Speaker 1: Everything that you can influence itself turns out to be
Speaker 1: dividable into these two categories, the bit that you do
Speaker 1: control completely and the bit that that you don't control
Speaker 1: at all. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Massimo Pilucci.
Speaker 1: He's currently the Katie Irani Professor of Philosophy at the
Speaker 1: City College of New York. Massimo's research interests include the
Speaker 1: philosophy of science, the relationship between science and philosophy, the
Speaker 1: nature of pseudoscience, and the practical philosophy of Stoicism. He's
Speaker 1: the author and editor of many books, including the one
Speaker 1: discussed here, A Field Guide to Happy Life fifty three
Speaker 1: brief Lessons for Living. Him Massimo, Welcome to the show. Thanks,
Speaker 1: it's a pleasure to be here. I am happy to
Speaker 1: have you on. We are going to be discussing your
Speaker 1: book called The Field Guide to a Happy Life fifty
Speaker 1: three brief Lessons for Living. But before we start with that,
Speaker 1: let's start the way we normally do with the parable.
Speaker 1: In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their
Speaker 1: grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And grandchild
Speaker 1: stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up
Speaker 1: at their grandparents as well. Which one wins, and the
Speaker 1: grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting parable. I mean, I suppose the basic
Speaker 1: idea is that there are different aspects to human nature
Speaker 1: in this particular case too, and that it is up
Speaker 1: to us to some extent to feed, so to speak,
Speaker 1: the aspect that we want to nurture. And I mean
Speaker 1: there is quite some truth in that. A lot of
Speaker 1: philosophical traditions seem to focus on one or the other,
Speaker 1: you know. Some philosophers like Thomas Hobbs, for instance, famously
Speaker 1: thought that human beings are nasty Brewish, you know, and
Speaker 1: our life would be very short if you were not
Speaker 1: under the authority of of an absolute ruler. So that
Speaker 1: would be one side that we feed on your business.
Speaker 1: Other philosophers like Jean Jacques Rousseau fought exactly the opposite,
Speaker 1: that human beings are naturally good and that it's society
Speaker 1: actually that ruins us right. As a biologist especially, I
Speaker 1: think that much better and more realistic understanding is that
Speaker 1: we really have a combination of both natures and that
Speaker 1: interact in complex ways. And I think, however, that something
Speaker 1: can be said, you had. A lot can be said
Speaker 1: for the fact that we do have choices of which
Speaker 1: side do we feed and how, and so ultimately we
Speaker 1: are responsible for what comes out of our nature even
Speaker 1: though we have this kind of mixed heritage. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you are a I think you would use this description
Speaker 1: of yourself a modern stoic um, and you're you're sort
Speaker 1: of working to reinterpret Stoic philosophy for modern times. Could you,
Speaker 1: for listeners, share to you what that term stoicism means well.
Speaker 1: Stoicism is a framework, is a way of looking at
Speaker 1: life that is supposed to be helping you, just like
Speaker 1: any other philosophy of life, or in fact, for that matter,
Speaker 1: any religion. Buddhism is another such framework. Christianity is one
Speaker 1: such For network, so, stoicism is one way of looking
Speaker 1: at life, setting priorities, figuring out what is important one
Speaker 1: is not, and and generally try to navigate your life
Speaker 1: in the best way possible. In fact, every such framework
Speaker 1: also provides you with some kind of idea what best means?
Speaker 1: You know, what is a good life. Depending on which
Speaker 1: philosophy or religion you subscribe to, that means different things.
Speaker 1: If you are an Epicurean, for instance, a good life
Speaker 1: is one in which you reduce pain to a minimum,
Speaker 1: especially mental pain. If you're a Stoic, a good life
Speaker 1: is one in which you use reason to solve problems
Speaker 1: and in particular to improve society. And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is because the Stoics think that the two fundamental
Speaker 1: mental aspects of human nature that distinguished human nature from
Speaker 1: any other animal on earth is the fact that we
Speaker 1: are highly social and the fact that we are capable
Speaker 1: of sophisticated reasoning. So once you put the two things together,
Speaker 1: then a satisfying you know, good human life or human
Speaker 1: life worth living is one in which you actually use
Speaker 1: your brain to improve society at large. You talk about
Speaker 1: eight years ago or so that you said, my life
Speaker 1: changed instantly and for the better when you first read
Speaker 1: a particular philosopher who was that that fonswer was Epictitis,
Speaker 1: who was a late first century early second century Roman Stoic.
Speaker 1: In fact, that wasn't actually even his name. We don't
Speaker 1: know his name. A pictis just means acquired because he
Speaker 1: was a slave and he started out his life in Hierapolis,
Speaker 1: which is in modern day Pamlically in western Turkey. Highly
Speaker 1: recommended place to go and visit. It's a UNESCO International
Speaker 1: Heritage Site, just gorgeous. And then it was acquired by
Speaker 1: the personal secretary of the Emperor Nero and so he
Speaker 1: was brought to Rome and he lived part of his
Speaker 1: life in Rome. Eventually was freed, as it was not
Speaker 1: unusual for particularly promising slaves. He studied philosophy with a
Speaker 1: major Stoic philosopher of the time on his Rufus and
Speaker 1: the eventually he started teaching his own brand of Stoicism. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things that happened was that the
Speaker 1: Stoics in general, and he Pictetius in particular, had his
Speaker 1: pensiont too. As we would say today, speak truth to power,
Speaker 1: and as we know, power usually doesn't like to be
Speaker 1: spoken truth through. And so in that particular case, the
Speaker 1: emperor in charge at the moment was the mission, and
Speaker 1: the mission didn't really appreciate these, uh, these Stoics going
Speaker 1: around telling him that he was unvirtuous and then he
Speaker 1: wasn't doing the right thing. So at some point he
Speaker 1: actually probably getting an edict according to which every philosopher,
Speaker 1: especially the Stoics, were kicked out of Italy, and that
Speaker 1: included of course the Pictitius. And the Pictitius moved to
Speaker 1: Nico Police, which is a town that still exists today
Speaker 1: on the northwestern coast of Greece. Once the he re
Speaker 1: established his school, and the joke was on the mission
Speaker 1: because epictitius school became one of the most sought after
Speaker 1: the Romaniti stocolacy who sent their kids to study with Epictetus,
Speaker 1: and later empertors like Adrian became regular visitors. So so
Speaker 1: this is a guy that went from literally the lowest
Speaker 1: possible rank of society, you know, being a slave, to
Speaker 1: being one of the most renowned and respected teachers of antiquity.
Speaker 1: And the reason he spoke to me particularly is because
Speaker 1: he's very clear when he speaks, is very no nonsense.
Speaker 1: There is no ambiguity in what he says. He tells
Speaker 1: you exactly what what he thinks, and you don't need
Speaker 1: any background in philosophy to understand what is telling you.
Speaker 1: And also he has a weaked sense of humor, bordering
Speaker 1: on sarcasm, and I appreciate that. You know, he didn't
Speaker 1: write any books, just like Socrates. He didn't write anything.
