John G. Messerly's Blog, page 80

A Vision of the Future

A colleague elucidated a thoughtful replay to those who believe that culture needs a vision of an ideal future that inspires people to act now so as to help bring about this ideal in the future. In my case this vision is of a future where our post-human descendents attain higher levels of being and consciousness. Our role in the drama is as protagonists in that evolutionary epic, and this provides (roughly) the meaning of our lives.

 Here is my colleague’s insight:

I would prefer this aspiration not to be “boxed in” to a single faraway, nearly metaphysical ideal (like Heaven, Utopia, Singularity, contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, …). Instead, I proposed that people should have a variety of aspirations and directions, from very concrete ones to achieve here and now, to very far away ones unlikely to be reached during their lifetime, and everything in between.



Rather than seeing the purpose of our lives in a specific goal, we instead think of it as a direction toward which cosmic evolution continually orients itself. As my colleague puts it:

In an evolutionary worldview, it is clear that life does not have an endpoint, but continues to evolve. Therefore, it is more realistic to replace purpose by direction: life evolves in the direction of more complexity, fitness, intelligence, synergy … you name it. Intent is a good word to capture this idea of pointing or directing, as it derives from the Latin “intendere”, which means “reaching towards.”

In practice this implies that as we reach one goal we then continue to strive for another. And this implies that we not box ourselves into a specific goal, but maintain “the flexibility
to choose and change destinations any time along your journey, because … you always learn and become wiser while travelling.” So we shouldn’t accept a endpoint like a heaven, but instead remain open to adapting to lessons we learn along our journey.








This seems reasonable. Our overall purpose in life is to increase the good things about life and consciousness—goodness, truth, beauty, justice, liberty, equality, joy, pleasure—and decrease their opposites. The point is a better existence, higher levels of being and consciousness. But obviously we don’t have foreknowledge as to how to bring this about and at any given moment there are small steps along the way. In the present incremental steps may include: changing our criminal justice from its current punitive model to a therapeutic one; preserving the biosphere and stopping climate change;  defeating totalitarian political systems; overcoming racism, sexism, and xenophobia, advancing scientific research, elevating the truth versus the omnipresent lying; raising our children so that those eventually in power arent’ sociopathic; creating more equitable economic systems; and advancing critical thinking and undermining superstition. Needless to say this list is almost endless.




For the moment we can do is what is humanly possible to bring about a better reality. If we do that we will be judge, if we are judge at all, favorably.













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Alexandre Maurer on Why Longevity Doesn’t Equal Overpopulation

I have previously replied to the overpopulation objection to radical life extenstion, the most common objection to those of us who want to defeat death. While my defense of indefinite lifespans centers primarily around moral concerns, the computer scientist Alexandre Maurer has recently offered powerful mathematical reasons to doubt the whole premise of the overpopulation objection.

His main conclusion is that fertility rates and not longevity are the true culprits in population increases. A spectacular extension of life will have a negligible effect on population growth compared with a slightly greater fertility rates. To explain, he offers a simple example.

Assume an initial population of 1000 people. The fertility rate is 2, and the life expectancy is 80. Women give birth at 20.Now, let us consider two variations:

Case A: Death disappears. Nobody dies anymore!

Case B: The fertility rate slightly increases from 2 to 2.5.

Which of these two cases will lead to the greater population increase? A quick calculation gives the following results:

– After 500 years, the population will be 26 000 in case A, and at least 780 000 in case B: 30 times more than in case A.

– After 1000 years, the population will be 51 000 in case A, and at least 206 000 000 in case B: more than 4000 times case A! The gap will be enormous.

The point is that the disappearance of death “only causes a linear population increase; while a fertility rate slightly greater than 2 causes an exponential population increase.” And this means that early death is an inefficient means of population control compared to lower birth rates.

Another consideration is that:

There is an inverse correlation between fertility and longevity: population increases the most in the countries with the shortest life expectancy. The common cause is poverty: when infant mortality is high, there is an incentive to have many children to ensure that some of them eventually survive. In addition, when there is no retirement system, the only “retirement insurance” consists in having many children. Further, to this double incentive to have children, must be added the lack of access to contraception, and a lack of information about it.

The implication of all this is that “people concerned about overpopulation should focus on reducing inequalities and improving the standard of living of the poorest countries.”

