A Guide to the Good Life

by William Braxton Irvine

  Marcus also offers advice on anger avoidance. He recommends, as we have seen, that we contemplate the impermanence of the world around us. If we do this, he says, we will realize that many of the things we think are important in fact aren’t, at least not in the grand scheme of things. He reflects on the times, almost a century earlier, of Emperor Vespasian.

  People everywhere were doing the usual things: marrying, raising children, farming, loving, envying, fighting, and feasting.But, he points out, “of all that life, not a trace survives today.”9

  By implication, this will be the fate of our generation: What seems vitally important to us will seem unimportant to our grandchildren. Thus, when we feel ourselves getting angry about something, we should pause to consider its cosmic (in)significance. Doing this might enable us to nip our anger in the bud.

  Suppose we find that despite our attempts to prevent anger, the behavior of other people succeeds in angering us. It will help us to overcome our anger, says Seneca, if we remind ourselves that our behavior also angers other people: “We are bad men living among bad men, and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another.” He also offers anger-management advice that has a parallel in Buddhism. When angry, says Seneca, we should take steps to “turn all [anger’s] indications into their opposites.” We should force ourselves to relax our face, soften our voice, and slow our pace of walking.

  If we do this, our internal state will soon come to resemble our external state, and our anger, says Seneca, will have dissipated.10 Buddhists practice a similar thought- substitution technique. When they are experiencing an unwholesome thought, Buddhists force themselves to think the opposite, and therefore wholesome, thought. If they are experiencing anger, for example, they force themselves to think about love. The claim is that because two opposite thoughts cannot exist in one mind at one time, the wholesome thought will drive out the unwholesome one.11

  What if we are unable to control our anger? Indeed, what if we find ourselves lashing out at whoever angered us? We should apologize. Doing this can almost instantly repair the social damage our outburst might have caused. It can also benefit us personally: The act of apologizing, besides having a calming effect on us, can prevent us from subsequently obsessing over the thing that made us angry. Finally, apologizing for the outburst can help us become a better person: By admitting our mistakes, we lessen the chance that we will make them again in the future.

  Everyone occasionally experiences anger: Like grief, anger is an emotional reflex. There are also people, though, who seem to be angry pretty much all of the time. These individuals are not only easily provoked to anger, but even when provocation is absent they remain angry. Indeed, during leisure hours, these individuals might spend their time recalling, with a certain degree of relish, past events that made them angry or things in general that make them angry. At the same time that it is consuming them, anger appears to be providing them with sustenance.

  Such cases, the Stoics would tell us, are tragic. For one thing, life is too short to spend it in a state of anger. Furthermore, a person who is constantly angry will be a torment to those around her. Why not instead, Seneca asks, “make yourself a person to be loved by all while you live and missed when you have made your departure?”12 More generally, why experience anti-joy when you have it in your power to experience joy?

  Why, indeed?

  * * *

  F O U RT E E N

  Personal Values

  On Seeking Fame

  People are unhappy, the Stoics argue, in large part because they are confused about what is valuable. Because of their confusion, they spend their days pursuing things that, rather than making them happy, make them anxious and miserable.

  One of the things people mistakenly pursue is fame. The fame in question comes in varying degrees. Some want to be known around the world. Some seek not world fame, but regional or local fame. Those who don’t actively pursue even local fame nevertheless seek popularity within their social circle or recognition in their chosen profession. And almost everyone seeks the admiration of friends and neighbors. They are convinced that gaining fame (in some very broad sense of the word) will make them happy. They fail to realize that fame, whether it involves world renown or merely the admiration of their neighbors, comes at a price. Indeed, the Stoics claim that the price of fame is sufficiently high that it far outweighs any benefits fame can confer on us.

  To better appreciate the price of fame, consider the following example, offered by Epictetus. Suppose it is your goal to be Personal Values: a socially prominent individual, to be “famous” within your social circle, and suppose someone within your circle is giving a banquet. If this person fails to invite you, you will pay a price: You will likely be upset by the snub. But even if he does invite you, Epictetus points out, it will be because you paid a price in the past: You went out of your way to pay attention to the banquet giver and to shower him with praise. Epictetus adds that you are both greedy and stupid if you expect a place at the banquet table without having paid this price.1

  You would have been much better off, Epictetus thinks, if you had been indifferent to social status. For one thing, you would not have had to spend time trying to curry favor with this person. Furthermore, you would have deprived him of the ability to upset you simply by failing to invite you to a banquet.

  Stoics value their freedom, and they are therefore reluctant to do anything that will give others power over them. But if we seek social status, we give other people power over us: We have to do things calculated to make them admire us, and we have to refrain from doing things that will trigger their disfavor.

