#123 William Irvine: How To Live a Stoic Life

0:00 Self discipline. A lot of people undervalue self discipline. You know, you're so um straight and always doing what you want to do. But when you think about it in a different sense Self discipline means what? It means you are controlling

0:16 the one life that you have to live. And then the follow up question is, uh, so uh if you're not controlling that life, who or what is? And why would you allow something else to control the The one life you have to live. What a waste.

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1:11 Check out the show notes for an easy to click link. William Irvine is here today. He's the author of seven books, including A Guide to the Good Life. When he's not writing, he's a professor of philosophy at Wright State University. Today we're gonna talk about stoicism.

1:26 What is it? How did it begin? Who are the stoics? What's their take on failure? What's their advice on decision making?

1:33 And importantly. how we can train ourselves to become more stoic. It's time. To listen? And learn.

1:47 How did she come to write about stoicism in the good life? Ah, long story, but here's a short version of it. Uh apparently uh when I turned fifty I was having a mild grade midlife crisis and uh I decided I was gonna become a Zen Buddhist. So I mean I I I got the stoicism through Zen Buddhism, which sounds like paradox. But Um

2:10 started reading about Zen Buddhism. And it dawned on me that uh I could actually not only Satisfy my curiosity and deal with this midlife crisis. But at the same time I could get a a a publication out of it, you know, and it being a college professor, you always try to get two for the price of one. So if I could get a publication, that would be great.

2:34 So I decided to extend this into the book that ultimately became uh the book on desire, why we want what we want. But to be complete. I needed to show what the alternatives were. to Zen Buddhism. So Zen Buddhism in one way you can construct it, it's um uh philosophy of life. Wha what is the grand goal in living and how best to

2:56 attain that goal. Uh, and so I thought well what are some other uh viewpoints on that. Uh well stoics offered uh one And I started looking into them. Uh uh I had actually encountered the stoics Um, but uh doing logic back in college, not not in the philosophy classes I took.

3:16 Back then, uh this would be in the nineteen seventies because My professors said no, it's not the proper business of a philosopher to concern himself with with how to live a good life. It's about all these timeless issues that we've been talking about for two thousand years. And you know what, we're so close to the final breakthrough when we finally figure this out. Uh

3:38 So that's not what the stoics were about. But if you want, you can study their logic. And they were uh in uh First century um uh A D they were the prime logicians of their time and they were very good at uh propositional logic, which is what makes modern computers and your cell phone. work. So it dawned on me once I found out more about Stoicism that I actually uh first surprise was they are headed at approximately

4:07 the same grand goal in living and that is a life that's full of uh to the extent possible of positive emotions like delight and even joy, and relatively uh without negative emotions like anger and anxiety. And regret. But what where they differed is they had two radically different strategies for pursuing that goal. So if you want to become a Zen Buddhist, you spend a lot of time meditating. As a result of that you can uh you can uh reduce the number of negative emotions you experience.

4:38 But it's a long term project'cause when is that gonna happen? Well, maybe tomorrow, or maybe in thirty years. You know, it could go either way. The stoics said, Well, uh we've got some basic psychological strategies you can put to your work in your life. And these aren't obscure things. We can explain them to you in a matter of minutes. You can test drive them. With no one being any the wiser. And if they make a difference, great, they can transform your life. And if they don't make a difference, well, then go back to uh z to Zen Buddhism. It's a strange word um you know research project. I went in thinking I was gonna come out as Zen Buddhist and came out as stoic instead.

5:22 Then Thinking this is wonderful stuff. I've got to share this with the world. I decided to r write uh a book, uh Guide to the Good Life. uh which I imagined would sell maybe twelve copies total, you know, with six being purchased by friends who might or might not actually read it, but it turned out that we're in the midst of a stoic renaissance and I c I caught it uh in the early stages. So the world has has changed on that, and and I think that's a a change for the better.

5:54 I have so many questions to follow up on, but I I think before we we dive into some of the nuances and details here, it's probably wise to start with what is stoicism? Stoicism is um uh ph philosophy, ancient philosophers. Uh first stoic was a guy named Zeno of Citium, who lived in three hundred BC. he wanted uh to become a philosopher, and back then there was no such thing as academic philosophy. So what you would do is you would create a philosophical school, and then you would have students in that school. And presumably uh you know, is it was like a school of martial arts, you know and uh you attracted students and and they were paying students and that's how you made your living.

