Stoicism 101

thank you Jeff what I'm going to try to do today is to give you a very very brief and very very fast introduction to ancient stoicism and modern story susan as well as the practice of stores isn't just in case you're interested I am NOT here to turn your you into storix whatever that means I'm just here to provide what I think it's an interesting perspective on a philosophy of life something I think all of us are interested in presumably many of you are think of yourself as secular humanists or something on those lines that is a philosophy some of some sort and so I think what I'm going to try to convince you today is that stoicism is a either a good alternative over a good integration for a secular humanist perspective on unlined these are some of the questions to which you will find any answer by the end of this talk well you begin to find an answer notice the the clause there what's the meaning of life what is my power to do what is the mean what does it mean to be mindful how should I deal with emotions why should I relate to others how should I prepare for adversity and what is my place in the cosmos all of that in 50 minutes count so I'm going to give you a few quotes here and there from from ancient Stoics just to give you a flavor what the kind of stuff that we're talking about here's the potatoes one of my favorite quotes from the discourses he said I have to die if it is now well then I die now if later then now I will take my lunch since the hour for lunch has arrived and dying I will tend to later this is a classic example it's a classic example of first of all stoic sense of humor which some people might think it's an oxymoron but it's not evidently potatoes there's a number of these things now I'll show you one or two more as we go along but it also gets some of the basic ideas of stories and this one is particularly the idea that we'll explore a little bit more in a few minutes of what is under your control and what is not under your control if it is fated you have to die to die well fine and then the story but if it's not then it is under my control to actually go out and have lunch and possibly even have a good lunch so it's it's it's a very nice I think attribute over total life in general let me start with the basics which is what we're going to do first is I'm going to briefly introduce you to the main characters that is the ancient stories themselves just to tell you where this whole thing came from then we'll go through some of the basic theory first the more esoteric part because I want to give you an idea of the general stoic system and then the one that really matters to most people which is the ethics and remember that by ethics the ancient Greeks and Romans meant how to live your life the early store that is the first phase of the stoic school begun in Athens near that place over there that would the one you're looking at is a store it's it's an open porch that's where the philosophy gets its name because the Stoics met in the open market where everybody could stop by and talk to them that one is not where it actually studied where it actually studied is a few metres away you can't see it it's called the store película the painted porch and it's in Athens is right there this one is a reconstruction of another store nearby the fender stores is mr. fellow on the Left Zeno of cesium which is modern-day Cyprus Xena was a merchant he apparently was going to Greece with a ship and then a storm just sank the whole thing he lost ship and everything that he had he arrived to Athens and he said now what it was walking around and went to a bookstore and he said no I heard of these people called philosophers do you have anything you suggest in terms of readings and maybe there is somebody I can actually learn this stuff from and apparently the librarian or the book bookseller said yeah that guy over there the guy over there happen to be the major feature of the cynics school and so that's how Xena got into philosophy started studying with the cynics and then with the politeness to the academicians and then eventually went on to found his own school that second guy they are crazy passive so Lee is the third head of the store that is the third master the third teacher of the store and he's the one that is mostly responsible for the foundations of the logic the stoic logic and the stoic physics which I'll introduce you in a minute he was so influential in history stories isn't that later on people said without chrysalis there would be no store it was that fundamental to so the ideas of stoicism now let's skip the middle store which took place between in the time of the early Roman Republic and then we're like we get to the late store late store when in Roman Imperial period it's important for a major there's a major reason why we pay a lot of attention to these people and that is because these are pretty much the only stories of whose writings are have come to us pretty much intact or in large part we have lost most of the writings from you know Chris oppose wrote seventy two books apparently talk about somebody who writes you know prodigiously but we don't have any of them left we'll only have fragments and we only have commentaries by other people about the early stories the late Stoics on the other hand Seneca the younger who was a senator influential senator and advisor of Nero Epictetus who was a slave initially and then a teacher and of course Marcus Aurelius who was an emperor they are these people we do have a lot of writings especially Seneca there's a lot of Seneca that has actually survived so a lot of what we know about stories is actually either from commentaries and secondary sources ancient sources or from these guys firsthand let me tell you a bit about the other you know where stories came from and the other the other rivals let's say to this to the school at the time this was a very interesting time in Greek and Roman history Yellin istic period the Stoics were influenced by Socrates just like all of the other mystic schools to a larger lesser degree any particular by the cynics we're edging tensions you know was initially started studying with the cynics now