In fact, in rich countries, underpopulation is more of a problem rather than overpopulation, and rich countries would benefit enourmously from increased healthy lifespans. Moreover, since rich countries will probably be the first to benefit from life-sustaining technologies, “is very unlikely that increasing life expectancy will result in an overpopulation crisis; especially since such an increase will first happen in rich countries, where the fertility rate is low.”

Moreover, better material security generally leads people to have less children. Remember too that a “even if we lived 1000 years, a fertility rate slightly lower than 2 (e.g.,1.9) is sufficient in the long-term to result in a decreasing population.”

So in addition to all the moral arguments I have made in a previous post, I add Maurer’s insight: fertility rates are much more significant in population increase than death rates.

 

Letter To New Grandchild

A New Life

It’s early morning on May 16, 2017. About two hours ago my wife and I picked up our four-year old granddaughter who is now safely with us. The occasion is the imminent birth of our new granddaughter, who should be born in the next few hours.

It is hard to know what say about a new birth. There are about 353,000 births each day worldwide, about 255 each minute and 4 each second. That places what seems so special to you in a larger context. Still, if the birth directly affects you as a parent, grandparent, or sibling, the event is momentous.

What Kind of World Will There Be?

What I think about most is what kind of world awaits my new granddaughter. Will the world improve, will we we progress, we will overcome the legacy of our Pleistocene brains? Or will we remain ape-like, driven by out-group hostility and destroy ourselves?

Cosmic Evolution

I know one thing—the Gods will not save us. They either don’t exist, don’t care, or are impotent. (They almost certainly don’t exist.) Thus only we can save ourselves, for we are now the protagonists of the evolutionary epic. To save both ourselves and our planet, we must enhance our current moral sensibilities and intellectual capabilities. There is no other way. If we are important at all, it is as links in a chain leading onward toward higher levels of being and consciousness. If we succeed, the universe will become increasingly self-consciousness. This is the story of cosmic evolution—the universe becoming self-conscious through the creation of conscious beings. Our obligation is to aid this upward march.

Now I don’t know if we can make it, if we can create heaven on earth, but we can try. Perhaps the chance to try is our greatest gift. Here is a favorite poem to express these sentiments:

I turn the handle and the story starts:

Reel after reel is all astronomy,

Till life, enkindled in a niche of sky,

Leaps on the stage to play a million parts.

Life leaves the slime and through the oceans darts;

She conquers earth, and raises wings to fly;

Then spirit blooms, and learns how not to die,

Nesting beyond the grave in others’ hearts.

I turn the handle; other men like me

Have made the film; and now I sit and look

In quiet, privileged like Divinity

To read the roaring world as in a book.

If this thy past, where shall thy future climb,

O Spirit, built of Elements and Time!

Keep Striving

And when you get down, my little grandchildren, take comfort in these words:

Come, my friends,

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

… for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Life Is Good

Remember too that the world is full of beauty and truth and goodness. There is love, friendship, honor, knowledge, play, beauty, pleasure, creative work, and many other things that make life blissful. There are parents caring for their children, people building homes, artists creating beauty, musicians making music, scientists accumulating knowledge, philosophers seeking meaning, and children playing games. There are mountains, oceans, trees, sky and flowers; there is art, science, literature, and music; there is Rembrandt, Darwin, Shakespeare, and Beethoven.

Hope

I’ll conclude by giving my best advice. We should adopt a hopeful attitude—expressed as caring and striving—because it is part of our nature, spurs action, and makes our lives better. We should also adopt a wishful hopefulness—wishing without expectations—for the same reasons.

Still, we don’t know if life is meaningful; if truth, beauty, goodness and justice matter; if there is any recompense for our efforts; if suffering can be ameliorated; or if anything matters at all. We don’t know if our wishes will be fulfilled, or our hopeful attitude can be sustained. But I see no value in giving into despair, at least not yet. For now I still have hope.

All of my advice best comes together in a famous passage about from William James’ essay, “The Will To Believe.” I first encountered it more than 40 years ago, and it still moves me. I hope it provides comfort on life’s often rocky road:

We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ‘Be strong and of a good courage.’ Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. … If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.

