Tanner Campbell's Blog, page 27

Staying the Path [Fireside Chat]

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Used Philosophy Dealership

Ancient Stoics vs. Modern Stoics vs. The Stoicism-Inspired

I'm wading into the waters of an argument I don't know I'm ready for, but this is kind of how I do things. I'm a firm believer that the path to being knowledgeable is built with uneven jagged bricks made up of countless "oh, I guess I'm and idiot" and "Whoops" moments. For me, writing publicly is the surest way to figure out how wrong I am about something. This can be ego-shattering, which is good, I think, and why I've been able to become knowledgeable over the years on such a broad swath of topics. 

The argument-in-vogue in the broader "Stoic Community" is that Modern Stoics aren't technically Stoics because they reject the Stoic god.

Let's explore that.

Traditional Stoics vs. Modern Stoics

A Traditional Stoic makes two faith-based claims. The first is that there is a god. The Stoic god is most like a conscious cosmos and is often referred to as Nature. You do not pray to this god, this god is not a personal god, this god does not come down from the heavens and sip tea with us when we need a friend. Never the less, it is conscious and it is logical, and that makes it a being of sorts and, to most of us atheists (I'm an atheist) that's "god enough" to be supernatural. Though the ancient Stoics don't view their god as SUPER-natural, because their god IS Nature. The second claim is that Virtue is the only good. Not the highest good, the only good.

A Modern Stoic makes one faith-based claim: that Virtue is the only good. They do not, because most of them are atheists like me (or agnostics), believe in the Stoic god. I fall into this camp. I'm a Modern Stoic. 

Logic Isn't The Centerpiece Here

I feel, strongly, that the logic of either the Modern Stoics' or the Traditional Stoics' claims are not what is important to defining what a Stoic is in this case. Instead what is important is how the ancients defined it, and that was: if you believe that Virtue is the only good, you're a Stoic.

At no point did the Stoics demand you had to believe in the Stoic god in order to be a Stoic, they only said you had to believe Virtue was the only good. If you believed Virtue was the highest good, or one of many goods, you could still hangout with the Stoics but you couldn't BE a Stoic.

There are plenty of philosophies that hold Virtue in high regard, but those philosophies are not Stoicism, they are *those other philosophies.*

However, if the belief that Virtue is the only good is a belief you hold, you should be able to defend why you believe it. Traditional Stoics can do this by pointing to the Stoic god. Modern Stoics, as far as I've been able to reason at this stage in my Stoic education, cannot, since they don't believe in the Stoic god, provide a logical defense of their belief that Virtue is the only good.

But does that matter?

I could go to a Traditional Stoic and say,

"Well now wait a minute. You expect me to come up with a logical argument for why I believe Virtue is the only good, but you don't need to come up with a logical argument for the existence of the Stoic god? Aren't we both, in the end, making an unprovable faith-based claim? Aren't you justifying your beliefs with faith the same as we are? We're just stopping one step before you."

And I think this point is a point that is worth discussing for hours, maybe days, but ultimately it's not the point that matters is it? If we're trying to practice Stoicism, isn't the reasonable way of defining Stoicism to take the definition of the ancients who invented it? 

Modern Stoics are Stoics, but we're making a faith-based claim that Virtue is the only good and it seems to me, a committed atheist(!), silly that we'd criticize Traditional Stoics for their faith-based claim because it seems just too darn faithy for us. That seems... stupid, judgmental, and hypocritical. 

Traditional Stoics are Stoics who make a faith-based claim. Modern Stoics are Stoics that make a different faith-based claim. But a Stoic is someone who believes Virtue is the only good. Is that you? Congratulations, you're a Stoic. Full stop. Stop arguing with one another.

Stoicism-Inspired 

Alright so, what do we have left? Most everyone else, I'm afraid. I would be so bold as to say most people who identify as Stoics are not, as define above, Stoics at all but individual who are vaguely familiar with Stoic concepts and ideas and see the practical utility in implementing them. Momento Mori, Premedatatio Malorum, and development of emotional management and control.

This is very likely you, and I'm not judging, given all I've just written that would be pretty hypocritical! I am, however, suggesting that you be aware of this for two reasons:

1. For the sake of knowing that there's so much more to this philosophy that you find a surface level attraction to, and a surface level utility for. Perhaps it is worth your time going deeper! Think about that!

2. So that you don't contribute to the myriad of misinformation about Stoicism online. Not understanding Stoicism, as a living breathing ancient philosophy, not understanding what it really is, in its entirety, and then talking about it as if you're an expert, is one of the reasons so many people who might benefit greatly from Stoicism are turned away from it because it seems like Fratboy, hustle culture, hyper-masculine nonsense when the first Google result is someone overly animated marketer screaming at you to remember you're going to die.