the cynics were an interesting Bunch there were many very very minimalist philosophers I mean these people were going around in rags within app sack containing all their possessions they had no job they had no you know no no possessions no family no dwellings nothing this is the painting there shows one of the famous stories there's a lots of famous and funny stories about the the cynics particularly Diogenes who was the most famous of the cynics and there's Diogenes on the right is who is just taking the Sun in his tub we was living in a tub in a tent and Alexander the Great is the fell on the left he paid paid homage we went to visit the Jews because they are Jews was so famous despite the fat video nothing and Alexander said you know you are such a famous influential philosopher here I am Alexander the Great and anything you like you can just ask and I will get to you and the our journeys response was sure get out of the Sun no that was the only thing he asked of Alexander the Great so we're talking that kind of minimalism right now some of the other schools that were around at the time you may have heard of you know may know something of so they were the playlists named of course after Plato who was Socrates one of Socrates students Aristotle who was a student of Plato so Socrates Plato and Aristotle often referred to as the dream team of philosophy and philosophy Plato establish his own school the Academy is totally established his own school the Lyceum Epicurus will also establish his own school the garden Pyrrha who was the founder of the skeptics not in the modern sense of the term skeptic but in the ancient philosophical sense of the term and then you might or may not recognize the last one over they are pall of purses right if the guy who actually really built Christianity not because we don't know what the hell Jesus did or sad what we do now is call and basically what we know of as Christianity today is Paul and it's interesting that it is Paul because Paul actually was very much aware of the Stoics in new Senecas brother and in fact for a while there was these documents that allegedly we're and correspondence between Seneca and Paul it turns out that it was a forgery there was no that you never never you know gasp imagine that the two never actually correspondent but clearly Paul in the early Christians were very much aware of the Stoics as well as there were where of course of all the other schools that I'm talking about so that's in terms of origin and so competitors in terms of influences although all the Ellen istic schools of philosophy were closed down at some point in the 5th century by the Emperor Justinian the first was a Byzantine Emperor and that was a result of you know that was the last straw of the rise of Christianity basement so Christianity took over essentially Europe throughout the Middle Ages and that was the end of all the schools not just the Stoics but the last billion influential influential story we know obvious actually Marcus Aurelius in the second century that doesn't mean this toys is amazing idea died it had influences all over the place some of the people that were clearly influenced because either they tell us so or it's very clear from what they wrote was Paul as I said and a number of the other early church fathers to the point that the number of monks in monasteries increased and monasteries throughout the Middle Ages actually used Epictetus handbook as their book of meditation and their book of of course every time that that epic tators refer to Socrates which he does often in in the in the handbook the Christians replaced it with Jesus but all right a little bit of editorializing it's okay boy it is Thomas Aquinas a lot of Renaissance humanists Giordano Bruno Thomas More Erasmus Montaigne a little later on Francis Bacon in England the cart was highly influenced by stone you know the guy that I think therefore I am Montesquieu Spinoza very much so existent modern existentialism and finally even something called neo Orthodox Protestant theology which I have no idea what the hell it is but swear it's there and finally we get to modern day so a modern day I think that's Joyce is in closest contemporary Keynes our secular humanism and secular Buddhism and for a variety of reasons which I think will become clear throughout the rest of the talk there is a lot of similarities there's some fun some interesting differences but they're also all the similarities between Buddhism and stoicism in fact you can sure to think of at a first approximation you can think of stoicism as the Western equivalent or the Western response to Buddhism to some extent okay here's another quote from Epictetus consider at what price you sell your integrity but please for God's sake don't sell it cheap again you can see the sense of humor in Tigard it's important why it's important because tourism is a is a type of virtue ethics for the Stoics just like a number of virtual ethical philosophies at the time the most important thing in life is your integrity is your character okay is and you're supposed to be practicing that integrity practicing the virtues we'll talk about the virtues in a in a minute but that is the fundamental component of stoic philosophy stoicism is a system meaning that it has actually a coherent it's a Korean pole like all systems it may actually have things that work or don't work particularly well and modern Stoics do pick and choose of course because these are people who wrote 2,000 years ago before a lot of modern science and before a lot of modern philosophy either even but nonetheless I'm going to present you the basic idea of the system so you can appreciate what they put they come from so the Stoics used a lot of metaphors to explain what they mean what they meant and one of the best metaphor is a thing is of the entire system is as a garden they said in case if you think of stores ISM as a garden then the fence is the logic I'll tell you in detail in a minute what logic physics and ethics actually mean here but by the logic they essentially meant you know the the way you reason about things not just in the the technical meaning of the term logic that we