Speaker 1: But we have two books sort of buy him. One
Speaker 1: is called The Discourses, which is a long booking four volumes,
Speaker 1: and the other one is a very short thing called
Speaker 1: the eNCA Rideon or the Manual for Life. And actually
Speaker 1: these books were put together by one of the Pictis
Speaker 1: students area of Nicomedia. Now, I had to tell you,
Speaker 1: as a teacher myself, I would be really worried if
Speaker 1: I knew that the only thing that survived in terms
Speaker 1: of my writings were notes taken by one of my students.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, my gosh, do I do I trust
Speaker 1: this thing? But it turns out that that area of
Speaker 1: Nicomedia was actually a pretty interesting guy in and of himself.
Speaker 1: He wrote a biography of Alexander the Great. It was
Speaker 1: the governor of the Roman province of Cappadocia in modern Turkey.
Speaker 1: It was a serious guy, and so we we hope
Speaker 1: that what he wrote down is close enough to what
Speaker 1: Epictetus actually taught. But the interesting things about those books,
Speaker 1: especially the discourses, is that you really hear epic Tito's
Speaker 1: talking because Arian didn't write down the lecture part. So
Speaker 1: the in antiquity what a typical teacher would do. We
Speaker 1: do lecture during the day, and then in the evening
Speaker 1: or late afternoon you would have sort of these open
Speaker 1: discussion sections with sessions with his students. And when Arian
Speaker 1: did well it was he transcribed some of these. So
Speaker 1: we have a series of conversations between Epictetus and the students,
Speaker 1: where the students ask questions and a Pictetus answers, and
Speaker 1: so you get a really interesting sense of sort of
Speaker 1: the lively exchange between teachers and students. And I was
Speaker 1: just I got hooked as soon as I started reading
Speaker 1: the discourses. Now it is not the Discourses, it's the
Speaker 1: other book of which I'm not gonna thank you. I'm
Speaker 1: staying away from that pronunciation listeners and know I I
Speaker 1: struggle with pronunciation, so I'm staying away from that one.
Speaker 1: But it was that book that you sort of adapted,
Speaker 1: as I understand it, to create this field Guide to
Speaker 1: a Happy Life. It's your sort of modern version of
Speaker 1: that book. Correct. So the Acadian, which is typically translated
Speaker 1: as just as handbook, it's a very short book. It's
Speaker 1: like fifty three paragraphs. But sically I mean that the
Speaker 1: call three sections, but each section is only a paragraph
Speaker 1: for some time two or three, but but not more
Speaker 1: than that. And it's meant to be a summary of
Speaker 1: Epithitiss teachings. So one common mistake actually that people do
Speaker 1: is that when they approach Stoicism is oh, they see
Speaker 1: that the Incredian is very short so it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: let me start with that one bad idea because it's short, Yes,
Speaker 1: but it's very condensed. It's a very dense little booklet.
Speaker 1: If you don't actually have background in Stoic philosophy, you're
Speaker 1: likely either not to understand what you're reading, or even worse,
Speaker 1: to misunderstand what you're reading. Nevertheless, once you have the basics,
Speaker 1: it's really a very handy thing to do. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was meant to be brought with you and and
Speaker 1: then consulted on a regular basis. The reason I focused
Speaker 1: on the Kredean is because it was highly influential, not
Speaker 1: just in ancient Stoicism, but really throughout medieval and early
Speaker 1: modern history. Is So, to give you a couple of examples,
Speaker 1: the Incredian was used by Christian monks throughout the Middle
Speaker 1: Age is as a manual for spiritual exercises, with the
Speaker 1: only change that every time that the Epitius mentioned Socrates
Speaker 1: they replaced it with Jesus. But other than that, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing and uh. In fact, even in modern times,
Speaker 1: the Enkaredean has been influential on people that you might
Speaker 1: not necessarily associate with the Stoics. For instance, most of
Speaker 1: the American funding fathers, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 1: to Benjamin Franklin, all of them had their personal copies
Speaker 1: of The End Kredian unnotated. Washington even brought The End
Speaker 1: Canadian in battle and read it as an inspiration before
Speaker 1: getting into into action. So it has been a very
Speaker 1: influential book essentially for almost two millennia. And then what
Speaker 1: happened was that at the beginning of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: both stories in general and Epictetus in particular kind of
Speaker 1: got forgotten. Philosophy became more of a technical profession, you know,
Speaker 1: with the rise of the modern academy. You know, this
Speaker 1: is what I'm doing now. I mean, I'm in my
Speaker 1: office now, and I normally don't do ancient philosophy when
Speaker 1: I when I'm here at City College, I do philosophy
Speaker 1: of science, which is a very specific, very technical field.
Speaker 1: And so in the twenty essentially kind of Epithitis and
Speaker 1: Stoicism went into a little bit of an eclipse, and
Speaker 1: I think that's unfortunate. Fortunately, Stoicism has been revived, Tension
Speaker 1: has been revived over the last twenty years or so,
Speaker 1: and my intention with writing the field Guide or Happy
Speaker 1: Life was twofold. On the one hand, to bring back
Speaker 1: Epictitius to the attention of the general public, because I
Speaker 1: think he deserves it. It has been one of the
Speaker 1: most influential philosophers literally the last two millennia, and it
Speaker 1: is a very practical philosopher. There is quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Even if you disagree, which I do, with some of
Speaker 1: the things that he writes, there's certainly inspirational and there's
Speaker 1: certainly worth thinking about. The other goal was to update Stoicism.
Speaker 1: You know, that may sound a little weird, but if
Speaker 1: you think about it, Stoicism started out near the end
Speaker 1: of the fourth century BC in Athens, so it's more
Speaker 1: than you know, it's almost two and a half millennial.
Speaker 1: And you know, every other tradition that you can think of,
Speaker 1: let's say Christianity or Buddhism, agains as examples, they have
Speaker 1: changed over the last two or two and a half millionaire, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody is a Christian today in the way
Speaker 1: in which people were Christian two million ago. Even if
Speaker 1: you could see yourself a so called fundamentalist Christian, you're
Speaker 1: still nowhere near what Christianity was two tho years ago.
Speaker 1: Saying goes for Buddhism. I mean, modern Buddhists are of
Speaker 1: a variety of types. For one thing, Buddhism has evolved
Speaker 1: so much as a set of traditions that we really
Speaker 1: should be talking about Buddhisms in the plural, because they're
Speaker 1: they're very different subsets of it. Now, the problem with
Speaker 1: stoice is, on the other hand, is that it kind
Speaker 1: of got interrupted. It studied out, as I said you,
Speaker 1: at the end of the fourth century BC, and then
Speaker 1: it flourished throughout the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, but
Speaker 1: then it kind of stopped with the second or third century.
Speaker 1: I mean, the last big Stoic we know of is
Speaker 1: Marcus Aurelius, who died in the year one eight. We
Speaker 1: know of a few other Stoic teacher years after that,
Speaker 1: but not much. Why well, probably for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: But you know, the same happened to all the other
Speaker 1: Hellenistic and Greek schools. The last one to close down
Speaker 1: was the Plato's Academy in the fifth century. Basically, the
Speaker 1: major reason, probably probably arguably is the rise of Christianity.
Speaker 1: You know, once that Christianity, no non Christianity, became very
Speaker 1: popular and kind of replaced or at least competed directly
Speaker 1: with these other philosophies. But once the Christians got hold
Speaker 1: of the Roman army that they became the official religion
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire, then they started using that army
Speaker 1: to really shut down everybody everybody else. So then Stoicism
Speaker 1: got interrupted, let's say in the second or third century.
