A Month of Twitter, ended

Earlier this month, I declared I was going to write on Twitter every day as @skepticalstoic.  Fortunately, the end of this month coincided with Stoic Week, and it was great to be part of the #stoicweek dialogue.

At the end of this month, it's necessary to ask: did the daily writings help?  I'd say it helped somewhat.  Regurgitating Stoic ideas on Twitter is a pretty reasonable way to keep thinking about Stoicism.  The issue was that most of my thinking about Stoicism came at the end of the day, because no posts would come to mind during the day itself.  At the end of the day, I was often tired and not very motivated to write something on Twitter.  Often, not much came to mind as I sat down for my daily posting.  Overall, I felt this practice was a bit of nuisance, and I'm not sure the benefits made up for it.

During Stoic Week, I combined my mental review of the day with the Stoic post, and reviewed my day with an eye to finding a pertinent Twitter post I can write.  That proved to be more effective than just the Twitter journaling alone, and it gets closer to what the Stoic journals should be.

Going forward, I don't think I'll attempt to post every day.  But a mental daily review seems like good practice, and if it brings to mind something worth writing, then I'll go ahead and post it.  It may also be a good idea to specific try to write about areas I am having trouble with, so as to reinforce good thinking.  I did make some posts about things I was having problems with, but I wasn't focused on doing so.

Predicting the future, even of my actions, is hard.  I'm not going to promise to write at any frequency.  But I hope my natural laziness doesn't take over, and that I continue to post at least somewhat regularly. I only have 33 followers at the moment.  But that's ok, I'm really posting for myself.

Stoic Week

Exeter University is running a Stoic Week this week.  Check it out, and especially read their very excellent PDF handbook.  This is an excellent opportunity to start experimenting with Stoicism.

A month of Twitter

Every month I like to take on some new habit, try various things out for a spin. I don't write about them here, since most of them have nothing to do with Stoicism.

However, this month, I've decided to try and write every day on my as-yet-rarely used Twitter account. @skepticalstoic.  Hopefully, more than once a day.  So, check out what I have to say over there.  My hope is that this is a beneficial practice I' haven't done yet.  I did previously try journaling for a month, but that was a personal journal. If you look at what Marcus Aurelius wrote, it was rarely personal at all.  It was more like he was expounding wisdom for a reader, but the real reader was himself.  By teaching a thing, we can internalize it, and this is another form of journaling that I have not tried yet.

I'll try this out and see what effect it has, and I'll write it up at the end of November.  Has anyone else tried this before?  If so, what have your experiences been?

Micro-Stoicism

Stoicism is a pretty practical philosophy.  As the Stoics all mention, it really isn't about your knowledge of philosophy, or how well you can form syllogisms.  Essentially, Stoicism is a skill.

Thinking in this way, we have to wonder how we can practice this skill, so we can get better at Stoicism, which ultimately should lead us to a happier and more rewarding life.  The Stoics seemed to do this by reflecting on their day's activities, and by writing down Stoic thoughts as Marcus Aurelius did.

I was wondering if there were other ways, though.  One thing I've thought of is something I call "micro-Stoicism", which is practicing Stoic thinking on the smallest things possible.  For example, if I get an itch, I won't scratch it.  Instead, I'll observe I have an itch, and judge the true nature of it.  When I think about it, an itch is nothing bad.  It doesn't have any physical cause, or cause any harm.  Therefore, it is neither good nor bad, and one can ignore it as a purely neutral phenomenon.

I wouldn't try and use this technique to break habits.  There are more effective techniques for that.  But it is useful to come up with similar small opportunities to practice Stoicism.

Random Quote 2

Random Quote 2 is from Epictetus. I opened to a random page, and actually got something about negative visualization, which I didn't previously even recall Epictetus getting much into.

Is [a wise and good man] surprised at anything which happens, and does it appear new to him?  Does he not expect that which comes from the bad to be worse and more grievous than what actually befalls him? And does he not reckon as pure gain whatever (the bad) may do which falls short of extreme wickedness? Such a person has reviled me. Great thanks to him for not having struck you.  But he has struck me also.  Great thanks that he did not kill you.  

