Stoic 'em with the pointy end

“Nothing happens to anyone that he can't endure”

The following article is divided into three segments.

1. My encounter with stoicism and motivation to write this article.
2. About Marcus Aurelius and Meditations (go here directly for the article)
3. Ending note from the author

But before that, a small note: this is not a complete article on stoicism and does not capture its concepts entirely. This is merely a nudge in that direction. If the reader finds something that I may have missed out, finds something incorrect, please correct me in the comments. Thank you. I wish the book guides you and provides you peace as it has been the case with me.

1. My encounter with stoicism and motivation to write this article:

In my 3rd semester, I was learning to deal with certain grievances of my own. At the same time, I was watching a lot of TED(x) talks. In this venture of mine, I discovered a very intriguing TED talk titled: Why you should define your fears instead of your goals by Tim Ferris(For those who do not know who Tim Ferris is, he is one of the best-selling authors and was nominated for Pulitzer Prize for one of his books).  This is where I first encountered Stoicism [also, I do not know why everyone keeps mentioning Spock]. Anyway, this is what Tim has to say about stoicism:

"[think about stoicism] as an operating system for thriving in high-stress environments, for making better decisions"

As any fanatic of self-help, I was instantly sold to this idea of stoicism. Moving further from the talk (I'll come back, right here, a year later), I googled the idea and came across the website called dailystoic.com, a pretty decently maintained website. I signed up for the newsletter, didn't read any of the emails sent to me and chapter closed.

Fast-forward to 2018 summer. Internship drive was 2-months away, meaning I was in a state of panic. I stumbled, again, on the TED talk mentioned above. Akin to the last time, I signed up for the newsletter - but this time, I followed it. In one of the newsletters was mentioned the book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which I downloaded and started reading. That is when everything changed for me. I followed the fear setting practice - Premeditaio Malorum - which is essentially to meditate and think upon your worst fears, write them down, then write down what would you do to prevent them and what would you do upon the realization of those fears. I also started journaling - which is one of the exercises that all the stoics recommend; every time I came across a quote which I thought was extremely relevant and needed to be on top of my mind - I would write it down and then meditate upon it whenever I got time. And that worked pretty well for me - I remained calm during the examinations, interviews and more importantly, it took me very little time getting back on my feet after the tests and getting back to my routine preparation.

These were very important changes for me, leading me to write this article in order to reach out to as many people as I can and recommending this book. Of course, I'm not the only one to revere this book - George Washington, Nelson Mandela, Arnold Schwarzenegger, T-Pain, Tom Hiddleston, JK Rowling, Theodore Roosevelt, Anna Kendrick [https://dailystoic.com/stoicism-pop-culture/] just to name a few. If I have made you curious and if I have your attention, let us dive right into the next section.

 

2. About Marcus Aurelius and Meditations:

Many of you read books by entrepreneurs, world leaders and other powerful people who have made an impact in the world. But not many people would have read a book written by someone with absolute control and power over most of the known world at the time - I'm talking about Marcus Aurelius who was the emperor of Rome 161 to 180 A.D. If the reader has come across Plato, he/she might be familiar with the concept of Philosopher Kings:

"States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers." -Plato, The Republic.

Marcus is widely accepted as the philosopher king that Plato talked about. Meditation is a collection of 12 books of his private journals. It was not intended to be published - it is a spiritual exercise that he used to do every night- a very common exercise among the Stoics (emperor of Rome has time to journal - talk about time management). That is why you will not find a particular structure in his book - they are mainly mental notes written in random order, something a practicing philosopher would do.

Knowledge at that time was divided into three categories - logic, physics (nature of the physical world) and ethics. Marcus never focused on the first two. His main focus in Meditations was on ethics. There are a few themes I found to be recurring in the book - logos, perception, death and hence the futility of running after pleasure and pain, purpose and responsibilities, nature/destiny, dealing with people. His pattern of thoughts in the book comprised of three disciplines, and I've grouped the above themes into these categories at my discretion.

