A Guide to the Good Life
Page 9
In response to this complaint, I would point out, to begin with, that it might be possible for someone, by spending enough time practicing goal internalization, to develop the ability not to look beyond her internalized goals—in which case they would become her “real” goals. Furthermore, even if the internalization process is a mind game, it is a useful mind game. Fear of failure is a psychological trait, so it is hardly surprising that by altering our psychological attitude toward “failure” (by carefully choosing our goals), we can affect the degree to which we fear it.
The Stoics, as I have explained, were very much interested in human psychology and were not at all averse to using psychological “tricks” to overcome certain aspects of human psychology, such as the presence in us of negative emotions.
Indeed, the negative visualization technique described in the previous chapter is really little more than a psychological trick: By thinking about how things could be worse, we forestall or reverse the hedonic adaptation process. It is nevertheless a singularly effective trick, if our goal is to appreciate what we have rather than taking it for granted, and if our goal is to experience joy rather than becoming jaded with respect to the life we happen to be living and the world we happen to inhabit.
Having said all this about the internalization of goals, let me pause here to offer a confession. In my studies of Epictetus and the other Stoics, I found little evidence that they advocate internalizing goals in the manner I have described, which raises questions about whether the Stoics in fact made use of the internalization technique. Nevertheless, I have attributed the technique to them, inasmuch as internalizing one’s goals is the obvious thing to do if one wishes, as the Stoics did, to concern oneself only with those things over which one has control and if one wishes to retain one’s tranquility while undertaking endeavors that might fail (in the external sense of the word).
In talking about the internalization of goals, then, I might be guilty of tampering with or improving on Stoicism. As I shall explain in chapter 20, I have no qualms about doing this.
Now that we understand the technique of internalizing our goals, we are in a position to explain what would otherwise seem like paradoxical behavior on the part of Stoics. Although they value tranquility, they feel duty-bound to be active participants in the society in which they live. But such participation clearly puts their tranquility in jeopardy. One suspects, for example, that Cato would have enjoyed a far more tranquil life if he did not feel compelled to fight the rise to power of Julius Caesar—if he instead had spent his days, say, in a library, reading the Stoics.
I would like to suggest, though, that Cato and the other Stoics found a way to retain their tranquility despite their involvement with the world around them: They internalized their goals. Their goal was not to change the world, but to do their best to bring about certain changes. Even if their efforts proved to be ineffectual, they could nevertheless rest easy knowing that they had accomplished their goal: They had done what they could do.
A practicing Stoic will keep the trichotomy of control firmly in mind as he goes about his daily affairs. He will perform a kind of triage in which he sorts the elements of his life into three categories: those over which he has complete control, those over which he has no control at all, and those over which he has some but not complete control. The things in the second category—those over which he has no control at all—he will set aside as not worth worrying about. In doing this, he will spare himself a great deal of needless anxiety.
He will instead concern himself with things over which he has complete control and things over which he has some but not complete control. And when he concerns himself with things in this last category, he will be careful to set internal rather than external goals for himself and will thereby avoid a considerable amount of frustration and disappointment.
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S I X
Fatalism
Letting Go of the Past . . . and the Present One way to preserve our tranquility, the Stoics thought, is to take a fatalistic attitude toward the things that happen to us. According to Seneca, we should offer ourselves to fate, inasmuch as “it is a great consolation that it is together with the universe we are swept along.”1 According to Epictetus, we should keep firmly in mind that we are merely actors in a play written by someone else—more precisely, the Fates. We cannot choose our role in this play, but regardless of the role we are assigned, we must play it to the best of our ability. If we are assigned by the Fates to play the role of beggar, we should play the role well; likewise if we are assigned to play the role of king. If we want our life to go well, Epictetus says, we should, rather than wanting events to conform to our desires, make our desires conform to events; we should, in other words, want events “to happen as they do happen.”2
Marcus also advocates taking a fatalistic attitude toward life. To do otherwise is to rebel against nature, and such rebellions are counterproductive, if what we seek is a good life. In particular, if we reject the decrees of fate, Marcus says, we are likely to experience tranquility-disrupting grief, anger, or fear.
To avoid this, we must learn to adapt ourselves to the environment into which fate has placed us and do our best to love the people with whom fate has surrounded us. We must learn to welcome whatever falls to our lot and persuade ourselves that whatever happens to us is for the best. Indeed, according to Marcus, a good man will welcome “every experience the looms of fate may weave for him.”3
Like most ancient Romans, the Stoics took it for granted that they had a fate. More precisely, they believed in the existence of three goddesses known as the Fates. Each of these goddesses had a job: Clotho wove life, Lachesis measured it, and Atropos cut it. Try as they might, people could not escape the destiny chosen for them by the Fates.4
For ancient Romans, then, life was like a horse race that is fixed: The Fates already knew who would win and who would lose life’s contests. A jockey would probably refuse to take part in a race he knew to be fixed; why bother racing when some-body somewhere already knows who will win? One might likewise expect the ancient Romans to refuse to participate in life’s contests; why bother, when the future has already been determined? What is interesting is that despite their determinism, despite their belief that whatever happened had to happen, the ancients were not fatalistic about the future. The Stoics, for example, did not sit around apathetically, resigned to whatever the future held in store; to the contrary, they spent their days working to affect the outcome of future events.