With love, your grandpa

“How Trump May Save the Republic,” But Not in the Way Bret Stephens Thinks

I was amused by Bret Stephen’s op-ed in the May 13th edition of The New York Times, “How Trump May Save the Republic.” As Stephen’s puts it: “His views are often malevolent, and his conduct might ultimately prove criminal. But we, too, are protected, for a time, by the enormity of his stupidity.” (Yes, this is the same Bret Stephens who spread his anti-climate change nonsense in a previous op-ed.)

I agree that Trump is no intellectual, but does that make him less dangerous? Trotsky and the intellectuals of the Russian revolution underestimated a mediocre intelligence of Stalin, and paid with their lives. Stalin was brutal and street-smart, two qualities that intellectuals often lack. The mafia kingpin John Gotti was a high school dropout, but street smart enough to have his rival killed and ascend to the top of the Gambino crime family. And that intelligent, Machiavellian Ted Cruz probably still can’t believe he lost the Republican Presidential nomination to the ignorant Donald Trump. I doubt there is a strong connection between education, intelligence and political power, street smarts and ruthlessness probably correlate better—Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale lost to Ronald Reagan, Al Gore and John Kerry to George W. Bush, and Hilary Clinton to Donald Trump.

I will say though that Stephens saved his best insight for last: “Incompetence may protect us—but … only for a while. The blunders may often be self-defeating, but not always. Trump is our president. The enormity of his stupidity, inescapably, is also our own.”

Yet here is another thought—replacing Trump with Pence doesn’t help much, if at all. McConnell and Ryan would push the same no-taxes-on-the-wealthy-no-social-safety-net policies as they do now, but they would look more refined in doing so with Pence in charge. Even if Trump were impeached or worse, that wouldn’t stop the Republicans from pursuing their current agenda. So we may be better off with Trump as the face of the Republican party. That way he remains the physical manifestation of what has been their somewhat hidden agenda since the early 1980s. Perhaps his threatening tweets, collusion with the Russians, weekly golf course vacations, his nepotism and all the rest will finally put a face on today’s Republican party.

So Trump’s ignorance may save us, but not in the way that Stephen’s imagines. It’s not that he won’t help them lower taxes on the rich, he will, it’s that he’ll make them look so shameless and uncouth. I hope I’m right. On the other hand, I’m not optimistic that anything can save us from our forthcoming troubles.

Comey’s Firing: Do We Live in a Kleptocracy?

Every time I sit down to write about something I want to write about—like how to find meaning in a secular age—or ponder the imminent birth of my new granddaughter—how beautiful that life renews itself—I find my reverie interrupted by the political turmoil surrounding me.

Yesterday’s firing of FBI director James Comey, the most important law enforcement official investigating the Trump White House not appointed by that administration, is more than deeply disturbing. For if no truly independent investigation is forthcoming, then we will never know the extent of the current regime’s crimes. With control of the White House, both branches of Congress, law enforcement, increasing control of the judiciary and law enforcement, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and all the rest, we may really be moving to the unthinkable—a one party state, a banana republic, and kangaroo courts. And don’t say it can’t happen here; that America is exceptional. It can and America is not.

The fundamental issue was best captured by David Frum in, “This Is Not A Drill,” published in The Atlantic. Frum wonders if the integrity of our government is being fatally undermined: “If this firing stands—and if Trump dares to announce a pliable replacement—the rule of law begins to shake and break. The law will answer to the president, not the president to the law.” So will the law answer to the president, or the president to the law? If it is the former, if the rule of law is null and void, then there is nothing left to protect any of us from the autocratic whims of the President and his apparatchiks.

And in The New York Times Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the previous three Republican administrations, pleaded with his fellow republicans in “Don’t Be Complicit,”

A powerful, independent person Mr. Trump did not appoint and whose investigation he clearly feared has been summarily fired. Given his volatility and vindictiveness, his Nietzschean ethic and his overpowering narcissism, this is exactly what one would expect of Mr. Trump.

The fear many Trump critics have had is that he is, as I put it just after the inauguration, a transgressive personality and a man of illiberal tendencies who was unlikely to be contained by norms and customs. He would not use power benevolently but unwisely, recklessly, and in ways that would undermine our democratic institutions and faith in our government.

I desperately hope a few Republicans will heed Mr. Wehner’s pleas, but I’m skeptical. No doubt many congressional Republicans despise Trump, but they all want to be reelected too. Unfortunately to do so they need the support of Trump’s devoted and delusional fan base, so almost all future candidates will probably continue to follow the party line. On the other hand, perhaps congressional Republicans will let an independent prosecutor be appointed in the hope that Trump might resign before being impeached. Then Pence would become President, something that many of them would undoubtedly prefer.