6:37 He also uh did what uh modern martial arts schools do, and that is uh you can have a pure style of of uh martial arts, but you can mix together different schools and come up with your own version. Um, so Z uh Zeno of Sidium did basically that. He tried a few schools on his own, and then he thought, you know, I think I can get this interesting hybrid that's got some logic in it, got some advice for living in it, this whole notion of being able to communicate well, got some science in it, this whole batch. uh and and I I I can have my own school. So he started a school this was in Greece And unfortunately most of the things he wrote and his subsequent Greek stoics wrote

7:23 have been lost. But uh the Romans took it on and put their own spin on it. So the people you normally think of as stoics are Roman stoics, uh most famously top four. Uh Seneca. who's currently my favorite, but ask me next week, and I might have a different favorite. Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, um, Epictetus, and Musonius Rufus. And the interesting thing is if you say, well, what did the Stoics say? Well I've just named four of them, and they actually can have interestingly different

7:56 spins on the questions you ask. So it it's a a diverse kind of philosophy. with common themes running through it. Where do those four tend to diverge? The greatest divergence is between Musonius Rufus and either Seneca or Marcus Aurelius. So Marcus Aurelius would have been

8:18 He was the emperor. He would have been vastly wealthy, vastly powerful. Seneca uh was counselor to an emperor But he was also the greatest playwright of his time. He was also the first century AD equivalent of a billionaire. And he was a stoic. Uh at the other end of the spectrum we find um Musonius Rufus.

8:43 who basically uh said, uh, you know what, if if if you can give me a cave to live in, that'll work. That'll do it for me. Uh so he was a minimalist kind of stoic. And You can have the whole gap in between. I guess one thing about uh the stoics is um And Stoic will tell you uh you know, what do you need to drink? A stoic will say, Well, water is fine. It satisfies the need. But if you handed a stoic a glass of really fine wine,

9:12 He would probably say, Oh, sure, I'll drink that. And then if you said, Okay, no more wine, he said, Okay. Jab some water'cause I'm thirsty right now. So it's that notion that you enjoy what life has to offer. But without becoming addicted to it, without clinging to what life has to offer, you're always prepared.

9:33 for things to take a turn for the worse. So you know, the p the people the the preppers, you know, these are the people who who stockpile food and everything else in case uh things take a turn for the worse. They they always have their day, you know, like w at the start of Covid where everybody else was scrambling for toilet paper and they said, Uh, here's my supply of four years of toilet paper, and they look really good. And the rest of the time we all we all uh just say, Oh, these people they're so foolish. But the stoics can be regarded as emotional preppers. So what were they doing? They were preparing for things to become dramatically worse. They were preparing to lose the things they value in life, and that can sound like a really negative approach to things, but Except that um they had the insight that if you do that

10:23 Then you'll be profoundly grateful for whatever it is you do have in life and 'Cause otherwise you're just gonna take everything in your life For granted. But if you appreciate what you have, you can savor it, you can embrace it, uh, and that raises the possibility of you experiencing joy in your life. These people sound almost superhuman, right? Like the ability to just

10:47 Go with the flow always and always be prepared and always be ready. And no matter what happens, you just have this sort of we would call it a stoic sort of way about you. For many of us who have more uh difficulty dealing with that, it sounds like oh I could never do that. Did they always practice what they preached? Is this like a binary thing? Or is it a gradient? To begin with, you know, we what we normally call stoics, these are people who don't experience emotions, uh and uh when life does something brutal to them, they just suck it up and stand there and and take it. I call those the lowercase as stoics. That's the common conception.

11:25 The Stoics themselves were remarkably Well adjusted people, they were known to those who who uh they lived with as cheerful individuals, because they weren't anti emotion. What they were out to do is minimize negative emotions. And they weren't out to stifle negative emotions. They were out to prevent them from happening in the first place and to nip them in the bud when they did start to arise. positive emotions. Uh they were connoisseurs of positive emotions. And you know, some of the greatest emotions you you can have. um that can be everyday experiences.

12:05 Mm. But you kinda gotta open your mind to them. Uh one is feelings of delight. Um you you walk outside. There's the sky. It's blue.

12:15 And it's a beautiful shade of blue that will change From hour to hour within a day, and will change from day to day. And it didn't have to be that way. You can either just say yeah. It's a sky, or you can say no. Look.

12:29 See what there is. It's a sky. Uh same thing with feelings of awe. So you can be experience awe. usually requires a little bit of effort uh on your part. I you know, I've described this in in one place where I can be walking along and pick up a rock, in fact right here where I live.

12:49 uh found a rock and I was freaking out. Because the rock was actually a fossil. that was four hundred million years old because the place where I now have my home used to be under an ancient sea that was the source of this fossil. So you know, the people who are watching me freak out were thinking, Well, he's got a rock.

13:11 Well, you know, it can be a rock, but it can be impressively greater. Just a wonderful thing. compared uh to that. And also the things that y uh are part of your everyday life. You know, if you look at your life from the point of view of your ancestors, you're living in heaven. You're living in d in a dream world. Uh well, what do I mean by that? Uh do you have running water? Do you have a toilet?

13:35 You have toilet paper, you know, from their point of view You've got in your pocket A little device. that you can order pizza in Hong Kong if you wanted to? And and what do we do? Oh, you know what? I don't have the latest model of that phone. Man, if only I had the latest model, I would be a a happy person, but I don't, and pity me, everybody. Look at what I lack. One of the stoke insights is that much of our unhappiness is self inflicted.

