Better Living Through Stoicism | Massimo Pigliucci | A Night of Philosophy and Ideas 2018

[Music] hi welcome if anybody's made a mistake this is better living through stories ISM you have 30 seconds to leave the room if this is not what you're interested in let me start by countering one of the stereotypes against tourism that we don't have fun wine although as an Italian a kind of object to wine in a can but whatever nobody's perfect Cheers so I get about 20 minutes to tell you how to live like a stoic I've read an entire book about it so it's not going to happen what I've fought instead is I will give you a little bit of a sort of a taste of what it is like and and I'll start by telling on how I got started so a few years ago I wasn't thinking about stores ISM at all and then I get on my Twitter feed of all things something that said help us to celebrate stoical week and I looked at and I said what the hell is stoic week and why would anybody want to celebrate it but I am a philosopher I'm curious I did study you know ancient Greece and Rome when I was in high school back in Italy so yeah let's take a look so turns out stoic week is an event that happens every year it's organized by the University of Exeter in England and it's done by a bunch of philosophers and County the behavioral therapists that should tell you something interesting and basically what you do is you sign up on their website you download a handbook and for a week you try to live like a stoic and what does that mean it means that you do some readings because you want to learn something about stoicism as a philosophy presumably it means you do some exercises they call them spiritual exercises there's not much spirit other than that's spiritual that's a spiritual exercise but it's things like meditation it's things like keeping a diary about relevant things that happen to you during the day that have a sort of moral ethical background or perspective and so on and then you engage in discussions with others and you try to alter your behavior your behavior along certain lines basically the goal is to become a better person easier said than done it actually takes time it doesn't you don't do it in a week but after at the end of the week I thought this was an interesting experience let me try to commit to another couple of months because stoic week usually happens in October or early November let's do this for another month and a half until the end of the year just for the hell of it and I thought it was very useful I felt better about a number of things so I said let me commit to another year on top of doing it and that's when the New York Times published my article which is why we're here tonight called how to be a stoic that allowed to be a stoic and here we are now three years later and I'm still doing it so what exactly is it that we're doing stoicism is an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy it started out around 300 BCE so it's you know 23 24 centuries old something like that if you don't know anything about stoicism let me tell you what it is not about because that's probably easier if you think of a stoic as somebody who goes through life with a stiff upper lip that's not stories or at least that is little-ass stoicism and not capitalized it's not the philosophy if you think of stories ism as suppressing emotions that's not what's tourism is about if your idea of a stoic is mr. Spock from Star Trek that is not what stoicism is about although interestingly gene Roddenberry did in fact think up the character of spark thinking of him as historic the problem is Gene Roddenberry did not know much about stoicism and now we're stuck with that thing so this is not what it is about and what is it about is a couple of things as I said it's it's about improving yourself trying to live a better life for the ancient Greeks and Romans not just the Stoics the point of ethics was not to tell other people what they're doing right or what they doing wrong a lot of more modern moral philosophy is about is this thing right is a spring wrong and things like that the point of ethics was to figure out how to live a good life and buy a good life they didn't mean necessarily sex drugs and can roll that's the Epicureans now that's not true actually that's a stereotype and a slander against the Epicureans as well but what they met was a life worth living they had a word for it which is untranslatable in English and so I'm going to use the Greek word eudaimonia now often today the word is translated as happiness it doesn't really mean a penis because if I happen is you me now I feel happy now that's not what it is about it's not a state of my temporary state of mind sometimes is translated as flourishing as in having a flourishing life and life in which you are able to pursue your projects and you have enough freedom of action that you can do your thanks that's better but not quite because then you know a psychopath could say I want to pursue my projects and I live a eudaimonic life and that I that in there is not a you know monic life what it really is is a life worth living according to a certain way of thinking about what life is about the Stoics in particular thought that there are two things that pretty much define human beings as a species one we are highly social species just look at you guys right we're here in a social environment that means we depend on each other we were very highly integrated with other members of our society right so that's the first part the second part is we are capable of reason the fact that we're capable of reason does not mean that we are always reasonable it does not even mean that we're often reasonable and you can look at recent political events especially in the United States and you can see the millions of people are not reasonable at least some of the times but we're capable of reason and so if the if these are the true things that define humanity we're highly social and we're capable of reason for the Stoics what followed from that is that a good life a life worth living is a life in which you use your reason to improve society to become to make this a better world for yourself and for the others for others the Stoics rejected a dichotomy between selfishness and altruism today we tend to think in these categories right so if I do something for myself and kind of selfish if I do something for other people I tend to be sort of altruistic they thought that whenever you do something for yourself you're automatically doing something for society and whenever you do something for society you're automatically doing something for you precisely because we are highly integrated social beings so that's the general idea that's what they were aiming for the way they try to get there and the way modern Stoics or modern practitioners of stoicism try to get there is by a couple of things first of all you try to practice throughout your life every day for further mint fundamental virtues the