Still I doubt that, with the goal of near complete control of government within their grasp, powerful Republicans will suddenly retreat. Those attracted to power rarely let principle intervene when on power’s doorstep. The Republicans find their newfound power exhilarating, and all they want to do is use it. Orwell taught us this years ago:

Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

As for negative public reaction, I don’t think the Republicans care. The public is pretty much disenfranchised anyway—by gerrymandering, voter suppression, big money in politics, and 24/7 propaganda. I hate to say it, and I’m sorry that some of my predictions seem to be coming true, but we now ruled by a kleptocracy. In the meantime the wealthiest will get their tax cuts, ordinary citizens will be denied their health-care, the poor will still be incarcerated in our high-tech dungeons, the environment will get more polluted, the climate will get more extreme, the mentally ill and the unlucky will continue to live on the streets, and more wars will be fought and bombs dropped.

With moral and intellectual excellence denigrated, with power and hyper masculinity praised, the nation itself, like so many of its desperately suffering citizens, is becoming increasingly psychotic.

The Philosophy of Vegetarianism

I recently read, “Plants can see, hear and smell—and respond,” on the BBC earth site. The article reports on new research which shows that “plants perceive the world without eyes, ears or brains.”

As Jack C. Schultz puts it, plants “are just very slow animals.” Schultz is a professor in the Division of Plant Sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and he has spent four decades investigating the interactions between plants and insects. “Plants fight for territory, seek out food, evade predators and trap prey. They are as alive as any animal, and – like animals – they exhibit behaviour,” says Schultz.

“To see this, you just need to make a fast movie of a growing plant – then it will behave like an animal,” adds Olivier Hamant, a plant scientist at the University of Lyon, France. Time-lapse camera reveal much of this, “as anyone who has seen the famous woodland sequence from David Attenborough’s Life series,” can attest.

So what is plant sense? Daniel Chamovitz of Tel Aviv University in Israel found that it isn’t all that different from our own. Chamovitz is the author of the 2012 book, What a Plant Knows, which “explores how plants experience the world by way of the most rigorous and up-to-date scientific research …” He distinguishes his book from earlier works like, The Secret Life of Plants, “a popular book published in 1973 that appealed to a generation raised on flower power, but contained little in the way of facts.” That work is now noted for supporting “the thoroughly discredited idea that plants respond positively to the sound of classical music.” But Chamovitz wasn’t trying to demonstrate that plants had feelings, instead he was using contemporary scientific methods to ask “why, and indeed how, a plant senses its surroundings.”

And other researches like Heidi Appel and Rex Cocroft are investigating plant hearing. They want to know why plants are affected by sound—not by classical music but by a predators approach. “In their experiments, Appel and Cocroft found that recordings of the munching noises produced by caterpillars caused plants to flood their leaves with chemical defences designed to ward off attackers.” Plants respond to some sound with an ecologically relevant response.

Moreover Consuelo De Moraes, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, “has shown that as well as being able to hear approaching insects, some plants can either smell them, or else smell volatile signals released by neighbouring plants in response to them.” Like us plants “smell or hear something and then act accordingly …” Of course plants don’t have easily identifiable sense organs like human beings, and more research is needed to learn how they sense. Still, “the photoreceptors that plants use to “see” … are fairly well-studied.

Vegetarianism

The nutruitional and environmental arguments for vegetarianism are quite strong. Vegetarians are healthier than meat eaters, and the negative environmental impact of eating meat boggles the mind. (These claims are so uncontroversial that I won’t even footnote them, but they can be verified by a small amount of conscientious research.) If you want to be healthier don’t take vitamins, but forego animal products; if you want to help the environment, better to not eat meat than drive a Prius. (Driving a Pruis will help too.)

But the moral argument traditionally rests on tremendous suffering animals experience when held captive under appalling conditions ameliorated only by their eventual slaughter, which itself we can assume is unpleasant. Animals suffer. But if plants also suffer what are we to eat? Must vegetarianism be rejected like meat-eating?