have today it's just the way of reasoning so logic is defense because it defends you against other ways of thinking it sort of it protects your your system the nurturing around is the physics by physics as you'll see in a minute they meant really the best understanding we can possibly have of how the world works and the idea was that you cannot live a good life unless you understand how the world works so the physics is what nourishes is the ground that nourishes our louche is what nourishes the fruits that comes out of the garden and those fruits are the ethics the ethics here again is meant is isn't intended as most of the ancient Greek government's did not in the narrow sense we mean today not in the sense of just you know the answer to questions of right and wrong but in the broader sense of how are you supposed to live your life ethics for the ancients was the study of how to live your life so it's a it's the fruit of what you get what once you apply essentially reason and science if you want to put into modern terms now let's take a quick look at each one of these three in turn will take a very quick look at the physics and the logic and then the rest it's going to be on the ethics because it's the important stuff the more practical step by should cycle so a little bit of stoic physics don't think of these as theories in the modern scientific sense of the term obviously there was no established science at the time these these people were doing what we will call natural philosophy today okay they were trying to us just trying to understand the world is the best they could they had no Hubble Space Telescope the hand no Large Hadron Collider and available nonetheless they did think that the universe started at a particular point in time with a primordial fire and then he's going to end event with the same fire and you fed it's going to start over it's kind of interesting the thing that some called modern cosmological models suggest something like that but please don't read the Stoics as somehow anticipating modern cosmology that's just baloney okay whenever people I mean it's it's funny to miss out the ancient atom is got the idea of atom right now David okay they've got nothing to do what they meant by atom has nothing to do with what modern physicists by atom so yeah they got an interesting idea right that is that the universe has a beginning and it's going to have an end and by the way they fought off a very long span between these in beginning and end they never said exactly one but that one they got right but now they got it right by intuitions or clean up by science oh they did I agree with modern modern thinking that the world is made of matter so they were physicalists they were materialists they understood causation as being universal everything in the universe connected by a cause-and-effect so these are these all very modern ideas that we can still to accept at a broad level and then they thought that the cosmos are organized rationally what they call the logos now this is where there is you can you can take what the logos means in different different ways if you are theologically inclined you can think of the logos as God and say well yeah sure God created the universe and blah blah blah and that's fine that actually is consistent with stomp some stories writings Stoics get deep right about God although they didn't think of God is a personal God God was eminent in the universe was was the same thing as the universe essentially and he was material bhatta why was made of matter so you can take it that way or you can take it as in modern you know psycho humanist wood or modern atheist what is it that is indicate simply the idea that the universe is understandable on the basis of logic and critical evidence which is true otherwise we wouldn't have son to begin with so that's up to you how to take that one now the result of all this what they got out of the physics is that one of their fundamental ideas which is the life is to be lived according to nature in what they mean by that is according to human nature and what they mean by human nature is the nature of a rational social animal for the Stoics that's the Stoics gut from their understanding of how the world works that we are social animals capable of reason and that therefore the best way to live your life is socially applying reason that's the base that's one of the fundamental ideas that we have from stories what about the logic so by logic they meant both what we mean today by logics that the technical study of you know formal reasoning that sort of stuff they also meant at least what we mean by today by epistemology there is a theory of knowledge how do we how is it that people get knowledge and also what we today we call cognitive science or psychology that is the study of our human reason works or fails to work sometimes they were very concerned about what we today would call the logical fallacies because those are the kind of things that can let you lead you astray and therefore make one decisions about about your life right so they introduced something called propositional logic which was very different from Aristotelian logic which was obviously popular at the time and actually is very similar to modern logic stoic logic came back into fashion at the end of the 19th century because it's very similar to the kind of logic the modern magicians are sure doing they thought the knowledge can be attained to reason and then we are in principle capable of separating true from false right this is one of the things that they disagree with the skeptics the accept they said there is no string is knowledge humans don't have knowledge they cannot claim knowledge let's get the stoic said well actually yes ideally at least we can and then finally that knowledge can only be achieved by peer expertise in collective judgment this is if you think about it's a very modern concept this is the concert of modern science the idea that knowledge cannot be acquired by just thinking by yourself about the universe because you can it's too easy to fool yourself that you got it right what you need to do is to compare your ideas with your peers with people they