A Guide to the Good Life

by William Braxton Irvine

  To develop and refine their strategy for attaining tranquility, the Stoics became keen observers of humanity. They sought to determine what sorts of things disrupt people’s tranquility, how people can avoid having their tranquility disrupted by these things, and how they can quickly restore their tranquility when, despite their efforts, it is disrupted. On the basis of these investigations, the Stoics produced a body of advice for anyone seeking tranquility. Among their recommendations were the following:

  • We should become self-aware: We should observe ourselves as we go about our daily business, and we should periodically reflect on how we responded to the day’s events. How did we respond to an insult? To the loss of a possession?

  To a stressful situation? Did we, in our responses, put Stoic psychological strategies to work?

  • We should use our reasoning ability to overcome negative emotions. We should also use our reasoning ability to master our desires, to the extent that it is possible to do so. In particular, we should use reason to convince ourselves that things such as fame and fortune aren’t worth having—not, at any rate, if what we seek is tranquility—and therefore aren’t worth pursuing. Likewise, we should use our reasoning ability to convince ourselves that even though certain activities are pleasurable, engaging in those activities will disrupt our tranquility, and the tranquility lost will outweigh the pleasure gained.

  • If, despite not having pursued wealth, we find ourselves wealthy, we should enjoy our affluence; it was the Cynics, not the Stoics, who advocated asceticism. But although we should enjoy wealth, we should not cling to it; indeed, even as we enjoy it, we should contemplate its loss.

  • We are social creatures; we will be miserable if we try to cut off contact with other people. Therefore, if what we seek is tranquility, we should form and maintain relations with others. In doing so, though, we should be careful about whom we befriend. We should also, to the extent possible, avoid people whose values are corrupt, for fear that their values will contaminate ours.

  • Other people are invariably annoying, though, so if we maintain relations with them, they will periodically upset our tranquility—if we let them. The Stoics spent a considerable amount of time devising techniques for taking the pain out of our relationships with other people. In particular, they came up with techniques for dealing with the insults of others and preventing them from angering us.

  • The Stoics pointed to two principal sources of human unhappiness—our insatiability and our tendency to worry about things beyond our control—and they developed techniques for removing these sources of unhappiness from our life.

  • To conquer our insatiability, the Stoics advise us to engage in negative visualization. We should contemplate the impermanence of all things. We should imagine ourselves losing the things we most value, including possessions and loved ones.

  We should also imagine the loss of our own life. If we do this, we will come to appreciate the things we now have, and because we appreciate them, we will be less likely to form desires for other things. And besides simply imagining that things could be worse than they are, we should sometimes cause things to be worse than they would otherwise be; Seneca advises us to “practice poverty,” and Musonius advises us voluntarily to forgo opportunities for pleasure and comfort.

  • To curb our tendency to worry about things beyond our control, the Stoics advise us to perform a kind of triage with respect to the elements of our life and sort them into those we have no control over, those we have complete control over, and those we have some but not complete control over.

  Having done this, we should not bother about things over which we have no control. Instead, we should spend some of our time dealing with things over which we have complete control, such as our goals and values, and spend most of our time dealing with things over which we have some but not complete control. If we do this, we will avoid experiencing much needless anxiety.

  • When we spend time dealing with things over which we have some but not complete control, we should be careful to internalize our goals. My goal in playing tennis, for example, should be not to win the match but to play the best match possible.

  • We should be fatalistic with respect to the external world: We should realize that what has happened to us in the past and what is happening to us at this very moment are beyond our control, so it is foolish to get upset about these things.

  The Stoics could have given us a philosophy of life without explaining why it is a good philosophy. They could, in other words, have left adoption of their philosophy of life as a leap of faith, the way Zen Buddhists do with theirs. But being philosophers, they felt the need to prove that theirs was the “correct” philosophy of life and that rival philosophies were somehow mistaken.

  In their proof of Stoicism, the Stoics first observe that Zeus created us and in doing so made us different from the other animals by giving us reason. Because he cares about us, Zeus wanted to design us so that we would always be happy, but he lacked the power to do so. Instead, he did for us what he could: He gave us the means to make life not just endurable but enjoyable. More precisely, he designed for us a pattern of living that, if followed, would enable us to flourish. The Stoics used their reasoning ability to discover this pattern of living. They then designed a philosophy of life that, if followed, would enable us to live in accordance with this pattern—in accordance, as they put it, with nature—and thereby to flourish. In conclusion, if we live in accordance with Stoic principles, we will have the best life it is possible for a human to have. QED.

  Adherents of most religions will, of course, reject this proof of Stoicism, inasmuch as they will reject the claim that it was Zeus who created us. Nevertheless, they might be willing to accept a slightly altered version of the proof, one that substitutes God for Zeus. They might thereby transform the Stoics’ proof into a proof that is compatible with their religion.