Anyway, that's where I'm at at this point. Let me know how much I got wrong 😘 

Black Stoics and Ancient Slavery

I received and email from a self-identifying "black" listener and, after the exchange that followed, I felt I wanted to share it. I did ask permission to do so, though I have, at this person's request, anonymize the email. This individual lives in the United States. I'll refer to them as X and hope you find the exchange useful.

X:

My name is X, but everyone calls me X. I have just started learning about this amazing Philosophy we know as Stoicism. While going down the rabbit hole of YouTube/Podcasts I found yours, Practical Stoicism. The very first episode I heard was, 'The Bulletproof Self.'

Tanner, I am writing for clarification on this topic. I was taken aback at first, but I chose and still choose not to be harmed as the Stoics teach us. The way you explain it is confusing. I am a Black man/woman, you made me feel in a way that maybe Stoicism is not right for me. I could never continue studying anything that condones slavery. I am not here to attack, I am trying to gain an understanding.

Tanner:Very glad you decided to write me instead of turning away.

I would encourage you to listen to my interview with Kai Whiting, which you can find on YouTube here because we dive specifically into this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez8_48xgsJEBut I don't want to dodge the concern and force you to listen to a 1-hour episode to get the answer (though I do really want you to listen to that to understand the full context of the position), so I'll say something here as well!

Epictetus was a slave. He was a slave who was brutally beaten by his "master" and made lame for life. He went on to become one of the founding fathers of Stoicism. So, first and foremost, let me say, emphatically, Stoicism (capital S) does not condone slavery.

In ancient Stoicism (not practical, but ancient) virtue is the only good. Virtue, as defined by the Stoics, was the knowledge of how to live well. Living well was embodied by four cardinal virtues: bravery, justice, wisdom, and temperance. If you were virtuous you were automatically "good" in all other aspect of life one might care to be good in. Therefore, the only good, again to the ancient Stoics, was virtue.

Since virtue was the only good, the ancient Stoics believed that if something couldn't damage your virtue (your ability and knowledge to live well, to be "good") then it wasn't good or bad, it was what the ancients would refer to as an indifferent.

Not indifferent as in "I feel indifferent about slavery" but indifferent as in "Slavery has an indifferent impact on me, personally, because slavery cannot damage my virtue."

It's like saying someone hitting me in the face is an indifferent. That doesn't mean I don't CARE that someone has hit me in the case, it only means that I recognize someone hitting me in the face isn't capable of hurting the ONLY real good the ancient Stoics believed in: my virtue.

But in Stoicism there are preferred indifferents and dispreferred indifferents. A preferred indifferent is something like wealth. We don't NEED it to become virtuous, but it might help us do virtuous deeds, so it's helpful and we can pursue something like that.

Slavery would be a dispreferred indifferent. A dispreferred indifferent can't PREVENT us from being virtuous, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't, as Stoics who love Justice (one of those four Cardinal Virtues I mentioned), act to fight slavery.

Stoic indifferents aren't the same as modern indifference. Indifference means you don't care. An indifferent is a label we put on something that cannot corrupt our virtue.

It's kind of like "you can hit me, you can enslave me, you can torture me... but you cannot ever take away the goodness of my soul."

Unfortunately when we pronounce the word "indifferents" it SOUNDS LIKE "indifference" and this can be confusing.

The Stoics put a lot of emphasis on enduring and surviving terrible things because, in the ancient world, a lot of terrible things happened to MOST people.

Today we put a greater emphasis on preventing terrible things than we do on developing the sort of reliance of mind necessary to endure and survive them because we believe that's preferable. 

Of course it's better to fight and end slavery than it is to teach people how they can stay strong enough to endure and survive it, but the reality is we must train people to do both things and Stoicism does this.

Stoicism teaches us how to endure and survive on the one hand while, on the other, it encourages us to be brave enough to standup and fight injustice. 