The first thing we might say is that if the choice is either plants or animals we still maintain that plants are less developed or organized forms of being and consciousness compared to what we usually call animals. Most importantly, plants don’t have brains, and their sense experiences are more rudimentary—thus they probably suffer less. So, given the choice between eating either plants and animals, we should choose plants.

We also have the choice of eating food substitutes. Eventually science should be able to mimic the nutritional benefits of so-called natural foods. Theoretically we should be able to make even more nutritious food than was available in previous eras, or we may be able to redesign our bodies to run best on some nutritional goo! In fact, if we had robotic bodies, perhaps we could power them with our own solar panels.

For now though I don’t think the fact that plants have sensory experiences changes that we should strongly prefer eating them to eating animal products. Eating plants is healthier, causes exponentially less environmental damage, and the sensory experiences of plants are not as rich as those of animals and thus plants suffer less. The argument for moral vegetarian therefore remains intact.

Bertrand Russell’s Grandmother: Anti-Metaphysician

In, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1872-1914[image error],  Russell tells an amusing story about his grandmother, the Countess Russell (née Lady Frances Elliot), who was the dominant family figure for most of Russell’s childhood and youth.[69][73] As an adolenscent Russell had adopted utilitarianism, much to his grandmother’s dismay. In response she riduculed him, and proceeded to pose ethical conundrums that she believed the young Russell couldn’t resolve using utilitarian principles.

Here is how Russell describe her antipathy to his philosophical interests: “When she discovered that I was interested in metaphysics, she told me that the whole subject could be summed up in the saying: ‘What is mind? no matter; what is matter? never mind.’ At the fifteenth or sixteenth repetition of this remark, it ceased to amuse me, but my grandmother’s animus against metaphysics continued to the end of her life.” And the Countess penned the following poem to express her feelings:

O Science metaphysical
And very very quizzical
You only make this maze of life the mazier;
For boasting to illuminate
Such riddles dark as Will and Fate
You muddle them to hazier and hazier.

The cause of every action
You expound with satisfaction;
Through the mind in all its corners and recesses
You say that you have travelled,
And all problems unravelled
And axioms you call your learned guesses.

Right and wrong you’ve so dissected,
And their fragments so connected,
That which we follow doesn’t seem to matter;
But the cobwebs you have wrought,
And the silly flies they have caught,
It needs no broom miraculous to shatter.

You know no more that I,
What is laughter, tear, or sigh,
Or love, or hate, or anger, or compassion;
Metaphysics, then, adieu,
Without you I can do,
And I think you’ll very soon be out of fashion.

Russell subsequently states that some years later his grandmother said to him, ” ‘I hear you are writing another book,’ in the tone of voice in which one might say: ‘I hear you are having another illegitimate child!’ “

As for me, I can’t imagine discussing utilitarianism or metaphysics with my grandmothers. Yet it doesn’t sound like discussing anything with Russell’s grandmother was much fun.

____________________________________________________________________

The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1872-1914 (London, Allen & Unwin: 1967), 56-7.

My Mom’s Birthday

My mother was born 98 years ago today. In her memory, I reprint this letter which I sent to her 17 years ago.

April 29, 2000

A SPECIAL 81ST BIRTHDAY WISH FOR MY MOTHER

This letter should arrive on your 81st birthday—a time of rejoicing for a life well-lived. Emerging from the stable background of loving parents, a young woman with girlish charm, an ear and talent for music, a fluent reader of Latin, and pursued by a plethora of west St. Louis beaus, in 1935 you met a bicycle delivery boy, in whom, despite his relatively low economic status, you saw something good. His honesty and gentleness shone through beneath the rough exterior; you would marry him when you were just nineteen. A hard-working man who would be a devoted father—somehow you knew.

You courageously endured through an economic depression and a world war in which your husband was absent for two long years, forcing you to raise your first son without your him. Your parents lived with you through the war and, as they prepared to leave at its conclusion, you and Ben told them they could stay with you for the rest of their lives. They had helped you during the war, and now you would care for them—they both would die in your home. In the post-war era you gave birth to three more children, all of whom you showered with the deep love and affection. With them you shared warmth and comfort—you were mother to them all. Like a chameleon you changed to meet their differing needs, always putting others before yourself. 

