"For the only safe harbour in this life's tossing , troubled sea is to refuse to be bothered about what the future will bring and to stand ready and confident , squaring the breast to take without skulking or flinching whatever fortune hurls at us."
- Seneca, Letter 104, Letters from a Stoic, posted to the Stoic Sub Reddit by silverdeath00
"Fortune" is in this case Fortuna, the goddess of chance. Seneca has a literal being in mind when he says "Fortune," whether or not he believed in her literal existence (see 5.3 at this link).
She hurls challenges at us like Jupiter hurls thunderbolts, if you're into that sort of thing. Once we've done all we can do then we can whine or we can ride it out with some style. What else is there?
I read this excellent entry at Manly Distribution on apologies and it got me thinking about my own apology practice.
I've noticed that my best apologies occur one time. I admit fully and completely my mistake and I say that I've learned from the experience. After that if the person brings it up again I say something like "yeah, I remember that" or "I thought I already apologized for that." The other person may accept or reject my apology. The relationship may continue or it may stall, or it may cease all together, but I won't grovel.
The key here is to own the behavior completely. Some people use an apology as a sort of get out of jail free card. They insult you, then they off handedly say "just kidding." Then they insult you again. The apology isn't sincere. I've done this myself and it makes me feel cheap. So the goal is a sincere, complete apology delivered one time only.
This practice isn't universal; if I do something major I understand that my apology will be a process rather than a one-off event. This hasn't happened in recent memory, but in the past I have occasionally said something horrible and it took some time to convince the other party that I was speaking without thinking and that I was truly contrite. Then there was that time I backed my uncle's van into a solid post. That was a tough one. Then there was that time I got a guy's expensive radio controlled airplane stuck in a tree...
What I'm talking about here is different; I am describing the everyday apology. We're all human and we all make mistakes. Sometimes the people we have wronged need to hear that we understand that we have wronged them, that we care about them and that we will try not to wrong them in the future. This keeps relationships alive and, in my experience, can even strengthen them.
As Stoics, of course, we think about being "wronged" differently, but the idea still holds relevance for us. Suppose I lend something to my friend and he breaks it. He doesn't apologize and he doesn't replace it. I've learned not to lend him anything. That's good information to have. Suppose, instead, that he breaks it, apologizes and maybe even offers to replace it. I will likely lend him something again. I've seen some reflection on his part, so that particular aspect of our relationship may continue. This is also good information to have. Apologies are, therefore, necessary and useful. What is NOT useful is grovelling. If we wrong others and they can't let go of the wrong, or if they bring it up over and over again they are trying to punish us. Fair enough, if that's what they want to do, but if the act in question was a minor one and if we apologize fully for it the matter is now their problem, not ours. We've done all we can do.
Of course this also means that I must accept the sincere apologies of other people with as much grace as I expect from them, and I do. I actually feel pretty good about it. Letting go of past hurts is, after all, a very Stoic thing to do.
"It shows a lack of natural talent to spend time on what concerns the body, as in exercising a great deal, eating a great deal, drinking a great deal, moving one's bowels a great deal or copulating a great deal. Instead you must do these things in passing, but turn your whole attention toward your faculty of judgment." -Epictetus, Enchiridion 41
There are two things to take from this passage. The first is that Epictetus assumes that we will take physical exercise, eat, drink (wine, presumably), use the toilette and enjoy physical love. The second is that he sees these things as mere incidentals, not goals in and of themselves. For him the needs of the body should be met, but not dwelt upon.
I'm pretty good about not dwelling on these things, but I'm not very good at meeting them.
I want to set up some simple systems to care for my body without requiring obsessive amounts of time and effort. I want to be a good steward of it, but I don't want to build it into my life's work. I don't want my body to be a monument to my will.
So what have I done to further this goal?
