An Interview with Gregory Lopez

This interview is with Gregory Lopez, who founded the New York City Stoics in 2013, and is a co-founder and board member of The Stoic Fellowship, co-facilitator of Stoic Camp NY, co-author of A Handbook for New Stoics, and a Modern Stoicism team member. You can learn more about him at: https://greglopez.me/

SD = StoicDan (Organizer of the Orlando Stoics)

GL = Greg Lopez

SD: Thanks for your contribution to the Modern Stoicism movement, Greg! I’m interested to know when you began to follow Stoicism and how you keep it interesting in your NYC Stoics group? This is a key question, because your group is one of the established ones and other Stoa leaders around the world can learn from your meeting format or some creative device.

GL: I first became interested in Stoicism through its connection with Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, one of the first forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Over a decade ago, I started volunteering for, and ultimately became president of an organization that teaches techniques from one of the first forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) — Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). There, I learned that Stoicism heavily influenced REBT and CBT, and became interested in learning more about it. After some more exploration, I found out that people were looking to practice Stoicism in the modern world, such as The New Stoa and The International Stoic Forum. While I found these groups edifying and interesting, I had more of an interest in learning and talking with other aspiring Stoics in person, which led me to start the NYC Stoics.

In terms of keeping things interesting, I follow the main advice I give to others looking to start their own stoas by doing what I’m interested in. I’m not particularly motivated to grow my group or be a Stoic evangelist, since I don’t think Stoicism is for everyone — remember, even Epictetus told his students that most of them were probably Epicureans at heart! Focusing on what I’m interested in has two benefits: it helps me find people who are interested in the same aspects of Stoicism that I am, and it keeps me motivated to continue facilitating the group.

The main thing I’ve been interested in doing is deep reads of Stoic and Stoicism-adjacent texts. Thus, NYC Stoics has primarily functioned as a 10-year long reading group… and — with one exception — we haven’t had any repeats yet! To give some coherence, I started introducing yearly themes. 2023’s theme is ancient alternatives to Stoicism. The reading groups used to be in person, but I took them online for COVID and have kept them online since the group has attracted people internationally.

In the past, I’ve also run dedicated practice groups using a few different formats. The common thread between the formats was that they required repeated attendance, since I don’t think dabbling in Stoic practice will get someone very far. Those practice groups are on hold for now, but I am leaning toward starting them up again in 2024.

In lieu of the practice group, I currently hold in-person, beginner-friendly meetups in New York City, where we casually discuss anything related to Stoicism along with doing a deep reading of a section of the Enchiridion. I find in-person socialization and discussion to be better than online discussions, which get unwieldy when there are more than a few people present.

SD: As the Modern Stoicism movement matures, I’ve noticed many people compare its wisdom to Buddhism and Psychology. Donald Robertson has said the early Stoics were excellent students of human behaviors and the early Psychologists. How do you view Buddhism and Psychology in comparison to Stoicism?

GL: Both are quite big topics, so I’ll have to paint with a very broad brush!

Psychology differs from traditional Buddhism and Stoicism in that it (ideally) uses scientific methodologies to probe the human mind. In doing so, it’s more a descriptive project than a normative one. Of course, treatments for psychological maladies can and do come out of the psychological enterprise and are put to the test in the subfield of clinical psychology. However, application is not psychology’s only goal. Psychology as a field could exist in theory without ever being applied to the clinic, since at its core, it’s an empirical study of the mind.

On the other hand, both Buddhism and Stoicism are not sciences, but philosophies of life. Philosophies of life differ from psychology because they’re normative: they tell you what to do, what to value, and how to live if you want to achieve a certain outcome. For Buddhism, that outcome is nirvana (the extinguishment of greed, hatred, and delusion to end suffering). For Stoicism, it’s a smooth-flowing life in accordance with nature which is equivalent with eudaimonia (often translated as “happiness” or “flourishing”, but I prefer thinking of it as a worthwhile life; one can live a worthwhile life without feeling happy or meeting societal norms that people would label as “flourishing”). Clinical psychology may also have such norms, but those norms have a different goal: to treat things that are labelled as mental disorders. Buddhism and Stoicism were not designed for this. While I’m not fan of Freud, a quote from him is still apt to compare the three: I think the goal of clinical psychology is to transform mental illness (or in Freud’s outdated terms, “hysterical misery”) into “common unhappiness”, while life philosophies’ goal is to transform “common unhappiness” into a good life.

However, Buddhism and Stoicism have somewhat different pictures of what a “good life” is. At a very high level, they may have some similarities, but they differ greatly in the details. Early Buddhism suggested that an ideal gradual path of training led one to withdraw from society to become a wandering ascetic in order to escape the hustle and bustle of the householders’ world in order to train the mind. This seems a bit more like Epicureanism than Stoicism, which more often involves throwing oneself into the world and training with the difficulties there. These are quite different modes of living and training!

I know I’m brushing over the layperson’s practice in early and modern Buddhism as well as Buddhism’s long history involving the bodhisattva ideal and Buddhism’s evolution into Mahayana, Vajrayana, etc. But my interest lies primarily with early Buddhism, and this is an interview, not a thesis, so please forgive me for stopping here! :)

SD: In a presentation in the past few years, I believe you spoke about the importance of Epictetus and his discipline of action. How can we use this to become better Stoics?

GL: The discipline of action is the second phase in Epictetus’ sequential, three-phase training program. So, if you’re skipping this, you’re cutting Stoic practice short.

