Ancient Therapy for Modern Problems: Stoic Philosophy Explained

once upon a time I went through a very nasty breakup and my mental health really suffered I was in a bad place until I went to see a therapist who knew a lot about stoic philosophy stoicism is an ancient philosophy and it's having a bit of a moment the daily stoic has over 2 million followers on Instagram there's an international stoic convention called stoicon and a New York Times best-selling book about stoicism called discipline is Destiny a great title for a club night YouTube tells me what my subscribers have been searching for on the internet and as a group your number one most searched term is stoicism number three was Marcus Aurelius the stoic philosopher who wrote the meditations this philosophy is a movement and I have a Philosophy degree so let's do it in this video I'm going to tell you what stoicism is how it helped me and where it might be leading you astray so please make yourself comfortable lie down on the couch and tell me about your mommy foreign [Music] Claudia penis superfluous Pro barbarous Audi enterprisedur English let us begin with Marcus Aurelius since he's probably a lot of people's intro to stoicism Marcus was an ancient Roman he was born in 121 A.D and he was emperor of Rome from 161 until his death in 180. by all accounts he was a pretty decent guy the bar for Roman emperors was low as long as you don't murder your mum and Shaggy sister you can't go far wrong and he's one of our major sources for stoic philosophy Marcus did not invent stoicism it actually comes from ancient Greek philosophers like Zeno of kittium Aristotle of kios clay anthes of Asos and other minor characters from House of the Dragon but we don't have anything written by the ogs original Greeks one of the only things we know about cleanses of Asos is that he was really jacked somebody wrote that down and it survived but not a lot else everything we know about stoicism comes filtered through the Romans and they may not be reliable for example one of our other sources is the Roman politics Cicero and he tells us a lot about stoicism but he was arguing against it so he might not be portraying it accurately Cicero also wrote his philosophy as dialogue between characters which is just really pretentious I mean who the heck does that imagine if 2 000 years from now the work of every philosopher ever had been lost and future Scholars had to reconstruct their ideas based solely on this show that's kind of analogous to the situation we're in here they'd be going well is she portraying them accurately why is she dressed like that where's the guy who used to present it was that her brother a lack of reliable sources is one of the drawbacks to doing ancient philosophy but on the other hand I really love it because this stuff was written almost 2 000 years ago in another country in another language by people who lived unimaginably different lives but it's still capable of making me go oh yeah I get what you mean it genuinely gives me a really beautiful sense of the Oneness of humanity it's it's like getting a high five across time I love it the meditations isn't really a philosophy book per se it doesn't build to a conclusion or argue for a specific point it's just a collection of notes that Marcus wrote to himself that he probably didn't expect anyone else to ever read That's because in the ancient world philosophy wasn't a university course the way we might think of it now it was more like self-help it was supposed to improve your life philosophy was not merely a subject to write or argue about but one that was expected to provide a design for living a set of rules to live one's life by this was a need not met by ancient religion which privileged ritual over Doctrine and provided little in the way of moral and ethical guidelines nor did anyone expect it to that was what philosophy was for so I'm gonna skim through Marcus here I'm going to pull out some key stoic Concepts and teach them to you and of course I have compiled them into an internet friendly numbered list number one the dichotomy of control this one's pretty simple control the things you can control don't worry about the things that you can't if you're an addict or you know an addict you might recognize this idea from the Serenity Prayer popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change things I can and the wisdom to know the difference the key for stoics is there's only one thing you can really control and that is your judgments about the world for example Marcus says imagine somebody insults you and you get really angry take a step back have you really been hurt by what they said no what's happened is they've insulted you and you've made a judgment something like and you've reacted to that not the insult itself you can change that judgment if you want to and you can let that anger go if you are pained by any external thing it is not the thing that disturbs you but your own judgment about it and it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now that's not an easy thing to do which is why you have to to work at it this is something that other Roman stoics like Seneca and Epictetus said too you've got to train yourself to take that step back and examine your feelings every time you experience a strong emotion