Any person in modern age might have misconception of what the Stoics had in mind by a good life. We might misunderstand of having a good life with making a good living — with, that is, having a high-paying job or become a celebrity. The Stoics, however, thinks one might have a bad life despite making a very good living. For example, that he or she hates his high-salary job.
The good life doesn't depend on having pleasure and fortune, Instead, it depends on her excellence as a human being — on how well she performs the function for which humans were designed. It is like a excellent hammer is one that performs well the function for which it was designed-to drive nails — a virtuous individual is one who performs well the function for which humans were designed. To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live in accordance with nature. According to stoicism if we do this, we live a good life. But for what function were people designed? To answer this question, the Stoics thought, we need only examine ourselves. On doing this, we will discover that we have certain instincts, as do all animals. We experience hunger; this is nature’s way of telling ourselves to nourish our body to survive. We also experience lust for sex; this is nature’s way of carry our gene to the future. But we differ from other animals in one important respect: We have the ability to reason, we were designed to be reasonable. To be reasonable, we were designed to be social creatures, that we have certain duties.
One important goal of stoicism is the attainment of tranquility. By tranquility it doesn't meant a zombie-like state. To advocate that kind of tranquility, after all, would be a rejection of the rationality that the Stoics thought essential to virtuous living. Rather, Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy. The Roman Stoics would argue that the attainment of tranquility will help us pursue virtue. If we are not calm but distracted by negative emotions such as anger or grief, will find it difficult to do what his reason tells us to do: Our emotions will triumph over our intellect. This might lead to confusion about what things are really good, consequently might fail to pursue them, and might, as a result, fail to attain virtue. Thus, the pursuit of virtue and the pursuit of tranquility are doubly virtuous circle: The pursuit of virtue results in a degree of tranquility, which in turn makes it easier for us to pursue virtue. Roman emperor and one of the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius mentioned, in his diary “Meditations”, that “the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
But most of modern individuals don’t see the value of adopting a philosophy of life. They tend to spend time working hard just to be able to afford the latest consumer gadget, believing that if only they buy enough stuff, they will have a life that is both meaningful and maximally fulfilling. We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires. The psychologists have studied this phenomenon and given it a name: hedonism. The good analogy in this regard, Winning a lottery typically allows someone to live the life of his dreams. It is well observed that after an initial period of exhilaration, lottery winners end up about as life condition and happiness state as they previously were. Their perception their new Lamborghini and expensive house for granted as the way they previously took their small old car and apartment. Another, less dramatic form of hedonic adaptation takes place when we make consumer purchases. Initially, we are very excited in the new iPhone we bought and after a while we find ourselves longing for a newer version of that gadget.
We also experience hedonic adaptation in our relationships. We meet the man or woman of our dreams, and after a exhilarating and exciting journey of pursuing them we might succeed in marrying this person. We start out in a state of perfect bliss, but before long we find ourselves contemplating our spouse’s flaws and, not long after that, fantasizing about starting a relationship with someone new.
One key to happiness, then, is to ward off the adaptation process. This means that besides finding a way to forestall the adaptation process, we need to find a way to reverse it. In other words, we need a technique for creating in ourselves a desire for the things we already have.The stoics thought they had an answer to this question. They recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value — that our wife has left us, our car was stolen, or we lost our job. Doing this, the Stoics thought, will make us value our wife, our car, and our job more than we otherwise would. This technique lets call it as negative visualization. We should contemplate our death time to time as to live each day as if it were our last. Indeed, We can take things even further than this: We should live as if this very moment were our last similar like Buddhism philosophy living the moments, be here now.
What does it mean to live each day as if it were our last? Some people assume that it means living wildly and engaging in all sorts of consumerism and pleasurable excess. After all, if this day is our last, we will not pay any price for our riotous living. We can use drugs without fear of becoming addicted. We can like- wise spend money with reckless abandon without having to worry about how we will pay the bills that will come to us tomorrow. This way of thinking will make us appreciate how wonderful it is that we are alive and have the opportunity to fill this day with activity. But Stoics counsel suggest not to change our activities but to change our state of mind as we carry out those activities. In particular, they don’t want us to stop thinking about or planning for tomorrow; instead they want us appreciate today while think about and plan for tomorrow.
One reason children are capable of joy is because they take almost nothing for granted. To them, the world is wonderfully new and surprising. Not only that, but they aren’t yet sure how the world works: Perhaps the things they have today will mysteriously vanish tomorrow. It is hard for them to take something for granted when they can’t even count on its continued existence. But as children grow older, they grow satiated. By the time they are teenagers, they are likely to take almost everything and everyone around them for granted. They might complain about having to live the life they are living.
