Stoicism

I've been listening to The History of Rome podcast for the past month or so. I'll be doing a full review of the series once I'm done with it (Atilla has just been introduced, so the end is nigh), but a while back during the reign of Marcus Aurelius I learned that he was a fan of Stoicism. Marcus himself, the last of the Five Good Emperors of Rome, was by most accounts an intelligent, good man whose greatest failure was not keeping his son, Joaquin Phoenix, from succeeding him as emperor.

I have often been called stoic myself, and though that word means something different today than it meant 2,000 years ago, I feel a deep connection with that ancient philosophy.

Today, to be stoic means to seem unemotional. It's a curious feature, but not one that's examined much beyond that surface curiosity. Few people are really interested in why a person seems unemotional. After all, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and the stoic wheel rarely squeaks.

Stoicism puts into words many of the things I've felt but rarely had reason to describe. It's not that a stoic doesn't feel emotions, but rather they respond to those emotions by being still. Emotions aren't a call to action, they are a call to become reflective. Logic and reason should drive action, not emotion.

Sometimes I become very self-conscious of my peculiarities. Once, it seemed strange to me that anger rarely drove me to destructive behavior. I recognized that it was a good thing, but strange nonetheless. So, once when I was a security guard working at a garbage dump, someone left things in a bit of a mess. (Just because its full or garbage, doesn't mean it's disorganized.) After they left, I decided to act on my frustration; to "let it all out," as people say. I directed my anger toward something productive: putting things where they belonged, but angrily: kicking things, breaking stuff, and just generally letting loose in a productive manner.

I ended up cutting my hand pretty badly on a nail sticking out of a board. The nail's head left deep cuts in several of my fingers before embedding itself in my pinky finger. I'm honestly surprised that I don't see the scars anymore. The experience hurt, of course, as any damage to your nerve-laden fingers is naturally very painful.

However, as I bandaged myself up, I ended up laughing at how ridiculous I had been. My anger had led directly to my own pain. It was a very direct lesson, and one I never forgot. I never lost my temper like that again, especially not over something so trivial. I still get angry sometimes, of course, but I never act upon it. So, most people just assume I never get angry at all.

Anyway, there's a lot more to Stoicism than equanimity. It's a great state of mind and, I think, the best position from which to make decisions, but I could go on forever about the virtues of keeping a calm demeanor. Instead I want to talk about other aspects of Stoicism I find appealing.

For instance, Stoicism holds as an important tenant that all people are equal, and we should all be willing to work together and help each other out. This seems like a common idea in modern times, but Stoicism is an ancient philosophy, over 2,300 years old. It was born in a time when slavery was common, class and wealth were paramount, and kings were sometimes considered gods. (So, same as today, except we don't call it slavery anymore.) Still, I'm pretty sure that philosophies of equality have existed for as long as inequality has been around, so I doubt it was a revolutionary idea.

Then there's the very basic concept that knowledge can be attained through the use of reason. Reason and logic are at the core of the stoic philosophy for understanding the world around us. The equanimity helps us use our senses more clearly in order to have more accurate sensory data to understand. It is much easier to detect fallacy if we are not blinded by our emotions.

In the end, there's very little I find fault with in Stoicism. There's some parts I'm not sure I understand completely, though. For instance, classically they consider the universe to be a sentient thing, a pantheistic deity in and of itself. Like the Force, it penetrates and moves the passive matter that makes up the bulk of the universe in ways both subtle and, if you count the souls of living creatures as an extension of the universe's will, not-so-subtle ways. We are all cogs in the greater machine of fate, and though it may not be our job to know its final function, if we understand our place in the machine we can begin to see its workings all around us.

This somewhat jives with the Christianity I grew up with. Although Stoicism was renounced by Christianity due to some minor differences (a pantheistic god rather than a personified one, souls aren't immortal, etc), I don't think they were that off-base. Besides, Christianity was great at dividing themselves over doctrinal disputes regarding matters more trivial than that.

That said, I think Stoicism is my new favorite philosophy. Like any philosophy, I'm inclined to take what makes sense to me about it, and not take the rest too seriously. After all, in the words of Marcus Aurelius:

If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you were bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, but satisfied to live now according to nature, speaking heroic truth in every word that you utter, you will live happy. And there is no man able to prevent this.