Your firstborn was typical of firstborns, independent and forceful like his father. He left home at an early age for college, and went on to travel the world and settle far from home, where he became the head of his own household. Your daughter was more like you—gentle, nurturing and cautious—an only daughter must have a special place in a mother’s heart. For your sickly third child you shed more tears than you deserved. You nursed him back from the edge of death, and even now you play an indispensable role in his life. And the baby was inspired by his father’s mandate to be inquisitive. This intellectual wanderlust caused much unintended heartache, but he’s still the same young man who talked of life’s search so long ago.

With your children raised, your husband’s love for you deepened, as did your love for him. The young boy on the bicycle—in whom you saw so much more than fifty years ago—had aged. No longer did he participate in the virile games of youth. The arms that once hit golf balls long distances, the coordination that nestled many a wedge shot close to the hole, and the shoulders that carried large sides of beef—did so no longer. As Thorton Wilder said, he was being “weaned away” from life. But his love for you was deeper than any that emanates from youthful vigor alone.

As his own physical vitality faded, his main concern was Mary Jane Hurley, the beautiful young woman on whose door he had knock so long ago. In his eyes that is who you still were. After fifty years of sleeping in the same bed, separated by war, struggling to make your payments, and watching children to whom you had cared for leave your loving home, after all that … you still had each other. A love so strong that all the cynics could not or would not ever understand. Yet, tragically, it ended after just fifty years.  But be assured that when Ben’s very last breath was taken, it was your name on his lips, your face in his eyes, your presence in his heart. The wind still murmurs outside your window, and its sound is his sound calling you. Now … wait.

For living this well lived life, one of joys and sorrows, triumphs and tragedies, you are to be praised. In the times since your husband left you—not of his own choice—you have endured and survived and re-created yourself. While the body deteriorates, your heart is still strong. You are the hero of your own life—my dearest mother.

With my deepest love and affection,

With my most gracious appreciation,

With yours and my father’s spirit always within me,

I remain, your devoted son, John Gerard

(Postscript – Mary Jane Hurley Messerly died in of a stroke on Sunday, September 18, 2005. She was 86 years old and had taken her usual walk the day before.)

 

What Is The Point of Money?

Wealth is necessary in order to live well, but it is not sufficient. You may have lots of money but live terribly without friends or wisdom. You may have mistaken part of a good life—sufficient wealth to live—with the whole of the good life. For money isn’t an end in itself, it is merely a means to an end.

But let’s suppose that you realize all this. Let’s suppose further that you aren’t materialistic and you want to do good things for the world. Now imagine that you’ve been offered a well-paid position with a good company. We’ll assume your job doesn’t entail you doing anything immoral in the usual sense of the term. (We won’t consider participating in the world’s economic system to be intrinsically immoral.) Finally, let’s suppose you are the kind of person who worries that money might corrupt you, or that the job isn’t exactly what you want. What should you do?

My advice would be to take the job. Obviously the job and its benefits—medical and dental insurance, retirement, etc.—help you to live well. But even more importantly for the idealistic, having some modicum of wealth allows you to help others. So while many people aren’t wise and think money is just a means to buy trinkets, the wise realize wealth can also buy freedom and the ability to do good. Money is power that can be used to benefit people—as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do—or it can hurt people—as Donald Trump and the Koch brothers do.

So when offered a modicum of wealth you are essentially being offered a key that unlocks a door that gives you the chance to effect on the world, to having some power. That power can be used for buying frivolous possession or for hurting others, but it can also be used for good. And with more power comes the ability to do more good. On the other hand, if you have nothing, you have nothing to give.

Of course this doesn’t mean that the only kind of power is financial. There’s moral and intellectual power too. But the way our world is set up, sometimes that’s just not enough. So I say be adventurous and accept a key if offered. Go thru the door and you may find more keys that open more doors and perhaps, in some distant time, you will help unlock doors for others.

(I have written previously about whether you should only do what you love.)

The Stoics on the Emotions or Passions

A common criticism of Stoicism is that is doesn’t leave proper room for the emotions or passions (EorP), that it advocate a passionless, unemotional and apathetic life. I don’t think this a proper characterization of Stoicism, but let’s investigate further.

The Stoics Don’t Reject Emotions, They Reject Passions

Let us say first, following John Sellars a Research Fellow at King’s College London, is that “the Stoics never spoke about the emotions in the way we do.” Today the word emotion refers to almost any mental feeling that we contrast with reason. But “the Stoics do not reject emotions, they reject passions, and that is quite a different thing.”