  Consider, however, the predicament of modern Stoics who deny the existence of both Zeus and God, and therefore reject the claim that Zeus or God created man. Suppose these individuals believe instead that man came to exist through a process of evolution. In this case, man wouldn’t have been created for any purpose, meaning that it is impossible for us to discover the purpose of a human being so that we can, by performing that purpose well, flourish. These individuals can, I think, resolve their predicament by abandoning the Stoic justification of Stoicism in favor of a justification that makes use of scientific discoveries that were unavailable to the Stoics.

  Let me explain how this can be done.

  If someone asked me why Stoicism works, I would not tell a story about Zeus (or God). Instead, I would talk about evolutionary theory, according to which we humans came to exist as the result of an interesting series of biological accidents. I would then start talking about evolutionary psycholog y, according to which we humans, besides gaining a certain anatomy and physiology through evolutionary processes, gained certain psychological traits, such as a tendency to experience fear or anxiety under certain circumstances and a tendency to experience pleasure under other circumstances. I would explain that we evolved these tendencies not so that we could have a good life but so that we would be likely to survive and reproduce. I would add that unlike Zeus (or God), evolutionary processes are indifferent to whether we flourish; they are concerned only that we survive and reproduce. Indeed, an individual who is utterly miserable but manages, despite his misery, to survive and reproduce will play a greater role in evolutionary processes than a joyful individual who chooses not to reproduce.

  I would, at this point, pause to make sure my listener understands how our evolutionary past contributes to our current psychological makeup. Why, for example, do we experience pain? Not because the gods or God wanted us to experience it or thought we could somehow benefit from experiencing it, but because our evolutionary ancestors for whom (thanks to an evolutionary “experiment”) injuries were painful were much more likely to avoid such injuries—and therefore much
more likely to survive and reproduce—than ancestors who were incapable of experiencing pain. Those who could experience pain were therefore more effective at transmitting their genes than those who couldn’t, and as a result we humans have inherited the ability to experience pain.

  It is also because of evolutionary processes that we possess the ability to experience fear: Our evolutionary ancestors who feared lions were less likely to be eaten by one than those who were indifferent to them. Likewise, our tendency to experience anxiety and insatiability is a consequence of our evolutionary past. Our evolutionary ancestors who felt anxious about whether they had enough food were less likely to starve than those who didn’t worry about where their next meal was coming from. Similarly, our evolutionary ancestors who were never satisfied with what they had, who always wanted more food or better shelter, were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who were easily satisfied.

  Our ability to experience pleasure also has an evolutionary explanation. Why, for example, does sex feel good? Because our evolutionary ancestors who found sex to be pleasurable were far more likely to reproduce than those who were indifferent to sex or, even worse, found it to be unpleasant. We inherited the genes of those ancestors for whom sex felt good, and as a result we also find it to be pleasurable.

  The Stoics, as we have seen, thought Zeus designed us to be gregarious. I agree with the Stoics that we are “by nature” gregarious. I reject the claim, though, that Zeus (or God) made us this way. Rather, we are gregarious because our evolutionary ancestors who felt drawn to other people, and who therefore joined groups of individuals, were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who didn’t.

  Besides being evolutionarily “programmed” to seek relationships with other people, I think we are programmed to seek social status among them. Presumably, the groups our evolutionary ancestors formed had social hierarchies within them, the way troops of monkeys do. A group member who had low status ran the risk of being deprived of resources or even of being driven from the group, events that could threaten his survival. Furthermore, the low-status males of a group were unlikely to reproduce. Therefore, those ancestors who felt motivated to seek social status—those ancestors for whom gaining social status felt good and losing it felt bad—were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who were indifferent to social status. Thanks to our evolutionary past, today’s humans find it pleasant to gain social status and unpleasant to lose it. This is why it is delightful when others praise us and painful when they insult us.

  According to the Stoics, Zeus gave us the ability to reason so we could be godlike. I, however, think we gained the ability to reason in the same way that we gained our other abilities: through evolutionary processes. Our evolutionary ancestors who had reasoning ability were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who didn’t. It is also important to realize that we did not gain the ability to reason so that we could transcend our evolutionarily programmed desires, such as our desire for sex and social status. To the contrary, we gained the ability to reason so that we could more effectively satisfy those desires—so that we could, for example, devise complex strategies by which to satisfy our desire for sex and social status.

  We have the abilities we do because possessing them enabled our evolutionary ancestors to survive and reproduce. From this it does not follow, though, that we must use these abilities to survive and reproduce. Indeed, thanks to our reasoning ability, we have it in our power to “misuse” our evolutionary inheritance. Allow me to explain.

  Consider our ability to hear. We gained this ability through evolutionary processes: Those ancestors who had the ability to hear approaching predators had a better chance of surviving and reproducing than those who didn’t. And yet modern humans rarely use their hearing ability for this purpose. Instead we might use it to listen to Beethoven, an activity that in no way increases our chances of surviving and reproducing. Besides misusing our ability to hear, we also misuse the ears that evolved in conjunction with this ability; we might use them, for example, to hold on eyeglasses or earrings. Likewise, we gained the ability to walk because our ancestors who had this ability were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who didn’t, and yet some people use this ability to climb Mount Everest, an activity that distinctly reduces their chances of surviving.

