#Enchiridion by Epictetus has been helpful

[art-of-manliness]

Podcast #421: Why You Need a Philosophical Survival Kit

Admiral James Stockdale was a fighter pilot and POW in Vietnam for seven years. During his imprisonment, he was regularly tortured and beaten, and often held in solitary confinement.  Despite the emotional, mental, and physical trauma he faced day in and day out, Stockdale survived and came home to become an influential public figure.  How did he do it? As my guest today explains, Stockdale had with him a philosophical survival kit.  His name is Thomas Gibbons, he’s a retired Army colonel and a current professor at the U.S. Naval War College where he teaches a course founded by James Stockdale called Foundations of Moral Obligation. Today on the show, Tom shares how a little book of Stoic philosophy helped Stockdale endure through seven grueling years of confinement and how his experience as a POW inspired the creation of a course on Western philosophy. Tom then shares why it’s important for military officers and leaders of all kinds to have an understanding of philosophy and walks us through some of the topics they cover in the “Stockdale Course,” including Aristotelian virtue ethics and Kant’s duty ethics.  Show Highlights * The background and history of the Naval War College * How Admiral James Stockdale became a Stoic  * Stockdale’s experience as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton  * Tactics Stockdale used to survive torture and solitary confinement  * The negative effects of being too optimistic * How Stockdale turned his experience into a popular course on ethics that’s lasted for 40 years * Why teach military officers philosophy and the classics?  * The value of the Great Books  * Why has this class been so successful for over four decades? * The curriculum that students of the course go through  * What is it about Aristotelian virtue ethics that can help soldiers become better at what they do? * Kant on duty  * Why Stockdale loved the Bible’s Book of Job  * Why every man should ask life’s “Primary Questions”  Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast * Admiral James Stockdale * Enchiridion by Epictetus  * Hanoi Hilton * Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler * Stockdale in a 1992 VP debate * Good to Great by Jim Collins * The Stockdale Paradox  * Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl * Why Every Man Should Read the Classics * The Classical Education You Never Had * The Great Books methodology * What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes  * Meditations on a First Reading of Meditations * A Primer on Plato  * Begin With the End in Mind * Foundations of Moral Obligation Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!) Listen to the episode on a separate page. Download this episode. Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice. Podcast Sponsors Athletic Greens. The most complete, whole foods supplement available, plus it tastes fantastic. Head over to AthleticGreens.com/manliness and claim your 20 FREE travel packs today. ZipRecruiter. Find the best job candidates by posting your job on over 100+ of the top job recruitment sites with just a click at ZipRecruiter. Get your first posting free by visiting ZipRecruiter.com/manliness. Indochino offers custom, made-to-measure suits at an affordable price. They’re offering any premium suit for just $379. That’s up to 50% off. To claim your discount go to Indochino.com and enter discount code “MANLINESS” at checkout. Plus, shipping is free. Click here to see a full list of our podcast sponsors. Recorded with ClearCast.io. Read the Transcript Coming soon! The post Podcast #421: Why You Need a Philosophical Survival Kit appeared first on The Art of Manliness. http://dlvr.it/Qb72Sw

[lsestoic]

My personal case for Stoicism - and its opponents

Why Stoicism?

The Ancient philosophy dates back to 300 BC by one of its founders, Zeno of Citium. Since then, Stoicism has seen a modern revival, with authors like Ryan Holiday and Massimo Pigliucci helping to popularise its ancient teachings for a mainstream audience.

It is the latter author who has helped to systematise and explain the central tenets of Stoicism. Fundamentally, Stoicism poses the question, how does one live? And goes on to break down the responses to this question in three main principles: firstly, that virtue (or what is ‘good’) cannot be traded for what we don’t need, like luxuries or superficial goods. Secondly, that we ‘live according to our nature’ and approach the world with both courage and moderation when we act. And lastly, that we grasp the dichotomy of control that determines our actions, and that we only lead our lives through things we can control.