understand things as at least as well if not better than YouTube and to have this open conversation in a service arrive in a collective judgment so no knowledge for the storage was a collective enterprise not individual enterprise all of this as I said was in in the service of nurturing ethics the physics that is what we will today call no natural science and metaphysics as well as the logic were in the service of the ethics the reason they studied those other two was now because they were just curious about the University in general they wanted to know how the universe works and they wanted to know how reason works because they wanted to live a good like the best life that is possible so here's epictetus again introducing the ethics and the idea that it's all about virtual ask me what the real good amends in mens case is and i can only say that it is the right kind of moral character this is a fundamental concept as a sense choices the measure of a good man or woman of course you can there are modern versions of the stoic writings where people are where the writings are gender neutral which I'm pretty sure if the storks were running today they would write in gender-neutral terms but you know I picked the original version which of course talks almost always about men there are a few examples of stoic women actually in history but most of it is course is about dad white men anyway it's all it's all about character so so what does it mean to be both all about character it means that you develop a good character if you develop four fundamental virtues these virtues were imported by Christians themselves in their system these are default the four cardinal virtues in Christianity and for good reasons wisdom particularly practical wisdom wisdom is the ability to make the best decisions under any given circumstances it's a practical thing it's a it's a question of whatever you're faced with if you're wise you take the best course of action that is available at the bone at that moment courage by which they didn't mean just courage in battle they meant the courage to the right thing the courage to face situations that are unpleasant and so on and so forth or people who are unpleasant will see them quote about this in a minute just this I'll have a separate slide about justice because the storage were very much involved into social activities into social politics even but certain into into issues of social justice this was not an inward-looking philosophy unlike for instance Epicureanism Epicurious Coretta Cleary said stay away from politics and you know in the social world because that only causes pain you did have a point there it does cause a lot of pain but you know but the stories were actually very much into social action and then temperance temperance is the idea that you want to you know self control one exercise of control you want to always do things by the right measure not in any in any kind of access if you practice these these four things what are you buying to the rest of the stoic system or not your story a fundamental idea of stoic ethics is the so called stoic Fork and I'm going to introduce it by another quote from a bacteria that's epictetus by the way over there some things that under our control other things are not under our control now that seems trivial but you wouldn't believe how many people forget this kind of stuff okay and of course the wisdom there is to figure out well which things exactly are under my control and which things exactly are not under my control right um so for instance to try to give the best talk that I can at this moment is under my control because I prepare for it I'm responsible for the slides I read the text since on its forth to convince you that choice is amiss envy to pay it pay attention as soon as you walk out of this it's not under my control okay I can influence it but it's not under my control that's up to you and therefore my go should be here not to convince people but only to deliver the best stock that I can so my desire is simply to deliver the best talk that I can whatever happens afterwards it's up to you it's not it's under car it's outside of my control and if I start worried about things that are outside of my control then I'm just gonna have a miserable life according to a big theorist okay uh yeah all right fine the virtues but what about the rest of life I mean you're not going around all being virtuous and that's it there's other things there's drugs sex and rock and roll and all sorts of other stuff right so what about all that other stuff here's I think we're the Stoics really got it right and where they really we're brilliant let me set up this thing for a minute because it takes a little bit of background to understand where I'm coming from I mentioned the cynics right for the cynics who at the time were a dominant scope influential not dominant but influential school for the cynics virtue was the only thing the matter everything else is go to hell you found everything else is distracting okay so if you have property family friends but it's all a destruction it destruction from the best thing which is virtual as you can imagine the cynics never became particularly popular from virtue from practicing virtue that's it right so never being very popular item you know the ascetic lifestyle is never very popular it's always out there there are people still today my Buddhist monks for instance who do practice in some Christians who do practice ascetic life but it's not the kind of thing that is going to go mainstream it's not going to go viral okay now at the opposite extreme the where people like the Epicureans and the CE o negs who thought that it was all about pleasure now pleasure qualified you know I pickers wasn't about the bhature Ian and you know and that sort of stuff he was actually a very measure kind of guy but still it's about pleasure but it's about the externals in life it's about getting the right amount of external goods that make your life plus I restarted was very similar I started was kind of in between so it said that virtue is the most important thing but these other stuff is important as well you also want to be healthy