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June 15 - June 24, 2022
We are to place more importance upon wisdom and virtue than anything else.
“view from above”—as Hadot called it—in modern psychotherapy or self-help literature. It involves picturing events as though seen from high overhead, as they might be seen by the gods atop Mount Olympus, perhaps. Broadening our perspective often induces a sense of emotional equanimity.
view from above technique
They would describe how they were able to remain exceptionally calm while contemplating their situation in life from a detached perspective.
“cognitive distancing,” which is the ability to distinguish our thoughts from external reality,
“functional analysis,” which is evaluating the consequences of different courses of action.
The Stoics can teach you how to find a sense of purpose in life, how to face adversity, how to conquer anger within yourself, moderate your desires, experience healthy sources of joy, endure pain and illness patiently and with dignity, exhibit courage in the face of your anxieties, cope with loss, and perhaps even confront your own mortality while remaining as unperturbed as Socrates.
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be; just be one.
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Everyone from Alexander the Great right down to his lowly mule driver ends up lying under the same ground.
reality of mortality
Once we truly accept our own demise as an inescapable fact of life, it makes no more sense for us to wish for immortality than to long for bodies as hard as diamonds or to be able to soar on the wings of a bird.
As long as we can grasp the truth firmly enough that certain misfortunes are inevitable, we no longer feel the need to worry about them.
remove anxiety by accepting misfortunes will come our way
The Stoics observed that often those who are most desperate to flee death find themselves rushing into its arms,
He was also content to accept that events in life, let alone after death, are never entirely up to us.
All of these schools focused on different aspects of philosophy: the Cynics on virtue and self-discipline, the Megarians on logic, and the Academics on metaphysical theories about the underlying nature of reality.
cynics megarians and academics
He repeatedly warned himself not to become distracted by reading too many books—thus wasting time on trifling issues in logic and metaphysics—but instead to remain focused on the practical goal of living wisely.
application of learnings
what the Cynics meant was that our character is the only thing that ultimately matters and that wisdom consists in learning to view everything else in life as utterly worthless by comparison.
For Stoics, virtue is still the only true good—the Cynics were right about that—but it’s also natural to prefer health to sickness, wealth to poverty, friends to enemies, and so on, within reasonable bounds. External advantages such as wealth may create more opportunities but in themselves they simply don’t have the kind of value that can ever define a good life.
virte is key. External parts of life provide opportunities to enhance virtue
For Stoics, that goal is defined as “living in agreement with Nature,” which we’re told was synonymous with living wisely and virtuously.
Humans excel when they think clearly and reason well about their lives, which amounts to living wisely.
wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.
cardinal virtues of the socratic division of thought that stoics inherited.
Wisdom, in all these forms, mainly requires understanding the difference between good, bad, and indifferent things. Virtue is good and vice is bad, but everything else is indifferent.
external things do have some value, but they’re not worth getting upset over—it’s a different kind of value.
The Stoic Sage, or wise man, needs nothing but uses everything well; the fool believes himself to “need” countless things, but he uses them all badly.
the pursuit of these preferred indifferent things must never be done at the expense of virtue.
never sacrifice virtue for indifferent things. not worth the moral tradeoff
Wisdom itself is uniquely valuable because it allows us to judge the value of external things—it’s the source of everything else’s value.
wisdom allows us to see the value good or bad of indifferent external things in life
Even the Stoic wise man, therefore, may tremble in the face of danger. What matters is what he does next. He exhibits courage and self-control precisely by accepting these feelings, rising above them, and asserting his capacity for reason.
aim to bear with other people’s flaws and forbear from any wrongdoing against them, while calmly accepting things outside of his direct control.
He believed that true strength consisted of one’s ability to show kindness, not violence or aggression.
“You are just an impression and not at all the things you claim to represent,” or “It is not things that upset us but our judgments about them.”
The Stoic likewise tells himself that although the situation may appear frightening, the truly important thing in life is how he chooses to respond. So he reminds himself to view the storm with Stoic indifference and to respond with wisdom and courage while accepting his initial nervous reaction as harmless and inevitable.
What matters, in other words, isn’t what we feel but how we respond to those feelings.
Whereas Sophistry is all about creating an appearance, philosophy is about grasping reality.
If you stick with the facts and don’t unnecessarily extrapolate from them, you will put paid to many anxieties in life.
As an aspiring Stoic, you should begin by practicing deliberately describing events more objectively and in less emotional terms.
“It’s not things that upset us but our judgments about things,”
“cognitive distancing”
Beck defined it as a “metacognitive” process, meaning a shift to a level of awareness involving “thinking about thinking.”
When we judge external things to be good or bad, it’s as though we forget what’s under our control and try to overextend our sphere of responsibility.
cognitive distance by understanding that events don’t seem the same to everyone: our own perspective is just one of many.
sheep don’t vomit up grass to show the shepherds how much they’ve eaten but rather digest their food inwardly and produce good wool and milk outwardly.
Imagining that we’re being observed helps us to pay more attention to our own character and behavior.
not to be “stained purple”
not to uccumb to social expectations and show boating. focus on core values
He likewise tells himself on awakening that he is rising to fulfill his potential for wisdom and not just to be a puppet of bodily sensations, swayed by pleasant feelings or turned aside by discomfort.
a man’s worth can be measured by the things upon which he sets his heart.
Hunger is the best relish, he said, whereas if we overeat we spoil our appetites.
More accurately, exercising moderation may become a source of personal satisfaction and inner fulfillment that outweighs the ordinary pleasures it seeks to overcome.
Someone compulsively checking social media might stop and ask if not reading each individual notification would really be so unbearable. If you practice self-awareness in this way, you’ll often (but not always) realize that the pleasure you obtain from such habits is actually much less than you previously assumed.
Pain wants to dominate your mind and become the whole story. However, people who handle pain well usually view it objectively, as something more limited in nature, which makes it easier for them to see themselves coping with it in various ways.
“Pain is neither unendurable nor everlasting, if you keep its limits in mind and do not add to it through your own imagination.”
Their distress lessens when they begin looking at things more rationally and objectively and acknowledge various ways they can potentially cope now or have coped in a similar situation in the past.
“cognitive distancing,”