Some of the things that attract us to Buddhism could also be found in Stoicism. Like Buddhists, Stoics advise us to contemplate the world’s impermanence. “All things human,” Seneca reminds us, “are short-lived and perishable. Marcus likewise reminds us that the things we treasure are like the leaves on a tree, ready to drop when a breeze blows. He also argues that the “flux and change” of the world around us are not an accident but an essential part of our universe.
While most people seek to gain contentment by changing the world around them, Epictetus advises us to gain contentment by changing ourselves—more precisely, by changing our desires. And he is not alone in giving this advice; indeed, it is the advice offered by virtually every philosopher and religious thinker who has reflected on human desire and the causes of human dissatisfaction. They agree that if what you seek is contentment, it is better and easier to change yourself and what you want than it is to change the world around you.
What about worldly success? Will the Stoics seek fame and fortune? They will not. The Stoics thought these things had no real value and consequently thought it is not wise to pursue them, particularly if doing so disrupted our tranquility or required us to act in an unvirtuous manner. This indifference to worldly success will make demoralize to modern individuals who spend their days working hard in an attempt to attain a degree of fame and fortune. But the Stoics didn’t seek worldly success, they often gained it anyway.
We might, for example, make a point of passing up an opportunity to drink wine — not because we fear becoming an alcoholic but so we can learn self-control. For the Stoics — and, indeed, for anyone attempting to practice a philosophy of life — self- control will be an important trait to acquire. After all, if we lack self-control, we are likely to be distracted by the various pleasures life has to offer, and in this distracted state we are unlikely to attain the goals of our philosophy of life. More generally, if we cannot resist pleasures, we will end up playing, Marcus says, the role of slave, “twitching puppet wise at every pull of self-interest,
On examining our life, we will find that other people are the source of some of the greatest delights life has to offer, including love and friendship. But we will also discover that they are the cause of most of the negative emotions we experience. Strangers upset us when they cut us off in traffic. Relatives trouble us with their problems. Our boss might ruin our day by insulting us. Our friends might neglect to invite us to a party and thereby cause us to feel slighted. Even when other people don’t do anything to us, they can disrupt our tranquility. We typically want others—friends, relatives, neighbors, coworkers, and even complete strangers to think well of us. We therefore spend time and energy trying to wear the right clothes, drive the right car, live in the right house in the right neighborhood, and so forth. These efforts, however, are accompanied by a degree of anxiety: We fear that we will make the wrong choices and that other people will therefore think poorly of us. Notice, too, that to afford socially desirable clothes, cars, and houses, we have to work for a living and will probably experience anxiety in connection with our job. And even if, through our efforts, we succeed in gaining the admiration of others, our tranquility is likely to be upset by the feelings of envy that other, less successful people direct toward us. In addition, we will have to deal with the envy that we feel toward those who have enjoyed even greater success than we have.
Because the Stoics valued tranquility and because they appreciated the power other people have to disrupt our tranquility, we might expect them to have lived as hermits and to advise us to do the same, but the Stoics did no such thing. They thought that man is by nature a social animal and therefore that we have a duty to form and maintain relationships with other people, despite the trouble they might cause us. What, then, is the function of man? Our primary function, the Stoics thought, is to be rational. To discover our secondary functions, we need only apply our reasoning ability. What we will discover is that we were designed to live among other people and interact with them in a manner that is mutually advantageous; we will discover that human nature is very much like that of bees. A bee is not able to live alone: it perishes when isolated. Marcus, it should be clear, rejects the notion of doing our social duty in a selective manner. In particular, we cannot simply avoid dealing with annoying people, even though doing so would make our own life easier. Instead, Marcus declares, we should confront them and work for the common welfare. Indeed, we should “show true love” to the people with whom destiny has surrounded us.
The most important reason for adopting a philosophy of life, though, is that if we lack one, there is a danger that we will mislive — that we will spend our life pursuing goals that aren’t worth attaining or will pursue worthwhile goals in a foolish manner and will therefore fail to attain them. What will be our reward for practicing Stoicism? According to the Stoics, we can hope to become more virtuous, in the ancient sense of the word. We will also, they say, experience fewer negative emotions, such as anger, grief, disappointment, and anxiety, and because of this we will enjoy a degree of tranquility that previously would have been unattainable. Along with avoiding negative emotions, we will increase our chances of experiencing one particularly significant positive emotion: delight in the world around us.