word virtue today kind of sounds funny you tend to think about chastity nothing like that the Greeks were not chaste and neither were the Romans got nothing to do with that the four virtues are called sometimes they're referred to as the four cardinal virtues they are practical wisdom courage justice and temperance practical wisdom is the ability to navigate complex situations complex moral situations to make to navigate trade-offs so you want to be a family person you want to raise your family but you also want to have a good career okay how do you balance these things what is the best trade-off between these things you want to be a good friend but you also want to be you know a good teacher or a good employer and so on and so forth ok how do you balance these kind of things that's practical wisdom courage it's got very little to do with physical courage even though some of the Stoics did things that were very physically demanding but it mostly has to do with the courage to stand up for the right reasons so to speak on behalf of a co-worker let's say that it's being mistreated or stand up in defense of somebody who is being abused or something like that which means that this is very close already to the third virtue which is justice today by justice we mean something like a sort of a societal level you know a social justice movements and things like that modern modern philosophers moral philosophers do think about justice that way the ancient philosophers thought about justice as just what happens when you interact with other people you want to interact with other people in a way that is just meaning that it respects them as human beings it doesn't exploit them and it it does it you do it in a way in which you would want other people to interact with you okay so it's justice in in that sense and then finally temperance temperance means of course self-control but not self controlling sort of stifling thing like as I said before it's suppressing your emotions or anything like that self-control is as in you do things in the right measure sometimes the right measure is you have to go all all out okay that is the right measure sometimes the right measure is you don't do something at all okay and sometimes the right measure is you do something in the middle so the Stoics famously said that they don't get drunk but they do drink wine so the four virtues you did is you practice these virtues every single day now how do you do that think about every interaction you have during the day with a co-worker I'm a teacher so with my students or with my colleagues were your friends we were significant others every single one of these interactions is an opportunity to practice all for the virtues because you probably will be faced at least once a day with a somewhat difficult situation how do I manage these two things that's practical wisdom sometimes you will encounter a situation where you have to stand up for somebody that's courage sometimes you will find a situation where you want to interact with a person in a certain way that's that's got to do with justice and very very often you will find opportunities to practice temperance right very often so so that's how you do it and in the way you practice day to day is you do certain exercises the most important one that I do pretty much every day is what's called the philosophical diary so in evening before going to bed you take a few minutes you you focus on on your day you go over your day and the important things of the day and then you write down a few lines in answer to these three questions what did i do right because if you did something right presumably hopefully you did it's okay to pat yourself on the back it's like good job job well that this is one of those things that I need to do more often the second question you want to answer is what did I do wrong because you probably did something wrong and there the idea is not to beat yourself up and say oh you know what a stupid idiot I did something wrong it's just to learn from the experience just to say okay that was actually not a good thing that's one of the things I have to put on the list of not doing it again or doing it better which brings me to the third question third question is what could I have done better the reason to ask yourself that question is because our lives are actually typically far less diverse and and adventures that most people maybe think everyday we do the same things okay you get up you go to work you do certain things you come back you go grocery shopping you prepare dinner whatever it is that you do it's pretty much all the same thing most of most days which means that very similar situations will occur over and over and over so the first time around if you do something if you don't react well the first time that's something difficult happens that difficult to deal with happens okay you get a pass but then you reflect on it and you say okay the next time I'm gonna do it this way that way the second time the third time the fourth time the fifth time you're gonna do it better and better and better so it's all about self-reflection it's about critical analysis now the problem with critical analysis with self-critical analysis is that we're so good at rationalizing Thanks so Aristotle famously said that human beings are the rational animal modern psychologists will tell you that we are the rationalizing animal meaning that we can make up easily excuses for ourselves what did I do that well because after all there was a good reason now it actually felt good whatever it is so that means that in order to practice stoicism or practice anything personal flaws if your life stoicism is very very similar actually as it turns out in terms of practical exercises in practical way of doing to Buddhism I actually think of Stoicism as the sort of Western equivalent of Buddhist practice it's very similar there are similarities with other philosophies in the Western tradition as well like existentialism for instance part of the practice then is however because we rationalized so easily is you get a buddy just like you when you want to go to a gym I don't know about you but when I go to the gym and the nice person across the counter says enjoy your workout I want to smack him I don't enjoy my workout I don't know what you're talking about I do it because I have to do it it's good for me it's long-term thinking but no I don't enjoy it right so what do you do when you when you have to do something you don't enjoy you it works very well if you pick somebody else and say can you keep tabs on me can you help me go into the gym every day or three times a week or whatever it is when you are in a diet the same thing right if you do it with now the person it's easier because the other person checks anew you check on the other person the Stoics realized that 23 centuries ago and they thought of a different ways of getting a body to practice your virtues they went all the way from actual physical