To me, this is an important passage.  This kind of anticipating all possible issues is something I haven't been very good about pursuing.  I need to seriously give it a shot.

Epictetus goes on to say:

For when did he learn or in what school that man is a tame animal, that men love another, that an act of injustice is a great harm to those who does it.  Since then he has not learned this and is not convinced of it, why shall he not follow that which seems to be for his own interest?

This is a really interesting point.  Not only should we not get angry at what little misfortunes befall us, but we can't even blame those who do it.  After all, people do have their reasons.

Today, on the subway, someone was thrown off balance and stepped back, right on my sandal-covered foot.  It hurt.  I did what almost any New Yorker would in the situation:  absolutely nothing.  This is one situation in which it seems that everyone in the city has learned that it doesn't even make sense to get upset, since all of us has done our share of stepping on other people's feet as well.  This isn't quite the same thing as the deliberate harm that Epictetus describes, but it is related.  There are some small situations where Stoicism, in its wisest and most profound sense, is practiced widely, and I'm happy about that.

Anime heroes

I admit it.  As much as I'm sure this would disappoint the sages of old, I don't sit around and read philosophy in most of my free time.  I read other things too, including Japanese mangas, and I watch animes made from those mangas.

This isn't a total waste of time from a philosophical perspective, though.  On the contrary, to a Stoic, these can be pretty interesting.  Take the ninja Naruto, one of the most beloved fictional characters in the Japanese manga / anime scene.  He has no fear of death, and his devotion to his friends trumps every practical consideration.  On the other hand, he often makes rash pledges to accomplish some task (notably to rescue his friend Sasuke), which the Stoic would never do.  Not that the Stoic ninja (if such a creature could exist) wouldn't try to rescue friends, but he would not give any guarantee of victory.  The matter of victory is not in his hands, that is up to fate.  But the Naruto-like will to be of service to others, to help those in need of help, that the Stoic could easily pledge to.

In the One Piece manga, which is the most popular manga and anime right now, the hero Monkey D. Luffy has a pretty un-Stoic-like goal: to become King of the Pirates by obtaining the legendary One Piece treasure.  Stoics are not known for their treasure hunting.  The Stoicism comes in with his attitude towards death; Luffy seems to be the remarkably unconcerned about dying, which is a character trait the series dwells on.  Notably, his philosophy is that if you truly want something, you should be happy to die in pursuit of it.  The Stoic wouldn't put it that way, I think.  They would say only that you shouldn't mind dying, and it shouldn't interfere with your judgements on the morally correct way to live.

The Prince

If you could choose one classic book as a beautiful example of anti-Stoic thought, what would you choose?

Maybe it's just because I recently read it, but my choice would be Machiavelli's The Prince.  It's famous for being the quintessential book of realpolitik.  The book is a manual of how to obtain and then hold power.  Very few qualms about morality appear in the book, it is just about practices that are effective and ineffective.

There are a few interesting quotes that I think would be interesting to a Stoic audience.  He has a few things to say on chance, for instance:

I say that a prince may seem happy today and ruined tomorrow without having shown any change of disposition or character.  This, I believe, arises firstly from causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who relies entirely on fortune is lost when it changes.

Everyone, regardless of philosophy, would agree this is true.  The Stoics would say that because of the caprices of chance, we should only treasure what is free from the reach of fate: our logic and morality.  Machiavelli, though, views those that can be undone by chance as merely not clever enough. When fortune changes, you have to change with it, or else fortune will overcome you.  Machiavelli, then, wants to fight fortune, while the Stoics wish to ignore it.

The fundamental problem, though, is that the world of Machiavelli is zero-sum.  One person cannot gain power without another losing it.  Not so for the Stoics, and in fact quite the opposite.  If you gain wisdom and the ability to transcend your position in life through philosophy, I am actually more likely to do so as well, since you can help me.  Therefore, at the least we can say that Machiavelli's advice is not for everyone.