This is a lot to unpack and certainly raises more questions than answers. For example, what is ‘good’ if it differs from one person to the next, let alone vast cultural differences? And is Stoicism teaching us to feel indifferent or detached from wrongs inflicted on us, if they are indeed ‘out of our control’?

Before I get to answer these questions, I want to share how I personally got into Stoicism and why I’m sticking with it.

Stoicism for me has been a ‘long dawn’. That means, it has broken into the horizon of my thought many times - only to be interrupted by the flicker and fancy of another ideology or life philosophy. My first encounter with learning about and reading Stoicism was in sixth form, before university, when I read one of the key texts, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. At the time, despite the notoriously difficult writing style, I was impressed by the ambition of its task to respond to the dilemmas one encounters in life. It goes on to list philosophical exercises (or the Greek term, ‘askesis’) that could train the mind, like one would train the body, to resist the temptation of desire and instead act with confidence.

(As an aside, Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor who ruled in the second century AD and ended his reign in the midst of the Antonine Plague named after him. Something to think about when one reads him, as we experience our own pandemic!)

My own spiritual upbringing brings me adjacent to Stoic teachings. I was raised in a Buddhist family and I’m proud that I was exposed to these profound questions about how to live life and conduct myself with others from a young age. Of course, there are differences between Buddhism and Stoicism - in my opinion, Buddhism puts more emphasis on suffering as the root of spiritual understanding while Stoicism stresses individual action within the constitution of our nature or worldly logic. Regardless, I have picked and considered views from each practice to make my understanding of Stoicism more nuanced and deliberative.

It is exactly that cosmopolitan perspective which is part of Stoicism. It carries on from the influence of Diogenes the Cynic, who was the first to say ‘I am a citizen of the world’. To be cosmopolitan means that Stoicism is open to practice for all, and can be seen as a set of techniques or exercises that anyone regardless of background can start to train themselves with.

Often, Stoicism is viewed by its stereotype. Its practitioners are cold, indifferent and detached. Perhaps a more serious critique but, it is seen as practised mainly by white, middle-aged men and their young followers. Similarly, Stoicism is viewed as individualistic and practitioners are privileged enough not to need to consider social concerns in their everyday lives.

While I understand where this critique comes from, in my opinion Stoicism is what you make of it. It is not a religion nor a doctrine with an authority that you must follow and conform with. The strength of Stoicism lies in its flexibility of practice and timelessness - in each historical era, Stoicism has gone on to inspire debates and provoke discussion, such as thinkers like Montaigne and the Enlightenment, as it touches on questions fundamental to the human condition. It has gone on to influence modern psychotherapy, as seen in the cognitive behavioural school which rests on the Stoic principle that perception and thoughts of a situation determines one’s behaviour towards it. Stoicism has uses beyond arm-chair debates and the recluse, but can inspire real change and action in people’s lives.

With all this said, why not start engaging with Stoicism now? LSE Stoics is a new group, officially part of LSE Philosophy society. We are running a reading group which starts in this Michaelmas term and all are welcome, including those who are beginners or just curious. We plan to go through the three main Stoic texts and provide interesting discussion of Stoicism every week. But these details and more will be explained in our first meet and greet meeting on Wednesday 23rd September 2020.

I am so excited. This has been a brief overview and exploration of the main views in Stoicism. If you’re interested in finding out more, message me for the zoom link to our meet and greet at LSE Stoics.

Just bring yourselves! Togas and wine are optional.

Useful resources:

Primary texts:

The Enchiridion of Epictetus

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

The Letters and Essays of Seneca the Younger

Secondary texts:

How to Be a Stoic (2017) Massimo Pigliucci

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Irvine

The Daily Stoic (2016) Ryan Holiday

[sunrec]

A tiny article about Stoicism has had a significant influence on my life since I read it. Maybe for the first time in my adult life, I don’t feel like I’m wasting much of my time. I feel unusually prepared to do difficult things.