I hope this is helpful, X! And thank you, again, for reaching out directly to ask questions.X:Wow, I honestly did not think you would respond and certainly not as expeditiously as you did! I have just finished viewing the episode you did with Kai for further explanation on the topic. He says a LOT and speaks extremely fast. One of the things that helps me understand his position on slavery is when he parallels the historical experience to the modern world, by using the prison system as an example.Certainly being Black (though I have never been imprisoned) I can understand the correlation between the two as I see how it affects my community. I still have some push back for Kai, but we are just going to have to agree to disagree on some things. For example, it seems as though he really does not want to acknowledge that "White Privilege" does exist.Here's where our communities have misunderstandings. One does not want to acknowledge that it does exist and make efforts to change and the other does not want to make the choice that though it may exist, we can choose to not be harmed by this.That's a tough pill for both to swallow. I don't always constantly think of the dreaded 400 years of slavery. I marvel at the fact that my ancestors had the spiritual and mental fortitude to endure. CERTAINLY we can.This is why I do not want the Black community or other POC's to turn away from Stoicism.  It is tough to explain to people that we can not be stuck in a perpetual state of victimhood.  How do I, certainly you or anyone else appropriately articulate this to them?  Though my views may differ from Kai on some things, I do respect the fact that he is not trying to influence opinions.  Thanks for writing Tanner, studying the Stoics is helping me to master my emotions and so that's why I decided to write to gain an understanding.  I can only control my actions, but what a world we would have if everyone slowed down a bit and tried to understand viewpoints that may differ from their own.Additional thoughts (I did not send these to X)Because the Stoics never advocated for abolition, it can seem, from a modern perspective, that they condoned it--but I don't think it's possible to give the ancient Stoics a fair shake on this. Slavery was such a ubiquitous part of life during this time period that calling for its abolition would have been unthinkable. It would have been like calling for the abolition of pet ownership today (no I'm not comparing people to pets, give me a minute).Imagine if 2000 years from now the acceptable moral position on pet ownership was that keeping pets against their will was a sort of kidnapping or imprisonment. Then imagine, 2000 years from now, you looked back at all of us living today and asked questions like "How could they have imprisoned those innocent kitties and puppies like that!? And they neutered them!? And they kept them in crates!?"Certainly we'd be morally bankrupt by your 2000-years-in-the-future estimation, but how fair would it be to have expected us to know better?Maybe that's a weak example, but my point is that you can't expect moral progress to occur faster than the human capacity for recognizing moral progress needs to be made. Humans beings have always needed to fail before we could succeed and our morality is no exception to that. That's not an excuse, it's a reason.An ancient Stoic might have said, "mistreating slaves is immoral" but they wouldn't have said "owning slaves is immoral." That's something we have to reckon with because it's a fact. I think the answer to this conundrum lies in accepting that practitioners of philosophies are not the philosophies themselves. Nothing in Stoicism says enslaving people is moral, and nothing in Stoicism says slavery is immoral. It's our job as practitioners of the philosophy to reason ourselves to a conclusion on the morality of slavery.And I don't know a single contemporary Stoic who would tell you that Slavery, the way we all conceptualize it, is morally good. Kai Whiting, as mentioned above (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez8_48xgsJE), does interject some gray area into this, and it's worth listening to because nuance and context are incredibly important in philosophical and logical reasoning, but that gray area lives in the extreme exceptions to what we think of as a normative view of slavery.Anyway, I hope you found this post useful.Take care.

Stoicism without Stoic Cosmology

Recently I had a conversation with Kai Whiting, a philosopher and professor of Stoicism in the UK where during, and I mean for nearly the entirety of the conversation, we talked about the Stoic god. I'm an atheist, this is well-established at this point, and something in particular about Kai's views caught my attention, and that was this: That the Stoics believed the highest only good was a virtuous character and, in order to be a Stoic, one had to believe this. As this belief is informed by the Stoic's cosmology, one must believe in the Stoic conception of god in order to believe that virtue is the only good. Ipso facto: you maintain a coherent and logically defensible Stoic practice without believing in the Stoic god.

My immediate inward-facing response was, to quote Tim Urban, "Wait, but why?"

I don't yet have all my thoughts together on this but I wanted to "put to paper" what thoughts I have at the moment--unorganized and partial as they may be.

Did the Stoics ever claim objective truth?

I'll start with what I'm most curious to figure out: when the Stoics put forth their Cosmology, was it as fact or was it as opinion? Did the Stoic's claim the Stoic god objectively existed or was their god simply a means to a start? Or a theory?

If it was a theory, what's to stop us from moving the starting point of adoption (of Stoicism) forward one step from necessary belief in a conscious cosmos to necessary belief in the subjective claim that Virtue is the only good?

What is the concept of god at its core?

A theist would say that god objectively exists. Were you to ask a theist who created this god, that theist would respond, "Nothing. God has simply always been." So then, at its core, what is the fundamental essence of god (or, if you prefer, of God)?

Is it not simply a point beyond which you accept the rest on faith? 

If this is the case, if "god" is simply a point of demarcation between what can be empirically proven and what one chooses to accept on faith, why must it be required of a practitioner of Stoicism to make their leap of faith at point X rather than point Y? Why is it required to believe in the Stoic god rather than simply believe that Virtue is the only good? 