wealthy educated good-looking and so on I mean it's not actually said that if you're not good-looking you're not going to be happy go figure so the Stoics thought okay wait a minute here there is some truth in all of this we just need to look at in a different from a different perspective in a different way the truth that they agreed with is that that that virtual character integrity is in fact the most important thing it is the chief good why well because they said you're going to be able to evaluate your life at the time at the time you're it's about to end and if you look back at your life and you say what are you gonna say to yourselves it oh yeah I got another car yet another car or I gotta get another house oh my god yet another you know piece of entertainment whatever it is is that's what's worth it now that was that what most of us I think would say no that's not the kind of thing you're gonna be proud you may have enjoyed what what would happened but this is not the kind of thing you want to leave to your children and say you know your dad really got these many cars in this county and so on unless you're Donald Trump of course in which case so virtue is what you want to know integrity is what you're proud of you have to have lived a good life meaning but live a life as a good person that other people have good things to say about you not because they want to flatter you but because you really we're a good person because you really did interact well with the rest of your family you didn't do well with your children with your spouse's and so on and so forth so they agree that that that is the top top priority but they also said yeah but there is these other things they're not as irrelevant as the cynics thing and they're not as important as the rest Italians think so we call them preferred and this preferred indifference now the word preferred indifference seems like an oxymoron like how can it be preferred if it is indifferent it's preferred because other things being equal you want to be healthy wealthy educated and so on and so forth as opposed to sick poor ignorant and so on and so forth but is indifferent meaning that that's not going to have anything to do with your ability to live a moral life anybody according to the Stoics can live a good moral life regardless of whether they are sick or healthy poor or wealthy educated or England the moral life is accessible to everybody that said if you do a fortune and fate sends your way health you know a little bit of wealth and things that you can enjoy by all means enjoy them but remember those are not the important things in life you can enjoy that and then you can lose them and if you lose them you're not supposed to regret them one things that potatoes keep saying is never think of anything you have is your stuff think of it as is you borrowed from the universe so when you lose him when you lose it and this goes by the way not just for stuff but also for people you know John I know I just lost a very dear friend recently and epictetus would say well you didn't lose it because it wasn't yours you just gave it back to the universe you enjoyed it for many decades and you were lucky to do so but now it's gone and you don't regret it you just move forward you're recycled actually Marcus Aurelius several times uses words similar to you know you're recycled in the gym your atoms get dispersed and you get become something else how am i doing on time alright now I mentioned justice as one of the stoic virtues justice is an inherently social virtue right justice has to do with society with the way you interact with other people the other ones not necessarily I'm encouraged you can explai courage or even on your own but but but justice is definitely inherently social the Stoics and the cynics were actually the ones that invented the term and use the concept of cosmopolitan the word cosmopolitan that is citizen of the world comes actually from cynic and stoic philosophy and and there were very conscious of these idea being a citizen of the world what you're looking at there is it's called high arrow placed circle circles and you had a place was a Roman stoic and II thought we have only fragments of what he wrote but we have we do have some some fragments and one of these fragments talk about these how you're supposed to relate to the rest of humanity the cent you cannot read it from there but the central circle is you the stoics unlike the Buddhist were very much into self they agree that there is such a thing as a self and you know you you are you that's it and in any consideration about the resin your starts review not because you are more important but because you with you you are the one making those consider doing those considerations right the next circle is your family the people that are close to you right your your children your spouse and so on or your parents the circle after that is your friends the circle at Bob after that is people in your city or your Polly's to use the Greek term and then after that is the people in your nation and then after that is all of humanity and the idea was that you may have heard of modern versions of this Peter singer who is a utility analysis to think that talks about the expanding circle of concern of ethical concern for high Iroquois was almost the opposite was he thought of this as a collapsing circle of concerns meaning that you're supposed to rein in the bring in the external circles closer and closer to you so that you care more and more about people that are actually far from here and he actually had technique the strikes were very big in practical techniques yet techniques about doing this he says so in order to do this when you walk in the streets and you meet somebody who you don't know but it lets you know he's only the Lord older than you are call him uncle or if you somebody at your age calling brother or sister because that is a way in which you can train yourself to think of them as brothers and sisters and uncle members of your family just bringing them in and if you do if you do that for most of your life then you really start feeling like they are in fact part of of your family so here's a