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September 30 - October 3, 2017
having reckoned that he was in pain and could no longer be useful to society, by committing suicide by starvation.
That framework is the idea that in order to live a good (in the sense of eudaimonic) life, one has to understand two things: the nature of the world (and by extension, one’s place in it) and the nature of human reasoning (including when it fails, as it so often does).
what is and is not proper to want.
just how easy it is to manipulate people emotionally, playing on their fears and anger.
our own ancestors also lived in small bands in which prosocial behavior was adaptive,
In Plato’s Crito, Socrates tells his distraught friends that he has a moral duty to accept the law even when it is patently misused, because we don’t get to change the rules when they happen not to suit us.
Cooks are more highly valued than farmers.
if someone is presenting them with just one of two forced choices, that person is probably committing what is called the fallacy of false dichotomy—he’s not telling them that other options are available.
That’s not hypocrisy or rationalization, I think, but rather a balancing of competing demands that stem from different ethical criteria: supporting a type of operation of which I do not approve versus disappointing someone I love.
“There is great difference between joy and pain; if I am asked to choose, I shall seek the former and avoid the latter. The former is according to nature, the latter contrary to it. So long as they are rated by this standard, there is a great gulf between; but when it comes to a question of the virtue involved, the virtue in each case is the same, whether it comes through joy or through sorrow.” In other words, by all means go ahead and avoid pain and experience joy in your life—but not when doing so imperils your integrity. Better to endure pain in an honorable manner than to seek joy in a
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people usually don’t want to do evil, and certainly don’t think of themselves as evildoers. But they also tend to follow the general opinion without critical analysis, and indeed—as in Eichmann’s case—they are often convinced that they are doing a good job.
And that was what I actually meant by banality. There’s nothing deep about it [the ignorance]—nothing demonic! There’s simply the reluctance ever to imagine what the other person is experiencing, correct?
he “dashes into politics” without the proper “education,” meaning without the sort of wisdom that comes from being virtuous.
Belangia helpfully adds: “A-gnoia means literally ‘not-knowing’; a-mathia means literally ‘not-learning.’ In addition to the type of amathia that is an inability to learn, there is another form that is an unwillingness to learn.…
Instead, intelligent stupidity is a “spiritual sickness,” and in need of a spiritual cure.
“Why then are you indignant with her, because, unhappy woman, she is deluded on the greatest matters and is transformed from a human being into a serpent? Why do you not rather pity her—if so it may be? As we pity the blind and the lame, so should we pity those who are blinded and lamed in their most sovereign faculties. The man who remembers this, I say, will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile none, blame none, hate none, offend none.”
We know that the best way to help students change their conceptual outlook about scientific notions is to purposefully increase their cognitive dissonance until they feel so uncomfortable that they themselves seek out more information and new sources to resolve the conflict.
For when, or in whose school, did he learn ‘that man is a gentle and sociable creature and that wrongdoing in itself does great harm to the wrongdoer’? If, then, he has not learnt this or been convinced of it, why should he not follow what appears to be his interest?”
When a man who has set his will neither on dying nor upon living at any cost, comes into the presence of the tyrant, what is there to prevent him from being without fear? Nothing.”
it is shame, not physical pain, that truly brings down a human being.
A similar problem arises with the contemporary, highly inflated use of the word “hero,” especially in the United States. Some brave people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good truly deserve that appellative (though they don’t have to be almost exclusively drawn from the ranks of the military or the police). But someone who dies, say, as a result of a terrorist attack is not a hero—he is a victim. He probably did not display courage and other-regard; he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We should most certainly mourn him, but labeling him a “hero”
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For Larry, the most devastating disabilities are precisely those that severely limit or entirely erase our agency.
The emphasis, for every human being, should be on what we can do, not on what we cannot do. Instead of saying, “I can’t do that,” say, “I can do it this way.”
Regret at the anticipation that this interval will end is not just irrational but entirely unhelpful.
But it's built into us
“If it is not to your profit, the door stands open: if it is to your profit, bear it. For in every event the door must stand open and then we have no trouble,”
the possibility of leaving life voluntarily gives us the courage to do what is right under otherwise unbearable circumstances.
anger, anxiety, and loneliness, three major plagues of modern life.
desire (not want or need) a promotion, so I’m going to do my best to deserve it. Whether I actually get it or not is not under my control, because it depends on a number of factors external to my will.
“Logic defeats anger, because anger, even when it’s justified, can quickly become irrational. So use cold hard logic on yourself.”
it just isn’t the case that every problem has a solution.
We are anxious for our bit of a body, for our bit of property, for what Caesar will think, but are not anxious at all for what is within us. Am I anxious about not conceiving a false thought? No, for that depends on myself. Or about indulging an impulse contrary to nature? No, not about this either.” The point here is more philosophical than psychological, of course; Epictetus is addressing the long-term course of our lives rather than whatever immediate problem we may face.
A religious person, putting it slightly differently, would speak in terms of taking care of one’s soul rather than just one’s body and possessions, but the idea is the same: we tend to adopt upside-down priorities, to be worried about things that are ultimately less important and definitely less under our control than what we should really be worried about and focusing energy and time on.
choice continuum, of course, pertains to external causes of loneliness, not to internal attitudes, which are more within the proper domain of Stoic thought.
Stoics reject the whole idea of embarrassment, especially with respect to societal expectations, because we have no influence over other people’s judgments, only over our own behavior.
One distinction between loneliness and being alone would have been perfectly clear to the Stoics: the latter is a factual description, while the former is a judgment we superimpose on that description, and it is that judgment, not the naked fact, that makes us feel rejected and powerless.
is it really as simple as a judgment
something that is to be sought unless it compromises our integrity and virtue.
every challenge in life is a perfectly good chance to work on self-improvement.
hic et nunc