Speaker 1: It did still have an influence throughout these these intervening time.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, you know, Christian monks were using the
Speaker 1: Caridean but all the major Christian writers, from Paulo Tarsus
Speaker 1: to Thomas Aquinas, all of them were familiar with the Stoics,
Speaker 1: and all of them actually engage with the Stoicism. It
Speaker 1: took something out of story is m and incorporated in
Speaker 1: their own version of Christianity. The early modern philosophers from
Speaker 1: Renee the Cards to Bhook Spinosa, we're all influenced by
Speaker 1: the Stoics. So it's not like Stoic thought went away,
Speaker 1: but Stoicism as a school did. And so the question
Speaker 1: then is, well, here we are now at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the twenty well no longer the beginning the second
Speaker 1: decade of the twentieth century, and then what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do? Are we're gonna really be Stoics are interested
Speaker 1: in stories in the way in which Seneca or micro
Speaker 1: Celius where two dozen years ago. That doesn't seem reasonable.
Speaker 1: And then the question is, therefore, what would a modern
Speaker 1: stories is look like? What is it that we want
Speaker 1: to change, what is it we want to keep? And
Speaker 1: and why? Yep, yep, We're not gonna Obviously, in the
Speaker 1: time we have talked about epictidious, we're not going to
Speaker 1: talk about the fifty three Lessons for Living and all
Speaker 1: of Stoicism. But let's hit a couple of Stoic principles,
Speaker 1: and I think that one of the underlying ones, cardinal virtues,
Speaker 1: share a little bit about those the cardinal virtues, which
Speaker 1: were actually not introduced originally by the Stoics. The Stoics
Speaker 1: to come on and then as an idea, and they
Speaker 1: became a uh point of reference for its Stoics. But
Speaker 1: in fact, the first mention of the four cardinal virtues
Speaker 1: is found in Plato's Republic, so it actually predates the Stoics.
Speaker 1: The cardinal virtues are practical wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance.
Speaker 1: Practical wisdom is a kind of an awful word. It
Speaker 1: really doesn't roll off your tongue very well. The original
Speaker 1: term in Greek is pH a nieces uh, and it
Speaker 1: used to be translated from the Latin as prudence, but
Speaker 1: prudence in modern English means something different, so we're not
Speaker 1: going to use that word practical wisdom. So practical wisdom
Speaker 1: is the ability to navigate complex situations in the best
Speaker 1: possible way. So if somebody is practically wise or prudent,
Speaker 1: as we used to say, uh, it means that that
Speaker 1: person has a good notion of how to balance different things,
Speaker 1: how to managed trade offs, and especially has, according to
Speaker 1: the Stoics, has a good understanding of priorities, what it's
Speaker 1: really important for that person and what is not important,
Speaker 1: what that person should go after, and what should be
Speaker 1: avoided and that sort of stuff. Ironically, our tagline on
Speaker 1: our website is practical wisdom for a better life. And
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that that was one of the
Speaker 1: cardinal virtues. So I hope it rolls off the tongue. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yes, it's it's not as good as prudence,
Speaker 1: I think, but it's it will do all right, all right. Now.
Speaker 1: The second cardinal virtue is courage. We usually associate courage
Speaker 1: with physical acts, and especially you know, going into battle.
Speaker 1: You know, and I would call that bravery more than courage.
Speaker 1: Courage here as a definitely mortal connotation. It's the courage
Speaker 1: to do the right thing because it may cost you something,
Speaker 1: and and so it does take courage to do it.
Speaker 1: Justice is the virtue that tells you what that right
Speaker 1: thing to do actually is. The Stoics took justice as
Speaker 1: a virtue that makes you behave in a way to
Speaker 1: other people. That includes respect, dignity. You behave to others
Speaker 1: in the way in which others want to behave towards you.
Speaker 1: So that's justice. And then temperance is doing things in
Speaker 1: the right measure, neither too much nor too little. So
Speaker 1: I may give you an example. Suppose that tomorrow I
Speaker 1: come back to work and I see my boss harassing
Speaker 1: somebody which he would never do. Is an but let's
Speaker 1: say for the sake of discussion that it does so not.
Speaker 1: The question is what do I do? So I consult
Speaker 1: the four cardinal virtues. Practical wisdom tells me that I
Speaker 1: have to intervene because one of my priorities in life
Speaker 1: is to become a better person cultivate my character, and
Speaker 1: intervening in situations where I can help others improves my character.
Speaker 1: Not intervening undermines my character. So practical wisdom says, yep,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta get in. Courage tells me that yes,
Speaker 1: this is a thing to do, and it will require
Speaker 1: courage because he's my boss. So there could be consequences.
Speaker 1: It could be italiation, that could be unpleasant situations. Justice
Speaker 1: tells me that yes, again I should intervene. Why well,
Speaker 1: because if I were the one being harassed, I would
Speaker 1: like somebody to come in and try to diffuse the situation,
Speaker 1: trying to help things out. Now, what about temperance. Well,
Speaker 1: temperance tells me that yes I should intervene, but neither
Speaker 1: too little nor too much. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: just mumble something under my breath so that my boss
Speaker 1: doesn't even hear me, and yet technically I've done something right,
Speaker 1: technically interviewed, that's not good enough. At the same time,
Speaker 1: I don't want to jump in and start punching around
Speaker 1: the nose, because this is not that kind of situation.
Speaker 1: If there is no physical danger, there is nothing like
Speaker 1: that going on, so that would be an overreaction. So
Speaker 1: temperance tells me that the right way to intervene is
Speaker 1: firmly with you know, a calm tone of voice uh
Speaker 1: and and trying to diffuse the situation. And that's the
Speaker 1: way the Stoics use the four caldum virtuses. Think of
Speaker 1: them as you know, they're cold cardinal for a reason,
Speaker 1: not only because they're most important, but because the an
Speaker 1: energies with cardinal geography cardinal points, that is, they orient
Speaker 1: to in life. You can use them as a compass
Speaker 1: to figure out what to do and want not to do.
Speaker 1: So that that's how the cardinal virtues work, and Stoicism
Speaker 1: in general is pointing at the highest good is to
Speaker 1: be and develop virtue. Correct. Although the qualification here is
Speaker 1: we need to understand exactly what the word virtue is because,
Speaker 1: especially in modern times, when you hear virtue, most people
Speaker 1: think of the Christian version of the term, right, so
Speaker 1: things like chastity and purity and things like that. That
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with what the Greeks and the
Speaker 1: Romans were actually talking about. So the word virtue actually
Speaker 1: comes from the Greek and arete is often translated as excellence.
Speaker 1: So really what we're talking about. Is the point of
Speaker 1: stoice is to make you into the best human being
Speaker 1: you can possibly be, the most excellent human being that
Speaker 1: you can possibly be. And what does that mean. Well,
Speaker 1: that means a human being who is a good reasoner.
Speaker 1: For instance, for the Stoics, reasoning well is a virtue.
Speaker 1: Somebody who pays attention to evidence. For the Stoics, paying
Speaker 1: attention to evidence, that is doing what we were today
Speaker 1: called science is a virtue. And of course the moral virtues,
Speaker 1: the four cardinal virtues that I just mentioned. So being
Speaker 1: an excellent human being for the Stoic means thinking well,
Speaker 1: paying attention to the evidence, and then trying to become
Speaker 1: a morally better person. And that's a kind of a
Speaker 1: program behind which I can actually find myself, you know, comfortably.
