Stoicism

Assurance and Care

There is a recognised principle in Stoicism about assurance and carefulness; Be self-assured about all that is outside your will and attentive and careful with everything within your faculty of reason. Understand, if the wicked and unpleasant is subject to the will, care is necessary. On the other hand, if everything outside your power is unimportant, those affairs can be set about with complete assurance since you are incapable of dictating them. Being vigilant in opposition to immorality, you tackle matters that are not inherently wrong in a confident frame of mind, this is essentially a stoic application. There is an old saying that goes; “When deer are frightened by the feathers, they seek safety in the hunters’ nets.” In other words, the deer confound devastation with shelter and as a result, suffer an untimely passing. Generally speaking, terror troubles us with regards to circumstances that are not within our control, yet we take action in an assertive attitude in affairs conditional on the will under the supposition that they are of little significance, in contrast. Whether you act flagrantly and with unrestrained sexual desire or reckless and irresponsible, no part of it is a nuisance to you so long as you have a favourable outcome in transactions outside your will. Demise, deportation, suffering; under such conditions, you will uncover the urge to grow fearful, anxious and evasive.

One would presume that when fallacy takes into account the things of the most considerable significance, your unprocessed assuredness will be corrupted into impulsiveness and recklessness. At the same instant, your terror and anxiety are swapped, as it were, trading your natural prudence and reticence for diffidence and hesitancy. The faculty of avoidance is brought about by handing over carefulness and vigilance to the faculty of the will. Conversely, if you aim it towards what is outside your faculty of will and not your liability, you will inevitably encounter distress and uncertainty. Consider, dying and suffering are not horrifying, it is your terror associated with demise and agony that you should dread. You see, death is not terrible but dying a weakling certainly is. Find assurance in death, then, and be heedfully aware of the terror you attach to it. Socrates described such horrors as ‘hobgoblins of the mind and for good reason. In the same way, facades frighten little ones because they are unknown and foreign to them, so do we respond to occurrences in a comparable manner and for quite the identical ground.

Above all, an infant is merely innocent and uneducated and any judgement on his part is more likely to be grounded in the imaginative faulty than reality. Death is nothing more than a spine-chilling mask, it is only when you can see through the veil that you let go and unwind, letting life unfold as it would like. In the end, your physical form and spirit must part ways, returning to that identical condition prior to your emergence. There really is no disturbance whether it happens now or the subsequent future, for it is inescapable. You might ask “why should it happen now, why not later?” If you take a stoic attitude towards such an inquiry, it is simply to attune to the cyclical nature of life since existence demands for things to cross the threshold both now and in the time ahead. Except, an important distinction must be made here, as the future also unfolds in the present moment. Therefore, past and future are only delusions of reality envisaged in the present.

There will be times where your body will be racked with pain, but know also that alleviation and respite always inevitably follow, for what goes down must always come up and vice versa. If you find life to be intolerable, the door always stands unobstructed. It is your choice; accept it or depart. Nobody in a condition of perpetual terror and anxiety is liberated, in the same way, anyone who has reached reassurance from misery gradually releases himself from such continual apprehension. The understanding of what should be regarded with assuredness or carefulness is crucial; assuredness for what is outside your power and carefulness for what is within your power. In this way, you know you will not let down your desires or undergo the undesirable since you do not crave what is in opposition to the natural course of events.

Battling Impressions

There’s this Stoic idea; if you like doing something, do it consistently. If you don’t like doing something, substitute it with something that you do. The same principle applies to ethical propensities. When you grow irritated, for instance, remember that you are not culpable of failure, you merely endorsed a tendency and inflamed it. Inevitably, consistent conduct of any kind will inculcate new practices and propensities while also corroborating worn ones. The innermost passions leave their personal blemishes and if you don’t treat them with care, they will be repeatedly vulnerable and never recuperate. The antidote to anger is restraint and watchfulness, attempt an easy experiment; watch your first impulse of anger and hold back until it elapses, do not act upon it nor make any conclusions about it. The more you do this, the less frequent anger arises and the more command you have over it through recognition. If you manage to resist it for a full month, you have made actual progress.

Begin, for a change, by desiring to make yourself happy instead of someone else. Aspire to grow to be honourable, clean and solid. For when you are unpolluted, you will find peace and a lack of constraint and you will feel in consolation with the companionship of nature, or God. Make friends with men of superior temperament so as to echo their good qualities and emulate yourself after them. Furthermore, whether you pick someone dead or alive is of minor importance, what matters is the essential framework. Consequently, do not let your imagination provoke you with the delight and enjoyment that lie in wait for you, these will only serve as diversions from doing the work you ought to do right now in order to carry the day. Lastly, get rid of your fear of death and comprehend this; no matter how many tempests you will confront, you will become aware that your brainpower is more than capable of enduring it in a relaxed composure and collectedness.