it's worth mentioning in the 21st century we are very used to thinking that feelings and judgments are separate things you've got your feelings those are your moods emotions desires your Vibes they're all over here in a pink heart shape those are for girls and they are gay because over here inside a blue brain shape that's where you've got your facts judgments reasoning beliefs Jordan Peterson big mind activity that is for men and it is not gay ancient stoics didn't think like that for them feelings have a judgment inside like the stone inside a peach in technical philosophy language we say that emotions have cognitive content and stoic said you have to make sure the judgments inside your feelings are true for example a while ago I had a big audition for a TV series and I was really anxious so I took Marcus's advice and had a step back and realized that inside my anxiety was a judgment and that isn't true if I don't get this part there'll be other auditions I can let that judgment go and immediately I felt less anxious which is great but from the stoic point of view the more important thing is that I've brought my judgments into line with reality I'm facing things as they are not as I imagine them to be and so I have become more rational concept number two virtue is the only good for stoics being rational having accurate judgments about the world is the only thing you need to have a good life so follow this example with me imagine my agent calls me up tomorrow and says you got the part and I think fantastic I'm so great and I get really arrogant I'm reacting to that judgment but it's not true so that good news has been turned into a bad thing for stoics if I don't have accurate judgments about the world it doesn't matter if I get good news or fame or wealth or opportunity they won't do me any good the only thing that really matters is virtue which is to say having correct judgments about the world the happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts therefore guard accordingly and take care that you entertain known Notions unsuitable to Virtue and reasonable nature this this idea overlaps with Concept number three living in accordance with nature there's two sides to this the first is what we just talked about making sure that your judgments align with reality the second is living in accordance with human nature stoic said that humans are social creatures it's in our nature to live in communities and be good to each other they're regarded mankind as one Brotherhood in which every man possesses a spark of the Divine each one of us is a part of this universe from which it is a natural consequence that we should prefer the common advantage to our own for just as the laws set the safety of all above the safety of individuals so a good wise and law-abiding man conscious of his duty to the state studies the advantage of all more than that of himself or of any single individual final stoic concept I want I want Sage is a stoic Master sometimes they mean a literal person like Socrates and they say he's a sage sometimes it's more of an ideal to strive for Sage lives perfectly in accordance with nature they have no false judgments about anything they are never overwhelmed by strong emotions because they've trained themselves to step back every single time even when times are tough even if their agent calls and says you didn't get the part the sage doesn't multiply their suffering by adding false judgments like it's over for me instead they face reality as it is and so they are able to cope with adversity so those are the major Concepts in stoic philosophy if you skim through Marcus Aurelius or you watch videos like these on YouTube those are the notes that you're going to hit and that is all cushy but this is philosophy tube I want you to watch this video and then go and sign up to my patreon so that I can make more of them and I know that you're not going to do that unless I earn it you don't sign up to my patreon because you want to hear me summarize Wikipedia you sign up to my patreon because I got the extra mile in extra style stoicism is supposed to be a guide for living a better life which prompts the obvious question does it actually work but before we get into that I want to talk about why the original stoics believed this stuff this is the extra material the Deep lore that podcasts and articles don't usually talk about stoic physics [Music] the people of the ancient world didn't have particle accelerators and radio telescopes and all the things that we have to make sense of the universe but they were curious and clever they had some theories about what's going on here and the stoics were no exception the stoics said there's two kinds of things in the universe there's matter which is passive and then there's this other active principle called the logos and the logos is kind of like the force it's an energy field found in all living things it surrounds us penetrates us binds the Galaxy together it's the rational principle which orders the universe the logos is made of a special physical substance called pneuma the Greek word for breath Newmar is a combination of air and fire two of the four fundamental elements and it's Blended through everything objects have it and ax has numer that gives it the power to cut plants have Newmar