It was a short personal essay by Elif Batuman, about how reading Epictetus helped her through a strained relationship, political turmoil in her country of residence, and other messy or insoluble worldly concerns.

It also prompted me to start reading what are sometimes called the “big three” Stoic works, The Discourses and The Enchiridion by Epictetus, and The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, who in his spare time was the Emperor of Rome.

I knew the basic idea of Stoicism, and it made sense: don’t freak out about what you can’t control. It’s perfectly logical. But logical isn’t always practical, at least for a species whose members typically can’t even fulfill their own new year’s resolutions.

Humans have never been short on sensible-sounding advice: spend less than you earn, don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today, be patient, don’t drink coffee after 6pm. What we’re short of is whatever quality it takes to get ourselves to do those things.

But I wasn’t giving the Stoics enough credit. So far, their advice is very practical—more self-improvement suggestions than philosophical ideas.

Basically, Epictetus tells you to continually divide your moment-to-moment concerns into two bins: the things you can control, and the things you can’t. Whenever you feel any sort of anger, desire or aversion, you look at the situation in terms of those two bins.

You quickly notice that the first bin is much, much smaller, and fortunately, it’s the one you’re responsible for. Essentially, it amounts to your actions and choices. The second bin is enormous, and it is the responsibility of the gods.

You can feel free to leave the gods’ enormous bin entirely up to them, as long as you do your best to tend to your small bin of personal choices and habits.

Of course, the larger bin still affects your life, even though you can’t (and shouldn’t try to) curate it. It contains matters such as when and how you die, how others act, the weather, and the stock market.

Obviously we have a stake in how those matters turn out, yet these outcomes aren’t really up to us, and we shouldn’t make ourselves miserable wishing they were. You will be treated unfairly, you will get sick, you will lose everything, and you will die, and the gods (or whatever forces there are) will deliver those fates to you as they please.

Stoicism gives you a very useful refrain towards these the matters that are out of your hands: That is none of my concern. Even in my initial experiments with it, it’s already become pretty easy to dismiss the largest categories of creeping worries, ones along the lines of:

What if ____ happens?

Why can’t ___ just ____?

I just wish _____.

Please let ____ be ____.

None of my concern! I can let the gods sort this stuff out, and attend to whatever actually ends up in my bin.

Our normal impulse is to see misfortune, loss, death, and the choices of others as primary concerns, since they can significantly affect our lives. But this is where the Stoics deviate from our natural inclinations. They offer a bold new take: a thing doesn’t automatically become your concern just because it might affect you.

The gods are doing things all day long that might affect you, but what they choose is their business. So any hoping or worrying you do about the to-do lists of the gods just makes you miserable and wastes your time. Epictetus would say it’s even kind of rude.

According to the Stoics, all day long you should be returning your attention to the relatively small realm you can control. Ultimately, your only concern is your own diligence in tending to your own bin, and that’s always up to you alone.

To the Stoic, life isn’t a juggling act between a thousand competing concerns. You have one concern, and that’s to tend your own garden, small or large as it is. It works the same for a slave (which is what Epictetus was when he was born) as it does for an Emperor (which is what Marcus Aurelius was when he died).

You might think we’re already pretty good at working on what we can control and leaving alone what we can’t. But this isn’t the way the untrained human mind works—we tend to ruminate over whatever we find emotionally compelling, from either sphere. If a politician does something we don’t like, we could burn unlimited energy getting enraged, even when we have no intention, or ability, to alter the proceedings. It’s possible to waste your whole life essentially shaking your fist at the clouds, completely preoccupied with where you are disempowered, overlooking every way in which you are empowered.

By reclaiming your energy, all day every day, from your sphere of concern (the range of things that appeal to your emotions) to your sphere of influence (the range of things you can affect) you are continually developing the essential Stoic skill of taking your lumps as they come, with minimal fuss and tantrum.

