find that we have fewer desires than we did before.
Zeno suggested we will stop having dreams in which we take pleasure in disgraceful things.
Our philosophy will consist on actions rather than words. What matters is our ability to live in accordance with Stoic principles.
The most important sign is a change in our emotional life. We will have fewer negative emotions, less time wishing things could be different and more time enjoying things as they are. We will have a degree of tranquillity that our life previously lacked. We will discover also little outburst of joy: We will, out of the blue, feeling delighted to be the person we are, living the life we are living, in the universe we happen to inhabit.
Seneca takes his progress to be adequate as long as “every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes”.
Stoic advice
Duty. On loving mankind
Stoics counsel us not to seek fame and fortune, since doing so will likely disrupt our tranquillity.
We will find that other people are the source of some of the greatest delights life has to offer, including love and friendship. But we will also discover that they are the cause of the most of negative emotions we experience.
Even wen other people don’t do anything to us, they can disrupt our tranquillity.
Stoics thought that man is by nature a social animal and therefore that we have a duty to form and maintain relationships with other people, despite the trouble they might cause us.
Our primary function is to be rational. To discover our secondary functions, we need to apply our reasoning ability. We were designed to live among other people and interact with them in a manner that is mutually advantageous. “Fellowship is the purpose behind our creation”. A person who performs well the function of man will be both rational and social.
Marcus goal was “the service and harmony of all”, more precisely “to be bound to do good to fellow-creatures and bear with them”.
We cannot simply avoid dealing with annoying people, even though doing so would make our own life easier. We should confront them and work for the common welfare.
What motivate most of us to do our duty is the fear that we will be punished if we don’t. What motivated Marcus tho, was not fear of punishment but the prospect of reward, something far better than thanks, admiration, or sympathy: experience tranquillity and have all things to our liking, a good life
Throughout the millennia and across cultures, those who have thought carefully about desire have drawn the conclusion that spending our days working to get whatever it is we find ourselves wanting is unlikely to bring us either happiness or tranquillity.
Social relations. On dealing with other people
Stoics are faced with a dilemma, associate with other people at the risk of having their tranquillity disturbed by them; or avoid people failing to do their social duty to maintain relationships.
There will be time when we must associate with annoying, misguided, or malicious people in order to work for common interests. We can, however, be selective about whom we befriend.
We should seek as friend, people who share our (proper Stoic) values and in particular, people who are doing a greater job than we are of living in accordance with these values.
Vices, Seneca warns, are contagious. Avoid people who are simply whiny, people who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint, it foes our tranquillity.
We should be selective too about which social functions we attend, Epictetus advises us to avoid banquets given by non-philosophers.
People tend to talk about things like gladiators, horse races, athletes, eating and drinking, and most of all, about other people. Epictetus advises us to be silent or to have few words, or to divert the talk to something appropriate.
When interacting with annoying people, we should keep in mind that there are people who also find us to be annoying. Be more empathetic to individuals faults and therefore become more tolerant with them. By letting ourselves become annoyed, we only make things worse.
Lessen the negative impact other people have on our life by controlling our thoughts about them. Do not think about what other people are thinking except when we must do so in order to serve public interest.
People do not choose to have the faults they do, it is therefore inevitable that some people will be annoying.
Marcus, advocates for social fatalism, that we should operate on the assumption that they are fated to behave in a certain way. It is pointless to wish they could be less annoying. “This mortal life endures but a moment” to be concerned with such things.
Some of our most important relationships are with members of the opposite sex. Musonious says that will not have sex outside of marriage and within marriage will have it only for the purpose of having children; to have sex in other circumstances suggests lack of self-control.
Marcus offers us a technique for discovering the true value of things: Analyse them into the elements that compose it. We would be foolish to place a high value on sexual relations and more foolish still to disrupt our life in order to experience such relations.
Musonious claims that few people are happier than a person who has both a loving spouse and devoted children.