A Stoic Attitude on Love and Friendship

People tend to show concern and care for what they deem good and they show it concern because they have a liking for it. For that reason, the righteous person is also the person who knows how to love. Yet, if a person is not able to differentiate what is good from what is bad or impartial, such a person is unable to love. It is the wise man, then, who possesses the faculty to profoundly love. You may ponder to yourself what makes a person foolish or wise, after all, your sensory faculty is working in euphony and you can generally discriminate between feelings and opinions. You see, it is not so much that you are foolish or unreasonable as it is that you are habitually stunned or overcome by unquestionable sensations and feelings whose illusory nature of their reality absolutely misleads you to the point of apprehension. Thus, while a foolish man is perpetually misled by his delusions, a wise man is able to see through their illusory nature and remain unharmed by them.

Do not live under any illusion, it is a general law of human nature that every person is married to nothing more than his egotism and self-interest. Furthermore, this fundamental law is not an exception to your children or close relatives, place a valuable property between you and your children and you will quickly realise how eager they are to consign you to the grave and how you wish they never came to be. Your self-centred and inconsiderate son has been intending your burial for a long while because his merit and profit, tied to your diligent sacrifice, is more significant to him than your enduring existence. If you think nature or god is in opposition with your self-interest, it is rational to suppose that you will object to it in the same way you object to others. Opposing nature is much like being in opposition with an extension of yourself, which in turn will cause disharmony in your ethics and character. It is a half-witted game to attempt to oppose the course of nature out of mere egotism, your sense of self-importance is a mere prejudice that clouds your judgement and unless your prejudice is given up to see what actually is, you will live in a continual state of uncertainty and disorder. Whatever you identify by ‘me’ or ‘mine’ is where you are inherently inclined, whether this force lies in your body or your will is determined by your judgement and awareness.

It is tough to trust a bad person with weak character; they are inconclusive, naive, gullible and easily misled by poor judgement. Such a character’s instability is not reliable because a dependable and honourable person has adequate integrity and good moral virtue that is worthy of your trust, unlike a wobbly and insecure man whose very values are indistinct and grounded in feebleness. Such values in a person are not dignitary. People with weak characters do not make righteous friends because friendship is contingent, largely, upon mutual confidence, not blind faith. After all, where is the relationship to be found if not in trustworthiness and unwavering loyalty? Memorise, then, make friends by choice and not by chance. When making new friends, find like-minded individuals who are well informed and wise but do not be so heedful in treating the ignorant with contempt, show some rapport and solace instead.

The stoic way is not a cruel and unforgiving attitude towards the foolish and ignorant. It is, rather, compassionate leniency that is not immoderately confrontational or aggressive. Aggression should be employed in a discriminating manner, not in a regular and thoughtless fashion that is a result of poor judgement. Employing unnecessary hostility on the ignorant is not resourceful in the least, it will agitate them all the more and make you look like a disconcerted character that is regulated by his passions not good perception. Stay away from cruelty and make adequate use of your judgement to understand a person’s disposition instead of subverting it out of loathing. Hatred, in general, is a result of inner revulsion and annoyance that needs to be inflicted onto others for brief contentment, a mark of a poor and detrimental character. Therefore, if you need to detest and pass an abusive remark about someone to discharge your self-indignation, you have to resolve your antipathy, first and foremost.

I have been meaning to write an opening piece on Stoicism for some time as I believe its essential teachings are of crucial importance for the development of man’s character. I have attempted to lay out some elementary morals from Stoic Philosophy that will serve as an adequate basis for the succeeding writings on this theme.

Stoicism was a school of philosophy that originated in Athens in the primitive third century BC. The whole philosophy largely revolves around a code of ethics that is grounded in a structure of rationality and a sensible attitude towards nature. The ensuing sections will give you further insight into the moral code of the Stoics and their various outlooks on Morality and Life. Stoicism, as a doctrine, firmly finds its basis in nature, its whole adage is founded upon the notion that when the will is in line with the fundamental course of events, there is no opposition between your will and the course of nature and thus, you do not come to be a slave of circumstance. Rather, you come to accept the natural course as it was intended by the gods without suffering unnecessarily. Needless to say, Stoic Philosophy is quite red-pill with respect to the development of man and his exceptional qualities; dignity, integrity, persistence and restraint, as these make up the essential temperament of the upright man whose values and strong points move in pleasant harmony.