Speaker 1: So epic Tetius is you'll correct me if I get
Speaker 1: this wrong, But is if not the creator one of
Speaker 1: the earliest sources of what later became one of the
Speaker 1: fundamental pieces of wisdom in my life, which is the
Speaker 1: Serenity prayer. Tell me a little bit about epictetus version
Speaker 1: of that, and maybe we can, you know, dive deeper
Speaker 1: into it, because I think there's so much in there
Speaker 1: modern Storis referred to that as the economy or control,
Speaker 1: which I don't particularly like as a term because the
Speaker 1: word control is often misinterpreted in these context but probably
Speaker 1: there's no point in opposing the general trend, so we'll
Speaker 1: just call it the economy of control. It's not original
Speaker 1: with Epictetus. It's found in earlier storics. We find that
Speaker 1: at least insisted of, for instance, from the first century
Speaker 1: before the current era, although Sister himself was not a Storic,
Speaker 1: but he was very sympathetic to the storics, and it
Speaker 1: does mentioned essentially the same concept epictatious are whatever, mixing
Speaker 1: into a centerpiece of his philosophy, and that's why he's
Speaker 1: very often associated with it. As you point out, however,
Speaker 1: the same idea pops up in different contexts and different cultures.
Speaker 1: You find it in eighth century Buddhism, in the eleventh
Speaker 1: century Judaism, and in twenty century Christianity under the surrendy prayer.
Speaker 1: So the surreendy prayer asks God to give us the
Speaker 1: wisdom to tell the difference between what we can change
Speaker 1: and what we cannot change, the courage to change what
Speaker 1: we can, and the serenity to accept what we cannot right,
Speaker 1: and it's often used by twelve step organizations like alcohol Econymous. Now,
Speaker 1: the epictatious version goes something like this. Epita says that
Speaker 1: some things are up to us and other things are
Speaker 1: not up to us, and that a wise person focuses
Speaker 1: on the things that are up to us and tries
Speaker 1: to accept the rest with equanimity. The real question there is, okay,
Speaker 1: but what are these things? What is to us and
Speaker 1: what is not up to us? Fine, I can get
Speaker 1: behind the general idea, But but what about when it
Speaker 1: comes to the details. And here's where different cultures do
Speaker 1: different The Christians will have a different version in terms
Speaker 1: of details, The Buddhists what have a different version. For
Speaker 1: the Stoics, the situation is actually a fairly simple. It's
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. There's only one thing, ultimately that is up
Speaker 1: to us, and that's our judgments. That's it. Now. Our
Speaker 1: judgments include our priorities, the values that we endorse or reject,
Speaker 1: every decision we make to act or not to act,
Speaker 1: all of those are the results of our judgments. Right,
Speaker 1: And in fact, the pigtitious actually mentions each one of
Speaker 1: these categories separately, but ultimately it all comes down to judgment.
Speaker 1: So that's the only thing, according to ITS that is
Speaker 1: in fed up to us, meaning that the box stops
Speaker 1: with me if I arrive at certain judgment. It is
Speaker 1: true that my judgments may be influenced by others or
Speaker 1: by external factors of course, right, But ultimately, if I
Speaker 1: decide to do or not to do something like, for instance,
Speaker 1: if I decided to come on your podcast, well that's
Speaker 1: my decision. I can say, well, but I was influenced
Speaker 1: by so and so who told me that this is
Speaker 1: a really cool guy and it's a great idea. Sure,
Speaker 1: but ultimately the buck stops with me. Americans say, are
Speaker 1: strong arm podcast guest tactics. We we made you an
Speaker 1: offer you couldn't refuse, right, But in fact Pia says
Speaker 1: you could always refuse offers. Right. He actually says, if
Speaker 1: the tyrant threatens you with your life, well you still
Speaker 1: have a choice. You can decide to die. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: so now that's a hard choice. He's not saying, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not minimizing. The issue is that it's a hard choice.
Speaker 1: But when we say, you know, it's funny that nowadays,
Speaker 1: uh you know, in modern days, we say things like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I couldn't. I didn't have a choice. He
Speaker 1: pointed a gun to my head and I Pictetis says,
Speaker 1: So what, you still had a choice. You could have
Speaker 1: said no and he would have shot you. So what
Speaker 1: what that means is that you valued your life more
Speaker 1: than that particular choice, right, but not that you did
Speaker 1: not have a choice. And it may very well be
Speaker 1: reasonable to value your life more than, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you are asked to choose. But nevertheless,
Speaker 1: it is in fed your choice. Everything else, Epictitius says,
Speaker 1: is not ultimately up to you. It kind of works
Speaker 1: in the reverse. You can influence a lot of other things,
Speaker 1: but ultimately you don't control them. What are these other things,
Speaker 1: Well pretty much everything, he mentions, health career, reputation, wealth,
Speaker 1: you know, everything that, relationships, everything matters to us. It's
Speaker 1: not really up to us. What does that mean. Well,
Speaker 1: let's say, for instance, let's talk about health. As you
Speaker 1: pointed out before we started this conversation. You know, last
Speaker 1: week I happened to pay a visit to the e
Speaker 1: R and I was in the hospital for three days.
Speaker 1: Well that wasn't certainly not my choice. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, something happened and I have to have
Speaker 1: doctors looking at it. Now. The question there is what
Speaker 1: is up to me and what is not up to me?
Speaker 1: According to Epic titius up to me was the judgment
Speaker 1: that there was something wrong, that was experiencing something sufficiently
Speaker 1: serious in terms of physical symptoms, that I better go
Speaker 1: to the e R because I was risking otherwise my life.
Speaker 1: That's choice is up to me. Nobody else can make
Speaker 1: it for me unless I'm unconscious. But I was conscious,
Speaker 1: so I made the choice. I can also make the
Speaker 1: choice of following what the doctors and the nurses are
Speaker 1: telling me to do or not. Right, I could I
Speaker 1: could refuse if somebody says, okay, well here's this medication
Speaker 1: or here's this exam that we want you to do,
Speaker 1: I could say no. So that's up to my judgment,
Speaker 1: and then I can since I was there for three days,
Speaker 1: it's up to me how to behave to other people,
Speaker 1: not only nurses and doctors but also fellow patients. Right,
Speaker 1: do I want to be cranky and irritable and start
Speaker 1: yelling at people, or do I want to try to be,
Speaker 1: you know, a good citizen at the hospital. And then
Speaker 1: also up to me is how do I want to
Speaker 1: spend my time when I'm there and not undergoing either
Speaker 1: procedures or exams. So so I asked my wife to
Speaker 1: bring in my iPad, and I read and wrote a
Speaker 1: little bit as much as I could. Those things are
Speaker 1: up to me, because they're all results of my judgments.
Speaker 1: What is not up to me, well, pretty much everything else.
Speaker 1: Right first and foremost, the outcome of all of these
Speaker 1: procedures and and all that. I mean, I could regain
Speaker 1: my health or not. That is certainly not up to me.