One way to think of it it is that the Stoic is making a practice out of shrinking the sphere of concern down to roughly the same size as the sphere of influence, where it finally becomes manageable.

As hard as life is, the only refuge you need, or ever have, is your own will to do what you can within your own sphere. That’s all you need to attend to, all you need to think about, all you need to get good at. You carry this refuge with you wherever you go, and nobody can take it away.

The practice of Stoicism is new to me, but its central insight isn’t. Buddhism has an almost identical interpretation of the human condition: our lives are vastly harder than they need to be, but only because we grasp at more control than is actually available to us.

I’ve been sold on this idea for years now—that happiness doesn’t come from finally learning how to control everything, but from finally learning how not to.

A passage from the Batuman article sums up this sense of carrying your empowerment with you, wherever you go:

When I read that nobody should ever feel ashamed to be alone or to be in a crowd, I realized that I often felt ashamed of both of those things. Epictetus’ advice: when alone, “call it peace and liberty, and consider yourself the gods’ equal”; in a crowd, think of yourself as a guest at an enormous party, and celebrate the best you can.

Source: Raptitude

[ibrandv]

//-002

There’s a long way to go, but now he sees clearer than he ever did. "Most people live in a self-perpetuated mirage. I don’t want that. I don’t need it. I feed on reality - brutal, honest reality.” And so he continues on his journey to the higher plane of enlightenment. 

“For me, enlightenment is to strengthen the best, and to eliminate the rest. Yes, the best characteristics, wisdom, relationships, and everything that has to do with innovating to the next level. The rest - the rest is garbage. Garbage in, garbage out? No thank you.”

“But they seem so happy!” 

“Yes, happy they seem.”

“Are they not?”

“Are you?”

“...”

“I get it now. At least I think I do. They’ve got ups and downs just like I do. They’re happy, but also sad. It’s that saying that people try to motivate each other with when they say To go high you must also go low - or something like that. It’s the yin-yang: you can’t have happiness without sadness, and you can’t have victory without failure. For how would you know you are short if there were no tall people?”

As much as he thought he would get as a result of learning day-in and day-out, the only things that he’s always won were to do with his mind, his character - for everything else were out of his control - and no matter how much effort and energy he put into them, some things simply cannot be accomplished by one’s sweat of the brow, because they are partnerships - hands have to reach from both sides to meet, one arm cannot extend enough to embrace a partner’s unwillingness to participate.

The willingness to accept what’s outside of my control.

Epictetus (Enchiridion, 1.1-2): Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. We don’t control our body, property, reputation, position, and, in a word, everything not of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, can be hindered, and are not our own. 

Opinions, choices, desires, aversions - everything of our own doing.

Body, property, reputation, position - everything not of our own doing.

“Confusion has time and time again left me broken and lost. Clarity is the way. Seeing things as they are, not as I view them. Action and results not intentions.”

“What stands in the way? The mind. The ineffective perceptions an assumptions of the world, people, and most importantly me. The mind is what I know. It is a record of my learnings, the accumulated past, the memory. The heart - the heart is the future, hoping and dreaming for something not yet in existence.”

“The mind is not the enemy; believed and accepted false information is the enemy, the delusional mind, the inaccurate and ineffective mind that leads you astray.”

Then and there, a mission has been born: Allow not to fool oneself and be fooled - The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. - and eradicate false perceptions.

The second: continually learn, widen your perspective, listen, and observe.

As he approaches his residence, he’s keenly aware of those around him. “They’re all consumed. They’re consumed to the core by life’s burdens: the decay of their bodies, natural forces that impede and put a stop to their plans, and other people that willingly or unwillingly cause them harm.” 

“And yet, as if this is not enough, they also whip themselves - constantly. For what purpose? Do they believe that this is normal, accepted, ideal? For what reasons don’t they, as I do, seek help? Do they want to keep up the facade that they know what they’re doing and it’s all under control?”