What is Within and Outside your Will

Reason is one of the most distinctive faculties, for it has the capacity to assess and observe itself, its ability and value apart from discerning and analysing others. Reason, furthermore, measures the utility of things and when is the suitable time to make use of them. The faculty of reason, therefore, is the most significant and productive facility we have been armed with, to make the fine use of judgement and impression. No other facility can replace it, the gods provided us with the single most sublime faculty, so long as it is exercised properly and comprehended with the utmost care. In spite of that, with the supposed knowledge of knowing there is but one faculty you can care for and commit yourself to, you instead decide to attach yourself with things that you do not own, such as your body (your physical vehicle), belongings, family and friends. Everything outside you is already in accordance with nature, there is no necessity for controlling the ungovernable whatsoever. Your commitment should be to make the finest use of your faculty of reason and everything outside your power with a position of complete assurance and trust in nature.

The understanding of what is yours and what is not, what you can carry out and what you can’t, is of great importance with regards to your attitude towards death, suffering and pleasure. You ought to die one day, but must you die enslaved by your suffering? In other words, is there something obstructing your position to approach torment with a smile in a cool and collected manner? It is your judgement of death and hardship that determines your frame of mind and attitude in the face of them. Your will is unconquerable, thus whether you’re chained by your leg or imprisoned, it is your strength of character that decides whether it grows to be a casualty of events or remain immutable to external factors, however severe they may be. Such is the position of the wise, then, it is their cultivated discernment of what is in their power and what is not that determines their purpose and attitude towards externals. You should inquire into these thoughts and put your policy into practice.

Content and Fulfilment

In the same way, an obedient citizen complies with the regulations of the state, so does the rational and clever person, after careful deliberation resolves to submit his faculty of will to nature, or shall I say; God. Freedom is not contingent upon external conditions, it’s having the river of life move in harmony with your will without opposition. Liberty is certainly precious and virtuous, but to capriciously engage in the wishful thinking of what you deem most suitable to happen to you is not noble, it is shameful. A significant part of becoming informed is becoming aware of bringing your will in accordance with the natural course of events, with the natural flow of the world.

Most people who, for instance, are held captive, are imprisoned against their will and thus are locked up both inwardly and outwardly. Conversely, when Socrates was imprisoned, he was not locked up, only his external vehicle was, his will remained unchanged and released. For, his will was not contingent upon what is outside its power, it was wholly centred around its own property. You should become aware that you occupy a minute space within the totality. Within reason, though, you do not surrender to anyone, neither to divinity because rationality is not quantified in dimensions but through the faculty of sense; perception. Furthermore, you are unfortunate, generally speaking, for being unaware and ignorant of your capacity for forbearance to manage the “problems” of life. You tend to neglect your untapped strong points, even when difficulties that said qualities can be in charge of coming to light, and their support could intelligibly be put to use.

There is something remarkable to acknowledge that the gods have made you strong enough to outlive what is outside your control and uniquely responsible for what is in your power. You are not wholly responsible for your parents, brothers and sisters, your property, death and fear. You are, however, completely responsible for making the right employment of impressions and accurately distinguish between the just and unjust. To carry your burden properly means to take full responsibility of what is in your control, and be assured and poised in everything that you can’t.

Dealing with Anger

You might ponder that we should dispose of degenerates and robbers, but you shall consider asking the question in a different way; Don’t you think we should dispose of people who are misled on what is of supreme importance, imperceptive people who lack the noble competence to discern the just from the unjust? If deprivation of the most valuable property necessitates the most injury and a person is impoverished of his most vital faculty which is his moral posture, annoyance should not be attached in response. Rather than being influenced by people’s shortcomings, exhibit an understanding of the inadequacy instead of scorn them. After all, you are not so intellectually superior that you ought to go in all directions rectifying and scolding people’s errors. Even if you were remarkably intelligent, you would have sufficient sense to understand the intricacies of how ill-informed your actions are. Therefore, let people voluntarily figure out what they ought to figure out, don’t be a nuisance.