1. Perception
2. Action
3. Will

But before that, I would like to try and explain the concept of logos, which is one of the central ideas of stoicism and it makes the understanding of three categories/tenets much easier. Once you start ‘believing’ in the concept of logos, stoicism starts to work its magic.

Logos: As Gregory Hays tells "... we are participants in the logos, which is as much a process as a substance." It is analogous to God or Nature and is often referred to as that in the book. 'It is the divine animating principle pervading the universe' - as Wikipedia puts it. Marcus also says that we all have a share of logos - sort of like a human body - and we have certain duties pertaining to it. Understand it like this - you have XP(experience) in games, right? What is the system of XP? Everyone at the start of games possesses some amount of XP. Every time you do something oriented to your character - for example in Assassin’s Creed you assassinate your target or gather information - you gain XP. And at the same time, you lose XP when you do something which is against what you should stand for - going with the same example it means killing innocents - your XP decreases. So, in totality, everyone possesses a share of XP and XP forms a system which embodies all the players. The same case is with logos. Another important thing to note is logos works on the principle of cause and effect. Some people often find it similar to the concept of Karma. I think this is enough for now. I’ll explain other concepts along with the themes.

1. Perception: Objectivity of thoughts - things are not inherently good or evil but our perceptions make them so. The idea is to merely observe the events and not put in judgments of your own:

“always to define whatever it is we perceive—to trace its outline—so we can

see what it really is: its substance. Stripped Bare. As a

whole. Unmodified. And to call it by its name—the thing

itself and its components, to which it will eventually return.”

2. Action: This is more concretely related to the concept of logos. The idea is that every one of us embodies parts of a human body and this body is the master plan of the universe. But here's the catch: Marcus believes that we were made for cooperative living and contributing to society. Each of us has duties/functions that must be performed for the above-said master plan. That is the action that we, as human beings, should perform. That brings us to the theme of purpose and responsibilities towards logos. For Marcus, everything in this world has its own purpose-every organism- ants, birds etc. - have their assigned set of duties and they perform them. That leads me to one of the most common quotes from his book, which I printed out and stuck on my wall:

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

       ‘—But it’s nicer here…’

       So you were born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

       ‘—But we have to sleep sometime…’

       Agreed. But nature set a limit on that—as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota. You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat.

       Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.”

He believed that as carriers and participants of the logos we are bound to some duties or some responsibilities of our own. We all, as I said earlier, are cooperative beings and we all have to put in some efforts for the collective good.

This brings in our responsibility towards the Logos - there are no rules per se but whatever wrong you do, you are responsible for it. This reminds me of a conversation between Ezio and Sofia in Assassin's Creed Revelations, where Ezio explains the creed to Sofia:

    “To say that nothing is true is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile and that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that everything is permitted is to understand that we are the architects of our actions and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious or tragic.”

One of the important points of debate in stoicism and something related to logos is the concept of destiny.

“That every event is the right one. Look closely and you'll see. Not just the right one overall, but right. As if someone had weighed it out with scales.”

Logos works on cause and effect. A careful reader may notice that there is no good or bad mentioned - there is right mentioned. It is not to say that everything will be good and you'll be happy in the end. It dictates that your state will be defined by your actions. Cause-and-effect. I know what you're thinking and yes, people do relate the concept of logos with Karma. But then there is the dog-and-cart analogy. The response to that usually is humans are responsible for their choices and actions but those are already determined by logos as a part of its master-plan. Personally, I view it as a computer program's switch statement. You are free to choose your action but there will already be a ready response to it. Hence, cause and effect. If and then.

Now, there is another idea that Marcus believes, which to be honest, I cannot wrap my mind around. The idea is that of hierarchy. The idea of everyone being different is still acceptable - that someone is a hand of the body while some other person is the feet. But how do you weigh them and put them in a hierarchy always confused me. Nevertheless, he asks us to treat everyone fairly and justly. What is fairness and what is justice - I do not understand for now.

