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.