Likewise, the soldiers of ancient Rome marched bravely off to war and fought valiantly in battles, even though they believed the outcomes of these battles were fated.
This leaves us, of course, with a puzzle: Although the Stoics advocate fatalism, they seem not to have practiced it. What are we to make, then, of their advice that we take a fatalistic attitude toward the things that happen to us?
To solve this puzzle, we need to distinguish between fatalism with respect to the future and fatalism with respect to the past.
When a person is fatalistic with respect to the future, she will keep firmly in mind, when deciding what to do, that her actions can have no effect on future events. Such a person is unlikely to spend time and energy thinking about the future or trying to alter it. When a person is fatalistic with respect to the past, she adopts this same attitude toward past events. She will keep firmly in mind, when deciding what to do, that her actions can have no effect on the past. Such a person is unlikely to spend time and energy thinking about how the past might be different.
When the Stoics advocate fatalism, they are, I think, advocating a restricted form of the doctrine. More precisely, they are advising us to be fatalistic with respect to the past, to keep firmly in mind that the past cannot be changed. Thus, the Stoics would not counsel a mother with a sick child to be fatalistic with respect to the future; she should try to nurse the child back to health (even though the Fates have already decided whether the child lives or dies). But if the child
dies, they will counsel this woman to be fatalistic with respect to the past. It is only natural, even for a Stoic, to experience grief after the death of a child. But to dwell on that death is a waste of time and emotions, inasmuch as the past cannot be changed.
Dwelling on the child’s death will therefore cause the woman needless grief. In saying that we shouldn’t dwell on the past, the Stoics are not suggesting that we should never think about it. We sometimes should think about the past to learn lessons that can help us in our efforts to shape the future. The above-mentioned mother, for example, should think about the cause of her child’s death so that she may better protect her other children. Thus, if the child died as the result of eating poisonous berries, she should take steps to keep her other children away from those berries and to teach them that they are poisonous. But having done so, she should let go of the past. In particular, she should not spend her days with a head full of “if only” thoughts: “If only I had known she was eating the berries! If only I had taken her to a doctor sooner!”
Fatalism with respect to the past will doubtless be far more palatable to modern individuals than fatalism with respect to the future. Most of us reject the notion that we are fated to live a certain life; we think, to the contrary, that the future is affected by our efforts. At the same time, we readily accept that the past cannot be changed, so when we hear the Stoics counseling us to be fatalistic with respect to the past, we will be unlikely to challenge the advice.
Besides recommending that we be fatalistic with respect to the past, the Stoics, I think, advocate fatalism with respect to the present. It is clear, after all, that we cannot, through our actions, affect the present, if by the present we mean this very moment. It may be possible for me to act in a way that affects what happens in a decade, a day, a minute, or even a half-second from now; it is impossible, however, for me to act in a way that alters what is happening right now, since as soon as I act to affect what is happening right now, that moment in time will have slipped into the past and therefore cannot be affected.
In their advocacy of fatalism, then, the Stoics were advising us to be fatalistic, not with respect to the future but with respect to the past and present. In support of this interpretation of Stoic fatalism, it is useful to reconsider some of the Stoic advice quoted above. When Epictetus advises us to want events “to happen as they do happen,” he is giving us advice regarding events that do happen—that either have happened or are happening—not advice regarding events that will happen.
He is, in other words, advising us to behave fatalistically with respect to the past and present. Likewise, just as you cannot welcome a visitor until he arrives, Marcus’s good man cannot welcome the experiences the looms of fate weave for him until those experiences have arrived.
How can fatalism with respect to the present cause our life to go well? The Stoics, as I have said, argued that the best way to gain satisfaction is not by working to satisfy whatever desires we find within us but by learning to be satisfied with our life as it is—by learning to be happy with whatever we’ve got. We can spend our days wishing our circumstances were different, but if we allow ourselves to do this, we will spend our days in a state of dissatisfaction. Alternatively, if we can learn to want whatever it is we already have, we won’t have to work to fulfill our desires in order to gain satisfaction; they will already have been fulfilled.
One of the things we’ve got, though, is this very moment, and we have an important choice with respect to it: We can either spend this moment wishing it could be different, or we can embrace this moment. If we habitually do the former, we will spend much of our life in a state of dissatisfaction; if we habitually do the latter, we will enjoy our life. This, I think, is why the Stoics recommend that we be fatalistic with respect to the present. It is why Marcus reminds us that all we own is the present moment and why he advises us to live in “this fleeting instant.”5 (This last advice, of course, echoes the Buddhist advice that we should try to live in the moment—
another interesting parallel between Stoicism and Buddhism.) Notice that the advice that we be fatalistic with respect to the past and the present is consistent with the advice, offered in the preceding chapter, that we not concern ourselves with things over which we have no control. We have no control over the past; nor do we have any control over the present, if by the present we mean this very moment. Therefore, we are wasting our time if we worry about past or present events.