Speaker 1: The specific consequences of each one of those particular actions
Speaker 1: is not up to me. The behavior of the doctors
Speaker 1: and the nurses is not up to me. The behavior
Speaker 1: of my fellow patients is not up to me. Uh,
Speaker 1: the functioning of the instrumentation, the medical instrumentation, that's not
Speaker 1: up to me either. So in other words, all of
Speaker 1: those other things, all that stoics call externals, anything that
Speaker 1: is outside of my judgment I don't control. I can
Speaker 1: influence it, because of course I can talk to my doctor,
Speaker 1: let's say, and what the doctor is gonna say or
Speaker 1: going to do is going to be influenced by what
Speaker 1: I say and by how I interact with him, but
Speaker 1: ultimately it is his decision, that's his judgment of what
Speaker 1: to do vere to do, And that I find that
Speaker 1: notion of keeping in mind very clearly as clearly as possible,
Speaker 1: where my agency, another way to put all these things,
Speaker 1: where my agency lies and where it doesn't lie, right
Speaker 1: to what I can actually affect and what I cannot.
Speaker 1: I found that very calming and very useful. In fact,
Speaker 1: already in the ambulance, when I was going to the hospital,
Speaker 1: I started making up two mental lists. What is going
Speaker 1: to be up to me under these circumstances, is what
Speaker 1: is not going to be up to me under these circumstances,
Speaker 1: and what you do. Then after you have that list,
Speaker 1: not only you go over the list over and over
Speaker 1: to remind yourself you know afresh that Okay, this is
Speaker 1: up to me, this is not up to me, but
Speaker 1: also then you're supposed to be focusing on the first
Speaker 1: list what is up to you, and trying to develop
Speaker 1: this attitude of equanimity and acceptance towards the second list,
Speaker 1: toward the things that are not up to you. That
Speaker 1: is difficult, obviously, because we have a tendency to want
Speaker 1: to control the outcomes, right, we want certain things to
Speaker 1: go in a certain way, and we are really low
Speaker 1: to say no, I don't. I don't control. It's not
Speaker 1: up to me. I mean, in the case of going
Speaker 1: through the year, one of the outcomes might be they're
Speaker 1: gonna die. If it is a life threatening situation, you
Speaker 1: might die, and we recoil from the whole idea is like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: if I die, I die. But that actually is, according
Speaker 1: to the story, is the only rational and useful attitude
Speaker 1: you could possibly have. You said, well, in fact, one
Speaker 1: of the first things you asked me earlier on why
Speaker 1: I was so interested in Epictitius. One of the very
Speaker 1: first things that I read by Epictetus is right at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the first volume of the Discourses, where
Speaker 1: it says, well, do I have to die? Apparently not today?
Speaker 1: And if it's not today, then let me not think
Speaker 1: about dying. On the other hand, it is the time
Speaker 1: for lunch, so let's think about lunch time and what
Speaker 1: we're gonna need for lunch. I mean, I remember I
Speaker 1: laughed out loud when I read this thing, like, but
Speaker 1: then I stopped and I said, you know, this guy
Speaker 1: really on to something. Yes, we all have to die,
Speaker 1: and at some point that moment will come and you
Speaker 1: have to deal with it. But the only thing you
Speaker 1: can do about it is acceptance. There's nothing you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's an inevitable thing. Meanwhile, however, if it is
Speaker 1: not today, then I can do other things. Then I
Speaker 1: have other priorities, and I can redirect my mind and
Speaker 1: my attention to something that is more productive than dwelling
Speaker 1: on the fact that one of these days I'm going
Speaker 1: to die. Seneca, who was a little older about a
Speaker 1: contemporary with pig Titious a little older, and he writes,
Speaker 1: you know, we die every day, meaning that every day
Speaker 1: we get closer and closer obviously to that moment. But
Speaker 1: he says, you know, when I get up in the
Speaker 1: morning and I realized that I probably have yet another
Speaker 1: day ahead of me, I say, yeah, that's something to celebrate.
Speaker 1: So let me see what I can do with this day.
Speaker 1: And then if tomorrow there isn't gonna be another one,
Speaker 1: then fine, one of these days will have to happen anyway.
Speaker 1: So this dichotomy of control, this grouping things and the
Speaker 1: things I can change and can't change, or can do
Speaker 1: something about there's another stoic philosopher, Bill Irvine, who we
Speaker 1: actually talked to not that long ago, but he talked
Speaker 1: about breaking this into what he calls a trichotomy of control,
Speaker 1: meaning things we can control, things we can influence, and
Speaker 1: things that we have no control over. You felt like
Speaker 1: that weakens the core piece of this talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about why you don't think that model is as useful.
Speaker 1: I know Bill very well, we're friends and we've all
Speaker 1: due respect, and I think he's just wrong on that one.
Speaker 1: What it does comes pretty natural. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: I said earlier on that I don't like to label
Speaker 1: the concept that we're talking about economy or control is
Speaker 1: because people immediately start thinking, and on similar lines to
Speaker 1: what Bill suggested, is well, wait a minute, there are
Speaker 1: things that control, there are things that I don't control,
Speaker 1: and then there's a bunch of stuff in between, right,
Speaker 1: And yes, you can think that why, but then you're
Speaker 1: kind of missing the point. The point is that in
Speaker 1: a sense, almost everything is in between, right. There are
Speaker 1: very few things that you live do not control. Like
Speaker 1: I don't control the weather, that's for sure. What I
Speaker 1: do control is, of course, checking the weather forecast, and
Speaker 1: decided whether to bring an umbrella or not to bring
Speaker 1: an umbrella. Right, And if I do bring an umbrella,
Speaker 1: then it might seem like I'm now into one of
Speaker 1: those intermediate situations where I have some control over things.
Speaker 1: I may not control the weather, but I controlled the umbrella,
Speaker 1: so I don't get wet as a result of it. Right.
Speaker 1: It seems like a perfect example of something that is
Speaker 1: in between. But the point of epictitus is yes, but
Speaker 1: think about that particular situation very carefully. Everything that you
Speaker 1: can influence itself turns out to be dividable into these
Speaker 1: two categories, the bit that you do control completely and
Speaker 1: the bit that you don't control at all. When the
Speaker 1: two come together, you have something into me as something
Speaker 1: that you're influencing. Right, So in the example that I
Speaker 1: just gave, again, if you think about it for a minute,
Speaker 1: the only bits that I really control are my judgments.
Speaker 1: Do I need to check the weather forecast before I leave?
Speaker 1: That's a judgment call. And do I need to bring
Speaker 1: my umbrella or not, that's a judgment call. Once I
Speaker 1: made those decisions, then the rest is actually not up
Speaker 1: to me. Even if I bring my umbrella, I might
Speaker 1: still get wet, because you know it may pour down
Speaker 1: really heavy or with a lot of wind and whatever
Speaker 1: it is. And so my umbrella is entirely useless, right,
Speaker 1: Or my umbrella would be very effective. But whether the
Speaker 1: umbrella is effective or not, it's really not up to me.
Speaker 1: It's a question for the weather. The only part that
Speaker 1: I control was the judgment call do I bring the
Speaker 1: umbrella or do I not? Right, So I think that
Speaker 1: there is a danger. In fact, Bill has been warned
Speaker 1: about that by other modern stoic authors like Don Robertson,
Speaker 1: that if you start talking in terms of intermediate situations,
Speaker 1: then you kind of lose the force of the metaphor
Speaker 1: and and and all of a sudden, now you you
Speaker 1: don't have a guidance for action, because if almost everything
Speaker 1: turns out to be intermediate, then the answer to anything is, well,
Speaker 1: it depends right, begins to depend on the details. Instead,
Speaker 1: if you go with the actual dichotomy of control, then
Speaker 1: it's very clear you have to remember only one thing,
Speaker 1: the only thing that is up to you and your judgments.