What Stoic claim prevents us from redefining god without "breaking" Stoicism?

Why can't we change the ancient Stoic definition of "god" from a conscious cosmos to the phenomena of Virtue? Why can't we stop there and say the leap of faith necessary is to accept that Virtue is the only good? Full stop. Why, if we don't need to prove the logical existence of god, do we need to prove the logical belief in Virtue being the only good?

I'm not as well read as Kai, I've not had the same amount of exposure to the ancient texts of Stoicism and I don't read Koine Greek, nor Latin, nor ancient Greek, thus I have significant limitations in setting out to answer this last question but, here it is:

Where in ancient Stoicism is there an argument made that prevents us, doing as I've describe above, from severing the cosmological connection without breaking Stoicism?

And here I'll think of my new friend, Keiran Setiya, who reminded me in our conversation last month that, "Argumentation has its limits."

I've got plenty to think about, and I'm happy to hear your thoughts below. 

As Often As You Can, Stand.

The fifth meditation from book three of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is one of my favorites. I thought it might be fun to dive into this meditation and move through it, line by line, to see what sort of value we can get out of it. Let's start with the meditation as translated by Gregory Hays in 2002.  

"How to act:

Never under compulsion, out of selfishness, without forethought, with misgivings.Don’t gussy up your thoughts.No surplus words or unnecessary actions.Let the spirit in you represent a man, an adult, a citizen, a Roman, a ruler. Taking up his post like a soldier and patiently awaiting his recall from life. Needing no oath or witness.Cheerfulness. Without requiring other people’s help. Or serenity supplied by others.To stand up straight—not straightened."

Starting with the first line:

“Never under compulsion, out of selfishness, without forethought, with misgivings.”

This makes sense, doesn’t it? We don’t want our actions to be actions we take because we are being forced to, nor should they be taken with selfish motivations. When we act, we should act freely and with the benefit of others in mind or, at least, freely and with something other than ourselves alone in mind. And here I think “ourselves” would mean, our emotional desires.

Take breakfast for example: our emotional desire might be a stack of chocolate chip pancakes with a whip cream smiley face and strawberry eyeballs, but is that a good decision to make when we know the value of maintaining a healthy diet and taking care of our bodies? Surely it is not.

Does that mean succumbing to desires is always bad? No. We’ve never covered Book One of the meditations because it’s essentially a list of thank yous to people in Marcus’s life, but one of those thank yous, I cannot remember to whom it was written, and I’m paraphrasing, went, “I’m thankful that whenever I gave into my desires, that I was quick to recover.”

So, perhaps there is a sort of managed interplay going on between our emotions and our logical minds when we know that stack of chocolate chip pancakes is the exception, not the rule. But we certainly know that not even Marcus, ever the teacher, thought it was possible to be perfect in this regard. You’ll fail, you’ll recover, and you’ll continue the effort moving forward.

"Don’t gussy up your thoughts"

Don’t over-aggrandize your thoughts, keep them simple, keep them straight forward. Don’t make yourself out to be, in your own mind, more than you are. Cut through the fluff and think in a way that is as reflective of reality as is possible. Separate the signal of importance from the noise of emotion and self-aggrandizement.

"No surplus words or unnecessary actions."

I don’t recall exactly where I heard it but a long time ago, maybe twenty years or so, someone said to me, or I heard it in a movie or read it in a book, “Never say anything that doesn’t add value to the conversation.”

I’ll be the first to admit I fail to do this frequently, but it is a nice aim to have. Before you speak, ask yourself, “is what I’m about to say going to provide any value to the conversation I’m about to join?” If the answer is no, then why are you saying it? Is it in service to your ego? Do you want others to know how smart you are? Do you fell compelled to say something in order to fit in? If you can avoid saying things that are without substance, you may become known as someone who only speaks when there is something worth speaking to. That would be a good thing for the future, sure, but it would also be a good thing in the present because you wouldn’t be confusing important issues with vapid or useless thoughts, and you wouldn’t be participating in conversation which were not important. That doesn’t mean a bit of fun useless banter can’t be enjoyed from time to time but, like everything else that isn’t the goal of Stoicism, in moderation.

"Let the spirit in you represent a man, an adult, a citizen, a Roman, a ruler. Taking up his post like a soldier and patiently awaiting his recall from life. Needing no oath or witness."