1. Green smoothies to up my fruit and veg consumption 2. Walk three miles three times per week 3. Body weight and fitness band exercises twice per week 4. Calorie limitation using myfitnesspal.com
I'm getting to the point that these things are becoming habit. I don't have to think about them too much. I believe that this is in keeping with Epictetus's teaching.
There's one thing left to deal with: pain.
There is a very realistic older man where I work, a man who tells the truth all the time. He doesn't volunteer it freely; he's pretty self contained. If you ask him a question, though, you'll get a straight answer.
Once I asked him what it's like to be an older man.
"I'm in constant pain," he said. I thought he was talking about psychological pain. He may have had regrets or failures of character. I said as much.
"No, I mean physical pain. The older I get the more everything hurts."
There is some truth to it. What we cannot change we must accept, right, fellow Stoics? But what if we CAN change it?
I try to do a simple yoga routine at least once per week. Notice that I say "try." What I really ought to do is to commit to doing it twice per week. I've noticed that when I do yoga my joint pain decreases and my back pain sometimes dissappears.
So I have a goal: I will do yoga twice per week. This seems moderate, and I know that it will produce real results, a claim which seems to be backed up by science.
Here is a sequence I've been using, and it seems to work pretty well:
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Public domain image courtesy of the New York Public Library
I found an interview that James Stockdale did with Jim Lehrer in 1999. The transcript is here.
I'll let the Admiral speak for himself, but a few things did jump out at me.
1. He considered character to be far more important than specifics. A man of character can deal with specifics. He says that he doesn't get up in the morning thinking about Social Security.
2. He was a placeholder because Ross Perot needed a warm body in states that required a declared VP. He never expected to be in a public debate, and he wasn't terribly thrilled about it.
3. He and Perot never ever talked about politics.
4. He considered physical courage to be very important. If he ran a presidential debate he would ask the candidates about a time when they had to demonstrate physical courage.
5. He was very realistic about his performance. He was surprised to be there, but that's where those other guys lived. It is what it is.
6. He describes his time in the big central prison as the founding of a new civilization. They lost everything and had to start over. He is proud of what they accomplished.
7. His experience during the VP debates caused him to feel emotion. There were highs and lows. His way seems to have been that you experience the emotion and then you deal with it. The emotion seems to happen whether you like it or not, and then you use philosophy to manage it.
So for anyone who wants to know "How does a Stoic handle X or Y?" This is how a Stoic handles it.
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The images used are official US government property, so I think that they are in the public domain.
James Bond Stockdale was inspired by Stoicism as a young man. He was inspired to the point that he memorized The Enchiridion by Epictetus, which was a good move because it would allow him to survive seven and a half years of brutal torture and emerge with his sanity.
Admiral Stockdale flew A-4 Skyhawks over North Vietnam. He was shot down, captured and tortured. At one point he slashed his own scalp with an improvised razor so that the North Vietnamese wouldn't be able to exploit him on television. Seven and a half years later he came home to teach philosophy at Stanford. If I had known then what I know now I might have applied to that august institution.
Here is his take on the experience of surviving as a POW. He could laugh about it. That's incredible. What an incredible human being. I think that he might be the closest thing to a Stoic sage we've seen in the modern age. In fact I think that he was a sage. I think that he earned the title.
Before I learned of Admiral Stockdale's Stoicism, and before I knew his history, I thought of him as a doddering old fool (to my great shame). I thought that because as a young man I watched him perform poorly in a vice presidential debate, and then I laughed as he was lampooned on Saturday Night Live by Phil Hartman. Now I've read a lot about Mr. Hartman. His friends loved him and said that he was a gentle, kind human being. I don't think that Mr. Hartman wanted to personally injure Admiral Stockdale (not that he could, if seven years of torture couldn't). Still, Phil Hartman wasn't fit to shine Admiral Stockdale's boots. Neither am I. This is a person who we should treat as the national hero that he was.