Insults. On putting up with put-downs
Insults not only about verbal abuse, but also “insults by omission” or physical insults like a slap. People tend to be exquisitely sensitive to insults.
When insulting people typically become angry. There are strategies to prevent insults from angering us. Pause, when insulted, to consider whether what the insulter said is true. If it is, there is little reason to be upset.
Pause to consider how well-informed the insulter is. He might just simply be reporting how things seem to him, if incorrect, we should calmly set him straight.
Consider the source of an insult. If we respect the source, if we value his opinions, then his critical remarks shouldn’t upset me.
If we don’t respect the source of an insult, rather than feeling hurt by his insults, I should feel relieved: If he disapproves of what I am doing, then what I am doing is doubtless the right thing to do. The most appropriate comment would be “I’m relieved you feel that way”.
Those people who insult, have deeply flawed characters. Rather than deserving our anger, deserve our pity.
Wile progressing in Stoicism we will become increasingly indifferent to other people’s opinions of us. We will feel no sting when they insult us, like the barking of a dog.
We ourselves are the source of any sting that accompanies the insult. If we can convince ourselves that a person has done no harm by insulting us, his insults will carry no sting.
Our values are things over which we have complete control. If something external harms us, is our own fault: We should have adopted different values.
A wonderful way to respond to an insult is with humour. Self-deprecating humour can be particularly effective. By laughing off an insult, we are implying that we don’ take the insulter and his insults seriously. Insult the insulter without directly doing so is far more effective than a counter-insult would be.
The problem with answering with humour is that requires both wit and presence of mind, so a second way to respond to insults is with no response at all. The advantage is that it requires no thought on our part.
A non-response can be quite disconcerting to the insulter, we are robbing him of the pleasure of having upset us, and he is likely to be upset as a result. We simply don’t have time for the childish behaviour of this person.
There are times when it is appropriate for us to respond vigorously to an insult. Some insulters might be encouraged by our jokes or silence and might start with an endless stream of insults.
In some cases, we want to admonish or punish the person who childishly insults us. If a student insults her teacher in front of the class, the teacher would be unwise to ignore the insult.
You would punish the insulter not because he has wronged her, but to correct his improper behaviour.
Political correctness movement has some untoward side effects. By protecting disadvantaged individuals from insults will tend to make them hypersensitive to insults. They will come to believe that they are powerless to deal with insults on their own.
The best way to deal with insults directed at the disadvantaged, Epictetus (born lame and slave) would argue, is to teach members of disadvantaged groups techniques of insult self-defence.
Grief. On vanquishing tears with reason
The belief that Stoics never grieve, is mistaken. Grief emotions are an emotional reflex. But there are some strategies by which we can prevent ourselves from experiencing excessive grief.
The primary grief-prevention strategy is to engage with negative visualisation. By contemplating the deaths of those we love we will remove some of the shock we experience if they die. Rather than mourning the end of their lives, we should be thankful that we they lived at all.
This may be called retrospective negative visualisation. We imagine never having had something that we have lost. We replace our feelings of regret, with feelings of thanks.
Epictetus advises us to take care not to “catch” the grief of others. We should display sings of grief without allowing ourselves to experience grief.
Grief is a negative emotion and therefore one that we should, to the extent possible, avoid experiencing. Our goal should be to help people overcome grief. “Catching” other’s grief won’t help anybody but will hurt us.
Anger. On overcoming anti-joy
If we let it, it can destroy our tranquillity. Anger, says Seneca is “brief insanity”. We live in a world in which there is so much to be angry about, that unless we can learn to control our anger, we will perpetually angry. A waste of precious time.
Some people claim that anger can help us to be motivated. Seneca rejects this claim, after we turn it on we will be unable to turn it off. Whatever good it initially does, it will offset the harm it subsequently does.
Shouldn’t somebody that sees his father killed and mother raped feel angry? Not at all, but most probably he will probably do a better job of punishing and protecting if he can avoid getting angry. We are punishing people not as retribution, but for their own good, to deter them from doing again.
