When we look at the human condition, we notice that most of us are entirely controlled by the world outside of us.
When we get what we want from it, we’re happy. But when it’s taken from us we are sad. The praise people give us uplifts us but their dislike makes us miserable. The more we want something, the more we’re willing to sacrifice to get it. And the more we oppose something the higher the price we’re ready to pay to avoid it. These chains of desire and aversion, love and hate of like and dislike, leave us fearful and open to manipulation by shaming and blaming the appeal of large companies, political parties, cults, and other external forces that want something from us. And thus, the world governs us like a donkey rider with a carrot on a stick, which of us follow from birth to death, like the obedient cattle we are.
But what if we decide to reject the carrot? What if we choose to escape the system?
Enslavement to the system
The ancient philosophy of Stoicism concerns itself with attaining freedom from the whims of the environment. We don’t achieve freedom from the system by destroying our surroundings, though, as the external world is not a fault here. The universe does as it does. And even though we have some influence on it, we ultimately cannot command it. Like sunshine, rain, and wind strike a farmer’s crops the outside world imposes on us its inescapable conditions. These conditions themselves are not the system. Our enslavement to them is.
How come that the waves of fate so quickly sweep us away?
How come that even the smallest of misfortunes and tiny bits of luck play our emotions like puppeteers?
Stoic philosopher Epictetus explained it as:
“Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death that is terrible. When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles “
This system works as long as we add fuel to it. The more we see tragedy and blessing in what’s natural and beyond our control, the more Fortune determines how we feel.
Luckily the Stoics provide us with wisdom to escape the system.
1. Being cheerful whatever befalls
How much time did we waste hoping for good things to happen and bad things never to appear? How many hours did we weep because the future turned out differently than we had expected?
Humans have become masters in fighting fate and subsequently suffering the inevitable pain that this brings. Our disagreement with uncertainty is big business and our fear of misfortune an opportunity to be exploited. Many try to sell us promises for the future like the illusions of safety, the protection of ourselves and loved ones, the prevention of encountering things we don’t like.
So as slaves of our likes and dislikes, we try to trick fate by adjusting our environment to keep misfortune at bay.
But we can’t put locks on every door of life. We can’t police reality’s every street and alley. Despite the time, effort, and money spent on protective measures, fate always wins.
We, therefore, escape the system by accepting whatever comes, instead of paying dearly as a vain attempt to resist the inevitable. By doing so, we’ll less likely let others capitalize on our fears and we’ll be less disturbed when misfortune occurs.
As Seneca stated “ Why, then, should be angry? Why should we lament? We are prepared for our fate: let nature deal as she will with her own bodies; let us be cheerful whatever befalls, and stoutly reflect that is not anything of our own that perishes. “
2. Caring less about reputation
The Stoics regard reputation as a so-called ‘preferred indifferent.’ It’s nice to have, but you don’t need to be happy. Moreover, as is the case with anything external reputation is ultimately beyond our control. Some people spend a lifetime building a good reputation for themselves, just to see it destroyed because of a single misstep.
Other lives of crime and complete disregard of their social standing but suddenly gain fame and admiration by chance.
Conclusion: reputation is as fickle as the wind.
The more we care about good standing, the more we become dependent on other people’s opinions which is unreliable. Moreover, if we care about the opinions of others, we will be open to manipulation and exploitation and we become slaves to the environment
Epictetus argued that we should not let our desire for a good reputation stand in the way of our mental well-being. If necessary, we should accept things like shame, blame, exclusion and ridicule if that allows us to purchase tranquility and freedom; the latter are within our control and therefore, uncontrolled by and independent of what other people think or say.
3. Learning to endure
Most of the time, when we’re in an undesirable situation, we wish to escape it quickly. But this isn’t always possible. And we son go on to complain and moan and feel bad about it as we believe we’re entitled to a better position.
But we’re ultimately not entitled to anything and many times the best way to handle a situation is to endure it.
How often have we deviated from our path, betrayed our morals, compromised our values simply because we didn’t want to endure pain? Pain is the mighty weapon that makes good people do bad things or refraining from doing good things.
Pain remains a tool for control and in our attempt to run from it, we run straight into the trap of those trying to control us. Thus we’re willing to exchange our freedom for a little less pain and discomfort.