that makes them grow and reproduce animals too Newmar gives them movement and perception and we have Numa in US it makes your blood warm because it's fire it makes your heart beat it lets you think and be rational it's what your soul is made of and when you die the pneumon leaves you you get cold you can't move or think anymore the Newmar in you is dispersed back into the cosmos because the Newmar is Blended through the universe the same way it is in us the universe itself is alive and not only is it alive the stoics believed the universe is intelligent and it's happy which I think is just a really sweet idea the universe is thriving she's smiling she's happy to see you she's moisturized she's four and a half billion years old but she still looks great if you read stoic philosophy including Marcus Aurelius you'll notice that they use a lot of very big words interchangeably like God fate the world the universe Zeus the gods the cosmos the reason they do that is because in stoic physics those are all the same thing and if I could briefly turn this show into Bible studies tube any Christians in the audience might be thinking this sounds awfully familiar The Gospel according to John opens with the phrase in the beginning was the word and the Word was God and the Word was with God in the original ancient Greek that's an RK and ho logos Kai ho logos and Pros tone Theon kaitheos and Hol logos logos is the Greek for word John is saying that this stoic idea the force that orders the universe is the same thing as the Christian God if you translate that phrase into Latin you get imprincipio erat werbum which you can find carved on statues and churches around the world and written above the Gate of the school where I studied theology by the way if anyone in the audience is upset at my ancient language pronunciation then I would simply remind you that ude [Music] now all of that physics is bollocks there is no such thing as Numa the universe is getting less ordered over time there are many more elements than four your blood is worn because of chemical reactions in your body and your heart beats because of electrical activity in your sinoatrial node but the point is twofold firstly stoic philosophy was based on the latest science of the day the science was wrong but they weren't Mystics or fools the people of the ancient world were intelligent just as much as me and you high five the second point is that stoic physics informs stoic ethics when they said that your judgments need to align with reality they mean the things that happen to you literally impact your soul and you need to literally move your soul in such a way that it aligns with the world when Marcus Aurelius said there is a share of the Divine in all of us he means it literally these days a lot of people would probably interpret that stuff as metaphor I would Hazard a guess that people getting into stoicism now probably aren't engaging with the Deep physics they're using it as self-help because stoicism is supposed to make your life better which brings us back to the obvious question does it being stoic is sometimes associated with toxic emotional repression men having no feelings never asking for help becoming the perfect Warrior cold and ruthless living by your strength alone uninhibited by foolish emotions this Dragon Ball Z masculinity is a subject about which I know more than I should but uh less than some of you might think I studied it for a number of years but I never quite had the natural talent and I want to reach out to young men help de-radicalize them offer a positive role model we're doing left tube again remember that from like five years ago well we're gonna bring it back somebody call age bomber Guy what's he up to these days [Music] what have I become this stoicism for Bros broacism if you will is based on a misunderstanding of what stoics actually said you can't get rid of all your feelings for example when I go too hard on a night out I often get depressed the next day and you can't philosophize your way out of a hangover there are some emotions which are for want of a better word physiological and a sage would still have those it's not about having no feelings it's about having feelings that align with reality so the wise Sage might say I feel really depressed today but I know that's just because I had a big night on Molly down at the darson superstore this too shall pass still the stoics described the sage as somebody who is never overwhelmed by strong emotions epic Titus advised his followers to become so detached that they could treat the death of a child like the breaking of a cup and you might think oh that doesn't sound like a particularly nice way to live we can call this the Romantic objection isn't it good sometimes to get carried away by Passion when the blood runs hot and the champagne is cold and you're alone in a hotel room with somebody who you probably shouldn't kiss but you both feel like you just gotta have to the Romantic objection is that overwhelming passion is needed for a good life and if you follow stoicism you'd be missing out on that the stoic response here is to pretty much bite the bullet and just say no a good human life does not include moments of overwhelming passion because if they're based on incorrect perceptions they will lead you into