There are individuals that are incapable of changing their behaviour, then it does not make sense to become actually angry. Although Seneca rejects the idea of allowing ourselves to become angry and disrupt our tranquillity, he is open to the idea of pretending to be angry to motivate others (feign anger).
To prevent anger we should fight our tendency to believe the worst about others and our tendency to jump to conclusions about their motivations.
If we are overly sensitive, we will be quick to anger. Seneca advises us to never get too comfortable. That the reason for things to be seen as unbearable is not because they are hard but because we are soft. If we harden ourselves in this manner, we are much less likely to be disrupted.
Humour can be used to prevent ourselves from becoming angry. Think of the bad things that happen to us as being funny rather than outrageous.
Contemplate the impermanence of the world around us. Many of the things we think are important in fact aren’t. When we feel ourselves getting angry about something, we should pause to consider its cosmic (in)significance.
When angry, we should force ourselves to relax our face, soften our voice, and slow our pace of walking. Our internal state will soon come to resemble our external state. Buddhists when experiencing anger, force themselves to think about love. Two opposite thoughts cannot exist in one mind at the same time.
If we find ourselves battering whoever angered us, we should apologise. This can almost instantly repair the social damage and can prevent us from subsequently obsessing over the thing that made us angry, we do also lessen the chance that we will make mistakes again in the future.
Personal values. On seeking fame
Fame comes at a price, you’d be much better off if you’d be indifferent to social status.
Stoics value their freedom, they are reluctant to do anything that wil give others power over them. If we seek social status, we give other people power over us. Since we make it our goal to please others, we will no longer be free to please ourselves. We will have enslaved ourselves.
To retain freedom while dealing with other people we should remain indifferent to what they think of us. We should be as dismissive of their approval as we are of their disapproval. When others praise us, the proper response is to laugh at them says Epictetus.
Marcus claims that seeking immortal fame is an “empty, hollow thing”. Since we are dead, we will not be able to enjoy our fame. It would be foolish to think that future generations will praise us, when we find it so difficult to praise our contemporaries. We should concern ourselves with our present situation.
In order to win the admiration of people, we will have to avoid their values. We should stop to ask whether their notion of success is compatible with ours, if they are gaining the tranquillity we seek.
Another way to overcome our obsession with winning the admiration of other people is to go out of our way to do things likely to trigger their disdain. Cato made a point of ignoring the dictates of fashion. To trigger the disdain of other people simply so you could practice ignoring their disdain.
Fear of failure significantly constraints our freedom, so we even avoid attempting something to avoid the risk of public humiliation.
Many people will want you to fail in your undertakings, as your success makes them look bad and uncomfortable. If you can succeed, why can’t they?
Work on becoming indifferent to that others think about you.
Ironically by refusing to seek the admiration of other people you may actually succeed in gaining admiration. For many people indifference ot public opinion is a sign of self-confidence.
Personal values. On luxurious living
People typically value wealth. The material goods our wealth can buy us will win the admiration of other people and thereby confer us a degree of fame. Wealth shouldn’t be worth pursuing either.
Possessing wealth won’t enable to live without sorrow and won’t console us in our old age. It can never bring us contentment or banish our grief. Not needing wealth is more valuable than wealth itself.
People use their wealth to finance a luxurious lifestyle, one that will win them the admiration of others.
There is a danger that if we are exposed to luxurious lifestyle, we will lose our ability to take delight in simple things.
When people become hard to please a curious things happens, they take pride in their newly gained inability to enjoy anything but “the best”. These individuals have a seriously impaired their ability to enjoy life. Stoics value highly their ability to enjoy ordinary life.
Musonious advocated a simple diet. Best to eat foods that needed little preparation; to avoid meat, a food more appropriate for wild animals. To choose food “not for pleasure but for nourishments”. Rather than living to eat, we should eat to live.
We should guard against acquiring a taste for delicacies, it will be difficult to stop. The more often we are tempted by a pleasure, the more danger there is that we wil succumb to it.