Speaker 1: That's it. Your decisions to act or not to act,
Speaker 1: that's it. Obviously, these things get more subtle when we
Speaker 1: start talking about real world situations. So if we were
Speaker 1: to talk about health, for example, I don't mean your
Speaker 1: trip to the hospital, but let's say health in general. Right,
Speaker 1: there are certainly lots of actions I can take that
Speaker 1: make it more potentially likely that I will have good health.
Speaker 1: But as you say, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: whether or not I do have good health, I don't
Speaker 1: have control over, right, you know, I can do the
Speaker 1: action that gives me, you know, based on what we
Speaker 1: know today's best guess of what causes good health. But
Speaker 1: it's a roll of the dice, you know, to some degree.
Speaker 1: And I think to your point, when you look at
Speaker 1: anything closely enough, we do see that we have the
Speaker 1: thing we can do, and then there's the point where
Speaker 1: that ends, and then what happens after is up to us.
Speaker 1: But we can make our best guess about how our
Speaker 1: actions will impact the world. Yes, that's right. So I
Speaker 1: mentioned a few minutes ago that actually an earlier version
Speaker 1: of the economic control is found in Sister and Sister
Speaker 1: uses an interesting metaphor, which is known as the metaphor
Speaker 1: of the archer. He says, consider you are an archer
Speaker 1: trying to hit an enemy soldier with your errors. Right,
Speaker 1: what is up to you and what is not up
Speaker 1: to you? And it goes through a list of things,
Speaker 1: and it turns out, however, that the only thing they're
Speaker 1: up to the archer. Again, our decisions judgments, right, So
Speaker 1: he can decide how much to practice archery before the battle.
Speaker 1: That's always a good idea. You can choose which arrows
Speaker 1: and bow to to actually take with him in battle.
Speaker 1: He can decide how to take care of those arrows
Speaker 1: and bow. He can decide where to aim, went to aim,
Speaker 1: and when to let the arrow go. All of those
Speaker 1: are decisions. They're all judgment calls. But once the arrow
Speaker 1: leaves the boat, that's it. Nothing else is on this
Speaker 1: good all right. The enemy soldier might turn in the
Speaker 1: last moment and see the arrow coming, and that's Eddie Ducks,
Speaker 1: and the best shot is ruined or augusta wind might
Speaker 1: interfere with the shot, or all sorts of things could happen,
Speaker 1: and you don't have any more decision making on on
Speaker 1: those things. Your will stops the moment in which you
Speaker 1: actually let go of the arrow. The saying goes with
Speaker 1: health in general, you know, without the e er trips
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Sure, I can make a lot of
Speaker 1: judgment called. I have to make a lot of judgment
Speaker 1: calls based on what I think is the best information. Right,
Speaker 1: So I can say, hey, I need to get to
Speaker 1: the gym at least, you know, three times a week
Speaker 1: or for for a certain number of hours. I can
Speaker 1: decide to eat in a in a certain way, you know,
Speaker 1: decent portions, healthy foods, and all of those are my decisions,
Speaker 1: and they will certainly influence the outcome, there's no question
Speaker 1: about it. But in terms of the outcome itself, I
Speaker 1: can do all of those things and still get sick. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it is helpful to keep that line
Speaker 1: pretty clear. Now. I think where it gets difficult, And
Speaker 1: this is something I thought maybe we could talk about next,
Speaker 1: which is one of the disciplines of Stoicism. Can talk
Speaker 1: about three disciplines, and maybe we'll get to all of them,
Speaker 1: but one of them is called the discipline of desire,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to talk about that in how it
Speaker 1: also relates to the dicotomy of control, because what people
Speaker 1: will say is okay, great, I may not be able
Speaker 1: to control that thing, but I still really care deeply
Speaker 1: about it, and I really want it, you know, I
Speaker 1: feel very attached to it. So talk about how the
Speaker 1: discipline of desire and aversion plays into that. First of all,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right that the discipline of desire and a version,
Speaker 1: as it's called, it's directly connected to the economic control.
Speaker 1: That the two are very deeply connected. So the three
Speaker 1: disciplines that you mentioned are actually, as far as we know,
Speaker 1: there are Epictetus inventions, so they are actually one of
Speaker 1: EPs original contributions to Stoicism, which incidentally, let me open
Speaker 1: a small parenthesis here, makes a point that Stoicism has
Speaker 1: been changing from the beginning. Epithetis was living five centuries
Speaker 1: after the origin of Stoicism and he was still making,
Speaker 1: you know, changes into the philosophy. So when people say, oh,
Speaker 1: we should stick with the original, there's no sting as
Speaker 1: the original, because philosophies and religions in general change over time.
Speaker 1: As soon as somebody has the initial idea that somebody
Speaker 1: else is going to challenge that idea and make changes.
Speaker 1: So the three disciplin links are one of epicitious original
Speaker 1: contributions to Stoicism, and there are three of them as
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, desire and a version, action and assent.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll get to the other two, but desire and
Speaker 1: a version. The first thing that we need to understand
Speaker 1: here is that there is an issue with the English
Speaker 1: translation of these terms, especially as far as desire and
Speaker 1: a version or concerned. First of all, versions are the
Speaker 1: opposite of desires. So desire is something I want. A
Speaker 1: version is something that I don't want. Right, I have
Speaker 1: a desire for chocolate, and I have an aversion to
Speaker 1: vanilla or something like that. However, the English words in
Speaker 1: this case are misleading because you know, very often it
Speaker 1: has happened to me that people say, but wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I don't control my desires. If I have a desire
Speaker 1: for something, it just comes to me. It's an emotion. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is true as far as the modern English word
Speaker 1: desire is concerned. But that is not at all what
Speaker 1: epic titius meant. If you go to the original Greek,
Speaker 1: desire is not exactly a great translation of that terminology.
Speaker 1: What epictitious means is it's translated better as endorsed values,
Speaker 1: or in the case of aversions, endorsed these values so
Speaker 1: you make conscious decisions about what you value and what
Speaker 1: you do not value, or what you should value. Let's
Speaker 1: put it that way. Or should not value. For instance,
Speaker 1: let's go back to one of your earlier examples. You said,
Speaker 1: you know I can do all sorts of things in
Speaker 1: order to improve my health. Well, that reflects a desire
Speaker 1: in the sense of epic Titus. That is, the judgment
Speaker 1: that health is valuable and sickness is not valuable. Right,
Speaker 1: is that this value? Now it may not come natural
Speaker 1: to you to have certain values or these values. For instance,
Speaker 1: I do realize that going to the gym is something
Speaker 1: that improves or at least maintain my health. But it's
Speaker 1: certainly I have never never had in my life a
Speaker 1: desire to go to the gym. When I get to
Speaker 1: the gym and you know, the nice lady behind the
Speaker 1: counter says, you know, enjoy your workout. What do you mean.
Speaker 1: This is not a nice meal or a glass of wine.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to enjoy it the workout. But I
Speaker 1: do it because I decided. I made the conscious decision
Speaker 1: that this is a positive value for me, That exercise
Speaker 1: is a positive value, right, even though I don't desire it.