pic Tito's as the way he put it this is do a socket is dead or if you're a Christian do as Jesus did never reply to the question of where he was from with I am athenian or I am from Corinth but always I am a citizen of the world now the next little copy that I want to bring up is misconceptions about stories ISM I don't know what you guys have heard about stories and before me I know some of you have actually heard quite a bit but some of you might not have and yeah it's more like this right yeah most people today if they think about stories as they think about Spock there is a reason for that as it turns out Gene Roddenberry the creator of Star Trek actually designed the characters far after it stories you were supposed to be destroyed on Star Trek the problem is that Ron and Mary for all his brilliance didn't do much research on what stories are supposed to be like and so we get of course the picture of the extremely logical you know lacking empathy lacking emotions kind of guy that's not what stores is supposed to be and so that's a caricature unfortunate as I love Spock it is a caricature of stoicism the Stoics did not in fact seek to suppress emotion what they thought was that you need to transform emotions you need to look at emotions and separate the good ones positive ones from the negative ones okay you have to apply your judgment to emotions emotions that are natural part of being a human being so you cannot suppress them there's no way you can avoid a media if you wanted to what you can do is to look at them at the emotion that you're having like fear for infants or lust or whatever and look at it and try to create some distance between you and emotions or well who are you and am I supposed to give you a scent or not are you a good idea or not sometimes the answer yes sometimes the answer is no the goal is to achieve through this process some kind of some degree of inner calm here's Epictetus modern version keep calm and carry on so they distinguished between Pro potatoes which are distinctive reactions we all have if you see a threat you're going to have you're going to be afraid fear that's an instinctive reaction that's just adrenaline it's going to rush through there's nothing you can do about it it's a it's a natural reaction of human beings but they distinguish those from what they call you potatoes which are the feeling is resulting from correct judgment so you stop and you say wait why am I afraid oh because I've heard of a sound in the other room well is the other side of the burglar is a ghost if there isn't more likely my cat go check it out if it's your cap then you don't need to be afraid unless you have a really big the goal ultimately was to reach what the Stoics call a Pattaya now a Pattaya is of course right into the modern world apathy but it doesn't mean apathy in fact quite different it means peace of mind in the sense of are something that results from a clear judgment and the maintenance of equanimity in life so you achieve a pattaya when you go through life knowing the difference between what is good and what is not good knowing the difference between what is really dangerous when it's not knowing the difference between what you ought to do and what you're not but not to do that's the kind of inner calm so in that sense the Stoics are like spark they're calm but they're calm because out of knowledge and out of cultivating positive emotions not out of suppressing emotions ok ok ok fine what about the practice I mean people presumably you're interested in practice if they're interested not not necessarily in ancient philosophies so very briefly I'm going to give you a list of stoic so-called spiritual exercises there's a number of them actually we did a stoic camp with a friend of mine recently where some of people are here ok and by the end of the camp I think we listed something like 32 or 33 exercises on the board but you could do so there's a lot that can be done this is going to just give you an idea of some of the main ones in order to sort answer the question well ok so what does it look like if I actually were interested in this practically as opposed to just reading the text right for instance what I do fairly regularly is you know I start my morning with a morning meditation morning meditation is simply finding a quiet place in your apartment and I know this is New York it's difficult but you know it can be done and think about the day I have think about the challenges you might encounter in the day ahead meeting at work or my case you know teaching my students or having to do with colleagues or whatever it is and and visualize those those instances and trying to think ahead of time about the challenges and remind yourself of which virtues you might be we need off or call for in order to deal with those challenges the three in the middle are things that will actually the second and the third are things that I don't do every day but I do it at least once a week sometimes two or three times a week the view from above is and you can do it any time of the day it doesn't have to be the morning the view from above is actually it's a visualization where you look at yours you start looking at yourself from above you show you picture yourself in your mind close your eyes and then you sort of zoom out and you start looking at yourself from further and further away until you see your apartment and people live in your building and then people live in your city the country the planet and you keep zooming out as far as you can as you can all the way to the pile of universes if you can get there why this is a way to remind yourself of the fact that you're a minut part of a larger much much larger cosmos and that your own problems are really not that important and the largest human thing they reported to you is in a way to minimize your your problems it's a way of reminding yourself to putting them in perspective the primary tateo malorum is an interesting exercise this is the idea of thinking ahead visualizing again really bad stuff that can happen to you and again the goal here is to get ready for it to prepare yourself mentally for it now the most difficult kind of primatology