14:07 It's a question of your state of mind. It's a a question of you framing the things that happen to you in a way that makes them not just more tolerable, but where you can actually extract delight from them. Well, let's take a little sidetrack here on that sort of hedonic treadmill that you brought up. Wha why is it that we think that something is gonna make us happy. And then when we get it, we just immediately almost take it for granted. We're on to the next thing. We're always chasing something else. We're wired to be that way. So by wired, uh I don't mean wires, I mean neurons, but we evolved on uh savannahs of Africa, you know, two hundred thousand to uh seventy thousand years ago, rough rough numbers. And the ancestors who were alive back then. who were easily satisfied dropped out of the gene pool. Uh imagine that you had uh an ancestor and uh while everybody else was walking around worried about lions and worried about where the next meal was coming from, he was there in the savannas of Africa, looking at the blue sky, thinking

15:12 Isn't it all just grand? I I'm gonna stay in the moment. Well, he stayed in the moment for a moment, and then a a a lion ate him. I don't know if that's how he he perished. Um And uh when f meal time came. He didn't have. Uh food.

15:29 prepared. He didn't have food of s some source of food. So people who were easily satisfied dropped out of the gene pool. Now the people who were constantly thinking not about the The present. The people who weren't in the moment, but the people who were constantly thinking about the past, about things that had happened so they could learn from them. And the future. so that they could control that future uh in a way that would benefit them. Those people

15:57 who were not satisfied, who always wanted more, were much more likely to survive and reproduce. and therefore much more likely to be somewhere in your family tree. So to be dissatisfied was uh an um uh had survival uh advantage. But we live in a dramatically different world. Than those ancestors did.

16:21 And we have food. Food is not the problem. The problem is over eating. w we have the opposite problem. Material possessions. Think of it. Their possessions were limited to what they could carry. And they didn't even have like big uh cooler chests, you know, and and and backpacks and everything else, I don't think they did, that they could carry. And so it's basically what you could carry kind of on your person. And in your hands. And that was uh the limit. And we have Now uh just you know places where you can stuff them.

16:52 With material things. But we're wired. Once we get something, we we just raise our standard. We say, okay, okay, I've got all that. And that's nice, but you know, if I only had and then you fill in the blank however you want, then at last I would live happily ever after. So we're like uh we're we're like thirsty people chasing mirages in a desert. We work so hard to get to that seeming pond off in the distance, but Only to realize it's a mirage. And then we go to the next seeming pond off in the distance.

17:26 Why do you think there's a stoic renaissance now? I don't know. Like I said, so this would be in the nineteen seventies. I was exposed I was a philosophy major, but the only place I encountered stoicism was in a logic class. Philosophers lost interest I mean there were classical philosophers who didn't, but m most of philosophers would have said that's just not an appropriate thing. for us to be thinking about. There are more important things to be thinking about. And um so it's a curious thing, but it had survived. You can find examples

18:00 of uh philosophers starting in three hundred B C all the way up to, what, the beginning of the nineteenth century, and then suddenly they They drop off. Um so When I published a guide to the good life, I had very, very low expectations. Because uh and these were reality based expectations, I I looked on Amazon and I could find a handful

18:25 I could find books written by the ancient stoics, translations of those books. I could find scholarly books written about the The ancient stoics. But there were only a handful of books that That were written about stoicism for general audiences.

18:42 And I think it's because people just didn't know these the stoics were out there. Most uh college professors wouldn't stoop to writing a book that would reach uh a general audience. Um, so there were a handful of books uh when I published it. It got off to a very slow start. but started picking up speed. Uh and uh Last year I gave uh a talk at the Stoicon Convention. There are now enough of us that we can have global uh conventions, and I did some research.

19:13 And at present There are books on stoicism. Written for general audiences. coming out at the rate of more than one per day. So it's just this incredible transformation.

19:27 I can give you the reason why stoicism is popular. And that is because it's very hackable. And I hate the word hackable, but it's hackable. It gives you pr s specific psychological techniques. That you can use To change the way you're living your life. There's a handful of these techniques. And these aren't obscure things, they're easy to learn. Easy to try.

19:53 So it's got a very low price of admission compared, for instance, to um Zen Buddhism. So people try it and uh they find it it works. And then I guess the word spreads, but it's it shows signs of picking up speed, if anything, and it's it's uh undergone in the last twenty years is huge. uh change in popularity.

20:16 Well, let's talk about some of those sp specific techniques. How do we train ourselves to be more stoic? Uh my favorite uh beginning uh technique on stoicism is uh the what's called negative visualization. And uh w if you if if it's okay, let's take two minutes to go through an actual exercise. This is two minutes that could change your life or or maybe not, but we'll see. So negative visualization, step one is you think about things in your life. that you rely on. Think of about the things that you uh experience uh daily. And this can be uh the people in your life, this can be your job, this can be your health.

20:59 Uh and these are all just things that are there, uh and they've been there for a long time. And so you being a human, you you just aren't taking them for granted. Okay, so negative visualization says once you've found your thing to think about Now I want you to imagine

21:17 That you don't have. The thing. that you take. for uh granted. So for instance, you can imagine it can be a child in your life, it can be a spouse or partner in your life, it can be uh your job. Uh so I want you to imagine. Just give yourself a flickering moment to fill in the details.