If you don’t cling to your possessions, you will not grow passionate and vexed if you get burgled. With matters of women, don’t make your spouse’s surface allure her principal appeal and you will not grow irate with her unfaithfulness. Neither the burglar nor the disloyal person can obstruct what is truly yours, they can only obstruct what is common possession that is not within your power to regulate. Deprivation and sadness are only conceivable with regards to what is really your own. People can chain your leg or put you in handcuffs, but they will neither chain nor handcuff your will because it remains unhindered by external affairs. This is the underlying grounds for that worn saying; ‘know yourself’. To know yourself means to identify and refine your most valuable faculty, without concerning yourself or clinging to what you can’t control. Hold yourself accountable, if you have a sore head, exercise a lack of profanity. Stop yourself from engaging in profanity over trivialities, it is not so much that you can’t protest or grumble, simply do not protest with your entire existence as if your life depended on it.

Stand and walk honourably and independently, having confidence and faith in the fortitude of your ethical positions, not in the power of your physique. You are absolutely indestructible and dauntless if nothing outside your power can unsettle your integrity. The mind’s essence is as such; it will consent to the truth, turn down what is false and adjourn evaluation in irresolute affairs. In the words of Plato, ‘Every soul is deprived of the truth against its will.’ Thus, when someone accedes to a faithless hypothesis, you can be definite that he didn’t intend to entrust his agreement but simply misinterpreted the true for the untrue. People, by and large, have little to none apart from their own abstractions of good and bad to direct them. Your actions are largely all dictated by your depiction and judgement of them, whether be just or unjust. If your judgement is accurate, then, you are guiltless, but if it is mistaken, you pay the price yourself since it is unreasonable that another person ought to be punished for your blunder. For man, what amounts to good and bad could be unearthed in promptly those facets where we deviate from animals. If man’s exceptional qualities, therefore, are preserved and guarded and he does not deprive himself of his honour, integrity and intelligence, the man is delivered. Remember: no man is defeated by people’s behaviour and actions, ever. It is, rather, that you submit to your passions and whimper over a woman, for instance, that you stray from the reality that you were there for battle not love. When fair judgements are corrupt and destabilized, thoughts are weakened and sabotaged.

Reason Investigating Reason

Do you ever ponder for what purpose nature provided you with the faculty of reason? It is to have the capacity to make accurate employment of judgement. Reason is much like a hoard of characteristic judgements, thus it affects dissection and fractionation of itself. The goodness of wisdom claims to analyse the just, the unjust and the commonplace. Wisdom is virtuous, ignorance inferior. Accordingly, it is typical and inherent of wisdom to inquire into itself and its antithesis. Juxtapose your outlook in going stone-blind with being cognitively inferior, that is a conjecture of how apathetic you are towards virtue and vice and how solemn you are towards indifferent things. That juxtaposition is adequate to recognise how unfitting and incongruous your values might be. After all, the quintessence of virtue is the right use of judgement, if your discernment lacks lucidity and reasoning, you have a lack of knowledge and moral bearing that is likened to ignorance.

Further Reading

1. Letters from a Stoic
2. The Enchiridion
3. Discourses and Selected Writings
4. Meditations
5. Art of Living

Your Will

Your greatest element to cultivate is your faculty of will, it is the one element that should never be neglected, your most precious jewel that no one can burgle. There is a price to be paid if you disregard it, it’s called unhappiness. Conversely, be watchful and considerate of it and your happiness is assured. In the same light, you must neither be ignorant nor bluffed by other peoples’ aptitudes. You should take a step back and observe their worth for what it is without letting it restrain you. Good judgement is capable of discerning the authority that governs peoples’ judgement, whether it be an external attachment or their body.

Upon starting your day, hold yourself responsible, subjecting yourself to observation and paying it close attention. You should then proceed to generate answers that are derived from posing the right questions, for example, does a woman’s body have any impact on my character? Does her beauty influence my actions? If the answer is ‘no’, then it is not your business to own or control her; instead, be indifferent to things beyond your control. A lack of awareness happens when the air that encircles your virtue and intellect is lessened. Heightened awareness has clear air surrounding it, signifying its intelligible and unclouded nature. Furthermore, it is capable of a distinctive moral judgement that is trustworthy and principled.

Resolve your will, so it is in line and harmonious with the natural course of events, so nothing will fail to happen as it ought to happen by divinity. Adapting yourself as such, neither your avoidance nor your intention will fail because you are in accord with your inherent substance. This is the sound means to occupying a favourable role in society as a superior man. Do not seek other means among the unexceptional mainstream for idols to model yourself after, you will not have much good fortune. When you adapt yourself accordingly, your sense of terror towards things beyond your power diminishes, and you are not heedlessly getting attached to things which you do not own.