friends to sort of imaginary friends and to role models so for instance if you have an actual person that practice is view that's great you can exchange notes you can say yeah actually that behaved today you really did okay you could have done better you can also square your own behavior your own practice your own progress with role models so think about somebody you know either then you know personally or you know enough of that is a good person and you say hey that I should try to act more like I don't know Nelson Mandela just to pick a little bar right now that doesn't mean you have to move to a place where there is an apartheid government and then spend 23 years in prison to overcome that's that's asking a lot of a person I mean some people do it like mad samanya by the way Nelson Mandela was influenced by a very short and incisive book that was smuggled in prison when he was under the apartheid government for many years and that book was the meditations by Marcus Aurelius which is one of the founding texts of Stoicism so stores you find stores is actually more places you might think of even though it's a somewhat considers esoteric philosophy okay so Nelson Mandela it's a great role model but that doesn't mean you have to behave like him what that means is however that lets say thank you I got five minutes the next time that I don't know you walk by a homeless person without saying hi because you feel embarrassed for a stoic that's not a just thing to do because you're not treating that person as a human being you're avoiding him or her so think of Nelson Mandela and say okay if Nelson Mandela was able to spend 23 years in prison to overthrow a government I can surely manage to say hi to somebody I don't know even if that's the only good thing that I do today that's pretty good that's better than yesterday the goal is not perfection Seneca was one of the ancient Roman Stoics and he wrote a number of letters to is to one of his friends Lucilius who he was using sort of as a as a buddy for that reason they were using each other as a body for that reason and in one of these letters Seneca says look I'm not trying to be perfect I'm just trying to be better than yesterday and if we all try to be better than yesterday this would be a hell of a lot of a better place I think very very quickly if you don't succeed let's say you slide a little bit right it's like Oh yesterday actually did improve but today boy I did that thing it's just doesn't doesn't compute it's not was not very virtuous it's okay sources is a very forgiving philosophy forgiving of others you don't go around beating other people on the hand stoic you don't doing the right that's not that's none of your business because it's their business if they want to be helped you help them but you don't go around saying yeah a bad thing you know on the head and the reason for that is because of another one and I'm probably going to close on this one are the fundamental ideas of stories is that it's very practical this is called the dichotomy of control the economy control as epictetus one of the foundational philosophers of stoicism sad is some things are up to you and other things are not up to you and then which seems pretty trivially true right I mean obviously some things are not up to me like the weather for instance it's not up to me other things are up to me I made the decision to accept the invitation to come here tonight and talk to you right but he met something a little more profound than that he basically meant that the only thing that it's truly up to you is your judgement it's your decision-making process that's pretty much it everything else you can influence maybe but it's not entirely up to you it's you don't control it so for instance most people think that they control their body oh I can go to the gym I can eat healthy food I go to the doctor every year and my checkup yeah that's very nice of you and then a virus strikes you and you're done or then you go skiing and you have an accident you break a leg or you know whatever it is that was not under your control so influencing something like trying to make your body better or healthier is definitely after you you the decision-making is up to you the outcome is not and that's a crucial decision when you try to talk to somebody else let's say try to change their opinion about something you have a discussion about politics let's say just a random topic Trump for instance right you never as a stoic you never go up to somebody with the idea that you're gonna change their mind because their man is up to them it's not up to you it is their judgment you don't control their judgement you only control your own judgment what you can do is you can talk to them you can try to persuade them you can engage in a discussion but always with this idea that the outcome is not up to you which means this is applicable in general it's a very poor phylidia you always try to do things by internalizing your goals you don't never try to actually achieve something you try to do your best to achieve something so I want to be I want my partner to be in love with me know you want to be the most lovable person for your partner whether she loves Y or not or he loves you or not it's up to them not to you I want to get a promotion at my job no you don't you want to be the best person to deserve that promotion and do whatever it is reasonable to do to get the promotion whether you get it or not depends on a bunch of other things so when you actually internalize that it's a very important source of personal freedom because at that point slowly day after day you stop worrying about what's gonna happen you only worry about what you can actually do about it you only worry about your locus of control everything else is like you let it go you try and I'll leave you with this metaphor that makes I think it's a very nice metaphor it makes the point very clearly this is from Cicero who was not a stoic but was very sympathetic to the Stoics if I imagine an archer who is trying to hit a target I like an enemy soldier at the time since he was Roman what is under his control he has practiced as much as possible to hit the target he has chosen the best arrows and the best bow there was possible he's focused up to the moment in which he lets the arrow go and that's it after the Arab leaves the bow it nothing it's up to the archer anymore the enemy soldier may turn over the last minute cm and duck and that's it you're done even though you're the best archer in the world a gust of wind comes in and that's it it undoes all your all your efforts but if you are practicing historic you'd say well you know I prefer to hit the target but really what I'm focused on is to try my best to get the best shot possible thanks very much guys I think we're out of time [Applause] [Music]

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Length: 22min 31sec (1351 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 19 2018