malorum that you can do which me literally means thinking about that stuff in latin it's about thinking about your own death right so there are some people some practitioners who actually do suggest to do that on a number of occasions because you know that is something is going to happen and it is something that you want to be prepared for as Seneca famously said you know we are dying every day every day is a process by which you get closer and closer to it and so you might as well be ready because that's going to be your your ultimate test of character how you get to that point Stoics were not afraid of death because death once that is here you're not there so that's it we're done there's nobody to experience it but how you get there it's important that's what the measure of a person actually is right so this is what the premium alarm is supposed to be doing it but but you don't you can't you don't have to do it just about that and in fact I would suggest not to start it that way because he can be actually fairly difficult to do you know it's thinking in detail visualizing a way in which you might died in not exactly a pleasant thing so you might not want to start there start with something much simpler like my friend Greg who regularly has to meditate in death in that sense about the annoying guy who is going to certainly going to meet on the subway on the way to his from you writing on the guy that puts his fingernails on the thing or eat a sandwich and all over the place or is just bumped into him or or or plays music at high volume or you know you have the Yvetta expect you can start with that and the idea again is the same a weber is that you think ahead of time about challenges and you get used to the idea that well you know this is going to happen and it's not you cannot prevent it you cannot prevent your own death and you cannot prevent the jerk on the subway from doing what he's doing what you can't do I wear is to change your mentor a bit about it and the change where you think about what's going to happen the fourth one it's mindfulness about your moral choices this is really crucial this has changed my way significantly my way of going throughout the entire day because you do that almost every every minute and the idea is to become more mindful that about even your minor choices that you're making throughout your day actually have an ethical component where you bank but therefore where you bring your money what you eat therefore what you what you buy what kind of you know chain of supermarkets or what kind of practices of food grazing and so on in sports you actually support all of those things of course how you interact with other people how you treat your colleagues how you treat your friends and so on is where all of those have an ethical dimension to it all dimension to it and so this this exercise is supposed to be almost a constant becomes the second second nature every time you do something you start thinking about yeah but wait what's the implication of that what why am i doing it this way as opposed to some other way finally the evening meditation the evening meditation is in some sense the opposite of the morning meditation you sit down quietly I do it as a diary as a writing a diary and that's what Marcus Aurelius did write the meditations by Marcus Aurelius were actually a personal diary that were not meant for publication even in meditation sort of going over your day not it's over and say okay so what which challenge just did in fact I encounter and how did I do you know how well or not well did I do and according to Senegal you're supposed to ask yourself three questions what did i do right and if you did something right pat yourself on your back because that's good what did I do wrong and the reason you asked yourself that question is that's the I'll came I did that much because regret is not a stoic thing regret is about the past past is done the only thing you can do from about the past is learn from it so to remind yourself what you did wrong is not to beat yourself up but it's to learn from your mistakes and say okay well next time I'm going to try to do better because of that and the third question is what could I have done otherwise maybe there was something in a situation in any situation occurred that you do not expand that took you you know all of a sudden and you did not have a good a good way to react to it but think about it now you say well actually I could have done this or I could have reacted this way well that situation is likely to arise again because our lives tend to be you know repeating same situation over and over so next time you're going to know because now you had time to think about that situation your time to think about what might have being a better course of action so I'm entered Marcus let me give you an example of fun meditation so if you if you can you can think of Epictetus as the dryly sarcastic stoic think of Marcus as the brooding sort of you know really somebody doesn't like people but he has to live with people and he has and he's trying to do his best right and it comes through Betty colored it with this quote say to yourself in the early morning I shall meet today ungrateful violent treacherous envious uncharted above man all these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and health I can neither be harmed by any of them for no man will involve me wrong nor can I be angry with my kinsmen or Hadean for we have come into the world to work together this is very profound it's got a lot of passion into this so on the one hand he said look is going to happen just be prepared because people are going to be in a certain way and you and especially if you're an emperor and they're going to do that so number one it is not under your control so be prepared number two all these things that come upon them through ignorance of real good on the ER or ill this is a Socratic teaching that people are not evil people are just ignorant nobody does evil going around the day on purpose wanting to do evil nobody even the most evil people you think of right go out there and say today I'm going to do some evil right they're going to do out