  Epictetus therefore advises us not to seek social status, since if we make it our goal to please others, we will no longer be free to please ourselves. We will, he says, have enslaved ourselves.2

  If we wish to retain our freedom, says Epictetus, we must be careful, while dealing with other people, to be indifferent to what they think of us. Furthermore, we should be consistent in our indifference; we should, in other words, be as dismissive of their approval as we are of their disapproval. Indeed, Epictetus says that when others praise us, the proper response is to laugh at them.3 (But not out loud! Although Epictetus and the other Stoics think we should be indifferent to people’s opinions of us, they would advise us to conceal our indifference. After all, to tell someone else that you don’t care what he thinks is quite possibly the worst insult you can inflict.) Marcus agrees with Epictetus that it is foolish for us to worry about what other people think of us and particularly foolish for us to seek the approval of people whose values we reject. Our goal should therefore be to become indifferent to other people’s opinions of us. He adds that if we can succeed in doing this, we will improve the quality of our life.4

  Notice that the advice that we ignore what other people think of us is consistent with the Stoic advice that we not concern ourselves with things we can’t control. I don’t have it in my power to stop others from sneering at me, so it is foolish for me to spend time trying to stop them. I should instead, says Marcus, spend this time on something I have complete control over, namely, not doing anything that deserves a sneer.5

  Marcus also offers some words of advice to those who value what many would take to be the ultimate form of fame: immortal fame. Such fame, Marcus says, is “an empty, hollow thing.” After all, think about how foolish it is to want to be remembered after we die. For one thing, since we are dead, we will not be able to enjoy our fame. For another, we are foolish to think that future generations will praise us, without even having met us, when we find it so difficult to praise our contemporaries, even though we meet them routinely. Instead of thinking about future fame, Marcus says, we would do well to concern ourselves with our present situation; we should, he advises, “make the best of today.”6

  Suppose we admit that the Stoics were right: We should ignore what other people think of us. For most people, this will be difficult advice to follow. Most of us, after all, a
re obsessed with other people’s opinions of us: We work hard, first to win the admiration of other people and then to avoid losing it.

  One way to overcome this obsession, the Stoics think, is to realize that in order to win the admiration of other people, we will have to adopt their values. More precisely, we will have to live a life that is successful according to their notion of success.

  (If we are living what they take to be an unsuccessful life, they will have no reason to admire us.) Consequently, before we try to win the admiration of these other people, we should stop to ask whether their notion of success is compatible with ours. More important, we should stop to ask whether these people, by pursuing whatever it is they value, are gaining the tranquility we seek. If they aren’t, we should be more than willing to forgo their admiration.

  Another way to overcome our obsession with winning the admiration of other people is to go out of our way to do things likely to trigger their disdain. Along these lines, Cato made a point of ignoring the dictates of fashion: When everyone was wearing light purple, he wore dark, and although ancient Romans normally went out in public wearing shoes and a tunic, Cato wore neither. According to Plutarch, Cato did this not because he

  “sought vainglory”; to the contrary, he dressed differently in order to accustom himself “to be ashamed only of what was really shameful, and to ignore men’s low opinion of other things.”7 In other words, Cato consciously did things to trigger the disdain of other people simply so he could practice ignoring their disdain.

  Many people are haunted by a fear that in some cases significantly constrains their freedom, namely, the fear of failure. The individuals in question might contemplate doing something that will test their courage, determination, and ability, but then decide against the attempt, with the key factor in their decision being the fear of failure. From their point of view, it is better not even to attempt something than to fail while trying to accomplish it.

  There are, to be sure, failures that any sensible person will want to avoid—those failures, for example, that result in death or disfigurement. The failures that many people seek to avoid, though, will not cost them their life or health. The cost of failure is instead having to endure the open mockery, or maybe the silent pity, of those who learn of their failure. It is better, failure-averse people reason, not even to attempt an undertaking than to run the risk of public humiliation.

  Realize that many other people, including, quite possibly, your friends and relatives, want you to fail in your undertakings. They may not tell you this to your face, but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t silently rooting against you. People do this in part because your success makes them look bad and therefore makes them uncomfortable: If you can succeed, why can’t they? Consequently, if you attempt something daring they might ridicule you, predict disaster, and try to talk you out of pursuing your goal. If, despite their warnings, you make your attempt and succeed, they might finally congratulate you—or they might not.

  Consider again the woman, mentioned in an earlier chapter, whose goal is to write a novel. Suppose she tells her friends, relatives, and coworkers about her literary aspirations. Some of those she confides in will be genuinely encouraging. Others will respond to her announcement, though, with gleeful pessimism. They might predict that she will never finish the novel.

  (And to annoy her, they might, with clocklike regularity, ask how the novel is coming along.) If she finishes it, they might predict that she will never find a publisher for it. If she finds a publisher, they might predict that the novel will not sell well. And if it sells well, they might hold up her success as evidence of the low standards of the book-buying public.

  It is, of course, possible for this woman to win the approval of these naysayers: She need only abandon her dream of becoming a novelist. If she does this, the naysayers will recognize her as a kindred spirit and will welcome her with open arms. They will invite her to sit with them on a comfortable couch somewhere and join them in mocking those individuals who pursue their dreams despite the possibility of failure. But is this really the company she wants to keep? Does she really want to abandon the pursuit of her dream in order to win these individuals’ acceptance?