  Just as we can “misuse” our ability to hear or walk—use these abilities, that is, in a way that has nothing to do with the survival and reproduction of our species—we can misuse our ability to reason. In particular, we can use it to circumvent the behavioral tendencies that have been programmed into us by evolution. Thanks to our evolutionary past, for example, we are rewarded for having sex. But thanks to our reasoning ability, we can decide to forgo opportunities for sex because taking advantage of these opportunities will lead us away from various goals we have set for ourselves, goals that have nothing to do with our surviving and reproducing. (Most dramatically, we can decide to remain celibate, a decision that will reduce to zero our chance of reproducing.) More important, we can use our reasoning ability to conclude that many of the things that our evolutionary programming encourages us to seek, such as social status and more of anything we already have, may be valuable if our goal is simply to survive and reproduce, but aren’t at all valuable if our goal is instead to experience tranquility while we are alive.

  The Stoics, as we have seen, thought that although Zeus made us susceptible to suffering, he also gave us a tool—our reasoning ability—that, if used properly, could prevent much suffering. A parallel claim, I think, can be made about evolution: Evolutionary processes made us susceptible to suffering but also gave us—accidentally—a tool by which we can prevent much of this suffering. The tool, once again, is our reasoning ability. Because we can reason, we can not only understand our evolutionary predicament but take conscious steps to escape it, to the extent possible.

  Although our evolutionary programming helped us flourish as a species, it has in many respects outlived its usefulness. Consider, for example, the pain we might experience when someone publicly insults us. I have given an evolutionary explanation for this pain: We experience it because our evolutionary ancestors who cared deeply about gaining and retaining social status were more likely to survive and reproduce than our ancestors who were indifferent to social status and who, therefore, didn’t experience pain on being insulted. But the world has changed dramatically since our ancestors roamed the savannas of Africa. Today it is quite possible to survive despite having low social status; even if others despise us, the law prevents them from taking our food from us or driving us from our home.

  Furthermore, low social status is no longer an impediment to reproduction; indeed, in many parts of the world, men and women with low social status have higher rates of reproduction than men and women with high social status.

  If our goal is not merely to survive and reproduce but to enjoy a tranquil existence, the pain associated with a loss of social status isn’t just useless, it is counterproductive. As we go about our daily affairs, other people, because of their evolutionary programming, will work, often unconsciously, to gain social status. As a result, they will be inclined to snub us, insult us, or, more generally, do things to put us in our place, socially speaking. Their actions can have the effect of disrupting our tranquility—if we let them. What we must do, in these cases, is use—more precisely, “misuse”—our intellect to override the evolutionary programming that makes insults painful to us.

  We must, in other words, use our reasoning ability to remove the emotional sting of insults and thereby make them less disruptive to our tranquility.

  Along similar lines, consider our insatiability. As we have seen, our evolutionary ancestors benefited from wanting more of everything, which is why we today have this tendency. But our insatiability, if we do not take steps to bridle it, will disrupt our tranquility; instead of enjoying what we already have, we will spend our life working hard to gain things we don’t have, in the sadly m
istaken belief that once we have them, we will enjoy them and search no further. What we must do, again, is mis use our intellect. Instead of using it to devise clever strategies to get more of everything, we must use it to overcome our tendency toward insatiability. And one excellent way for us to do this is to use our intellect to engage in negative visualization.

  Consider, finally, anxiety. We are evolutionarily programmed, as we have seen, to be worriers: Our evolutionary ancestors who, instead of worrying about where their next meal was coming from and about the source of that growling noise in the trees, sat around blissfully enjoying the sunset probably didn’t live to a ripe old age. But most modern individuals—in developed countries, at any rate—live in a remarkably safe and predictable environment; there are no growling noises in the trees, and we can be reasonably certain that our next meal is forthcoming. There is simply much less for us to worry about.

  Nevertheless, we retain our ancestors’ tendency to worry.

  What we must do, if we wish to gain tranquility, is “misuse” our intellect to overcome this tendency. In particular, we can, in accordance with Stoic advice, determine which are the things we cannot control. We can then use our reasoning ability to eradicate our anxieties with respect to these things. Doing this will improve our chances of gaining tranquility.

  A l lo w m e to recapitulate. The Stoics thought they could prove that Stoicism was the one correct philosophy of life, and in their proof, they assumed that Zeus exists and created us for a certain purpose. I think it is possible, though, for someone to reject the Stoic proof of Stoicism without rejecting Stoicism itself. In particular, someone who thinks that the Stoics were mistaken in their assertion that we were created for a purpose might nevertheless think that the Stoics, in their philosophy of life, chose the correct goal (tranquility) and discovered a number of useful techniques for attaining this goal.