trouble you might feel as if but uh you won't literally explode you'll be sad but you can probably live with that when you have virtuous emotions there's no overwhelming romance but there's also no overwhelming grief or anxiety virtuous emotions are aligned with the real world which is the best and indeed only place that human beings can live if you're very clever you'll already have noticed that there's a lot of overlap between stoicism and CBT that's cognitive behavioral therapy not the other kind of CBT is a talk therapy invented in the 20th century inspired by stoicism patients are encouraged to identify underlying beliefs which might be affecting them and substitute those beliefs for something else so just like stoicism it focuses on the cognitive element of emotion CBT is what I was sent for when I went through that breakup I was very depressed and my therapist encouraged me to find the belief underneath that depression eventually we wrote it down and I thought that isn't true so what if we substitute that for something else at one point I asked her but why do I feel this way and she said well does it really matter we could spend years psychoanalyzing your dreams or your childhood and eventually we'll come up with something like oh your mother didn't breastfeed you enough as a child or whatever but you're still going to be left with the same question which brought you to therapy in the first place namely what are you gonna do now are you going to accept the real world or not and this leads us to a criticism of both CBT and stoicism is there a danger that we're encouraging people to accept things that they really shouldn't have to hi I'm Kelly Slaughter the founder and CEO of psiope I'm an entrepreneur but I'm also a mom and I know that juggling all those responsibilities can cause stress stress is the number one cause of employee sick leave in America so what if there is a way to hack your stress response reducing employee stress whilst keeping them at work introducing psiope a solution for your business whether you're a multinational conglomerate or a mom and pop store our story began when I was running my previous company Express we were making facial recognition software for law enforcement and a number of employees came to see me in my office and said they were experiencing stress they didn't agree with the work we were doing they wanted to change their conditions they even threatened me with unionization and at the time I was also experiencing stress because I was in the process of buying a third home so I was really able to sympathize I started reading about the scientific causes of stress and I learned that stress is caused when an individual reacts negatively to challenges and I thought what if there was a way to reduce employees stress without compromising productivity that's when I had the idea for syapee syapee uses artificial intelligence to bring the practice of cognitive behavioral therapy to your workplace when faced with a problem of employee stress a lot of Founders use these patronizing Solutions like putting a ping pong table in the office or letting employees pet a dog those Solutions don't work cognitive behavioral therapy is where scientific study meets ancient wisdom a solution works when your business signs up to sciopi you'll gain access to our suite of software apps including our artificially intelligent therapists employees can schedule regular sessions to hack their stress and our AI therapist offers genuine Solutions employees can stay and work while they stress hack you can also set measurable goals for them to work towards inside people monitor their progress outside of sessions Society is proven to minimize employee absence due to sickness and helps create a healthier happier working environment as a mom it's my belief that you can't put a price on health scipy starts at 12 997 a month per employee so don't delay use psiope for your business today the British philosopher Mark Fisher said it's no surprise that people feel anxious angry and stressed when capitalism Works us and the planet to death just so the Five Guys who own everything can make point three percent more profit this quarter we all pretend that feeling bad means you have some kind of brain problem and Fisher says that's like living next to a smokestack and saying here's five ways you can cough more quietly at work it fundamentally misunderstands the problem people are angry lonely depressed anxious and they're right to feel that way not because they're broken humans but because their situation is inhumane the solution isn't therapy it's politics not the cigar of Sigmund Freud the cigar of Fidel Castro Capital makes the workers ill and then multinational pharmaceutical company certain drugs to make them better the social and political causation of distress is neatly sidestepped at the same time as this content is individualized and interiorized what we originally need is a New Politics of mental health organized around the problem of public space this is a version of what philosophers call the passivity problem stoicism says you can only control your own internal judgments but there is a world out there and it needs us would a sage ignore climate change for instance or systemic racism because they can only control their own internal States