"Comedian Dennis Miller captured this small tragedy well, when he said:
"Now I know [Stockdale's name has] become a buzzword in this culture for doddering old man, but let's look at the record, folks. The guy was the first guy in and the last guy out of Vietnam, a war that many Americans, including our present president, did not want to dirty their hands with. The reason he had to turn his hearing aid on at that debate is because those f***ing animals knocked his eardrums out when he wouldn't spill his guts. He teaches philosophy at Stanford University, he's a brilliant, sensitive, courageous man. And yet he committed the one unpardonable sin in our culture: he was bad on television."
Admiral Stockdale wrote about Epictetus in "Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior." I can't seem to link to it but if you google the title it'll come up at the top of the list. It's well known in Stoic circles, so I'm not pioneering any new territory by posting the link here, but if you haven't read it do yourself a favor. It's improving.
Thank you for your service, Admiral Stockdale, and thank you for continuing to serve beyond your own lifespan.
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The image of a bust of Admiral Stockdale, by Master Chief Larry Nowell, is not public domain... I've put in a request to Mike Lambert at "I Like The Cut of His Jib" to use it... I can't imagine that he or Chief Nowell would have a problem with it, though.
Upvote! I'll tell you why... this characterizes something I've noticed about the developing masculine subculture known as "red pill." My guess is that quite a few young men end up here because stoicism, or outcome independence, is discussed as part of the red pill outlook on life. I listen to Joe Rogan's podcast (to me he is a modern day philosopher, the real thing, who gathers forward thinkers around him and discusses new ways of being). Anyway, he often uses the phrase "there were zero fks given that day!" I don't know that Mr. Rogan would call himself a red pill thinker; he certainly doesn't like parts of it, but he does seem to represent to me a large number of young men who are dissatisfied with modern culture. Sounds a lot like the founders of our own philosophy... My point here is that this "No Fks given" idea isn't some random meme; it's the tip of a cultural iceberg. It's a movement. There is a shade of the "no F**ks given" idea that to me seems to be in conflict with Stoicism. A cartoon accompanies the article. It shows a character floating away with a bunch of helium balloons in one hand and a raised middle finger in the other. The character is flipping off a large number of people and going his own way. Aurelius tells us that we will often meet people who behave in negative ways, and that we are to remember that they do this because they are ignorant of the good. Those are our brothers and sisters. When we reject modern culture, or aspects of it, we do so because we feel that parts of it are aggressively colonizing our minds. So we here have revived a twenty-five hundred year old philosophy in response. That's a pretty bold move... it's a pretty clear rejection. Rather than see modern culture as the enemy, though, I think that we are directed to see the people who we don't want to emulate as ignorant of the good. So perhaps the cartoon character could be smiling, open armed, and saying "I don't give a f**k, and you don't have to either." Thanks for posting this and for stimulating my own thoughts. I look forward to hearing more from you.
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I choose not to use profanity publicly. For me it seems to cheapen my thoughts. That's why I asterisk out the "f" word. Do what you like; I don't mind, it's just not for me.
Flour, yeast, and sugar: less than $1
Cheese: I shredded 1/8 of a block of cheddar**, so probably $1.00
Sauce: I used 1/4 of a can of $1 spaghetti sauce, so about .25 cents
All in cost: $3.25... call it $3.50 if you throw in the olive oil and cornmeal to keep it from sticking...
It's pretty tasty, and it cost less than a single value meal at McDonalds. Plus I know what's in it (except for the spaghetti sauce).
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I hereby release the above image into the public domain
*Some Stoics will worry that I'm trying to turn Stoicism into some sort of Oprah/Doctor Phil style trend, and that's a valid concern. On the other hand Rufus gives us specific lifestyle advice, which I find interesting because it's a way to live out our practice. I'd be very intersted to hear about other Stoic views on living a Stoic lifestyle in the modern age.
**Yes, using cheddar instead of mozzarella is tantamount to sacrilege, but it's what I had on hand, so in true Stoic fashion...