3. Will: Will is complementary to action. It governs our response to the things that are not in our control. If we act wrongly, we harm ourselves and no one else - not even the logos. That is to say wrongdoings by the agent harm the agent and not the victim(another thing that I cannot understand - certain crimes like rape do harm the victim) - you harm your own logos, a consequence for that. From this, stems the theme of dealing with others. Marcus believes we should not react in any manner to the people who harm us. The reason for that is the idea that we all are the parts of the same entity. The following excerpt from the book says that:

“... none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”

This does not mean he says everyone is good and no one is evil. Well, he rejects the concept of good and evil in the first place but for the sake of argument, he believes that whatever that a person does (to us) is in the response to his nature:

“That sort of person is bound to do that. You might as well resent a fig tree for secreting juice. (Anyway, before very long you’ll both be dead—dead and soon forgotten.)”

And, if you are still not convinced and still want to take baap ka, dada ka, bhai ka as well as sabka badla, here's what Marcus has to say to you:

“The best revenge is not to be like that.” [Just imagine gangs of Wasseypur with Stoic concepts - Stoic philosophers of Wasseypur]

Another one of the common themes that a reader might find in the book and in general in the stoic philosophy is the theme of death. There is even an exercise on it, I kid you not, called Memento Mori - “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” - is what Marcus said. There are many other entries which have a very casual perspective on death - if there was something beyond death, it would not have been this easy. The same thing goes for pain. Marcus, I think, does not give you  '10 things you can do to become happy today'! No. It focuses more on how one reduces the pain. Pain comes from our reaction to external events and that is what you control. One of the entries from the book speaks for this:

“External things are not the problem. It is your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now. If the problem is something in your character, who's stopping you to set your mind straight? And if it's that you're not doing something you think you should be, why not just do it?

    -- But there are insuperable obstacles.

    Then it's not a problem. The cause of your inaction lies outside of you.

    -- But how can I go on living with that undone?

    Then, depart, with a good conscience, as if you'd done it embracing the obstacles too.”

Back to the discussion. Sometimes, you may find the tone of the book getting very pessimistic. It presents slightly uncomfortable views on humans sometimes as is noted with the following entry:

“Despise your flesh. A mess of blood, pieces of bone, a woven tangle of nerves, veins, arteries”.

Disturbing, I know, but it can be explained. You see, Marcus' last years were spent in the battlefield fighting off members of Germanic tribes far from home. Of course, the point that I mentioned above - not providing any portion for happiness, the means of achieving it, is one of the drawbacks of this book.

3. Ending note from the author:

First off, when you read the book, do not think of the book as a boring philosophy text that old people just mutter on as they move closer to death. While we are at it, do not think of philosophy as a subject. I personally think of it as a tool among various others that help me make day to day decisions and guide me towards what I am supposed to do, and at the same time developing more compassion towards other human beings(hey! I try my best). As Marcus has mentioned in the book: “not to think of philosophy as your instructor, but as the sponge and egg white that relieve ophthalmia—as a soothing ointment.”

Treat this book like a self-help book. Pick a principle and understand it thoroughly. See where you could have implemented it in the past and what will you do if certain things happen to you - here's where the exercise of defining your fears comes in handy.

Congratulations if you’ve managed to survive till the end. Where to go next after this article? I would suggest the following things:

1. Go watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OCA6UFE-0
2. Subscribe to this newsletter: https://app.convertkit.com/landing_pages/284508?v=6
3. Read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoicism/wiki/faq#wiki_how_should_i_read_marcus_aurelius.27s_meditations.3F
4. Get a copy of Meditations translated by Gregory Hays. It is paid but it is worth it. If you want the pdf, you can always find copies on the internet or just PM me.
5. And then read this before you dive right in: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoicism/comments/5vrwql/how_do_i_read_meditations_by_marcus_aurelius_and/