I think a case can be made that his advice is moral.  After all, Machiavelli promotes effective leadership.  Imagine living in an Italian city centuries ago.  If your ruler was an effective leader, your life may be peaceful and prosperous.  If not, chaos and war could follow from your leader's follies.  The morality of a ruler is different than other morality.  Your duty is to your subjects.  Sometimes that means you have to betray people, or punish some severely so that rest can benefit, or destroy the family who may eventually plot to overthrow you.  Maybe the ends just the means.

Maybe.  It's all quite dubious to me.  Regardless, I have no real power, and am unlikely to get it.  The Stoic philosophy seems much more appropriate to me, since it is the philosophy of powerlessness itself.

One more interesting point from the book: he actually talks about Marcus Aurelius.  Marcus the Philosopher, as he calls him, was a pretty nice emperor.  But he could only be nice, Machiavelli claims, because he was born into the title of emperor.  Things would be quite different if he had to fight for it.

From these causes it arose that Marcus, Pertinax, and Alexander, being all men of modest life, lovers of justice, enemies to cruelty, humane, and benignant, came to a sad end except Marcus; he alone lived and died honored, because he had succeeded to the throne by hereditary title, and owed nothing either to the soldiers or the people; and afterwards, being possessed of many virtues which made him respected, he always kept both orders in their places whilst he lived, and was neither hated nor despised.

Machiavelli goes on to talk about the sins of Marcus's son Commodus, as well as other issues with Roman emperors.  Reading Machiavelli's praise of Marcus is amusing, especially for the idea that his success was so conditional on the circumstances under which he received the throne. Perhaps Marcus would answer that by saying that if that wasn't so, he'd just be a good man, and whether he was a successful emperor, an unsuccessful emperor, or not an emperor at all is unimportant.

With that in mind, I leave you with Machiavelli's description of Pertinax, who succeeded Commodus.  Think about what is written here, and what you would do if you were Pertinax.

But Pertinax was created emperor against the wishes of the soldiers, who, being accustomed to live licentiously under Commodus, could not endure the honest life to which Pertinax wished to reduce them; thus, having given cause for hatred, to which hatred there was added contempt for his old age, he was overthrown at the very beginning of his administration.  And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones, therefore, as I said before, a prince wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil; for when that body is corrupt whom you think you need of to maintain yourself - it may be either the people or the soldiers or the nobles - you have to submit to its humors and to gratify them, and then good works will do you harm.

Daily stoic quotes

Michel Daw, in my last post on a random Stoic quote, left a comment referring to his blog Words of the Ancient Wise. It has about three quotes on a theme every day. Daily quotes are very useful. As much as we may read Stoic or other philosophy, daily life is always there, and merely living as normal can form bad habits.

Stoic philosophy is unnatural. I don't think the Stoics would agree with that statement, since they present their philosophy as merely acting in accordance with nature.  The fact that they had to formulate and propagate this philosophy should have clued them in to its unnatural nature. Because of its conflict with our natural desires, we have to constantly remind ourselves about it.

This is why the daily reading is important. Also why the daily review is important. Seeing as how the daily review advocated by Seneca happens at bedtime, the daily reading should probably happen in the morning. Other activities can take the place of reading. Marcus Aurelius said his little speech to himself every morning, reminding himself that he will face opposition, setbacks, stupidity, etc throughout the day. That probably works to much the same effect.

Random quote 1

The practice of randomly selecting a part of a holy book and reading it is great for those books that have very little cohesiveness but plenty of wisdom on each page.  Stoic books are like that, and I think picking out random quotes and discoursing on it for a while would be a good exercise.

OK, I'm randomly choosing Epictetus to start (actually that part wasn't so random).  Out of a 250 page book, I randomly choose a page, and get page 202.  Hm.  I see a problem.  This page has the end of one major paragraph and the start of another one.  I guess I'll choose the start of the paragraph (with a few transitional parts elided).