We should favour simple clothing, housing, and furnishings. Dress to protect our bodies, not to impress other people. Our housing should be functional: It should do little more than keep out extreme heat and cold.
People who achieve luxurious lifestyles are rarely satisfied: Experiencing luxury only whets their appetite for even more luxury. Luxuries are not a natural desire. Natural desires like water when we are thirsty, can be satisfied; unnatural desires cannot.
Luxury promotes vices, it makes us want things that are inessential, then we want things that are injurious.
If we forgo luxurious living, we will find that our needs are easily met. Life’s necessities are cheap and easily obtainable.
Learn to restrain luxury, cultivate frugality, and “view poverty with unprejudiced eyes”. The lifestyle of a Stoic should be between that of a sage and that of an ordinary person.
One person’s being richer than another does not mean that the first person is better than the other. Lao Tzu observed that “he who knows contentment is rich”.
Even though Stoics don’t pursue wealth, it might nevertheless acquire it. Stoics might be quite effective helping others, and they might reward them for doing so. Practice of Stoicism may be financially rewarding.
As an example, a Stoic is likely to retain a large portion of income and might thereby become wealthy (prosperity paradox).
Stoicism does not require to renounce wealth; it’s allowed to enjoy it and use it to the benefit of yourself and those around you. We should keep firmly in mind that our wealth can be snatched from us, so we should prepare for the loss of it. Keep in mind that enjoyment of wealth can undermine our character and our capacity to enjoy life, so is recommended to steer clear of a luxurious lifestyle.
It’s perfectly acceptable to acquire wealth, as long as you do not harm others to obtain it. It is also acceptable to enjoy it as long as you don’t cling to it. It is possible to enjoy something and at the same time be indifferent to it.
Musonious and Epictetus thought that even an minimal exposure to luxurious living would corrupt us, while Seneca and Marcus thought it possible ot live in a palace without being corrupted.
Stoics would have been more wary of enjoying fame than enjoying fortune. The danger that fame will corrupt us, is even greater, as it trigger in us a desire for even more fame, saying things and living in a manner calculated to gain the admiration of other people.
At the same time Stoics avoid enjoying the fame it comes their way, they will not hesitate to use this fame as a tool in the performance of what they take to be their social duty.
Exile. On surviving a change of place
Exile is nothing but a change of place. Even in the worst places of exile, the exiled person will find people who are there of their own free will.
Seneca says that even depriving oneself from his country, friends and family, and his property, one keeps the things that matter the most: his place in Nature and his virtue.
Musonious thinks that exile deprives a person of nothing that is truly valuable.
Old age. On being banished to a nursing home
Twentysomethings aren’t willing to settle for “mere tranquillity”, for them Stoicism may sound like a philosophy for losers.
In extreme cases, young people harbour a profound sense of entitlement. When the path they have chosen gets bumpy and rutted, or even becomes impassible, they are astonished. When the world does not hand them fame and fortune on a silver platter, they realise that they must work to get it.
When we are young we might have wondered what it would be like to be old. A day will come when we won’t need to wonder or imagine what it would be like to be old; we will know full well.
We might find ourselves banished to a nursing home. Although our new environment is physically comfortable, it is likely to be quite challenging socially.
Faced with the death, we might finally be willing to settle for “mere tranquillity”, and we might, as a result, be ripe for Stoicism.
The downside of failing to develop an effective philosophy of life: you end up wasting the one life you have.
Seneca argues, old age has its benefits. Consider lust, the desire for sexual gratification is a major distraction in daily living. As we age, our feelings of lust and the state of distraction that accompanies them diminish.
By causing our bodies to deteriorate, old age causes our vices and their accessories to decay. The same ageing process needn’t cause our mind ot decay.
When we are old, we know full well that we will die soon.
Stoics thought the prospect of death could make our days far more enjoyable. In our youth, it takes effort to contemplate our own death; in our later years, it takes to void contemplating it. Old age therefore has a way of making us do something that, we should have been doing all along.