doesn't accepting things as they are serve the needs of the powerful now there is a possible response that stoics could make here they could say that when it comes to climate change for instance not taking action would be contrary to our nature as creatures who live on planet Earth so you could make a stoic argument for sustainability they might also say that Marcus Aurelius was emperor of Rome for 19 years and that's not really a job that you can do if you never take action you can be a stoic and still stand up to Injustice can you though can you really because there's one section of the population who might have something to say about that the ancient stoics attitude towards women is a subject of some debate on the one hand there is some relatively Progressive stuff the Roman philosopher musonias Rufus said that marriage is a partnership built on longing rather than just pumping out babies he says that women should be educated and that we should be allowed to study philosophy like a lot of ancient writers he also said that men and women have the same genitals just in different Arrangements omiosonius you were wiser than you knew on the other hand all the stoic philosophers were men there were women in the ancient world who were renowned for behaving stoically but all the sources we have were written by men they only quote men and they're addressed to men as well often young men who are seeking wives there's even a funny bit in musonias where a student comes to him and says musonias why should I get married wouldn't a wife get in the way of me studying philosophy and mesonius essentially says shut up nerd what are you going philosophize and if we read on a bit in musonias a bit of a theme starts to emerge a woman must be a good household manager and a careful accountant of what is advantageous to the household and a director of the household staff I claim that these qualities are especially likely to belong to a woman who pursues philosophy he also says stoicism's emphasis on resilience and self-development will help us when it comes to nursing her children from her own breast and serving her husband with her own hands and to do without shrinking things that many think suited to slaves would such a woman not be a great help to the man who married her an adornment to her relatives a good example to all those who know her so women should be educated not because it empowers us but because it enables us to better serve our husbands we can be virtuous but the proper manifestation of female virtue takes place inside of the home you too can take the Trad wife movement to its logical conclusion by installing a vomitorium musonias is relying on a trick here that some people still use today separate spheres of Excellence men are good at some things and women are good at other things and there's nothing wrong with admitting that is there you're not one of those weirdos who thinks that we shouldn't tell the truth about sex are you so no we're not misogynists we don't hate women we love women women are strong women are nurturing we're the best at being wives and mothers the trick is one of those spheres is politically subordinate to the other the male sphere contains all the levers that control Society the female sphere is stuck at home with the kids and notar Bene men decide what those spheres are lest I be accused of cherry picking it's not just muconius Seneca and Epictetus said that women lack self-control Xeno of kittium said that we should be held in common and wise men should try to father children with us whenever they chose if any wise men would like to give it a go feel free to call me but in the meantime notar Bene secundo Zeno assumes that men choose women not the other way around but so what we all understand that nowadays you have to take the good bits from ancient philosophy and leave the other stuff behind like with the physics so when it says mankind reading humankind and yes okay but having to do that presents an extra barrier for women who want to get into stoicism now the modern stoic movement welcomes women and has prominent women in it but it still recruits mainly men author and philosopher Sharon LaBelle says that might be because we have to do the extra work of adapting it for us in order to belong to the world females must cherry pick and adapt texts discussions and thought systems to include and apply to us a female ontological perspective is one that can easily embrace the values of passion emotion and intuition we need I believe to integrate these into our modern stoicism while being true to the spirit of stoicism's essential worldview otherwise for a lack of a better way to say it modern stoicism will be too unilaterally stoic there's another group of people who might like to be included as well slaves the ancient Greeks and Romans regularly enslaved people and again the stoic sources have a bit of a mixed view on this on the one hand they believed in a Brotherhood of Man or community of humanity they did reject the idea that some people are born and naturally suited for slavery which is better than some ancient authors looking at you Aristotle on the other hand they never opposed slavery per se like Seneca says you shouldn't beat your slaves which yes true you you shouldn't beat your slaves but I feel like it would be better