... a man ought to study all day long, for as not to be attached to what doth not belong to him; neither to a friend, to a place, an academy; nor even to his own body: but to remember the law, and to have that constantly before his eyes.  And what is the divine law?  To preserve inviolate what is properly our own : not to claim what belongs to other : to use what is given us; and not desire what is not given us : and, when any thing is taken away, to restore it readily; and to be thankful for the time you have permitted the use of it; and not cry after it, like a child for its nurse and its mamma.  For what doth is signify, what gets the better of use, or on what do you depend?  And in what are you superior to him, who cries for a puppet, if you lament for a paltry academy, and a portico, and an assembly of young people ; and such like amusements?  Another comes, lamenting, that he must no longer drink the water of Dircè.  Why, is not the Marcian water as good?  "But I was used to that."  And in time you will be used to the other.  And, when you are attached to this too, you may cry again, and set yourself in imitation of Euripides, to celebrate, in verse.

 I have to apologize for the completely crazy punctuation.  That's what you get with free books.

This paragraph is pretty typical of a Stoic philosopher.  No real surprises here.  But there are parts of interest.  Note that Epictetus says that we ought to study all day long.  What exactly does he mean by this?  It must mean that we have to constantly remind ourselves of these truths, as oppose to literally study.  Or maybe he really did want everyone to devote their lives to the philosophy.  Certainly Seneca said similar things.  But, reasonably speaking, we have our activities we have to perform, and studying Stoicism is not going to be our main activity.  The question really is how to "study all day long", in other words, how do we constantly remind ourselves of the Stoic philosophy?  We definitely need it, since it is so easy and natural to be attached to what doesn't belong to us.  This is where a daily journal as Seneca recommends (and I tried) may come in handy.  Maybe we should ask ourselves every day if we are valuing the right things.  I personally found journaling not very fruitful, but I didn't ask myself this question specifically.

The thought that our own body doesn't belong to us is another common one with Epictetus in particular.  The image is powerful, though.  If we don't even own our own body, we truly own nothing except our actions.

Epictetus's random quote has proved useful. The philosophy here is nothing new, but now I'm thinking about how this related so things going on in my life.  The random quote seems like a success!  I'll do it again soon.

A month of journaling

I mentioned at the start of this month that I would start a daily review journal for a month to see how it goes.  It's now been a month, and I'd like to summarize how it went.

The method I used was to just write a few paragraphs about my day in a text file.  I usually did my journal close to when I went to sleep.  I'd write about what I think went well (such as that I avoided eating any sweets), or what didn't go well (such as problems focusing at work).

I'll start with the bad points.  Of course, doing a journal entry every night was kind of a pain, even if it didn't take too long.  It was another thing to remember and to do.  One night I just skipped it because I was feeling sick (I had a minor cold), and another night I skipped it because I was just too tired, and once I just came home too late and didn't bother with it.  The worst part is that many days I felt like I had nothing new to say in my journal.

Even though it was hard to do every day, there were benefits.  Writing things down is simply real in a way that merely thinking is not.  In my experience, thoughts that are written down are clear thoughts, and my best thinking is typed out on a keyboard.  Perhaps Seneca could do a daily review in his head, but I'm not yet capable of it.

After thinking of what I did well or badly that day, I then spent some time thinking about my own death.  That was an interesting experience.  It made me realize that I really have to focus and do things that are noticeable and have high impact.  It made me a little restless with how little good I've done in my life.

I'm not sure what is next this month.  I made continue the journal in a slightly different form.  I need to take some time to think of it.  No, not thinking.  Writing.

On the anger of atheists

Although this doesn't necessarily have much to do with Stoic philosophy, this speech by Greta Christina at Skepticon was interesting to me, because it touches on anger as a useful and justified response to injustice.



