StuffThatMatters: Philosophy & Self-help
One of the things I personally believe in life, is the Socratic assumption that good thoughts, belief-systems, values etc can heal our lives. This view has been challenged, for being overly simplistic, by many philosophers, thinkers, scientists and especially psychiatrists (for business reasons, obviously), but I have discovered time and again, that this view works to a great extent. Yes, your views can't change your whole life, or make obstacles magically vanish, but they will definitely have a positive impact on the very way you think, behave and react, if applied wisely and refined correctly.
This is where stoicism comes into effect. For a long time, I had been searching for a philosophy I could relate to, and I devised a personal philosophical view of the world, which, although accurate (subjectively speaking, anyway), is a pessimistic approach to life. That's why I turned to ancient ethical philosophies of life, and discovered stoicism.
What is stoicism?
Since I'm writing this post for both philosophy-nerds like me, and common users as well, I guess it'd be better if I explain stoicism briefly at first.
Stoicism is one of the great Hellenistic philosophies that developed after the BIG 3 - Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It was first devised formally by Zeno of Citium, and then modified by a number of other thinkers. It grew immensely popular in the Roman empire, and under the watchful guidance of great Roman Stoics like Seneca, Rufus, Epictetus etc it developed into a reasonable, logical and powerful philosophy of life. Even the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was a practising Stoic, as evident from his writing Meditations, which survives today as one of the greatest Stoic texts ever.
The trichotomy of control
Describing stoicism as a whole would take hundreds, if not thousands, of pages, which is not the objective of this post. But the best part of this great philosophy is that, you can take bits of it and apply them to your life in a practical way, without having to know stoicism by heart.
In this way, stoicism's teachings are in many ways standalone systems of assumptions.
At the heart of stoicism, especially the version of it popularized by Musonius Rufus and his greatest student Epictetus, is the dichotomy of control. Epictetus, born a slave, showed great promise in learning, and was allowed by his master Epaphroditus to join Rufus's school.
The dichotomy of control is simple - it's a logical premise that there are two categories of things (for want of a better term) around us, namely:
1. Things we can control
and
2. Things out of our control
However, later Stoics changed it into a trichotomy, adding a third category, an uncertain, grey area between the two extremes. Then the system became:
1. Things we can control (A)
2. Things we can partly control (B)
and
3. Things out of our control (C)
Here, the second category includes all the happenings, in which our actions may or may not have a limited impact on the outcomes. The best way to describe this system is through modern exemplification. And so, here they are:
Example (A): Say, the AC if off, and it's very hot. You can obviously lie down and continue complaining, feeling miserable, accusing God/nature for the extreme heat etc, or you can just get up and turn the AC on (this is a very rough example, I admit).
Example (B): Say, you want to develop good muscles. You can exercise, follow a healthy lifestyle, plan and maintain a diet, eat less junk food etc, but ultimately it's not certain whether you'll get those six pack abs. However, if you follow a logical sequence of activities, your chances of getting them get better, with time.
Example (C): You get out for a stroll, and immediately it starts raining heavily. Other than grabbing an umbrella, there's virtually no respite from the rain.
Almost everything we face can be categorized into this system of trichotomy, and once we do that, stoicism advises us to choose how to react to them.
The trichotomy of actions
For everything in A, we should learn to take responsibility. Basically, it is assumed that we are solely responsible for how we think, feel and decide.
For things in B, we should employ internalization as opposed to externalization of goals. What this means is simple, back to the abs examples. So you decide to workout for a year, and still you might not get as fit as you wanted to be. Here, instead of setting your goal to be getting those abs, it would be much wiser to change it to just getting a bit more fit than I am currently. Then, even if you don't get those abs, you'll feel better, with a sense of achievement.
Internalization of goals is, in a way, to set goals in such a manner that they are easier to achieve, within our control, and reasonable to think about. Giving it our best is an example of this great stoic advice.
Now, for things in category C, the stoic suggestion is simple - try your best to avoid the situations (i.e don't allow them to needlessly damage yourself), but accept your limited capacity and don't let them affect your inner tranquillity. In the rain example, we don't have any control over the process, and so it's best to let it be as it is, while trying out best, in a logical manner, to stop it from damaging us physically. Mentally speaking, we shouldn't allow the external disturbance to affect our mind.
Conclusion
The standalone teachings of stoicism, if applied correctly, can add great value to our lives. And for opponents of this great line of thinking, I'd say that I exercise a pragmatic view regarding it - we can debate it forever, but it's better to just try and test it, see if it works, and then accept/leave it.
References
A guide to good life: the ancient art of Stoic joy (W. Irvine)
Meditations (Marcus Aurelius, also thanks to its free LibreVox recording)
Philosophy for life and other dangerous situations (Jules Evans)
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