to not enslave them in the first place Seneca also argues this in quite a strange way he says Well everybody's a slave if you think about it some people are slaves to lust or greed or ambition aren't we all slaves on the inside and yes that's very poetic Seneca but some people are also literally slaves in the sense that you force them to work for you and you never paid them Seneca also said that you shouldn't force your slave to shave his beard and then dress him like a maid and have him serve you at the dinner table and then have sex with him which weirdly specific example Seneca I mean like yeah don't do Force Fair Maid play with your Fanboy slaves but uh again I feel like the bad bit of that is the slavery the rest sounds great the passivity problem kind of comes back here in a broader sense a feminist philosopher might say that it's hard to develop your rational Soul unless you are guaranteed some external Goods like political Liberty Goods that can only be had in a society which rejects gendered hierarchy and slavery it's pretty hard to cultivate reason and virtue if you're treated like a second-class citizen all of this stuff is meant to help people live good human lives but if you're a slave or a subjugated woman you kind of can't live a good life but once again the most powerful stoic response is just to go nope it's all well and good for Mark Fisher to talk about Freedom or feminists to talk about Liberty but those things won't do you any good if you don't have the virtue of reason you could have political Liberty and be in mental chains because your judgments about that Liberty are false by the same token you could be in literal chains and be the freest person in the world if you are a sage and if that sounds counter-intuitive well if it was easy everybody would do it we're starting to get down here to fundamental questions about what a good human life looks like which is of course what this is all about that's the question I had when I first went to that therapist all those years ago [Music] despite my therapist telling me it wasn't important I did wonder where I acquired this belief I asked myself if I picture somebody telling me this out loud who do I picture and I realized with a bit of a shock that the reason the breakup had affected me so much was because the relationship had been very abusive it took me quite a bit of effort to really accept that it's not an easy thing to face the idea that someone you loved has done something terrible and even violent there's an incentive on the personal and on the global level to just ignore big problems because it's depressing to think about them stoicism offers one potential way to confront problems and maybe not feel as bad about some of them my story took place many years ago I don't even really think about it all that much anymore because now I live in the real world during that very difficult period of my life making this show was a real Lifeline for me my abuser hated philosophytube so it is with some pride that I note this month philosophytube is 10 years old I started a decade ago in my parents bedroom just trying to give away My Philosophy degree for free and now so many of you supported me that there's set unless there's a crew and so much more thanks to this show I am now an award-winning actor and playwright I I wrote a play called The Prince and we put it on in London with like fight choreographers and musicians and actors and directions the whole nine yards the reason I got to do that was because I went to the producers and I said hey the philosophy tube audience they're nice enough people they're going to turn out and support this and you did making the prince was an incredible journey and I got to do that because all of you supported me so if you would like to see what you made possible you can watch the show itself and the behind the scenes documentary about how we made it and a q a about the writing with Jesse gender at go.nebula.tv the prince if you use that link and get a year-long membership of nebula you get a 40 discount which works out at about 2.50 a month ridiculously cheap a slice of that comes back to this show so you'll be helping me make more stuff and if enough people sign up then this proves to be a viable strategy then maybe will get to do it again [Music] [Music] the way it's burning I just survived and I forget where I've begun maybe it just hurts to remember making love ain't always bright lights at the end of December starting over takes time and money [Music] I'll go away [Music] [Music] from Memphis he used to feel like going on [Music] celebrating at the end of the world bright lights [Music] I tried to walk away walk away [Music] my future [Music] War I tried to walk away [Music] pain [Music] pain [Music] this is the extra material the Deep law that articles and podcasts don't often talk about stomach physics I've got pins and needles in my leg I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine I just was like oh let's try that again

Channel: Philosophy Tube

Views: 1,746,976

Keywords: philosophy, stoicism, Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, mental health, anxiety, depression, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Epictetus

Id: lSvKNNtkUSU

Length: 39min 58sec (2398 seconds)

Published: Fri May 12 2023