Philosophy vs life-hackerism

Dear Greg,

Thank you for bringing up the issue of Stoic “salve-ation,” as you call it. And thanks to Meredith for presenting her perspective as an actual mother in the trenches, so to speak, who is striving to apply Stoic principles to raising her daughters.

I agree with the analysis you proposed of the Stoic texts, concerning the issue of negative valence and the Stoic notion that it’s all about virtue and virtue alone.

I also agree with your comments on Irvine’s book. For me as well it was one of the first things I read about modern Stoicism, and I found it both helpful and frustrating. For instance because of Bill’s infamous introduction of the “trichotomy of control,” which pretty much destroys Epictetus’s fundamental insight.

Anyway, what I’d like to comment on here is what you refer to as the “Stoicism-as-a-salve-for-X” approach. As you put it: “‘X’ can range from mental states with negative valence (like anxiety) to life domains (like productivity). Want less stress? Want to be more productive? Try Stoicism!”

This, seems to me, points to the difference between a philosophy of life and life-hackerism. Let’s use a different example: Buddhism. As you know better than I do, different kinds of meditations are established Buddhist practices, and there is pretty good empirical evidence that they are useful for a number of issues, from anxiety to pain management.

But of course, meditating does not make one a Buddhist. Indeed, as our colleague Owen Flanagan points out in his chapter of the How to Live a Good Life collection of essays: “Your average Buddhist layperson in East and Southeast Asia meditates very little, about the same amount that your average American Christian prays. Most meditation in North America and Europe, which advertises itself as Buddhist or Buddhist-inspired, is served up as a tool for becoming less frazzled and more serene. It is about the self, not about being less selfish.”

This doesn’t mean that meditating is a bad idea. It just means that there is a distinction between the technique (or life hack, if used in certain contexts) and the philosophy. What makes someone a Buddhist is not the fact that they meditate, but the fact that they accept the Four Noble Truths and strive to pursue the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment.

Similarly, I think, with Stoicism. There is no question that some Stoic techniques, from journaling to engaging in the view from above, are useful for specific purposes, though as you point out, people would be best served by looking at the most recent evidence from empirical psychology rather than simply follow the intuitions of people who lived two millennia ago, as admittedly observant and perceptive about human psychology as they were.

But journaling does not make someone a Stoic, and one can certainly be a Stoic without journaling. What makes one a Stoic is acceptance of the notion that virtue is the only good, or striving to live “in agreement with Nature,” meaning reasonably and pro-socially.

So far, however, I don’t see a problem: some people will be interested in the pursuit of Stoicism or Buddhism as philosophers of life, others will be content to use Stoic- or Buddhist-inspired techniques in order to solve specific problems in their daily life.

What bothers me is when the two approaches are confused. I cringe whenever I hear people say something along the lines of “Stoicism will help you become rich / famous / win the Super-Bowl” and similar assorted nonsense. Not only that sort of thing confuses philosophy and life-hackerism, it actually perverts the philosophy itself, since Stoicism does not consider those goals as worthy of much.

In its worst manifestations, the confusion between philosophy and life-hackerism gives rise to what I call “broicism” (as in Red Pill men characterized by a significant degree of sexism and possibly misogyny) and $toicism (as in “Stoicism will make you rich and famous!”)

Perhaps one of the most contentious examples of this is stoicisM, that is, the use of Stoic philosophy to encourage militarism and a cult of the military. (See also here.) I think even some of the most respected contemporary popular authors on Stoicism are at least occasionally guilty of this.

The classic example is the recurrent use of Admiral James Stockdale as a Stoic role model. (Full disclosure: I did it too, in the first edition of How to Be a Stoic, but am planning on correcting the mistake in the forthcoming second edition.) As you might recall, Stockdale had been introduced to the philosophy of Epictetus when he was doing his Master’s degree before the Vietnam War, and often found himself re-reading the Enchiridion.

He was then shot down with his plane and made prisoner, having to spend several years in the so-called “Hanoi Hilton,” a POW camp where he was often tortured or put in isolation. Stockdale credited Epictetus for having helped him survive the ordeal, and I have no reason to doubt his words.

But what Stockdale referred to was life-hackerism, not Stoicism as a philosophy. The reason I am saying this is in part because Stockdale’s own description of what happened makes no reference to fundamental ethical aspects of Stoic philosophy, but hinges exclusively on the so-called dichotomy of control (“some things are up to us,” etc.). As you have pointed out in your opening letter:

“A lot of public discourse around Stoicism seems centered around a moderately perverted interpretation of Epictetus’ first discipline, whose purpose is to reduce the passions. While Epictetus calls this the most urgent of the three disciplines, (Dis. 3.2.3) it is not necessarily the most important. That qualification applies better to the second discipline, in which one practices becoming a more reasonable and caring human being. The main goal of the first discipline, in my view, is to clear the way for the second discipline (see En. 2.1.2). Resilience paves the way for appropriate action. Resilience is not an end in itself. Yet it is often treated that way. If people stop at the first discipline without progressing to the second, we risk helping assholes become more resilient versions of themselves (which are… even bigger assholes!).”

I’m not going so far as to call Stockdale an asshole, as by all accounts he was a nice enough chap. (I still remember him during the Vice Presidential debate of 1992, when he ran as Ross Perot’s running mate!) But it is significant that Stockdale pretty much always talks about Epictetus’s first discipline, not the second one.

Perhaps more damning, if also more controversially, Stockdale was present at the infamous incident of the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964, which US President Lyndon Johnson used as an excuse for commencing full scale hostilities against North Vietnam. Except that there was no incident at all. And Stockdale knew it. Later on he wrote: “[I] had the best seat in the house to watch that event, and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets—there were no PT boats there. … There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.” (Essay on the 40th Anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident)

When the next morning Johnson ordered the first bombing raids in retaliation for the attack at Tonkin, Stockdale’s comment was: “Retaliation for what?” Nevertheless, he said nothing and dutifully participated in a war that he knew perfectly well had been started on false pretenses. Would that be the behavior of a Stoic concerned with the discipline of action? I don’t think so, and the current fashion of connecting Stoicism with the military in this manner is, I think, a particularly pernicious one. Probably worse than the mere danger of creating resilient assholes…

Vale,
Massimo