21:37 that that person or that job or that thing is suddenly gone. Here's something you take for advantage. This is if you're a sighted individual, and that is your eyesight. So here's the a concrete way to put this. Okay, so close your eyes. And I want you to imagine that that's all you would ever see. That's it.

21:59 Um Now uh here's a twist that I've put into this exercise. So you don't dwell on these negative things,'cause that would be a recipe for uh uh disastrously suicidal life. But now

22:14 Ah in a second here I'm gonna ask you to open your eyes and But I want you to imagine that when you attempt to open them. that they're somehow glued shut. So go ahead. But they're glued shut.

22:28 And you realize you can never open them again. Now, give yourself a second to let that soak in. Now open those eyes. And um Take a look.

22:42 Isn't that Absolutely incredible. And yet two minutes ago it was something you took utterly for granted. And your life is full of things that are like that. Your sense of balance. Your ability to walk.

22:58 your ability to breathe without needing uh some kind without needing an oxygen tank. You can go through uh things you're one of the luckiest individuals ever to inhabit the universe. And yet If you have the wrong frame of mind, you know, poor, poor, pitiful me, somebody feel sorry for me. Look how terrible. It is. It's a it's a mind game.

23:21 It's a psychological technique. So it's it's a flickering thought that you have and you can fill in some detail. on that flickering thought. Uh so imagine that you've lost your job. then uh you you allow yourself to kind of think about that for a sec, fill in some of the details, and then snap out of it and uh go on with life. I do this on a routine basis about

23:45 Any number of things, uh common things, and uh uh my wife knows I've been doing it because she'll hear me yell out from the back bedroom. Thanks for existing and she'll know that I imagined that her suddenly being absent from my life. And then it all rushes in. Oh wow. That would be a huge loss. What does that mean?

24:08 That means I've got something really wonderful. And what am I doing? Well, I'm a human being. I'm taking it utterly for granted. Or, you know, in a worst case, I'm just sort of saying, Yeah, yeah, this is fine for now. But you know, if only I had, and then you you you're on that hedonic treadmill. If only I had uh something better than that. I would finally, that would do it for me.

24:32 But we're human beings. That's just part of the experience. So negative visualization is one technique. Uh are there other popular or effective ones that are equally valuable. Yeah, another one is the dichotomy of control. Uh so Epictetus uh is normally identified as the source of this uh psychological insight. uh the dichotomy of control, which I have transformed into the trichotomy of control.

25:01 So it says look, there are things you can control and things you can't control. And I've actually put it into three different categories. There are things you can control, meaning you have almost complete control over. Things you can't control, meaning you have no control. at all over and things you have some but not complete control over. So that'd be that uh middle c category. So I'm putting a spin on epictetis here. So what are the things uh that you uh can't control? Uh well you know if an asteroid hits the earth tomorrow, hey, that's uh you can't you can't Prevent that. You can't stop that.

25:38 What are things you can control? You can control the values you pick for yourself. You can control the goals you pick for yourself. You can, with a little bit of effort, control how you respond. To the challenges. Life presents you. So um I've used the example of a tennis match. So suppose uh you're scheduled to play a tennis match. So a stoic would say okay, so what you wanna do is you wanna think about

26:06 the three elements of control here. You can't control how hard your opponent trains. You can't control how uh what strategy your opponent uses. You can't control how hard your opponent uh plays Uh but what can you control?

26:24 Well, you can control how hard you practice. you can uh control the strategy you use going into the game. you can work on uh your conditioning. You need to focus your attention on the things you can control. And sometimes there there's very great degree of control and sometimes there's moderate d degree of control.

26:45 But that's what you should be thinking about because um The things you can't control, you're just wasting your time because you can't control them. You can't affect them, you can't change them, so to spend your time and energy on worrying about them. is a waste of your time and energy.

27:03 And it's a profound insight. Uh, you know, some people are anxious, some people or not. But the people who are anxious often it's because they're concerning themselves With things they can't control. And uh so an important uh insight. So focus your attention. on things you can control. And I mentioned that uh among the things you can control are your values.

27:27 So what is it I want in life? What do I value the most? You can pick that. You can set that. And then develop a strategy. that'll get you to the things that you value the most. I remember having a conversation with one of my friends a few weeks ago and they were focusing on something they couldn't control. And even though they recognized they were focusing on it.

27:50 They couldn't really stop focusing on it. Is there a way to get that out? I have noticed this in my own life. There are things I will toss and turn at night. Uh as a stoic. Everybody does. You know, you'll have some uh intrusive thought. that it you're trying to fall asleep or you wake up in the middle of the night, the intrusive thoughts as Oh, he's awake. Okay, here we go. We're gonna party in his

28:15 in his mind. And then the question is uh what do you do about it? And it's it's really interesting. When you become a practicing stoic then uh you get upset at a whole other level. Uh I call it uh meta anger. Uh so you're angry about something. But as a stoic, you're angry that you're angry at it because you realize that as a stoic

28:41 You've let it get to you. It's under your skin. And it really is a an interesting and challenging thing. Uh I've decided that there are people s to whom I'm simply allergic. It's a s kind of a psychological allergy. They know how to get under my skin. Uh, I can uh have any number of techniques, you know, standard technique is That's just Bob being Bob. That's just what Bob does, and I'm working with that. Uh check with me again in a few years and I'll tell you about that particular experiment.