If we find it challenging to endure painful situations, we might want to turn to Marcus Aurelius His meditations teach us that endurance isn’t necessarily bad. Endurance can be a purpose, something beneficial to us, even if its consequence is death. “Everything that happens is either endurable or not. If it’s endurable then endure it. Stop complaining. If it’s unendurable, then stop complaining. Your destruction will mean its end as well. Just remember you can endure anything your mind can make endurable, by treating it as in your interest to do so. In your interest, or in your nature.
4. Letting go of people
Strong attachments to people can have devasting consequences. It means that the very possibility of losing them begins to dictate our lives, to the point that our every move is a desperate attempt to avoid an unavoidable end game; the separation between ourselves and the person we’re attached to.
Epictetus gives us some harsh but potent advice regarding the attachments to things we’re fond of, which is that we ought to see them as they are, as destined to be broken or dead. “If for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed.”
When a man kisses his child, said Epictetus, he should whisper to himself, “To-morrow perchance thou wilt die.” — But those are words of bad omen. — “No word is a word of bad omen,” said Epictetus, “which expresses any work of nature; or if it is so, it is also a word of bad omen to speak of the ears of corn being reaped”
5. Letting go of material things
There’s a reason why people are stuck on the hamster wheel of commuting hours to work a job they hate, being told what to do, day-in-day-out often to exhaustion; we’re willing to sacrifice our precious time and energy to purchase material possessions.
Society tells us that happiness is conditional as it depends on all kinds of outside circumstances. We need that minimum amount of money, social status, that group of friends that house in the suburbs. And as long as we don’t have it, we are not happy.
But even though attainable for many, are these things worthy of pursuing? They are above all, part of the domain where fate and Fortune rule.
Hence they’ll kick and throw us around, like a child’s toy, simply because we choose to wrestle with those we can never beat. In his letter to Lucillius titled On True and False Riches, Seneca questions the value of all these material possessions were pursue like “gilded couched” and “jeweled furniture.”
Do they really make us happy?
Or is it to show the world that we’re living the good life?
Seneca says that we should not let our happiness rely on anything outside of ourselves: from riches like gold and silver to even the most simple things like water and porridge. Doing so makes us independent of any external circumstances, no matter how trivial. Seneca argues that not the person over whom Fortune has slight power, but the person over whom she has no power at all, enjoys true freedom who she has no power at all, enjoys true freedom.
He then refers to the words of his teacher Attalus,
“If you are willing to think often these things, you will strive not to seem happy, but to be happy, and in addition, to seem happy to yourself rather than to others.”
6. Choosing our response
A typical reaction to people that provoke insult or in any way try to offend us is to answer with anger and hostility. Thus the system gives other people the power to make us feel bad, as we let their behavior affect the way we act. But then as with the quest for a good reputation, we tie our happiness to other people’s actions. Jerks, toxic people, narcissists, psychopaths: these people roam the world like rain clouds, showering us with their malice, hoping that we’ll suffer their wrath. But there’s a choice or as
Viktor Frankl wrote: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Do we respond to these people with anger, fear, and hostility, then we have handed them the key to our emotional faculties. But if we choose to be indifferent to them, they will only pollute the space around us, but not our hearts and minds. And thus they will not affect our freedom and our inner tranquility. The lesson here is that we’re only slaves if we choose to be or don’t realize that we have a choice to be free.
7. Accepting death
Some people claim that the root of all fears is the fear of death. As is the case with the fear of pain, the fear of death can also dictate the way we live. The Stoics would argue that a virtuous life is much more important than a long life. We don’t have anything to say about the latter, but we do not have everything to say about the former as long as we’re alive.
If we fear death, we may end up living to avoid it, rather than living for life itself and making it great. When we live life to avoid death, we continually escape circumstances that contain the slightest threat and seek out circumstances that show us an illusion of safety. We become anxious sheep who follow any shepherd that promised us the light of another day. But no shepherd can save us from the inevitable consequences of life: the disintegration of what we dem ourselves and the return of our physical bodies to nature. It’s futile to fear death. Or worse, it’s dangerous, as the fear of death might stop us from living bravely and virtuously. But death so argues Marcus Aurelius is too one of the things required by nature. Like growth, maturity the first gray hair. Everything comes and goes into existence and passes away.
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