there and do something bad because they think it's right okay so the basic idea is remind yourself of that those people are doing a bad thing and you need to correct them if it's in your power I mean this guy was Emperor he was correcting people was not just going around you know fooling around with things but he was reminding himself that your vengeance is not a good idea because these people are not evil they're just enough they need to be taught if they can be taught I'll then look at the next one I can either be armed on any of them nor nor can I be angry because of that they cannot army things people do to me or caliber me cannot on me because I am English in control of my own responses one of the classical examples here is insult apparently Marcus was insult a lot by other people including his wife and there is a stoic analogy with the stone think of yourself as a stone try to go around and insult the stone and see how the stone responds the stone is completely untouched by your insults it doesn't care and the same way would be for a story I said sure you can insult my knee buddies that it's that's your problem not mine okay another way to respond to this is suggested by William Irvine who is a modern strike he's a philosopher to modern strike and he recounts this interesting example instance where he was talking to a colleague and his colleague said oh so I've been thinking about citing one of your papers in my next book and your violin said oh that's that's nice well yeah I haven't decided it says his colleagues whether you are um just misguided or downright evil wow that's uh that's a pretty hard thing to decide and so we've been talking about it for a zillion said Wow that's only because you know a part of what I wrote you shouldn't eat the whole thing you will know that I'm really much worse than you think that's a stoic way of doing a dealing with insults right so um okay fine all of this so I gave you the basic history I gave you the basic theory and I gave you a little bit of the practice does it work but presumably we are empirically minded people here right evidence-based people so does it work yeah it does there's some evidence that it does work on several lines of evidence first of all stoicism is directly influenced in number of a modern type of therapies including logotherapy which was introduced by Viktor Frankl after World War 2 and cognitive behavioral therapy Koni behavioral therapies are to be the most successful type of therapy talk therapy that there is out there it's a definitely evidence-based and it is inspired directly by stoicism some of the techniques of Connie be real terapy like a negative visualization for instance are essentially what I just described a minute ago as the permanent tattoo malorum it's the same idea and we do have evidence that they work if your problem is you know focused on let's say you have a fear of elevators or something like that you can use County behavioral therapy which essentially uses the permitted data in a modern modernized version and it does work so that's one source of evidence another one is every November so it's coming up this is a thing called stoic week it's organized by a group of research researchers philosophers and and therapists at Exeter University in England the main event is in London but it is worldwide because you can actually subscribe to it on their website and download the manual on how to do it the handbook for how to do it it's a full week of practice as a story and so what it is is you download these handbook it tells you day by day what to do what kind of exercises to do and you know how to behave and take notes about what you're doing and then when you come in you will be given a number of communities in electronically coming login you will be given a series of questionnaires which measure a number of things are pertinent to these numbers on a number of scales that are pertinent to these kind of study and then at the end of the week are you beginning the same exit questionnaire and then people have been comparing this for the three years they've been doing this so it's an ongoing experiment and then a subset of people will actually follow through six months later if they decided to actually keep practicing now this is of course not a controlled experiment in the sense that there's no double you know there's no blind first of all no double born reason one because they don't measure my access to your information but there is no double blind and also there is no control this is done with people only with people who actually interested in science or self selected sample nonetheless you had the results after stoical week just for just one week people report it being about a 16 percent average in on a scale of life satisfaction increase life satisfaction 10 percent increase on a scale of portion 11 percent increase on a scale of experiencing positive emotions and 16 percent reduction in of negative emotions this is after one week if you keep practicing for six months these numbers go up not a lot I mean they get into the 50 15 20 percent 25 percent but still that's pretty pretty good for six months like this so there is some evidence that these thing works although I would caution of course that there is a distinction between a therapy but it does make sense to ask does worker does it not work empirically in a philosophy of life in the case of my philosophy of life it doesn't really make much sense to say does your work that doesn't not work because the question it doesn't work for you is it something that resonates for you is it something that helps you the fact that it does or does not help other people is entirely relevant so choices may or may not be your your cup of tea if it is quite great if it isn't right but that's not the kind of thing that it really can be mix max as much sensories to submit to to empirical scrutiny and that's my last slide thanks very much

Channel: Stoa Nova

Views: 478,098

Rating: 4.8369923 out of 5

Keywords: philosophy, Stoicism, ethics, happiness

Id: seLLJP3H1FU

Length: 51min 55sec (3115 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/MTness86]

Great watch. Thanks for the link