29:13 You know, and and because of COVID, people were locked into small spaces with people perhaps not of their choosing. So Uh imagine that you're locked into Um an apartment. with two roommates, one of whom has anger issues, one of whom is an emotional basket case. Uh, and so the one who has anger issues Keeps

29:36 Coming in and nudging you. You know that guy who said that thing about you the other day, you should be really angry about that. If I were you, I would be so angry about that. And then the emotional a roommate will come in just as you're trying to fall asleep and say You know, y I'm worried about such and such, and I think it sh can affect you, so you should be worried about that. Yeah.

29:59 That would be it. Terrible situation uh to exist in, except your actual human situation is even worse than that. Because there you knew the COVID was gonna come to an end and you'd get out of this apartment and so on. But you are locked inside your skull with these two roommates for the rest of your life. So you have systems within your brain that uh respond with anger.

30:26 to whatever uh to to bad things that happen. Uh how come? Because your ancestors who were very angry, for instance, when when something happened to lessen their social status, uh, they survived and reproduced. Those who just took it in stride, oops. Uh same thing with the emotional uh aspect of it. You're wired to have those feelings. So uh the next step of strategy for dealing with them is number one to to realize that's what the game is. You're locked into the skull with them. So in my most recent book, um, The Stoic Challenge, I describe what I call the five second rule.

31:04 So within my my mind, I'll notice that something has happened and I'll notice the earliest signs of anger, just little smolderings of anger. And then uh my theory is I've got five seconds. To reframe that. Uh,'cause otherwise once once the anger bursts into a flame

31:25 It's gonna be there. And you know, it's a strange thing, but you can talk to people oh who have lost most of their memory, older people, you know, demented. You know, they don't know what day it is. They don't know what season it is. But they can tell you in graphic detail about something that happened to them four forty years ago that was upsetting. So the anger has that power over us.

31:47 So what you do is you try to take incidents that could make you angry. And you frame them as a kind of a test. that it's a test of seeing, hey, can I work around this? Can I repackage this in some way where it's not gonna trigger those feelings that are gonna wake me up. uh in the middle of the night. And there's this whole notion uh and in the book uh stoic challenge, the title says it all.

32:12 So we treat these episodes as challenges and we deal with them as such. We say, Oh, it's a test. It's a test. What do I have to do to Pass this test. Two things. Number one is I have to find a successful workaround to the setbacks I experience. I have to get out on the other side.

32:30 And number two, and even more important. I have to not let myself get out of control and angry and upset while I work around to the other side. Cause if you think about the things, the setbacks you experience in life. Usually

32:47 The setback is gonna harm you, but usually what harms you the most is your response to the setback. So I use the analogy of a broken water pipe, right? That's a setback. If you discover that you have a broken water pipe in your house, that's a setback. But that can be cured quite easily. You have a plumber come out and for a few hundred bucks it's all fixed. What causes the harm is not the pipe itself.

33:12 But the flooding water. emitted by the pipe, which can cause all sorts of damage. It can cause ceilings to collapse. It can flood basements. It can do any number of things. Same with you and and your setbacks. The setbacks themselves can be tiny little things. Like somebody making an offhanded remark. about uh y your appearance or uh uh uh about something you did.

33:36 That's the setback. And then what what does the harm is you dwelling on that, you tossing and turning on that. And that's an important insight. Then That it self inflicted harm. When setbacks hurt us.

33:50 most of the harm is self inflicted and it's us letting that Flood of negative emotions. Take us over. I don't know if you're uh like me at all, but uh you're you're an author and you put out work publicly and so people comment on that and forever you might get a thousand positive comments, but they don't stick in your mind at all. It's that one negative comment.

34:12 That stays w seems to stay with you. Yes. You're absolutely right. Let me tell you something else that's happened. Uh I've done a bunch of these. Zoom.

34:24 speeches and Zoom interviews and so on. And uh What I found is you can do it in such a way that you can people can chat while you're you're giving your talk. And then you have the option you can see the chat. Or you can not see the chat and at first I thought oh the chat is a a really good thing'cause you've got instant feedback. And y you know the the weird thing about giving a

34:51 of like a Zoom talk is you'll tell What you think is a really, really great joke. And there's no audience response because you can't hear uh their end. And then and then you're thinking, was it a bad joke? Did they just not get the joke? the little uh chat stuff that went by, I finally decided number one, it's distracting. And number two.