The Stoics do believe we should feel affinity for our friends and family, that we should have care and concern for them. They also acknowledge that we are affected by external events, that we can be scared or shocked as part of our natural reactions. Jumping behind a wall after hearing an explosion isn’t a passion. But hearing that you might lose your job and then becoming anxious and fearful would be a Stoic passion. In this case the Stoics counsel that we defeat these negative responses by thinking about whether they’re called for. Perhaps we won’t lose our job, or perhaps it won’t be so bad if we do. Thus our fear is a result of poor thinking.

As for good passions, the Stoics say the only thing that is always good for us is virtue, basically a healthy state of mind. “This is the only genuine good, the only thing that guarantees happiness, the only thing the absence of which guarantees misery.” So a good passion follows from a mental state produced by good reasoning. As Sellars puts it:

The ideal Stoic life is thus far from unemotional in the English sense of the word. Indeed, what the Stoics propose we reject are not emotions in the English sense of the word at all, if emotions are defined as feelings that contrast with reasoning. Instead what the Stoics propose we reject is faulty reasoning based on confused value judgements and the unpleasant consequences that this generates.

What Do The Stoics Mean By Passions or Emotions?

For those who feel more comfortable using the contemporary word emotion, we’ll continue our analysis using the phrase “emotions or passions,” (EorP) as long as we remember that it is the older idea of passions that the Stoics have in mind.

Now the four most common accounts or definitions of EorP provided by the Stoics include:

An excessive impulse.
An impulse that ignores reason.
A false judgment or opinion.
A fluttering of the soul.

The first two definitions tell us that EorP are a kind of impulse or force. They are things that happen to us, as contrasted with actions or things that we do. EorP can be compared to running downhill but being unable to stop; they propel you forward. EorP also have a temporal dimension. Typically they are strongest in the present, and weaken over time.

The second and third definitions emphasize that EorP disrupt and contradict reason. EorP misrepresent a thing’s value, and then misdirect our impulses toward achieving it. For example, if we exaggerate the importance of wealth, and then pursue it excessively. Or if we want revenge and act on that angry impulse, we may end up in jail. In such cases EorP are either based on or produce bad reasoning.

The fourth definition of EorP as “a fluttering in the soul” derives from the Stoics sense that EorP have a physical basis and physical consequences—just think of the effect of EorP on heart rate and blood pressure.

The main passions the Stoics identify are appetite and fear. If we think something is good, we have an appetite for it; if we think something is bad, we fear it. These passions are related to two others: pleasure and distress. If we satisfy our appetites, we may experience pleasure, whereas if we fail to satisfy them, we may experience distress. Similarly, if we fear something we experience distress, whereas if our fears don’t materialize we may experience pleasure.

Why Excessive Emotions or Passions Are Bad For Us 

When we (too strongly) experience EorP we make errors in judgment concerning the good and bad, and the present and the future. The idea is that something may be pleasurable in the present that is actually bad, or we may have an appetite for something in the future, which is also bad for us. Likewise, we might think some action is bad in the present and experience distress, even though the thing is really good, or we might fear something in the future that either won’t happen or won’t that bad as we thought.

So excessive EorP result in mistaken judgments and emotional disquietude. For example, things we have appetites for—food, drink, sex—may give us less pleasure than we thought. Thus it isn’t rational to risk more important things like health in their pursuit. Likewise things we fear–humiliation, betrayal, pain, anxiety—may not be as bad as we thought. So it isn’t rational to undermine our lives paralyzed by fear.

The Proper Role of Emotions or Passions 

But this doesn’t mean one lives as an emotionless robot. The goal is not to reject EorP altogether, but to have a balanced emotional life. Think of joy rather than pleasure, caution rather than fear, or reasonable hope rather than appetite. As for distress, we should reject it completely.

So the Stoics oppose EorP that psychologically manipulate us, thereby undermining our reason and volition. But this doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t care about anything. Rather, you should act as a result of rational deliberation. Perhaps an analogy might help. We may want to run or lift weights, but don’t run down too steep of an incline or lift too much weight—that would be excessive.

It is hard to know where to draw the line between restrained and excessive EorP, but clearly we will live better when reason prevents us from being slaves to them. EorP should follow from, not lead, rational reflection. I believe this is good advice.