I think Greta Christina does a great job in putting forth an argument on the usefulness of anger.  Watching it, though, I couldn't help thinking of Seneca's On Anger, in which, after describing the harm of anger at length, says:

... It is to purpose.  "It is a sad thing", we cry, "to put up with these injuries, and we are not able to bear them;" as if any man that can bear anger could not bear an injury, which is much more supportable.  [...]

To be angry at offenders is to make ourselves the common enemies of mankind, which is both weak and wicked; and we may as well be angry that our thistles do not bring forth apples, or that every pebble in our ground is not an oriental pearl.  [...]

 But "may not an honest man then be allowed to be angry at the murder of his father, or the ravishing of his sister or daughter before his face?"  No, not at all.  I will defend my parents, and I will repay the injuries that are done them; but it is my piety and not my anger, that moves me to do it.  I will do my duty without fear or confusion, and I will not rage, I will not weep; but discharge the office of a good man without forfeiting the dignity of a man.  If my father be assaulted, I will endeavor to rescue him; if he be killed, I will do right to his memory; and all this, not in any transport of passion, but in honor and conscience.  Neither is there any need of anger where reason does the same thing.

 Furthermore, Seneca goes on to more directly refute Greta's argument:

Some people are of the opinion that anger inflames and animates the soldier; that it is a spur to bold and arduous undertakings; and that it were better to moderate than to wholly suppress it, for fear of dissolving the spirit and force of the mind.  To this I answer, that virtue does not need the help of vice; but where there is any ardor of mind necessary, we may rouse ourselves, and be more or less brisk and vigorous as there is occassion: but all without anger still.

And as if Seneca was anticipating Godwin's law, he invokes the example of the Germans to settle the point:

There is not upon the face of the earth a bolder or a more indefatigable nation than the Germans; nor a braver upon a charge, not a hardier against colds and heats; their only delights and exercise is in arms, to the utter neglect of all things else: and yet upon the encounter, they are broken and destroyed through their own undisciplined temerity, even by the most effeminate of men.

Personally, I'm think Seneca is right that it is best not to be anger.  Sure, as Greta says, atheists roused to righteous fury can be very effective.  But that same anger can be used against us.  The same feelings are used by governments to dehumanize other nations and lead us into war.  Anger is simply too irrational to control, and my current view is that Greta is wrong to try and make use of it.  If any movement should lead by an example of rationality, it is the atheist movement.

The daily review

This month I want to try out a new practice, this one most thoroughly Stoic: the daily review.

Seneca writes:

It is dangerous for a man too suddenly, or too easily, to believe himself.  Wherefore let us examine, observe, and inspect our own hearts, for we ourselves are our own greatest flatterers: we should every night call ourselves to account, "What infirmity have I mastered today?  What passion opposed?  What temptation resisted?  What virtue acquired?"  Our vices will abate of themselves, if they be brought every day to the shrift. Oh the blessed sleep that follows such a diary!  Oh the tranquility, liberty, and greatness of the mind that is a spy upon itself, and a private censor of its own manners!  It is my custom (says our author) every night, so soon as the candle is out, to run over all the words and actions of the past day; and I let nothing escape me; for why should I fear the sight of my own errors, when I can admonish and forgive myself?  "I was a little too hot in such a dispute: my opinion might have been as well spared, for it gave offense, and did no good at all.  The thing was true, but all truths are not to be spoken at all time; I would I had held my tongue, for there is no contending either with fools or our superiors.  I have done ill, but it shall be no more."  If every man would but thus look into himself, it would be the better for us all.  What can be more reasonable than this daily review of a life that we cannot warrant for a moment?

All that is left is to determine the method.  Before sleep, like Seneca suggests, seems natural.  I'll try to type it up, otherwise I feel I wouldn't be as thorough as necessary.  I don't know yet how long it will take. The first night I try this is tonight, so this will be the next thing I do.

I'm looking forward to seeing how effective this is at improving myself.

Reflections on a month of meditation

I've been meditating for a month.

I started this at the beginning of the month, as you may remember.  Every day, for anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes a day, I've been meditating.  I missed 5 days last week, due to me being on a business trip, but other than that, I didn't miss a day.