35:12 I would see one negative chat. And then spend the the next seven minutes of my speech Yeah. You know, trying to respond, trying to work around it. Uh uh praise, I tend to to shrug off. I'm pretty good about shrugging off uh praise. I will if I get a positive email, I will thank. the person who sent it.

35:34 But uh stoic is gonna be very picky about uh praise. I if I designate somebody a mentor. And they praise me. That's cause for celebration because the mentor is the person that you've said, uh, you've decided this is a person who really understands something. So when they're talking, I'm just gonna shut up and take notes.

35:55 I'm not gonna try to correct them. I'm gonna ask lots of questions, but I'm gonna take notes. And if that person says You know, you did X and that's a good thing. Wow. Right? That's great. But praise from um a variety of people. I don't know. What are their values? Uh in fact I I have this uh this concept of an anti-mentor.

36:18 And that is there are people who if they praise you, it's a sign that you're doing something very wrong because they have such different values than you do. that if they think you're doing the right thing, whoa. Hold on, you know, you've uh you've got to correct that. you know, now with social media and I have all I have as little social media in my life as I as I can. But you see the effects of that, and that is people can now.

36:46 React to praise from complete strangers, thumbs up or or becoming a follower. Uh and it's a metric and you can check how it uh changes from from day to day. And and the thing is that you don't know who these people are. And yet in in many cases It's possible for a person's life to be taken over. By the praise or criticism of

37:09 Of complete strangers. Whose values you don't understand. And might not even agree with. So it's really risky. And you know, there are people who can do that. Uh, you know, I've I've uh certainly seen people uh who don't even look at their Twitter feeds, you know, they just dump stuff because there's gonna be so much stuff and and that's maybe the healthy way to proceed. But I know I would read them.

37:34 And I know I would react to them. So uh I I don't want to expose myself to that risk. Well I like how you shape sort of the environment to to meet your needs and understanding yourself in that context. Ingrid und Indeed präsentieren. Jobs, bei denen man sich keinen Fehler erlauben darf. Heute Friseurin. Etwas nachschneiden, bitte. Nur die Spitzen. Was ist das? Heckenschere. Viel effizienter. Die ist für Büsche. Ganz genau. Ingrid. Das ist ein Job für Sponsored Jobs. Mit richtigen Profis wäre das nicht passiert.

38:06 Vertrau in Grit. Versuch Indeed und finde qualifizierte Talente mit Sponsored Jobs. I'm wondering if you can go a little bit deeper on the concept of An anti mentor. Anti mentor. Uh and again a mentor. And and you can have I guess you could have a life mentor.

38:28 Uh I don't think I have. I think if uh Seneca had been around, uh yeah, he would be a life mentor. In fact, in the day as a kind of a uh uh a guiding technique. Uh sometimes when I'm really stymied, I will ask myself, what would what would Seneca do? under these circumstances. Uh, if I'm lying in bed, I ask myself, what would uh Marcus Aurelius do, right? And uh and he famously said, you know, is it my purpose here uh to lie and keep warm under these blankets. No, you know, I have a social duty to to go do things. So

39:01 There are people that I would give blanket mentor status to. Normally though it's a limited status. So I'm uh I I row uh competitively, I skull, more precisely, that's with two oars rather than one oar. And uh there have been people I have chosen rowing mentors. And so what they tell me about rowing, I take very seriously. And if they criticize me, I take that very seriously. I don't get hurt feelings, but I know, Oh, great. Here's something to work on. So that would be a limited mentor. And I have multiple limited mentors in my life. And you know, the the danger is that you think you don't need mentors because that means you think you know everything. And that's a really bad state to be in.

39:44 Um so an anti mentor. It's somebody that I've had a chance. To observe Yeah. and uh have drawn the conclusion that they're playing a radically different game than I am.

39:58 So th there's one game, the social status game. Uh there are people who uh live to create a certain social impression. So they buy a car, they dress, they buy a house, they do all of that. That's not the game I'm playing. I'm playing a radically different game. And so uh when they uh look down on me. You know, I think oh Oh, that's a good sign.

40:22 because they're playing a different game. And for them to win their game, what I'm doing. would be craziness. You know, it'd be like bringing a hockey stick to a baseball game. You know, just that would be absolutely crazy. So if they criticize me, I perk up a bit. Oh good. I'm not playing their game. I don't want to

40:41 be playing their game. I think their game is kind of foolish, not that I'm gonna tell them that. Uh, guess what? That's how they feel about the game I'm playing. So that would be an anti-mentor. One thing you can control is your exposure. uh to various people. And if uh there's a person who's not doing you any good and doing you harm and you are consciously uh going out of your way to expose yourself, well, then then it's on you. Now in other cases, you know, you have relatives, uh, you have co-workers and so on.

41:12 You can't quite do that. But uh yeah, so this notion of people who are just have different values or are having a different game for them to approve of you is a bad sign. The only thing I might add to that is people who aren't in the arena or haven't done what you're trying to do. So it's easy to be a critic these days. You can sort of sit in the stands and watch anybody try to do what they're trying to do. And you know, lob these grenades at them. But if you're uh the way that I think of it is if you're not in the arena

41:41 with me or trying to do what I've done or have done what I'm trying to do. Then those comments are generally speaking misplaced and don't add a lot of value to the The conversation. What's your response to that?