  This woman would do well, say the Stoics, to work at becoming indifferent to what others think of her. And the above naysayers, it should be clear, belong at the very top of the list of people whose views she should learn to ignore.

  Ironically, by refusing to seek the admiration of other people, Stoics might succeed in gaining their (perhaps grudging) admiration. Many people, for example, will construe the Stoics’

  indifference to public opinion as a sign of self- confidence: Only someone who really knows who she is—someone who, as they say, feels good about herself—would display this kind of indifference. These people might wish that they, too, could ignore what other people thought of them.

  In some cases, people’s admiration might be sufficient for them to ask the Stoic how she does it. When she reveals her secret—when she confesses that she is a practicing Stoic—will she thereby trigger a conversion in those who ask? Probably not. They might think she is teasing them. Who, these days, practices Stoicism? Or they might decide that although Stoicism works for her, it won’t, because of personality differences, work for them. Or they will, in all too many cases, conclude that although it would be nice to gain the self-confidence enjoyed by the Stoics, there are other things that are even more worth pursuing, things such as fame . . . or a life of luxury.

  * * *

  F I F T E E N

  Personal Values

  On Luxurious Living

  Besides valuing fame, people typically value wealth. These two values may seem independent, but a case can be made that the primary reason we seek wealth is that we seek fame.1 More precisely, we seek wealth because we realize that the material goods our wealth can buy us will win the admiration of other people and thereby confer on us a degree of fame. But if fame isn’t worth pursuing, and if our primary reason for seeking wealth is so we can gain fame, then wealth shouldn’t be worth pursuing either. And according to the Stoics, it isn’t.

  In his consolation to Helvia, for example, Seneca reminds us how small our bodies are and poses this question: “Is it not madness and the wildest lunacy to desire so much when you can hold so little?” Furthermore, he says, it is folly “to think that it is the amount of money and not the state of mind that matters!”2 Musonius agrees with this assessment. Possessing wealth, he observes, won’t enable us to live without sorrow and won’t console us in our old age. And although wealth can procure for us physical luxuries and various pleasures of the senses, it can never bring us contentment or banish our grief. In support of this assertion, Musonius points to all the rich men who feel sad and wretched despite their wealth.3

  Along similar lines, Epictetus asserts that “it is better to die of hunger with distress and fear gone than to live upset in the midst of plenty.”4 More generally, he argues that not needing wealth is more valuable than wealth itself is.5It would be bad enough if the acquisition of wealth failed to bring people happiness, but Musonius thinks the situation is even worse than this: Wealth has the power to make people miserable. Indeed, if you wanted to make someone truly miserable, you might consider showering him with wealth.

  Musonius once gave a sum of money to a man who was losing as a philosopher. When people told him that the man was an imposter, that he was in fact a bad and vicious person, Musonius, rather than taking the money back, let him keep it.

  He said, with a smile, that if he was in fact a bad person, he deserved the money.6Most people use their wealth to finance a luxurious lifestyle, one that will win them the admiration of others. But such a lifestyle, the Stoics argued, is counterproductive if our goal is not to live well but to have a good life.

  Consider, for example, the extravagant meals associated with luxurious living. Do those who eat such meals experience more pleasure than those whose diets are simple? Musonius doesn’t think
so. People with extravagant diets, he says, resemble iron that, because it is inferior, must constantly be sharpened; more precisely, these individuals will be unhappy with a meal unless it has been “sharpened” with unmixed wine, vinegar, or a tart sauce.7

  There is indeed a danger that if we are exposed to a luxurious lifestyle, we will lose our ability to take delight in simple things. At one time, we might have been able to savor a bowl of macaroni and cheese, accompanied by a glass of milk, but after living in luxury for a few months we might find that macaroni no longer appeals to our discriminating palate; we might start rejecting it in favor of fettuccine Alfredo, accompanied by a particular brand of bottled water. And not long after that, we might, if we can afford to do so, reject even this meal in favor of, say, risotto with Maine sweet shrimp and just-picked squash blossoms, accompanied by a bottle of that Riesling the critics have been raving about, and preceded, of course, by a nice salad of baby frisée, topped with braised artichokes, fava beans, Valencay cheese, baby asparagus, and confit cherry tomatoes.8

  When, as the result of being exposed to luxurious living, people become hard to please, a curious thing happens. Rather than mourning the loss of their ability to enjoy simple things, they take pride in their newly gained inability to enjoy anything but “the best.” The Stoics, however, would pity these individuals. They would point out that by undermining their ability to enjoy simple, easily obtainable things—bowls of macaroni and cheese, for example—these individuals have seriously impaired their ability to enjoy life. The Stoics work hard to avoid falling victim to this kind of connoisseurship. Indeed, the Stoics value highly their ability to enjoy ordinary life—and indeed, their ability to find sources of delight even when living in primitive conditions.