Stoicism is particularly well suited to our later years. Old people are more likely than young people to value the tranquillity offered by Stoics.
Stoicism is the best way to prepare for old age.
Dying. On a good end to a good life
Both young and old people are disturbed by the prospect of dying. Some are disturbed what might come after death, many more thought they fear that they have mislived.
Having a coherent philosophy of life can make us more accepting of death.
When Stoics contemplate their own death, it is not because they long for death but because they want to get the most out of life.
Stoics thought suicide was permissible only under certain circumstances. It is wrong for us to choose to die if our living “is helpful to many”. To choose a good death at our own hands or a pointlessly painful death through natural processes. Musonious counsel us to end that good life with a good death, when it is possible to do so.
On becoming stoic. Start now and prepare to be mocked
Practicing Stoicism won’t be easy. It will take effort, such abandon the attainment of fame and fortune, and replace them with a new goal, namely, the attainment of tranquillity.
Although it indeed takes effort to practice Stoicism, it will require considerable more effort not to practice it.
Having a philosophy of life can dramatically simplify everyday living. Decision making is relative straightforward, after all, it is hard to know what to choose when you aren’t really sure what you want.
You will be likely be mocked. So it may be a good idea to keep a low philosophical profile and practice what may be called stealth Stoicism.
People that adopt a philosophy of life are usually mocked because by adopting Stoicism, people are demonstrating that they have different values that others do, challenging their surroundings to do something they are probably reluctant to do.
The reward for practising Stoicism is to experience fewer negative emotions, such as anger, grief, disappointment, and anxiety; and as a result enjoy a degree of tranquillity that we previously would have been unattainable. We will also increase our changes for positive emotion by taking delight in the world around us.
By practising negative visualisation we will appreciate things we already have.
We would be able to enjoy things that can’t be taken from us, most notably our character. Enjoying the things that can be taken from us at full extent while simultaneously preparing ourselves for the loss of such things. We need to learn how to enjoy things without feeling entitled to them and without clinging to them.
Avoid becoming individuals incapable of taking delight in anything but “the best”. We should aim enjoy a wide range of easily obtainable things. If life snatches one source of delight, we will quickly find another to take its place. Stoic enjoyment, unlike that of a connoisseur, is eminently transferable.
Enjoy the mere fact of being alive, experience joy itself.
Stoicism for modern lives
The decline of Stoicism
Increasing corruption and depravity of Roman society made Stoicism, which calls for considerable self-control, unattractive to many Romans. Another theory is that the lack of charismatic teachers of Stoicism after the death of Epictetus caused its decline.
Stoicism was also undermined by the rise of Christianity, as its claims were similar to those made by Stoicism. Christianity had one big advantage over Stoicism: it promised an afterlife in which one would be infinitely satisfied for eternity.
Stoicism occasionally emerged for example when René Descartes revealed his Stoic leaning in his Discourse on Method. Arthur Shopenhauer used a Stoical tone with his essays “Wisdom of Life” and “Counsels and Maxims”. Henry David Thoureu’s masterpiece Walden reveals Stoic influence.
Although most of the twentieth century, Stoicism was a neglected doctrine.
Modern psychology has shown that grief is a perfectly natural response to a personal tragedy. And we have to say that Stoics did not advocate that we “bottle up” our emotions. They did advise to prevent negative emotions. If we prevent an emotion, there will be nothing to bottle up.
When people experience personal catastrophes, it is perfectly natural to experience grief. A Stoic will try to dispel whatever grief remains in him by trying to reason it out of existence.
Because grief is a negative emotion, the Stoics opposed it. Some grief is inevitable in the course of a lifetime. The goal of the Stoics was therefore not to eliminate grief but to minimise it.
I would challenge current psychological thinking on the best way to deal with our emotions. People are less brittle and more resilient, emotionally speaking, than therapists give them credit for.
“Forced grieving” in accordance with the principles of grief therapy, rather than curing grief, can delay the natural healing process.
