Stoicism 101

The advent of a widely available Internet brought us the ever expanding volume of easily accessible information. The shear amount of it all is overwhelming and the overall increase entails the expansion of the noise in it as well, which makes finding anything worth your time harder and harder. However, there is a chance of stumbling on something new, informing and/or curious, which was exactly what happened to me last week when I went straight to youtube with a particular purpose in mind and a “no distracting myself this time” attitude. But holding right to the search algorithms, my previous ambles there and the overall design, the website sure enough recommended some stuff “you might like”. There huddled in between ASMR, Stanford 25 Skills Symposium and a Celebrity Nutritionist’s Advise, or something on this lines, was a Ted Talk by a person I have heard before on multiple occasions when he was a guest on the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.

His name is Massimo Pigliucci and he is a very interesting person indeed. He is an evolutionary biologist, philosopher and an author, as well as science and skepticism promoter. The video recommended to me by youtube was dedicated to stoicism. Now I was interested in philosophy in general before and had definitely knew of stoicism but on a level of intro into intro philosophy 101.

Here I wanted to jot down my notes or rather leave not exactly verbatim transcription with a bit of my understanding of it.

• we are social animals that are endowed with capacity for reasoning, and although rationality and logic do not come naturally to most of us, the ability to improve our own lives and lives of others using intelligence would bring about the best possible life to everyone
• stoicism is based on two pillars

— cardinal virtues of which there are four: practical wisdom (knowing what is good for you), courage (to speak up for yourself or those who have no voice), justice (to do the right thing), and temperance (knowing when to stop, when enough is enough)

— dichotomy of control: the power that you have over things happening in your life is neither complete, nor endless; you have control over some things and not others and therefore what you’d be better off doing is focus on your goals instead of worrying about outcomes, it’s your intentions and efforts that matter since they are under your control

• stoics use a metaphor of an archer as a neat illustration of the dichotomy of control: as an archer the way to improve lies in practicing the archery skill, in choosing good equipment, taking care of it and in focusing when you are about to shoot an arrow. What happens after to the arrow does not depend in the least on you, all sorts of things could happen — you hit the target, you miss the target, arrow looses it’s velocity, or hits the tree, your enemy is stricken, or runs away vowing vengeance. Thus do not attach your self-esteem to the outcome, but prepare the best you could and focus your efforts on what you have control over. Not only this way of life is more productive, but also it is less stressful and more efficient — you do not waste your energy on things beyond your control.
• according to stoics happiness lies in serenity — you know you’ve done your best and enough is enough. Epictetus (Greek stoic philosopher) on happiness as serenity “If you have the right idea about what really belongs to you and what does not, you will never be subject to force or hindrance, you will never blame or criticize anyone, and everything you do will be done willingly” (Enchiridion III).
• we have three category of roles: basic role as a human being, roles given us by circumstance (being someone’s child), and roles that we chose for ourselves (profession, being a parent); person’s role as a basic human in society trumps everything else and in making decision the simplest rule is to ask yourself “Will this be good for humanity?” and if it won’t, do not do it
• happy life consists of balancing all your roles to the best of your possibility so play your role with integrity, citing Epictetus again: “You are the one that knows yourself, of how much you are worth to yourself and for how much you are selling yourself… consider at what price you sell your integrity, but please, for God’s sake, don’t sell it cheap” (Discourses I, 2.11.33) meaning do not compromise, it’s not about being perfect but being better than you were yesterday
• to play your role the way you see the best you can choose a role model and use it as a pattern to change your life and expand upon