Our evolutionary programming helped us flourish as a species, it has in many respects outlived its usefulness. Our ancestors go around seeking the rewards their evolutionary programming has to offer, such as the pleasure to be derived from having sex or consuming a big meal, and avoiding the punishments their programming can inflict, such as the pain of being publicly insulted. Consider, for example, the pain we might experience when someone publicly insults us. An evolutionary explanation for this pain: We experience it because our evolutionary ancestors who cared deeply about gaining and retaining social status were more likely to survive and reproduce than our ancestors who were indifferent to social status and who, therefore, didn’t experience pain on being insulted. But the world has changed dramatically since our ancestors roamed the savannas of Africa. Today it is quite possible to survive despite having low social status; even if others despise us, the law prevents them from taking our food from us or driving us from our home. Furthermore, low social status is no longer an impediment to reproduction; indeed, in many parts of the world, men and women with low social status have higher rates of reproduction than men and women with high social status.
If our goal is not merely to survive and reproduce but to enjoy a tranquil existence, the pain associated with a loss of social status isn’t just useless, it is counterproductive. Along similar lines, consider our insatiability. As we have seen, our evolutionary ancestors benefited from wanting more of everything, which is why we today have this tendency. But our insatiability, if we do not take steps to bridle it, will disrupt our tranquility; instead of enjoying what we already have, we will spend our life working hard to gain things we don’t have, in the sadly mistaken belief that once we have them, we will enjoy them and search no further. What we must do, again, is misuse our intellect. Instead of using it to devise clever strategies to get more of everything, we must use it to overcome our tendency toward insatiability. And one excellent way for us to do this is to use our intellect to engage in negative visualization.
Consider, finally, anxiety. We are evolutionarily programmed, as we have seen, to be worriers: Our evolutionary ancestors who, instead of worrying about where their next meal was coming from and about the source of that growling noise in the trees, sat around blissfully enjoying the sunset probably didn’t live to a ripe old age. But most modern individuals in developed countries, at any rate live in a remarkably safe and predictable environment; there are no growling noises in the trees, and we can be reasonably certain that our next meal is forthcoming. There is simply much less for us to worry about.
Thus, if someone asked me, “Why should I practice Stoicism?” I would talk about our evolutionary past; about how, because of this past, we are evolutionarily programmed to want certain things and to experience certain emotions under certain circumstances; about how living in accordance with our evolutionary programming, although it may have allowed our evolutionary ancestors to survive and reproduce, can result in modern humans living miserable lives; and about how, by “misusing” our reasoning ability, we can overcome our evolutionary programming. I would go on to point out that the Stoics, although they didn’t understand evolution, nevertheless discovered psychological techniques that, if practiced, can help us overcome those aspects of our evolutionary programming that might otherwise disrupt our tranquility. Stoicism, understood properly, is a cure for a disease. The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear, and various other negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence. By practicing Stoic techniques, we can cure the disease and thereby gain tranquility. What I am suggesting is that although the ancient Stoics found a “cure” for negative emotions, they were mistaken about why the cure works.
Some people might be attracted to Zen Buddhism as a philosophy of life, but the more we learned about Zen, we come to realize that Zen is incompatible with certain personality. I am a relentlessly analytical person. For Zen to work for me, I would have to abandon my analytical nature. Stoicism, though, expects me to put my analytical nature to work. As a result, for me the cost of practicing Stoicism is considerably less than the cost of practicing Zen. I would probably be miserable trying to sit for hours with an empty mind, but for other people, this won’t be the case.
It doesn’t help that those who think fame and fortune are more valuable than tranquility vastly outnumber those who, like myself, think tranquility is more valuable. Can all these other people be mistaken? Surely I am the one making the mistake! At the same time, I know, thanks to my research on desire, that almost without exception the philosophers and religious thinkers who have contemplated life and the way people normally live it have come to the conclusion that it is the vast majority of people who are making a mistake in their manner of living. These thinkers have also tended to gravitate toward tranquility as something very much worth pursuing, although many of them disagreed with the Stoics on how best to pursue it. I think the biggest mistake, the one made by a huge number of people, is to have no philosophy of life at all. These people feel their way through life by following the promptings of their evolutionary program- ming, by assiduously seeking out what feels good and avoiding what feels bad. The question remains, however, whether they could have a better life by turning their back on their evolutionary programming and instead devoting time and energy to acquiring a philosophy of life. According to the Stoics, the answer to this question is that a better life is possible — one containing, perhaps, less comfort and pleasure, but considerably more joy.
I tried to summarize what so far I have learned reviewing some books about stoic philosophy, specially one book caught my attention is “A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine”