Psychiatrist Sally Satel and the philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers, challenges certain aspects of modern psychological therapy. “Reticence and suppression of feelings, far from compromising one’s psychological well-being, can be healthy and adaptive. For many temperaments, an excessive focus on introspection and self-disclosure is depressing”. These authors reject the doctrine, that “uninhibited emotional openness is essential to mental health”.
Modern politics present another obstacle to the acceptance of Stoicism. Politicians tell us that if we are unhappy it isn’t our fault. Our unhappiness is caused by something the government did to us or is failing to do for us. To resort to politics rather than philosophy. We are encouraged to vote for the candidate using the powers of government, to make us happy.
Our government and oru society determine, to a considerable extent, our external circumstances, but is at best to loose connection between our external circumstances and how happy we are.
We have a duty to fight against social injustice. Stoics don’t think it is helpful for people to consider themselves victims. If you consider yourself a victim, you are not going to have a good life. Stoics thought it possible for a person to retain his tranquillity despite being punished for attempting to reform the society in which he lived.
Stoics believed in social reform, but they also believed in personal transformation. The first step transforming society is to make their happiness depend as little as possible on their external circumstances. The second step in transforming a society is to change people’s external circumstances.
Only when we assume responsibility for our happiness we will have a reasonable chance of gaining it. This is a message that many people, having been indoctrinated by therapists and politicians, don’t want to hear.
Philosophers not only lost interest in Stoicism but lost interest, more generally, in philosophies of life. Modern philosophers do not think telling people how to live their life is their business. Analytical philosophers respond not answering the question you ask, but analysing the question itself.
There is also one final but quite significant obstacle to accept Stoicism, it requires a certain degree of self-control. Stoics advise us to do things we don’t want to do, because it is our duty to do them.
For each desire we fulfil, a new desire will pop into our head to take its place. No matter how hard we work to satisfy our desires, we will be no closer to satisfaction than if we had fulfilled none of them.
A less obvious way to gain satisfaction is not by working on satisfy our desires but by working to master them. We need to slow down the desire-formation process within us. Rather than wanting new things, we need to work at wanting the things we already have.
The word sacrifice is a bit misleading. Stoic parents for example, don’t think of parenting as a burdensome task requiring endless sacrifice; they think about how wonderful it is that they have children and can make a positive difference in the lives of these children.
Our best hope at gaining happiness is to live not a life of self-indulgence but a life of self-discipline and, to a degree, self-sacrifice. The question isn’t whether self-disciplined and duty-bound people can have a happy, meaningful life; it is whether those who lack self-control and who are convinced that nothing is bigger than they are can have such a life.
Stoicism reconsidered
Stoics thought tranquillity was worth pursuing, a psychological state in which we experience few negative emotions, such as anxiety, grief and fear, but an abundance of positive emotions, especially joy.
Their recommendations for seeking tranquillity:
- We should become self-aware: Observe ourselves, periodically reflect on how we responded to the day’s events.
- Use our reason to overcome negative emotions: We should use reason to master our desires, to convince ourselves that things such as fame and fortune aren’t worth. That pleasurable activities will disrupt our tranquillity, tranquillity lost will outweigh the pleasure gained.
- If we find ourselves wealthy, we should enjoy our affluence, not clinging to it.
- We should form and maintain relationship with others. Avoid people whose values are corrupt.
- The use of techniques for dealing with the insults of others and preventing them from angering us.
- The sources of human unhappiness are the insatiability and worrying about things beyond our control.
- To conquer our insatiability, the Stoics advise us to engage in negative visualisation.
- To curb our tendency to worry about things beyond our control, Stoics advise us to perform a kind of triage. Things we have no control over, things we have complete control, and things we have some control. We should spend some of our time dealing with things over which we have complete control, such as goals and values, and spend most of our time dealing with things over which we have some but not complete control.
- When dealing with things that we have some but not complete control, we should be careful to internalise our goals.