A lot of people take all of Stoicism to be mostly the first discipline, which Pierre Hadot called “the discipline of desire”. The goal of that phase of training is to suppress all desires as much as possible, including the things that are “up to us”. In other words, including wanting to be virtuous. Epictetus lays out his reasoning for this quite clearly in Enchiridion 2.2: “ if you desire any of the things that are not within our power, you’re bound to be unfortunate, while those that are within our power, which it would be right for you to desire, aren’t yet within your reach.”

A lot of people focus on the first aspect of the quote. But relatively few catch the second part: that for someone who’s in the first phase of training — who hasn’t really tempered their desires and thus gets caught up in the throes of passion frequently — is not yet ready to desire what’s “within your power” or what is really “up to us”: to be a good person.

A lot of people come to Stoicism because they want to suppress desires in order to be resilient or to get rid of negative emotions: in other words, to feel better. But that’s not what Stoicism’s about. The goal of tempering the passions is not to feel better but to be better. Getting a hold of the subset of emotions that the Stoics called the passions is a precondition for actualizing what “would be right for you to desire”: to be a better human being.

So I’d turn the question you asked on its head: the discipline of action doesn’t help us be better Stoics: it helps us be Stoic. Period. Full stop. If one simply focuses on Epictetus’ fork of what’s up to us and what’s not, Stoicism becomes more of a resiliency life hack than a philosophy to craft a worthwhile life.

SD: In 2021, Orlando Stoics reviewed The Handbook for New Stoics, which you authored with Massimo Pigliucci. We still have people referring to that book today, because of its impact on their Stoic practices. What was the inspiration for the 52 sections and the related worksheets? Do you have another book planned in this format?

GL: The inspiration was threefold. The first was that Massimo and I mined the ancient Stoic literature for exercises while running Stoic Camp NY. We had a big pile of exercises backed by (or inspired by) ancient Stoic quotes, but didn’t use them outside of our small in-person yearly meeting. The second was that we saw a gap in the modern Stoic literature: some books mentioned Stoic exercises, but no book focused exclusively on practice. Finally, we were aware of the utility of cognitive behavioral therapy workbooks as well as some of the scientific literature that suggested the bibliotherapy is roughly as good as in-person therapy. So we decided to collate some of the exercises we had on hand into a CBT-style workbook — a book that’s meant to be worked, not just read! — to fill a practical gap we perceived in the modern Stoic literature.

As for your second question: yes, we are! Me, Massimo, and Meredith Kunz just signed a contract to create a practical overview of more Greco-Roman philosophies (or at least aspects of them) in the spirit of A Handbook for New Stoics. If things go according to plan, we’ll be delivering the manuscript in the next 6 months or so.

SD: If I remember right, the modern movement started in 2012, so much has been developed in the decade since. Example: the Stoicon Women’s conference addresses the need for female voices in the movement. How do you see us reaching more women in our second decade?

GL: I’m afraid I don’t have much expertise in this area, so I can’t really answer the question directly or well. However, I can say one thing which I think is important for modern practicing Stoics to do: they can make the Stoi-sphere more welcoming to women by speaking out and fighting against misogynistic takes on Stoicism. There’s a mix of misunderstanding and selective understanding that paints Stoicism as a philosophy that teaches what I think is a toxic form of masculinity. And to try to be fair to those who hold such views: there is a bit of misogyny in some ancient texts, and there was tons of it in Greco-Roman society. However, there is also a lot of what could be considered proto-feminist thought in the Stoic literature as well. Not only that, but we shouldn’t confuse the cultural mores which the ancients were immersed in with necessary parts of the philosophy. Stoicism evolved over its ancient history. And it should continue to evolve in its modern history, too. And we can help make that happen.

SD: Some other areas in the movement are developing, too. Donald Robertson and John Sellars are creating new books and materials for young adults. Are you working on a project like this for young people or another group?

GL: We actually did try to go that route, but things didn’t work out. I’m glad Donald and John are picking it up, though! There’s been a pretty big demand for young adult materials. If there’s a demand from Stoic Fellowship members, perhaps we can work on something as well.

SD: In April 2023, we both attended the North American Stoic Summit (hosted by Brittany Polat and Phil Yanov). We had some time (with the speakers and some mutual friends) to discuss the future of Stoicism. I remember chatting with Ward Farnsworth about gamification. Can you think of a technology that might help improve our Stoic community worldwide?

GL: Tough question, since how technological innovation will unfold is a hard thing to predict. My off-the-cuff, low-confidence answer about future tech is that I suspect graded exposure through VR could be useful under controlled circumstances — it can be used as a form of premeditatio malorum. AI chatbots may also prove useful as long as they’re trained on the appropriate data and don’t hallucinate (I’ve had Chat GPT literally make up a Seneca quote once!).

In terms of current technology that’s ready for prime time now, I use an app called Universe to assist in “view from above”-style exercises. And I think the good ol’ world-wide web has helped bring Stoics together from all over the world!

SD: Thanks so much for your time today. My last question: do you have a favorite ancient or modern Stoic, such as Seneca or Nancy Sherman? I’ve found Seneca’s perceptive nature in “On Anger” is amazing, plus Sherman’s presentation helps keep us tranquil in “Stoic Wisdom”.

GL: I actually don’t. I try to take the approach Marcus takes in Book I of the Meditations, where I look for the good in the ancient Stoics as well as modern people, whether they’re Stoic or not.