There is a chaotic child inside of all of us. And it can feel, by suppressing it, that we are killing some part of ourselves. To become, in Marcus’s words, “an adult” really can feel like you’re smothering some sort of innocence within yourself; some sort of whimsy or wide-eyed wonder. But this is what the world requires, it requires people who show up with purpose, and who believe it is their duty to do so. You’re not just waking up to pass time, you’re waking up to participate, to make change, to do your human job; you’re waking up to discover your internal honey bee and to inhabit it fully for the sake of your community, for the sake of your family and those who depend on you, and for the sake of future generations. Everything we do that matters must be thought about in such a way that we are inspired to do our best in doing those things.

Of course, as I say immediately following most of these edict-sounding pieces of advice from Marcus, we can’t be perfect. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve wrapped my night up with a Pixar movie, or a Hayao Miyazaki film, why, just last night, I bookmarked The Sea Beast on Netflix. I watch cartoons and animated films all the time, and I find them to be a comfort in a serious life. Perhaps Marcus would have thought this a childish waste of time but, as I’ve said in other volumes, we know things about the human mind today that Marcus didn’t—things that Marcus couldn’t have known. It is important that our Stoic practice be allowed to mature and change in ways that respect modern knowledge—not modern opinions, mind you, but modern knowledge.

There’s this great scene from my childhood that my mother told me once, I’ll share it with you now. We were on vacation, somewhere, I don’t recall where, and my step-grandfather, Walter Pickett, who was a Superior Court judge in Connecticut and the son of the same, was sitting at the edge of his hotel bed very early in the morning while the rest of us were asleep. My mother woke to the soft glow and low volume of the television set; but also of the quiet chuckles of my grandfather. Walter was a stoic man in many ways, a Yale graduate, a judge, a man’s man who lived by the book. Or, at least, that is how I remember him as a child and my mother reinforces this memory. He was a serious man who thought about serious things and he didn’t have time for games. But in that moment, there he sat, illuminated by cable television in a pre-dawn hotel room, one sock on, one sock off, getting ready for the day, watching and giggling at, a bugs bunny cartoon.

All minds need a break, even the most stoic ones, and today we know that these sort of lapses in intellectual severity give our brains time to relax and breathe and that’s important so, yes, show up like a soldier and stand your post, but when you get home, it’s probably okay to play a game, or read a comic book, or do something silly and without much intrinsic purpose—your mind needs that sort of thing sometimes.

"Cheerfulness. Without requiring other people’s help. Or serenity supplied by others."

Marcus seems to be asking us to become islands here, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, we do want to construct a character so strong that even if everyone in our lives abandoned us, even if we were reduced to abject poverty, forced to live on the street, that even under those circumstances we could maintain our stoic practices, we could be so resilient and self-sufficient that even the worst case scenario couldn’t rock our constitution; couldn’t rob us of our happiness. There is value in all of that, of course, and I don’t think anyone could argue that, but it is a bit like the conundrum of avoiding falling in love because you don’t want to risk the potential hurt of your partner falling out of it. I will say that in practicing gratitude—gratitude for being alive, for your good fortune to draw breath and participate in this grand experience of life, one can show up cheerful to almost anything. And one can become so strong that they don’t require help from anyone; but that last bit, to not require the serenity supplied by others—I’m less confident there. The idea of finding serenity only in yourself is alluring, but I don’t know how practical it is. Humans are social creatures, and friendships and relationships are important to us at a fundamental level, so the idea of not requiring others to be cheerful, it’s a nice idea, but I don’t know that one can be truly cheerful, fully cheerful, without relationships; I’m afraid we’re a bit too human for that.

"To stand up straight, not straightened"

Now this last bit speaks to me loudly. There’s this modern idea that no one gets anywhere on their own, you’ll hear many people say “you didn’t build that thing on your own; pulling yourself up by your bootstraps isn’t real.” But I’m not so sure. I think there’s a certain level of character we are all required to establish within ourselves that frees others of the need to prop us up. Other can prop us up, surely, and they do, but to lack the metaphorical spine and muscle to stand on our own two feet is almost unforgivable. To rely on others to do our standing for us, to fight our fights for us. That to me is, again, nearly unforgivable.

Of course this is metaphorical, some people physically cannot stand, but in their minds? In their minds they are as capable of resoluteness as any other man or woman and I feel it is important to train that part of ourselves, as Marcus did, so that we are an ally to our fellow citizens and not a burden. Is there anything worse, when assessing the character of a man or woman, when someone is capable of doing the thing themselves, than lazing about such that others must do the thing for them? I don’t think so.

Marcus wants us to stand on our own two feet whenever we’re able, and to be able as frequently as possible, and I think that's a noble ideal to aim for.