- Be fatalistic with respect to the external world. What happened to us in the past and what is happening to us right now are beyond our control. It’s foolish to get upset about these things.
How our evolutionary past contributes to our current psychological makeup.
- Pain: Ancestors for whom injuries were painful were much more likely to avoid such injuries, and therefore much more likely to survive and reproduce.
- Fear: Ancestors who feared lions were less likely to be eaten by one.
- Anxiety: Ancestors who felt anxious about whether they had enough food were less likely to starve.
- Insatiable: Ancestors who were never satisfied, who always wanted more food or better shelter, were more likely to survive and reproduce.
- Pleasure: Ancestors who found sex to be pleasurable were far more likely to reproduce.
- Social: Ancestors who felt drawn to other people, and who therefore joined groups of individuals, were more likely to survive and reproduce.
- Status: Our ancestors formed social hierarchies within groups. Low status ran the risk of being deprived of resources or even of being driven from the group, events that could threaten his survival. Low-status males were unlikely to reproduce. Gaining social status felt good and losing it felt bad.
- Reason: Ancestors who had reason ability were more likely to survive and reproduce.
Thanks precisely to our reasoning ability, we have it in our power to “misuse” our evolutionary inheritance. Consider for example our ability to hear. Our ancestors had a better chance of surviving and reproducing than those who didn’t, and yet modern humans rarely use their hearing ability for this purpose.
We can misuse our ability to reason so we can circumvent the behavioural tendencies that have been programmed into us by evolution.
We can use our reasoning ability to conclude that social status and more of anything we already have, may be valuable if our goal is simply to survive and reproduce, but aren’t at all valuable if our goal is instead to experience tranquillity while we are alive.
Evolution made us susceptible to suffering but also gave us a tool by which we can prevent much of this suffering, our reason ability.
If our goal is not merely to survive and reproduce but to enjoy a tranquil existence, the pain associated with a loss of social status isn’t just useless, it is counterproductive. Other people will do things to put us in our place, socially speaking. We must use oru intellect to override the evolutionary programming that makes insults painful to us.
Along similar lines, we can misuse our intellect to control our insatiability. Instead of using it to devise clever strategies to get more of everything, engage in negative visualisation.
Consider anxiety too, in developed countries were people live in a remarkably safe and predictable environment, there is much less for us to worry about. We should “misuse” our intellect to overcome this tendency.
Stoicism, understood properly, is a cure for a disease. Anxiety, grief, fear, and various other negative emotions can prevent people from experiencing a joyful existence.
What about rather than going to our book-store to buy a copy of Seneca, we go to our doctor for a Xanax prescription? Wouldn’t that work?
Stoicism is safer than the medical alternatives, as any number of Xanax addicts will attest. Stoicism does have benefits that spill over into other areas of our life. It will cause us to gain self-confidence to handle whatever life throws our way. It will also help us appreciate our life and circumstances and may enable us to experience joy.
Individual Stoics were unafraid to “customise” Stoicism. Stoics regarded the principles of Stoicism not as being chiselled into stone but as being moulded into clay that could, within limits, be remoulded into a form of Stoicism that people would find useful.
Stoicism is a tool that would enable a person to live a good life.
Who, them, should give Stoicism a try? Someone who, to begin with, seeks tranquillity.
No one philosophy of life is ideal for everyone. A person is better of to adopt a less than ideal philosophy of life than to try to live with no philosophy at all.
Practising Stoicism
It is recommended to practice stealth Stoicism, keep it a secret. You can gain its benefits while avoiding the teasing and outright mockery of your surroundings.
You might choose to reveal the sordid truth to them at some point.
Do not try to master all the Stoic techniques all at once. A good start may be negative visualisation, to contemplate the loss of whatever you value in life.
Is easy to forget to engage in negative visualisation, it is decidedly unnatural for someone who is satisfied with life to spend time thinking about the bad things that can happen. It is as important to engage in negative visualisation when times are good as it is when times are bad.
You can practice at bed time or while driving to work, transforming idle time into time well spent.
