A Stoics Guide to the Good Life
What do we want out of life?
A fulfilling job, an impeccable house, caring friends and family…are some of the responses that most of us would give.
But these are really just a few of the things we want in life. These are merely the goals we form while we go about living our daily activities, and not a grand goal in living. So let us reframe the question: of the things in life we might pursue, which is the thing we believe to be most worthy of our pursuit?
The answer does not come with ease to most of us. We act decisively and know what we want minute by minute, but have never paused to consider a coherent philosophy of life. This is understandable, given that society is set-up to provide an endless stream of distractions. The danger with not having a mental compass is to mislive. Identifying this grand goal is not sufficient, as you will also need to develop an effective strategy to attaining it.
To avoid wasting our wealth, we consult to financial planners. In times of ailment, we seek advice from doctors. Who do we seek then to take steps to avoid wasting our life? The Stoic philosophers (the likes of Epictetus, Seneca, Aurelius, Rufus) who lived two thousand years ago have offered their advice on this matter.
While for almost everyone, the default philosophy of life is to spend the day seeking a combination of affluence, social status, and pleasure, Stoics maintained that we ought to instead pursue tranquility — the absence of negative emotions such as anger, grief, anxiety, fear, and envy.
One can interject at this point: Would not the banishment of all negative emotions make us less human? Western societies already have an unhealthy obsession with happiness, which can have the paradoxical effect of exacerbating suffering. Take a stage-four cancer patient. It is easy to see how dictating the patient to think positively can have a real impact on the patient’s ability to be authentic and honest about their real experience. Inadvertently, the patient is left bearing the responsibility for the current predicament simply by not being “positive enough”. Given this reality, we should rightfully be weary of any advice that does not recognise that certain negative emotions are integral to the human condition.
We do not want to breed a society of emotionally absent human beings, but on the surface, Stoicism may be preaching just that. This is a misguided critic, however. The actual message that is being conveyed is that a prepared mind can go a long way towards uprooting the unnecessary and unwarranted sufferings and realise that misfortune weighs most heavily on those who expect nothing but good fortune.
Thus, the Stoics went on to develop techniques for preventing the onset of undesirable emotions and for extinguishing them when our attempts at prevention failed. They identified two primary sources that perturb human serenity: (1) insatiability and (2) our inclination to fret over matters that lie outside of our sphere of control.
Insatiability
We cannot rely on extrinsic motivators such as wealth, fame, or success (zero-sum life goals) to maintain our equanimity. We skilfully move the goalpost as we tick the checkboxes. Psychologists Frederick and Loewenstein have coined a term to describe this phenomenon: hedonic adaption. Take lottery winners. As it turns out, after an initial period of exhilaration, lottery winners end up about as happy as they previously were. They become accustomed to the additional pleasures made possible by their newfound wealth. They depart from a baseline of past experience and adapt to a new baseline against which further events are judged.
The key, then, is not only to forestall the adaptation process, but to reverse it. To not only take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted the things we have worked so hard to achieve, but to also create in ourselves the desire to want the things we already have. To do this, Stoics employ a technique called negative visualisation — to imagine losing the things we value, including our own lives. Senaca cautions us to remember that all we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission.
But is there not an inherent contradiction here? How can the Stoics advice us to pursue tranquility on one hand, and recommend us to entertain anxiety-inducing thoughts on the other hand? This contradiction untangles when we recognise that the Stoics are not advocating for the constant contemplation of potential catastrophes. It is to be practiced periodically, as a form of intellectual exercise. Just as a meteorologist can spend the day contemplating tornadoes without subsequently living in fear of being killed by one, we ought to adopt a similar pattern of thinking. The periodic entertainment of gloomy thoughts will actually make us more appreciative and allow us to enjoy our possessions without clinging to it in a life characterised by impermanence.
Dichotomy of Control
According to Epictetus, the most important choice in life is whether to concern ourselves with things external to us or things internal. Our opinions, impulses, desires, and aversions are up to us. Our body, possessions, and reputations are examples of things that are not. The implication is that we should not want the things that are not up to us. If we do and fail to attain the object of our desires, we will feel thwarted and upset. For instance, we should not expect our friends and relatives to live forever. We should not attempt to ingratiate ourselves with others. And even if fate were to act generously, we would still condemn ourselves to live the time preceding to the event in anxiety. Driven on through a succession of preoccupations, we shall always long for leisure, but never enjoy it.
Western culture has primed us to seek to gain contentment by changing the world around us. The Stoics seem to advice us to gain contentment by changing ourselves. To merely take a back seat and adapt to fates violently vexing vicissitudes. This proposition of passivity is particularly off-putting to those who prefer not to submit to a fatalistic worldview. So let us clarify the rather problematic phrase, “some things aren’t up to us.” This can mean either that there are things over which we have no control at all or to mean there are things over which we do not have complete control.
If we interpret the phrase the first way, we are confronted with a false dichotomy since it ignores the existence of things which we have partial but not complete control over. Practicing a craft may not guarantee the success of its application but doing so will affect the chances of success. Thus, the real dichotomy of control is over things we have complete control and things over which we don’t have complete control. The second branch of this dichotomy consists of two subcategories: things over which we have no control at all and things over which we have some but not complete control.
Given this new framework, we can form the basis for what we ought to concern ourselves with. Naturally, we should concern ourselves with things over which we have complete control. What are they? They are the goals we set for ourselves. Whether it is to become a monk in a Trappist monastery or a billionaire. We do not, however, have complete control over whether we achieve any of them. The values we attach to things are usually the source our distress. A thief has stolen some fine clothing? To whom can I feel angry if I count them as nothing?
Starting with things of little value — a bit of spilled oil, a little stolen wine — repeat to yourself: ‘For such a small price I buy tranquillity and peace of mind.’ — Epictetus
It is also foolish to dwell over things completely outside our sphere of control. The sun will rise tomorrow irrespective of our thoughts. How then do we concern ourselves with things over which we have partial but not complete control over? While we should concern ourselves with these things, we should be careful to internalise the goals we form with respect to them.
Consider, for instance, winning a tennis match. No player can be certain of victory. There are many external factors that lie outside the sphere of the players influence: the weather, the crowd sentiment, the opponent’s fitness, etc. Given this, is it reasonable for him to spend his energy trying to win matches? No — as an unfavourable outcome would require him to lose his tranquility. Instead he should focus on playing to the best of his ability in the match. By internalising his goal, he will spare himself the disappointment of a defeat.
In short, Stoics consider it a failing on our part when we miscalibrate our own sphere of choice and anchor ourselves in abstract utopia.
With some fine-tuning, we could feel light and unencumbered, destined to soar aloft.
But most importantly, we could be on the path to living the good life.