Indifferences in Stoicism

Everything that doesn't hurt you, in Stoicism, is an indifference. However, the Stoics had an interesting understanding of "hurt." According to the Stoics the only hurt which exists is damage to your moral character. If it doesn't hurt your moral character, then it doesn't actually hurt anything. Lose a limb? Doesn't hurt. Lose your parent? Doesn't hurt. To be clear, that doesn't mean it doesn't emotionally hurt, or physically hurt, it means that it doesn't hurt the one thing Stoics prize above all else: it doesn't hurt your character.

Preferred Indifference vs. Dispreferred Indifference

Everything external which cannot hurt your character, which is everything external, is viewed as an indifference. This means, when Stoics think about how to regard any external, when assigning a value judgement of good or bad to it, they decide to regard it indifferently because it lacks the power to compromise their character. But there are preferred and dispreferred indifferences.

An example of a dispreferred indifference is being sick. Being sick cannot compromise our moral character, but it's not exactly pleasant and so, if it can be avoided, steps can be taken to avoid it.

An example of a preferred indifference is winning the lottery. Being wealthy cannot compromise our moral character, but being wealthy could enable us to be more useful to our fellow humans, and to, ourselves, avoid dispreferred indifferences more reliably. So, if possible, so long as pursuing it doesn't compromise our moral characters, wealth can be sought and accrued.

It's also true that being sick could lend us the time necessary to reflect on something that improves our moral character, so it could become preferred. Likewise it is true that money could potentially lead to corruption, so it could become dispreferred.

The point is that an external thing only impacts your character in ways which you allow it to. No external has an organic value judgement attached to it because its value is determined by how you allow yourself to be affected by it. Externals are otherwise inert. 

This is often misconstrued for an apathetic worldview

People will ask, "Well then, I guess you feel indifferently about the fact that this terrible thing has happened to my friend Steve?" But that's not exactly what the Stoics meant when they talked about indifference or apatheia. Indifference is our relationship, we Stoics, with the things that happen to us, not the things that happen to you.

In regards to things which happen to others, Stoics still view it as, ultimately, an indifference, because it's not capable of impacting our moral characters, but that doesn't mean we don't identify dispreferred indifferences and work to minimize them. There's nothing in Stoicism, as far as I've ever read, which suggests it is "un-Stoic" to work to reduce dispreferred indifferences in the world. 

Can modern Stoics fight slavery? Yes. Do they? Yes. Can modern Stoics join the military to serve their county and fight in wars? Yes. Do they? Yes. 

It is true, of course, that different Stoics will identify different dispreferred indifferences as being in need of addressing (everyone is free to decide what wrongs in the world do and do not demand their attention) but all Stoics who put any serious thought into their practice of this ancient philosophy are encouraged by it to be in-service to their fellow human beings, and Marcus Aurelius makes no bones about this in the closing line of the first of his Meditations:

For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.

On Attracting More Female Listeners

Greek Philosophy is male-dominated in an academic sense and Stoicism, in particular, attracts almost exclusively men (though not exclusively, as you'll discover during my upcoming interview with author Sharon LeBell). Practical Stoicism receives over half-a-million downloads a month, but look at the gender breakdown of listeners:

Assuming 2/3 of "not-specified" is male, my audience is 90% male.

This is a problem, and it's a problem for modern reasons but probably not the modern reasons you think. You may think that I'm someone who cares about the optics of having (practically) no female listeners, that I worry for the "brand" as it exists in this "woke" virtue signaling culture. I do not. My concern stems from my practical sensibilities. 

The reason I care I have so few female listeners isn't representation, although I could make that argument because, from a representation of percentages standpoint, men are over-represented (when compared to the US population) and non-binary is pretty close to exactly representative. The reason I care I have so few female listeners is that they make up damn near (maybe a little more now) half of all people on earth. 

I believe, as you believe, that Stoicism is a useful philosophy that everyone should, at least in part, incorporate into their lives for the sake of themselves, their communities, and the world. How can we believe that and not care about reaching women with this philosophy?

If my plan is to reform fundamentalist/traditional Stoicism so it can be more practically practiced in the world, because I want to make the world a better place (and this is my plan), how successful do I imagine I'll be if women aren't part of that plan?

I don't know how to move forward with this, but here are my initial thoughts:

I should effort to appear on female-lead podcasts in the philosophy and classics realm so as to get in front of more women interested in this sort of content

I should effort to find more female philosophers (who are relevant to the content of this podcast) to feature as guests on Practical Stoicism

I should survey my existing female listenership to discover more about them. Perhaps they will be willing to share demographic information that can help me build an ad campaign to more effectively target listeners like them.