41:55 Well, uh to criticize other people is now frighteningly easy because social media has made it possible to anonymously criticize other people. Uh there was a time when I was a kid when you had your neighborhood, uh, you know, and if you wanted to Spread a bad word about somebody, you would have to do it either verbally to somebody's face or to people who knew them, or I don't know, mimeograph papers and put it in people's mailboxes and people very quickly would have found out who who it was. And you know the interesting thing is, whoever you were attacking would be uh very angry at you.

42:30 But the people Who saw you attacking him? would be thinking, you know what, he might be doing that to me when I'm not around. So there was a price to be paid. For being negative.

42:41 in that way. But now you can do it anonymously. And uh there are people who uh that's how the their meaning of life is I'm gonna be outraged and when uh somebody is attacked, I'm gonna pile on. And you know, that for me is a good day. So let's see, I piled on to eighteen different people today. Yeah, I've earned my beer. Here's another wrinkle on that, and that is the notion of failure. I happen to be a big fan of failure.

43:07 Uh, don't get me wrong, I don't like failing. I don't uh go out of my way uh to fail. But I know that a capacity to fail. in some sense of the word, and the Stoics had their own kind of conception of what it was involved in failing. For somebody to fail is actually an interesting sign. And for somebody to fail in public is an interesting sign, because what is it an indication of?

43:32 Uh, one of the things is that they're trying to trying to do things that for them are hard. It's an admirable trait that some human being is trying to do things that are hard to do. And if they really are hard, You're gonna fail. You're gonna fail. Um uh sometimes you might fail a lot. And if you never fail, you might say, I've never failed. And then the stoic response is, Well, do something hard then. Yeah, well, the things are easy for me. Well then switch to something that will be hard for you to do.

44:02 Uh so I told you I'm a competitive rower. So I oftentimes do not place well. Uh, and uh, you know, the interesting thing is when I don't Then uh the question is, so did I fail? Uh well, actually not, because one of the reasons I row is it's part of my stoic training. Uh stoic training involves doing something that's very hard to do, running the risk of failure. Uh, doing something that's going to activate. Remember, we talked about the roommates that you're trapped with. Uh, if you're rowing a race.

44:35 Those room mates When you're two thirds of the way through the race, they come out and they haunt you and they say Bill. be nice to slow down at this point. You know, why not quit altogether? So you get to grapple.

44:52 with those voices and you get to tell them to shut up and you get to push on to the end. And I think you're a better person. for having done that. But when I come in last So from that metric, yeah. Failure.

45:06 You know, there are people who came in ahead of you. But no, no, no, I was playing a different game. Yeah, I know I was playing the rowing game, but I was playing a different game. And the game is uh number one, not to be afraid of failure. To go out there. To grapple. with these of these voices in my head and to do the training, the physical training necessary

45:29 To be out there. And there's uh a background uh kind of thought of yeah, you know what, I may have come in last place in that race. But I beat the approximately seven point five billion people who didn't even show up at the starting line. Yeah. Which is uh which is something to be uh to be proud of. When you were saying that it brought to mind I often go for this uh ten mile run. where I go out five and I come back, but there's a there's a point at about three and a half where I can take this shortcut

46:03 And I can get home at about nine instead of ten. And I've found through trial and error that it's much better for me if I'm going to give up to actually walk The full tan is than it would be to take the shortcut because I took the shortcut once and I've only done this once ever, but it took me three months.

46:22 Yep. Because every time I passed it on the way back, it became harder and harder. not to take the shortcut after having done it once. Oh yeah. So it's better to just sort of like stop and walk the rest of the way if you don't want to run, but don't take the shortcut. Yep. Uh giving in to those voices encourages them hugely. You know they live in the in the back closet of your mind and and they're they're always trying. But you give them one big success, you know, where you actually do quit. And it's like giving them superpowers, you know, it's like you injected them with uh with adrenaline or whatever because after that they're gonna they're gonna own you. So there are times when uh I do quit. There are times when I I and I'm not up I'm not pr proud of it when it happens.

47:06 But uh to wrestle with them. To wrestle with them you're gonna build up your sense of I can control aspects of my life. Self discipline. Right, self discipline. A lot of people undervalue self discipline. Uh you know, you're so um

47:24 straight and always doing what you want to do. But when you think about it in a different sense Self discipline means what? It means you are controlling the one life that you have to live. And then the follow-up question is, uh, so uh if you're not controlling that life, who or what is

47:42 And why would you allow something else to control? The one life you have to live. What a waste. That's a really good way to put it. Uh I want to come back to the people that you're allergic to. What's the thought process that you go through before you remove them from your life? Well, once you've once you've realized that somebody has the ability to get under your skin. And you know, I I don't even think that they think of it in those terms. And so the best way to think of it is

48:11 That's just them. doing what they do. I think there are people who are allergic to me. So that's that's kinda how it goes. And so what is it that they're allergic to? Well, it's something about my personality. It's something that grates against their personality.