Speaker 1: In fact, I kind of a verse in the English
Speaker 1: sense of the term. I actually have an aversion toward exercise,
Speaker 1: but in the Epictitian sense of the term, I have
Speaker 1: a desire, meaning that I decided consciously that physical fitness
Speaker 1: and exercise is actually a positive value. So the discipline
Speaker 1: of desire and a version. Therefore, it's not about reshaping
Speaker 1: our desires in the normal English sense of the term,
Speaker 1: it's about prioritizing, or more likely re prioritizing things. So
Speaker 1: I picked us to all these students that you probably
Speaker 1: have the wrong priorities in life, and therefore you should
Speaker 1: change them now. In fact, he went on and said,
Speaker 1: you probably think that health and wealth and fame and
Speaker 1: reputation and career. You think that those are good things,
Speaker 1: don't you? And he says, fool your fools us was
Speaker 1: pretty direct with the direct part. You like, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: called them fools or slaves, which you know, coming from
Speaker 1: a slave, it's kind of interesting slaves because there were
Speaker 1: slaves to common opinion, right, they were not thinking with
Speaker 1: their brains. There were slaves to come opinion. Oh, your
Speaker 1: parents and your friends tell you that being rich and
Speaker 1: famous is a good thing, so you just automatically agrees,
Speaker 1: like what are your fool or or your slave or
Speaker 1: other people's opinions? So if he did says, no, those
Speaker 1: things have value. I mean, it's he's not crazy, he's
Speaker 1: not saying you know that those things are without any value.
Speaker 1: But those are not the really important things in life.
Speaker 1: There is, in fact, only one really important thing in life,
Speaker 1: and that's your character, which, for the Pictitis, is synonymous
Speaker 1: with your ability to judgment, of judgment, your your ability
Speaker 1: to arrive at good judgment. Now they may sound strange,
Speaker 1: but think about it for a second and you realize
Speaker 1: that Epititiuity is right. Why is it that the only
Speaker 1: thing that is truly valuable in life is judgment? Because
Speaker 1: from your judgments depends how you use everything else. Wealth,
Speaker 1: for instance, Let's take money, and you know wealth in general, Well,
Speaker 1: wealth is a good thing if you use it. Well.
Speaker 1: If you don't use it, well it's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're wealthy and then start corrupting politicians
Speaker 1: or buying your way out of you know, criminal record
Speaker 1: or something, and then it is a bad thing. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not a good thing in fact. Anther, one
Speaker 1: of the things that Epitius tells us right at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the discourses is, you know, so you want
Speaker 1: some money, good for you? Now, how are you going
Speaker 1: to spend your money, How are you going to use
Speaker 1: that money? Who is it going to tell you how
Speaker 1: to use your money? The money isn't going to tell
Speaker 1: you your faculty of judgment is, And the same goes
Speaker 1: for everything else. We tend to think that health is
Speaker 1: a good thing, like wow, who would argue that? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I were thinking of a dictator,
Speaker 1: for instance, in this this moment, I hope he's going
Speaker 1: to get sick. Health is not necessarily a good thing.
Speaker 1: It depends on how you use it. If you use
Speaker 1: your health to oppress other people, then it's not a
Speaker 1: good thing. The people would be better off if you
Speaker 1: were sick and dying rather than than being healthy. The
Speaker 1: saying goes with wealth reputation, Well, the same idea. If
Speaker 1: you have a good reputation and you use it well,
Speaker 1: that is in fact indeed a good thing. But if
Speaker 1: you use your reputation in order to corrupt other people,
Speaker 1: to swindle other people, etcetera, etcetera, then it's not a
Speaker 1: good thing. So it turns out therefore, that there are
Speaker 1: no good or bad things per se. The things become
Speaker 1: good or bad only because you use them in a
Speaker 1: certain way. Right, And I use that analogy also for
Speaker 1: things that are more controversial these days, such as certain technologies.
Speaker 1: Like you know, it's pretty common these days to rail
Speaker 1: against social media. It's like, oh, you know, the disasters
Speaker 1: of humanity are this is it comes that they're all
Speaker 1: originate from the social media. But social media are a tool.
Speaker 1: It's up to you how to use it. In other words,
Speaker 1: it's up to your judgment how to use it. Right,
Speaker 1: So are there bad uses of you know, things like
Speaker 1: Facebook and Twitter? Hell? Yes, are there good uses? Yes?
Speaker 1: I am regularly on social media and I use them
Speaker 1: only and exclusively, either to keep in touch with my
Speaker 1: relatives from overseas, and that is a good thing, or
Speaker 1: to promote my work and the work of people that
Speaker 1: I think is worth reading, and that is also a
Speaker 1: good thing. There's nothing bad about that now. Of course, if,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you use social media to harass
Speaker 1: people or to promote fake news and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: then it's bad. But it's not the technology that it's
Speaker 1: good or bad. The technology is neutral, Like for the stoics,
Speaker 1: every external is neutral. What makes it a good external
Speaker 1: or a band external is only our judgment. That's why
Speaker 1: e Pictitis says to his students, you really need to
Speaker 1: reprioritize things. The only thing that you should be ziing
Speaker 1: in the sense of prioritize is good judgments, and the
Speaker 1: only things that you should be averse too is bad judgments.
Speaker 1: And then everything else follows from that. What's the process
Speaker 1: of going from the desires that arise somewhat naturally? Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll stay away from the word naturally because I think
Speaker 1: Stoics use that word in a certain way. I'm going
Speaker 1: to walk away from that word. Desires that arise as
Speaker 1: a result of either our biology or our conditioning, right,
Speaker 1: and that conditioning could come from lots of different places.
Speaker 1: But desires that arise through our our biology are conditioning,
Speaker 1: which are to seek pleasure and avoid pain, the sort
Speaker 1: of desires you were talking about. What's the process of
Speaker 1: going from those things that arise? Two? Cultivating wanting a
Speaker 1: good character because that can seem like a pretty big
Speaker 1: gap and a lot of retraining that needs to go
Speaker 1: to get to that point. There is a gap there,
Speaker 1: and it's an important one which the Stoics do address.
Speaker 1: And yes, it is difficult. That's why Stoicism is like Buddhism,
Speaker 1: or again like Christianity. It's a lifelong commitment, you know,
Speaker 1: it's training for the entire life. It's not like you're
Speaker 1: gonna just do it today and then it's okay, I'm done.
Speaker 1: Right in a sense. In fact, it's like going to
Speaker 1: the gym. Right. Imagine if I went to the gym
Speaker 1: again to use the same metaphor, and then I asked
Speaker 1: my trainer, you know, explanations about how to use properly
Speaker 1: the different machines and the weights, and then I walk
Speaker 1: out and never come back in. Oh, I've done nothing.
Speaker 1: I understood the theory right now. Now I know how
Speaker 1: to use the machine. But if I actually don't commit
Speaker 1: and don't come back every day and use the machines,
Speaker 1: my muscles and my aerobic capacity aren't gonna go anywhere
Speaker 1: other than down right. So it's the same thing with
Speaker 1: your character. The commitment is on a daily basis. Now,
Speaker 1: what about that gap that you were just talking about.