I don't think it's realistic to expect that I will ever be able to get a 50/50 split. It's well-established that, for whatever reason, women are considerably less interested in this sort of Philosophy than men -- and, again, this isn't about representation for the sake of representation, it's about maximizing the impact of Stoicism across genders -- but I think a realistic goal, before the end of the year, is to see the current gender split move from 90/10 male/female to 80/20.

If you have ideas about how to make more progress towards this specific aim more quickly, please feel free to drop a comment below or send a private message from the contact page.

Thanks for reading.

The [Necessary] Reformation of Stoicism

(this is an excerpt from the pre-edit draft of my upcoming book, "Stoicism for Practical Humans" releasing Thanksgiving Day 2022)

Few ideas can be good ideas irrespective of the time, place, or situation within which they are presented. Philosophies are suites of ideas, they are carefully thought through and compiled guides for living. What happens, then, when a philosophy founded in 300BCE experiences a period of renaissance more than 2300 years later?

Can that philosophy, Stoicism in our case, and its suite of ideas, remain good ideas if left as they were over 2300 years ago? I argue that they cannot. I further argue that no philosophy can remain unchanged and maintain its utility or practicality as time marches on and our understanding of the world, and ourselves, marches along with it.

Consider the following:

I think it’s fair to think of any religion also as a philosophy, and it’s certainly not difficult to identify ancient religious practices that do, and would upon imagining their reintroduction into modern society, make most all of us recoil in disgust. Imagine the practice of demonic exorcism being performed on someone with Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder in the 15th century—absolutely a terrible thought. Imagine a modern world where science and medicine had no impact on the philosophies of today’s surviving religions. Imagine if civilized societies were still practicing demonic exorcisms as the primary method for treating various psychoses.

When our philosophies, or religions for that matter, fail to provide adequate answers to important questions about morality, behavior, and purpose, they must be either updated or abandoned. Stoicism has had a renaissance in recent decades, as I’ve said, but what it is in need of now is a reformation. However, any such reformation would face strong opposition from various traditionalists (from academics to practitioners of traditional Stoicism). These opponents would sternly assert that any deviation from traditional or classical Stoicism is a perversion of Stoicism and, while I would word it differently, I would call it a modernization of Stoicism, I agree.

What I present in this book is not a re-defining of classical Stoicism because, again, I agree that any attempt to do that would be a perversion of classical Stoicism. To attempt to do so would be like a biblical revisionist attempting to rewrite the Old Testament. You can’t just change a philosophy and call it the same thing and so, then, a new name is needed. We’ll get to that in a little while.

First, I would prefer to cut off at the pass any detractors who would suggest that Stoicism was never meant to be changed. I’ll do that by using their love of traditional texts against them:

“Is any man afraid of change? What can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature? And can you take a hot bath unless the wood for the fire undergoes a change? And can you be nourished unless the food undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?” — The Meditations, Book 7 Meditation 17, Marcus Aurelius (translated by George Long, 1862)

While Aurelius is certainly not the only person whose opinion matters on this point, he absolutely carries with him the bona fides necessary to opine on change—and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an ancient Stoic who wouldn’t argue the same: that change is part of nature and thus must be accepted and not fought against for reasons of ego when it appears to us.

MORAL PROGRESS NECESSITATES CHANGE

Epictetus, one of the fathers of Stoicism, was a slave. Slaves abounded in ancient Greece and Rome and slavery was the norm, at one point or another, across most every culture and on every continent right up until 1948 when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which abolished slavery internationally). Most Western philosophies, if not all, were conceived of prior to this declaration. This has ramifications.

Any philosophy conceived of during a time when owning people wasn’t just normative, but, going back far enough, considered to be somehow virtuous, must needs require updating as our human concept of right and wrong, moral and immoral, has matured. To put this another way: there is a modern problem baked into any philosophy that never spoke out against forced human servitude (or any other yet-to-be-identified moral failing of the past), and that problem will sit there, like a landmine, until such a time that people care enough to look for it, dig it up, and disarm it. Stoicism is one of these philosophies.

This isn’t to suggest that the ancient Stoics were monsters of their age, quite the opposite in fact. Stoics felt strongly that slaves should be treated humanely. Seneca, for example, wrote the following on how to treat slaves:

“Treat your slave with compassion, even with courtesy; admit him to your conversation, your planning, your society.”

Marcus, in his Meditations, says a bit as well:

“Consider how you stand in relation to your slaves, and how we were born to help one another.”