Agitation and Attachment

Agitation stems from the craving to control what is outside your will, for instance, you want to have a good performance, but you also want to make a good impression and be well-received from the audience. The former is within your will, but the latter is not and that is precisely where the difficulty lies. You are in a predicament where you desire what is not yours, and reject what is. If you knew the variance between the two, you wouldn’t be upset with what is indifferent to you intentionally. You could evaluate that one’s agitation is, to a significant degree, a result of a lack of awareness because as discussed earlier, a lack of awareness muddles you to the point of obscurity, and you cannot exactly make a rational distinction between internal power and external authority. This sense of confusion causes people to reject their inner authority to be enslaved by the outer. In other words, to turn down their most costly power for outside authority that is not theirs.

Don’t be innocent in your judgement, don’t resort to emotional deductions to give grounds for your difference of opinion. Put an end to presumptuous reasoning to comfort your preconceptions and biases, for it will only enforce your foggy logic. People always tend to have a reaction towards externals, thus remember to treat the uneducated with some rapport and avoid trying to convert them as it will all be futile. Furthermore, shun away from being too cruel as that will only serve the evidence of your unneeded indecency.

A comment on Anger

To briefly comment on anger; when you suppress rash urges, the impulse grows less recurrent. Give yourself a moment to recuperate, poor recovery will open up unrecovered wounds and then aggravate them. Wounds heal more wholly when they are given time to regain their strength. Do not turn a discussion into a heated argument. If someone offends you, do not return the slander. It is not wise to inflame an insult with more warmth. Why would you reflect his inferior judgement and let down your own? Vulgar manners should be avoided and substituted for civility and respect as such qualities are more admirable and stately. You want to be polite and tactful to the point where you are capable of ending an argument straight away, not out of timidity, but out of fine judgement and salvaging time.

Ignorance, Pleasure and Strong Character

It is your imagination that effects terror, thoughts weigh down your sensations and awareness. Thoughts govern people, for they are often misapprehensions of reality that contain you in ways you are not conscious of, and seeing beyond them is often unthinkable due to their intoxication. Thus, a detachment from everything that is not yours is worthwhile and productive. It is pivotal to guard yourself against attachment. Do away with your terror of death, and you’ll find that the adversity you confront will be undergone in a calm and composed demeanour indifferent to your anxiety. There is a worn saying that if you make a bad opening, you will compete with the troubles for good and all. Start on an affirmative note, and tackle everything with neither reluctance nor terror. To be accomplished and competent means upholding your godly elements; unrefined, assured, wise, resolute, not easily refuted or unsettled. Nevertheless, attachment to the body and externals must be given up for the cultivation of the noble elements. Attachment hinders progress, for it fruitlessly enslaves you to what is ungovernable.

Do not be arrogant to the point of taking pride in momentary delight. Pleasures are to be appreciated but not dragged out and pretentious, and there is no reason to validate pleasure, after all, you do not own it. Furthermore, you can’t lay your trust in anything transient, its temporary nature lacks stability. By way of illustration, here is a typical scenario; as you are endeavouring on your journey, an appealing pleasure arises, and you find consolation in it. As you savour it, you grow attached to it and as a result, you grow aimless. You see, that momentary delight restrained you and made you gradually lose sight of your ambition, disregarding your integrity in the process. Great careers have been wrecked as a result, and continue to do so. Do not lose your precious resources over externals, it is disastrous.

A weak character cannot be trusted, it is indecisive and easily won over, for weakness is a lack of certainty and an incapacity to be decisive without hesitation. Weak people are hard to trust, their lack of resolve makes them jump from one thing to the next without forethought, doing things which would otherwise not be beneficial for them. A strong character is one that is resolved and trustworthy, not easily swayed by the external world and come to a decision through assuredness, not uncertainty. Strength of character stems from the firmness of purpose and noble dignity. This is the mark of good judgement, a rational discernment of the internal from the external, from your essential power and the world outside it.

You won’t be hearing anyone acknowledge their lack of intelligence as that would humiliate a person. On the contrary, you do encounter people who are ostentatious and like to strike an attitude, growing pitiful towards themselves. A fool cannot be compelled to renounce his folly. This is a rather bitter reality, but you cannot talk fools out of their delusions, they must, if their awareness serves them, acknowledge their foolishness and then correct it with rationality and become wiser as a consequence. This is not a probable case due to their cluelessness but the perceptive ignorant are not doomed indefinitely by it. Furthermore, the more engrained their delusions, the more conditional correction they require to overcome their illusions.

Further Reading

• The Enchiridion
• The Art of Living