After a month, I can say that meditation helped me.  To note one example, I made a mistake at work, resulting in someone getting mad at both me and my boss.  I felt pretty bad about it.  Ordinarily, that emotional reaction would cause me a lot of stress, and I'd end up making further sub-optimal decisions.  Instead, I was able to keep my cool thanks to the meditation.  I corrected the problem without much fuss, and didn't let it bother me too much, and I don't believe there was any lasting harm done.

That was the most striking example, but throughout this month, I've felt that I've been more calm and more rational overall.  It really struck home how good a practice meditation is to the practicing Stoic.  Increasing tranquility and tranquility is what it's all about, Stoically speaking.  In a sense, though, meditation reverses the Stoic cause & effect.  The Stoics would encourage us to be rational, which will lead to tranquility.  Meditation increases tranquility directly, which leads to rationality.

This next month I have another practice I'm going to try, which I'll write up shortly.  I intend to keep up the meditation.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs died today.

He was one of the great visionaries of our time.  During his Stanford commencement speech, he reveals the reason why: he's focused on his own death.  Even from before he was diagnosed with cancer.

The notion of our death is one that we never think of.  Yes, we know it intellectually, but it's never in the forefront of our minds.  After all, it is likely many years away, and quite unpleasant.  But looking at our death can bring clarity. We have a limited lifespan, and time is precious.

Seneca wrote:

... you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose.  What many can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily?

Steve Jobs was such a man.

Ask yourself if you are also ready to stare death in the face and make the most of your time.  Starting now.

For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed.

Specific meditation practice

I've been doing meditation on and off for about half a year now.  More off than on, but I've done at least a month of 10-minute daily meditation.  I think it had a beneficial effect of calmness which seems to be wearing off after many months of doing almost no meditation.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to see Kamal Sarma, who gave a talk on leadership.  His talk was better than I thought, and actually had some nice insights about leadership.  Before the talk, I picked up Kamal's book, Mental Resilience, and I've read through it since then.  Overall, the book was an excellent introduction to meditation that gives just the right amount of information.  More importantly, it has a specific recommended regimen for meditation practice, along with a CD.  It's not the perfect meditation book; I'm still looking for a book on meditation that has no bullshit at all, and I'm afraid that even Kamal's book has some bullshit, but it's less than most.  I can live with it.  

That's specifically what I'll be doing for this month.  This is day 2.  I've been meditating at work, which has been challenging.  Twice, people walked in on me meditating in an empty conference room today, which threw me off a bit.  I need to find somewhere a little more out of the way.

Action for October

The Stoic philosophers could not be clearer: Stoicism is not a philosophy for analysis and debating.  It's a philosophy to be applied to life.

Partly, Stoicism is an outlook, a consistent view on life that should affect the way we respond to events, and the way we view our lives. In that sense, Stoicism is a passive philosophy.  Stoicism does have an active component, though.  Besides just waiting for events to come to you, you have to prepare.  There are things we need to do in order to keep us on a good path.

It is my intention to explore these active techniques.  So far, I haven't made a serious effort, since I'm primarily interested in Stoicism, and I do not self-identify as a Stoic.  But I think Stoicism is interesting enough to test practically, not just intellectually.

Now is the start of October, and I'd like to make a change for the next month.  I plan to meditate at least 20 minutes each day.  I know meditation is not classically Stoic, but the practice seems to align pretty well with Stoic thought, as I've written about before.  Perhaps next month I'll do a more traditionally Stoic activity such as nightly reviews, or negative visualization.

I'll write more about my meditation practice in the next entry, and I hope by the end of the month I'll have something interesting to report about the effects of meditation.

Stallman

My last post was about someone I considered a true modern philosopher, but I didn't say who the someone was.   The person I had in mind is Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation.