The Stoics certainly viewed slaves as deserving of humane treatment, there’s plenty of testament to this in various texts, but they stopped short of speaking out about the morality holding slaves in the first place. Of course, like any ancient person, you can be morally progressive by the standards of your day but, give it enough time, get far enough into the future before looking back at the human beings of the past, and it’s impossible to have ever been morally progressive enough. That’s just how it works. It’s not anyone’s moral failing, it doesn’t suggest the good men and women of yesteryear were in fact not good, it simply highlights the fact that all people are products of their time and, as such, no matter how good they were, they all have a limited amount of runway before modernity views them as actually quite horrific. Eventually it will be my turn, and then it will be your’s.

This proves it, then: our morality is ever changing, and so the philosophies that inform our morality must be fluid.

STOIC COSMOLOGY IS OUTMODED

The Stoics were not atheists, but they were an odd kind of theistic for, during a time of rampant pantheism, the Stoics were kind of monotheistic. They didn’t believe in a single god the way Christians would come to, but they believed in a single divine influence: the Logos.

Stoic Cosmology suggests that everything that exists is either matter, which I’ll trust you don’t need a definition for, or Logos, the divine and acting Reason of the Universe. This Logos would use what was called Pneuma, or “the breath of life”, to organize the Universe rationally. The Pneuma had three forms: life force, soul, and tension.

Pneuma as state or tension: in this form Pneuma is a lot like the Yin and Yang in Chinese Cosmology. It is keeping things together, like trees and stones, but also like the balance of a human being. Physical things and their relationships to one another.

Pneuma as life force: in this form Pneuma allows things to grow. Plants, fungi, etc. This form of Pneuma is what we think of when we think of all that is nature.

Pneuma as soul: the most concentrated, rare, and powerful form of Pneuma. This form of Pneuma animates animals (including humans).

I’m an atheist, so the idea of a conscious cosmos, while not exactly theism, is the kind of new age spiritual concept that’s a bit too Depak Chopra “cosmic consciousness” for me to take seriously. In fact, reading about Pneuma and Logos, when I first approached Stoicism, was very nearly enough to put me off the philosophy forever. Fortunately, I pressed through it. What I found was that the cosmology of Stoicism, of Hellenistic Period Greeks who, compared to the humans of modernity, knew almost nothing of science, was not needed in order to execute on the ultimate aims of Stoicism.

Imagine that a man discovered special mushrooms that, when mixed with a few other ingredients, cured numerous illnesses. Further imagine that he discovered these cures because he ardently believed in a cosmological view of existence that was complete nonsense. Do these cures lose their utility when the cosmological view of the universe that lead to their discovery is proven to be false? Of course not. It has always been possible to be right for the wrong reasons (because a person can be right without being epistemically correct). That is to say, you can guess the right answer without any knowledge of why that’s the right answer.

While the first Stoics may have fleshed out their philosophical principles based on an understanding of the cosmos worked, which was both fantastical and false, they still managed to create a Philosophy with such utility and insight that its wisdom hasn’t just survived the ravages of time, it has proliferated across nations, governments, educational institutions, and religions in spite of its founders’ archaic and outmoded understanding of science, psychology, and the world in general.

The practical principles for living which Stoicism provides are incredibly useful to any modern individuals whom would seek to implement Stoicism into their lives—and that is true regardless of whether or not those individuals believe in Pneuma or Logos. The Stoics, in my opinion, were right about the value of their values, but they were right for the wrong reasons.

If you want to be a Traditional Stoic, if you want to emulate the life of a Hellenistic Period Greek, then yes, you must accept and adopt the Cosmology that comes prepackaged with this Philosophy. However, if you’re trying to live like a Stoic who has learned things with the passing of thousands of years—a modern Stoic—then the Cosmology of Stoicism is entirely irrelevant to the benefits of Stoicism.

REFORMATION OR BUST

I believe, ardently, that every philosophy must be updated over time as we learn more about human beings and more about the world around us and beyond us. Further, when science proves certain things to be true, false, likely true, or likely false, the parts of any philosophy which contradicts those findings must be abandoned in order for that philosophy to remain tenable and in alignment with what we know to be true or false about the world we live in. If any such updating is so disruptive to a philosophy that said philosophy can no longer maintain its practical utility, then it is time to erect a burial mound and lay that philosophy to rest. Forever.

Philosophy is the only tool we humans have to answer the question, “How can I live a good and just life—and how can I live it well?” We cannot, outside of academia for the sake of historical knowledge and records keeping, cling to archaic ways of answering this question simply for the sake of honoring the past. The way to live well in 3,000 years ago may have been the way to live well 3,000 years ago, but it is, necessarily, not the way to live well today. If we agree that the world is changing, and if we agree that a changed world brings new questions and moral dilemmas, then we must also agree that the answer to questions about how to live well cannot, ever, be a static ones.