“But I, too, existed just as they do. What got me out? ...

Options! I was exposed to options! And It took one quick look to hunger for more!”

The answer he found was to become eclectic - that is to be “deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.”

“I looked to people - maybe I even looked up to them - but certainly I looked to them for advice, for information that was hard for me to find.”

A vice: To act and try to appear like you’ve got it under control, you know what you’re doing, and you need to help, when in reality you’re confused, lost, or even slightly unsure.

“And that’s most people - but me, no longer. From this day forth, I’ll seek to see, and learn, and listen, because there’s more than I can see, and more than I can fathom, and more than I can do to deserve to attain what I need in order to feel fulfilled - now, at this very moment.”

Albert Einstein: Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Let us not make the mistake of continuing to follow a misleading mirage out of perceived necessity or habit, but seek to inquire, interpret, and innovate evermore.

[healthnotion]

Podcast #421: Why You Need a Philosophical Survival Kit

Admiral James Stockdale was a fighter pilot and POW in Vietnam for seven years. During his imprisonment, he was regularly tortured and beaten, and often held in solitary confinement. 

Despite the emotional, mental, and physical trauma he faced day in and day out, Stockdale survived and came home to become an influential public figure. 

How did he do it?

As my guest today explains, Stockdale had with him a philosophical survival kit. 

His name is Thomas Gibbons, he’s a retired Army colonel and a current professor at the U.S. Naval War College where he teaches a course founded by James Stockdale called Foundations of Moral Obligation. Today on the show, Tom shares how a little book of Stoic philosophy helped Stockdale endure through seven grueling years of confinement and how his experience as a POW inspired the creation of a course on Western philosophy. Tom then shares why it’s important for military officers and leaders of all kinds to have an understanding of philosophy and walks us through some of the topics they cover in the “Stockdale Course,” including Aristotelian virtue ethics and Kant’s duty ethics. 

Show Highlights

The background and history of the Naval War College

How Admiral James Stockdale became a Stoic 

Stockdale’s experience as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton 

Tactics Stockdale used to survive torture and solitary confinement 

The negative effects of being too optimistic

How Stockdale turned his experience into a popular course on ethics that’s lasted for 40 years

Why teach military officers philosophy and the classics? 

The value of the Great Books 

Why has this class been so successful for over four decades?

The curriculum that students of the course go through 

What is it about Aristotelian virtue ethics that can help soldiers become better at what they do?

Kant on duty 

Why Stockdale loved the Bible’s Book of Job 

Why every man should ask life’s “Primary Questions” 

Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast

Admiral James Stockdale

Enchiridion by Epictetus 

Hanoi Hilton

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

Stockdale in a 1992 VP debate

Good to Great by Jim Collins

The Stockdale Paradox 

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Why Every Man Should Read the Classics

The Classical Education You Never Had

The Great Books methodology

What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes 

Meditations on a First Reading of Meditations

A Primer on Plato 

Begin With the End in Mind

Foundations of Moral Obligation

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Podcast Sponsors

Athletic Greens. The most complete, whole foods supplement available, plus it tastes fantastic. Head over to AthleticGreens.com/manliness and claim your 20 FREE travel packs today.

ZipRecruiter. Find the best job candidates by posting your job on over 100+ of the top job recruitment sites with just a click at ZipRecruiter. Get your first posting free by visiting ZipRecruiter.com/manliness.

Indochino offers custom, made-to-measure suits at an affordable price. They’re offering any premium suit for just $379. That’s up to 50% off. To claim your discount go to Indochino.com and enter discount code “MANLINESS” at checkout. Plus, shipping is free.

Click here to see a full list of our podcast sponsors.

Recorded with ClearCast.io.

Read the Transcript

Coming soon!

The post Podcast #421: Why You Need a Philosophical Survival Kit appeared first on The Art of Manliness.

Podcast #421: Why You Need a Philosophical Survival Kit published first on https://mensproblem.tumblr.com