Maybe it seems strange to call him a philosopher.  As far as I know, he's never said anything about the meaning of life, or the best way to live, or stuck his neck into the esoterica of more modern philosophy.  But he has a very well-defined philosophy of software code ownership.  Like all things, the modern world is all about specialization.  He doesn't have to have an opinion about everything.  The important part is he had a strong opinion, one based in morality, about a new force in our lives, and he's been fighting for his vision ever since.  His core idea is that our computers should only run software that we have the source code for.  If you don't know, and can't modify, what your own computer is doing, you shouldn't be running it.

I've been lucky enough to meet Richard Stallman.  He seems to talk like how I would imagine a philosopher would talk.  He speaks precisely (using the terms libre and gratis instead of the more generic word free), never lets something go that he considers wrong, and plainly admits when he doesn't know something.  He can forcefully argue his point, and is utterly uncompromising in his core beliefs.  For instance, he will not carry ID.  For someone who travels a lot and often goes into large institutions to speak, this has got to be inconvenient.  But he doesn't ever make that tradeoff of beliefs for convenience that we all make in so many ways.  Similarly, even though he was a legendary coder, he's never attempted to parlay that into any sort of career.  He doesn't make much money, and lives simply.

To many software engineers, his stubbornness and unwillingness to compromise is a problem.  They can't live such morally perfect lives.  The GNU licenses are seen as too constraining for business.  He's seen as someone who has some good ideas that he takes way too far.  I don't agree with that, though.  Stallman has to pursue the pure path of his ideals.  Otherwise he wouldn't be a philosopher, he'd just be a guy with opinions, and his ideas would probably have not been as influential as they are.  Due to Stallman, we have GNU/Linux, we have the GPL license, and his ideas have influenced other licenses even in non-software contexts, such as the Creative Commons license.

For further reading on Richard Stallman, I recommend his open-sourced biography, Free as in Freedom.

A modern philosopher

The great era of the popular philosopher is far gone.  Who do we have that has the ideals, the ideas, and the impact of Socrates? Not many, perhaps none. We've left our philosophy to the academics.

But I'd like to nominate one among us, still living, who I think fulfills all that a philosopher should be.  He has created powerful new ideas about a subject that did not exist in ancient Greece, but is a major force in modern society.  He's pursued those ideas for a lifetime, constantly forgoing material reward for the sake of fighting for those ideals.  He is unwavering and uncompromising, and is subsequently widely disparaged by his colleagues.  And he's undoubtedly changed the world already.

Best of all, he even has a beard.

Have you guessed who it is yet?

I'll reveal the answer in my next post.

Personality, Part 2

In a previous post, I wondered whether personality can be overcome.  I doubted that it could.  Reading Seneca's Epistles (aka Letters from a Stoic), I came cross the following in Epistle XI:

That which is implanted, and inborn can be toned down by training, but not overcome.

 And later in the same Epistle:

Whatever is assigned to us by the terms of our birth and the blend of our constitutions, will stick with us, no matter how hard or how long the soul may have tried to master itself.

Seneca seems to have reached the same conclusions.

Switching to a modern scientist, I recommend reading Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate for much more on this topic.  In fact, I should re-read it.  It's one of those books that makes a powerful argument against some very nice-sounding but in fact harmful ideas on human nature.

Remember, we can't change our personality, nor our faults.  But we can mitigate them, and sometimes to a large degree.  My own personality has shown itself to result in many careless mistakes in my work.  I don't think I can overcome this, but I can be aware of it, and I can control my actions. I've gotten into the habit of forcing myself to double-check my work, which has helped a lot.  Even though I am careless, I have found a way around it as long as I can keep up an artificial carefulness.

Less is more

The happiness of staying in cheap hotels amongst other travelers is the subject of David Brooks' recent column The Haimish Line.  Those who spend more on luxury only get luxury, and miss out on the real warmth and congeniality of the simpler lifestyle.  It's one of those examples of less is more.  We have been conditioned to think that nicer & fancier is unquestionably better.  But it doesn't bring any more happiness.  This is the sort of thing that reminds us that Stoicism is not a philosophy of self-denial, it is one of self-fulfillment.