After mastering negative visualisation, you can become proficient in applying the trichotomy of control. Things we have no control over, thigns we have complete control over, and things we have some but not complete control over; focus your attention on the last two categories.
Is an effective technique for allaying the anxieties for the non-Stoics around. “What can you do about this situation? Nothing!” works like a charm to avoid anxiety.
Practice internalising your goals. Instead of trying to win something, try your hardest; you can reduce distress in your life by removing the feeling that you have failed to accomplish some goal.
Become a psychological fatalist about the past and the present, but not about the future. Refuse to spend time engaging in “if only” thoughts. It is pointless to wish they could be different. Accept the past and embrace the present.
Other people are the enemy of our battle for tranquillity. One of the things that makes insults difficult to deal with is that they generally come as surprises.
Self-deprecating humour has become the standard for insults. Matters are even worse than whoever suggests it. We become impervious to insults.
One of the worst things we can do when other people annoy us is to get angry. It is a major obstacle to our tranquillity.
As anger can lie dormant within us and venting it feels good, iyr anger will be difficult to overcome, and learning to overcome it is one of the biggest challenges a Stoic practitioner faces. The more you think about and understand anger, the easier it is to control it.
It is quite useful to use humour as a defence against anger. One wonderful way to avoid getting angry is to imagine yourself as a character in an absurd play.
Stoics besides advising us to imagine bad things happening to us, advise us to cause bad things to happen as a result of our undertaking a program of voluntary discomfort. It requires a greater degree of self-discipline.
Whenever you undertake an activity in which public failure is a possibility, you are likely to experience butterflies in your stomach. These feelings are an important component of the fear of failure, so by dealing with them you are working to overcome it.
It is a wonderful opportunity to cause yourself psychological discomfort and to confront, and hopefully vanquish, your fear of failing.
In causing yourself anxiety, you have precluded much future anxiety in your life. A new challenge is nothing, if you have survived the first time, you surely will survive the next.
You play a game were can see yourself as two different people. You and your self-opponent that wants nothing more than be comfortable and take advantage of opportunities for pleasure, lacks self-discipline and always takes the path of least resistance, basically a simple-minded pleasure seeker and a coward.
To win points, you must establish dominance over him. To cause him experience discomfort he could easily have avoided, and you must prevent him from experience pleasures he might otherwise have enjoyed. When he is scared of doing something, you must force him to confront his fears and overcome them.
Most people come to the mall not because there is something specific that they need to buy. Rather they come in the hope that doing so will trigger a desire for something that, before going to the mall, they didn’t want. By triggering a desire, they can enjoy the rush that comes when they extinguish that desire by buying something.
Acquiring things makes zero difference in how happy you are.
You might find yourself wishing that your Stoicism would be put to test so you can see whether you in fact possess the skills at hardship management that you have worked to acquire.
A Stoic might welcome death, inasmuch as it represents the ultimate test of Stoicism.
You may end up putting yourself in situations that test your courage and willpower, in part to see whether you can pass such tests.
At old age it may be easier to find negative role models to avoid ending up like them. For some old people non-existence is preferable ot old age.
Seneca claimed that old age is one of the most delightful stages of life, a stage that is “full of pleasure if one knows how to use it”.
For Marcus, “life is more like wrestling than like dancing”.
The goal of Stoicism is the attainment of tranquillity.
No matter what you do, you might be making a mistake. You might be making a mistake by practising Stoicism, You might also be making a mistake if you reject Stoicism but the biggest mistake is to have no philosophy of life at all.
A better life is possible than seeking out what feels good and avoiding what feels bad. Less comfort and pleasure, but considerably more joy.
Stoic techniques can improve a life when times are good, but it is when times are bad that the efficacy of these techniques becomes most apparent. Your biggest tests in life lie ahead.
There is little to lose by giving Stoicism a try as one’s philosophy of life, and there is potentially much to gain.
A Stoic reading program
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// Published 2025-04-05, with 11623 words.
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