Notice, too, that the advice that we be fatalistic with respect to the past and present is connected, in a curious way, to the advice that we practice negative visualization. In engaging in negative visualization, we think of the ways our situation could be worse, and our goal in doing so is to make us value whatever we have. The fatalism advocated by the Stoics is in a sense the reverse, or one might say the mirror image, of negative visualization: Instead of thinking about how our situation could be worse, we refuse to think about how it could be better. In behaving fatalistically with respect to the past and present, we refuse to compare our situation with alternative, preferable situations in which we might have found or might now find ourselves. By doing this, the Stoics think, we will make our current situation, whatever it may be, more tolerable.
My discussion of fatalism in this chapter and of negative visualization in chapter 4 might make readers worry that the practice of Stoicism will lead to complacency. Readers might admit that the Stoics will be unusually satisfied with what they have, whatever it may be—a blessing, to be sure. But won’t the Stoics, as a result, be terribly unambitious?
In response to this concern, let me remind readers that the Stoics we have been considering were notably ambitious. Seneca, as we’ve seen, had an active life as a philosopher, playwright, investor, and political advisor. Musonius Rufus and Epictetus both ran successful schools of philosophy. And Marcus, when he wasn’t philosophizing, was hard at work ruling the Roman Empire. These individuals were, if anything, overachievers. It is indeed curious: Although they would have been satisfied with next to nothing, they nevertheless strove for something.
Here is how Stoics would explain this seeming paradox.
Stoic philosophy, while teaching us to be satisfied with whatever we’ve got, also counsels us to seek certain things in life.
We should, for example, strive to become better people—to become virtuous in the ancient sense of the word. We should strive to practice Stoicism in our daily life. And we should, as we shall see in chapter 9, strive to do our social duty: This is why Seneca and Marcus felt compelled to participate in government and why Musonius and Epictetus felt compelled to teach Stoicism. Furthermore, the Stoics see nothing wrong with our taking steps to enjoy the circumstances in which we find ourselves; indeed, Seneca advises us to be “attentive to all the advantages that adorn life.”6 We might, as a result, get married and have children. We might also form and enjoy friendships.
And what about worldly success? Will the Stoics seek fame and fortune? They will not. The Stoics thought these things had no real value and consequently thought it foolish to pursue them, particularly if doing so disrupted our tranquility or required us to act in an unvirtuous manner. This indifference to worldly success, I realize, will make them seem unmo-tivated to modern individuals who spend their days working hard in an attempt to attain (a degree of ) fame and fortune.
But having said this, I should add that although the Stoics didn’t seek worldly success, they often gained it anyway. Indeed, the Stoics we have been considering would all have counted as successful individuals in their time. Seneca and Marcus were both wealthy and famous, and Musonius and Epictetus, as heads of popular schools, would have enjoyed a degree of renown and would presumably have been financially comfortable. They therefore found themselves in the curious position of people who, though not seeking success, nevertheless gained it. In chapters 14 and 15 we will see how they dealt with this predicament.
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S E V E N
Self-Denial
According to Seneca, Epicurus, a philosophical rival to the Stoics, also practiced poverty.2 His goal in doing so, however, appears to have been different from that of Seneca. Whereas Seneca wanted to appreciate what he had, Epicurus wanted to examine the things he thought he needed so he could determine which of them he could in fact live without. He realized that in many cases, we work hard to obtain something because we are convinced that we would be miserable without it. The problem is that we can live perfectly well without some of these things, but we won’t know which they are if we don’t try living without them.
Musonius takes this technique one step further: He thinks that besides living as if bad things had happened to us, we should sometimes cause them to happen. In particular, we should periodically cause ourselves to experience discomfort that we could easily have avoided. We might accomplish this by underdressing for cold weather or going shoeless. Or we might periodically allow ourselves to become thirsty or hungry, even though water and food are at hand, and we might sleep on a hard bed, even though a soft one is available.3
Many modern readers, on hearing this, will conclude that Stoicism involves an element of masochism. Readers should realize, though, that the Stoics didn’t go around flogging themselves. Indeed, the discomforts they inflicted upon themselves were rather minor. Furthermore, they did not inflict these discomforts to punish themselves; rather, they did it to increase their enjoyment of life. And finally, it is misleading to talk about the Stoics inflicting discomforts on themselves. This creates the image of someone at odds with himself, of someone forcing himself to do things he doesn’t want to do. The Stoics, by way of contrast, welcomed a degree of discomfort in their life. What the Stoics were advocating, then, is more appropriately described as a program of voluntary discomfort than as a program of self-inflicted discomfort.