Speaker 1: That's why the Stoics have put so much emphasis on
Speaker 1: reason or Epitius uses the Greek word pro high rasis,
Speaker 1: which is translated as judgment. Again, a faculty, your faculty
Speaker 1: of judgment, which is right here the frontal prietal lobes
Speaker 1: of your brain are the ones that are in charge
Speaker 1: of your rational decision making, And basically you can think
Speaker 1: of stoicism as a lifelong program to improve your rational
Speaker 1: decision making. That's really what it comes down to. Now
Speaker 1: you're saying, well, what about the gap between our shall
Speaker 1: we call it naturally epicurean attitude? You know, I want
Speaker 1: pleasure and I don't want pain, right, that's basically a
Speaker 1: pecuring philosophy. How do I go from there too things
Speaker 1: that actually do require pain, and maybe even even to
Speaker 1: forego some pleasures, right, Well, in the same way in
Speaker 1: which you do other things. We use the metaphor of
Speaker 1: either exercise or health several times in this conversation, and
Speaker 1: for a reason the Stoics themselves do. The Stoics are
Speaker 1: often go back to either health. They say that a philosopher,
Speaker 1: meaning a teacher of philosophy, is like a doctor, and
Speaker 1: fat Epitas at one point says philosophy should feel like
Speaker 1: going to the doctor. If you're not in pain when
Speaker 1: you come out of it, you've done nothing right. Or
Speaker 1: they use the metaphor of the gym. The English ward
Speaker 1: gym comes from gymnasium, which is the Roman translation of
Speaker 1: the original Greek word. And that's because the stoics themselves.
Speaker 1: Often we're spending a lot of time in the gymnasium
Speaker 1: taking care of their of their body, not just their mind.
Speaker 1: So it's the same idea. Another example which has also
Speaker 1: to do with with health. But I think that addresses
Speaker 1: that gap that you're talking about. I think I'm not
Speaker 1: the only person in the world who would rather eat
Speaker 1: and drink to his own pleasure and contentment than not, right,
Speaker 1: So I have that little problem. There is a gap
Speaker 1: between what my reason tells me I should eat and
Speaker 1: drink and what my body wants and craves, right, And
Speaker 1: that is in fact the result in part certainly of biology,
Speaker 1: any part even of social pressures and things like that.
Speaker 1: You know, when you go out with friends, Oh, I
Speaker 1: have a second drink, right, you know, or have a
Speaker 1: third drink or something like that. That's social pressure. But
Speaker 1: there is also a result of biology, I mean evolutionary
Speaker 1: biologists and made the argument that one of the reasons
Speaker 1: we have so much trouble controlling our eating habits is
Speaker 1: because we evolved in a situation hundreds of thousands years
Speaker 1: ago where food was not available all the time. And
Speaker 1: cheap right as it is today. I mean today, if
Speaker 1: I feel like eating something, I literally have food available
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day for cheap right. If we
Speaker 1: were back in the place to see I would have
Speaker 1: to get up, get my tools and start hunting, right.
Speaker 1: So that's that's a whole different thing. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: have these cravings for eating and drinking there are disproportionate
Speaker 1: either for because of biological reasons or because of social reason,
Speaker 1: they're disproportionate with what is reasonable. But if we are
Speaker 1: responsible adults and we're trying to do the right thing
Speaker 1: for ourselves in this case, what do we do. I
Speaker 1: look at you know, like just last night, I went
Speaker 1: out with friends and we had drinks, and then of
Speaker 1: course the winner comes around and says, would you like
Speaker 1: another one? And everybody is looking at me, and I
Speaker 1: look at the weather, and I said I would, but
Speaker 1: I'm not going to have it right. So that's where
Speaker 1: your prohigresis kicks in. That's where your faculty of judgment
Speaker 1: kicks in and says, look, of course you're craving another drink.
Speaker 1: That would be nice. It will be even more relaxed
Speaker 1: than you're than you're now, and you're with friends, you
Speaker 1: know why not? And your reason said, well, the reason
Speaker 1: why not is because you're gonna be feel sick later,
Speaker 1: or this is not a good thing. In general. That
Speaker 1: is exactly the same gap that you're talking about between
Speaker 1: behaviors that we crave naturally and behaviors that reason tells
Speaker 1: us we should engage in. And you can again think
Speaker 1: of the entire point of Stoic training as bridging that gap.
Speaker 1: That is the reason why. For instance, Seneca says at
Speaker 1: some point in one of his letters to his friend
Speaker 1: Lucilius that are kind of an informal curriculum in story philosophy,
Speaker 1: he says, virtue is nothing but right reason. So when
Speaker 1: the storys talk about what the virtuous thing to do, well,
Speaker 1: the virgin thing to do is the reasonable thing to do,
Speaker 1: And essentially the rest is just practice. Once you understand that,
Speaker 1: Once you understand that there is that gap and that
Speaker 1: your goal in life is to fill the gap so
Speaker 1: that you align your actual behavior with what is in
Speaker 1: your best interests as well as the Storice would say,
Speaker 1: in the interest of humanity in general, then that's it.
Speaker 1: You understood theory. Now it's a question of practice. So
Speaker 1: It's very similar to once your trainer has told you
Speaker 1: how to use the basic machinery in the gym, then
Speaker 1: you're done. The theory is not difficult, This is not
Speaker 1: rocket science. The practice, however, takes commitment, and of course
Speaker 1: inevitably you will slide back. Right. There will be situations
Speaker 1: where to keep using the same example. I will go
Speaker 1: up with my friends and this time I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: yes to the waiter for the second drink, and then
Speaker 1: let I'm going to regret it. I'm gonna say, oh,
Speaker 1: the emlition, don't done that? Well. The storics have an
Speaker 1: answer for that as well. Don't indulge in regret. Regret
Speaker 1: this as waste of time. Regret means that you are
Speaker 1: emotionally distraught by something you did. But the past, by definition,
Speaker 1: is not under your control. So what the hell are
Speaker 1: you doing spending your time? You know, beating yourself up.
Speaker 1: What you should do is to learn from the past
Speaker 1: and try not to repeat that in the future, and say, look,
Speaker 1: let me analyze that situation. What made me say yes
Speaker 1: when I should have said no? Right? What kind of
Speaker 1: circumstances and what can I do better? How can I
Speaker 1: preempt that? The next time that something like this happens.
Speaker 1: That's what story training is about. It's about reflecting. That's
Speaker 1: why one of the major tools in the Stoic toolbox
Speaker 1: is something that is referred to as philosophical journaling, where
Speaker 1: every night you analyze that your more important actions and
Speaker 1: you ask yourself, what did I do wrong? What did
Speaker 1: I do right? And what could I do better the
Speaker 1: next time around? And again, the point is not too
Speaker 1: indulge in regret, but to learn from your experiences and
Speaker 1: then warn yourself prepare yourself for the next time around.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, here's the plan, here's what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do next. But never never beat yourself up. If you
Speaker 1: made a mistake, fine fight it under the mistake category.
Speaker 1: We all human beings after all, and then next time
Speaker 1: trying to remember, wait a minute, under similar circumstances, I
Speaker 1: made a mistake, so let me try to do different
Speaker 1: this time around. Well, Massimo, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. It has been such a pleasure
Speaker 1: talking with you. There's so many different things we could
Speaker 1: follow up on, and maybe we will do it another time,
Speaker 1: but thank you for being here. And I hope that
Speaker 1: whatever was going on health wise with you is resolved,
Speaker 1: even though it's not in either your eyes control. Thank you, Eric,
Speaker 1: it was a pleasure being here. M If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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