48:29 or their values. You know, relatives you don't get to choose. And uh if you have relatives, it's wonderful if you can get along with them. You can work at getting along with them. But sometimes the best solution for for all parties involved is You just keep your distance. Um Uh, and if they come up and uh uh start doing their normal act, then you just remind yourself that's just what he does. And this sounds uh cruel, but he can't control himself. That's just who he is.

49:01 It isn't cruel though, because that's how you are. There's just things that you do because they just feel like the right thing to do. And so that's how That's how you behave. So I I'm not there yet. I'm working on it. Again, get back to me um sometime in the next decade and I might have the uh the the final solution there, but uh but it really is uh tricky. So we human beings

49:28 We're social Animals. We need other human beings around us. I call it vitamin P. uh people.

49:36 We need that contact and you're gonna be very unhealthy if you don't give that uh get that contact. The problem is. People are just so difficult, right? Uh, they can't see things your way. They can't bend over backwards for you the way you're sure you're bending over backwards for them. Uh so can't live with them, can't live without them. But hey, welcome to the human experience.

50:01 How do how do we go as parents about teaching our kids Um to be more stoic. Uh I used to think that stoicism was uh philosophy for older people. in particular really old people, people uh facing uh near death. I thought that th that's the primary uh uh target for them. But then at at age of forty, you know, or age fifty, I discovered it myself or stumbled across it myself and realized, no, no, it's not for old people.

50:33 And I have had numerous people write to me and say that What about kids? And the more I think about that. The more I realize, for instance, your teen years. are just a prime time for you to develop stoicism. 'Cause that's when you really have to

50:51 to deal with your fellow human beings up close. You can't get away with them. You're stuck with them. You encounter them every day. And then you can have stoic Coping strategies.

51:02 that you can use. So uh I haven't given it a whole lot of thought. I'm aware that there are some people who who have, but just the whole notion that kids are a prime candidate. Um, you know, and and other things like being grateful. Uh and you have to be careful. You'd have to package it with uh with kids in mind. But uh here here'd be a a great example. And that is kids can be very insulting. Number one strategy how to respond to an insult.

51:32 Make a joke out of it. And uh in other words, turn it around. Uh so if somebody uh insults you, uh so here's one turnaround. You know, if that's the worst thing that you have to say about me, you really don't know me well enough to be insulting me. You should really Put your attention somewhere else. But that requires a little bit of thought and a little bit of presence in the uh aftermath of being insulted.

51:58 A better way to respond to an insult is with no response at all. So somebody says their insulting remark and you just carry on uh having whatever conversation you were having. And the interesting thing is, and you can watch this happen. Um, so I wrote a book on insults called The Slap in the Face. So this was a follow on book to A Guide to the Good Life. And um, to say nothing at all. So you watch what they do. And it's really kind of fun because at first they'll be kind of wondering, did he hear me?

52:32 I just insulted him. Did he hear me? And you you let them stew like that, and then with luck they'll say They'll repeat the insult. At which point you say. Yeah, I h I heard you the first time.

52:43 And then you just go on with your conversation once again. Uh it requires very little effort. on your part, and yet it's a knockdown punch. Because here they are. Hitting you with their best shot.

52:58 And you aren't even hearing it. So a a better way still would would be to slip into a coma, you know? I mean if you went up and were insulting a person who is comatose. Man, you're an idiot. that you would be doing such a thing. But what you do, i it's the ultimate put down. Of you know what you can say what you want.

53:19 And uh it's just words. It is simply words. Go ahead. Now, uh the thing is you are wired to care very much about insults because again on the Savannahs of Africa, if you allowed yourself to be insulted, you lost social status, meaning you were less likely to eat, uh, you were less likely to mate. So it's wired into you. Uh and uh I remember being a teenager, what a troubling time of of life. You know, you felt uh everything deeply. So there should be a stoic answer to that, but I haven't uh experimented deeply with that. Talk to me about the psychological immune system.

53:55 psychological immune system, the uh uh biological immune system, of course, in order to be healthy, your biological immune system, you have to expose yourself. to germs. I'm gonna use germs in the broad sense, uh, but you have to expose yourself to germs and foreign bodies for your uh biological immune system. to be uh healthy and active. Uh so there are these cases like the case of the bubble boy who uh doctors early in his life figured out that he was uh he had no immune system.

54:28 He grew up in a bubble, literally a plastic bubble with filtered air, meaning no human contact, meaning none of this. uh was doing okay. Uh and then when he was uh ten or twelve, he got a bone marrow transplant from his sister. thinking this will cure it. Unfortunately she had Someone German.

54:49 Lurking. In what the in the bone marrow. And it killed him. It killed uh the guy. Um so I have uh A relative who's actually a pediatrician and I asked him about the immune system. And how how you should respond to that with respect to kids. And he said that the official medical advice is a kid should eat a pound of dirt.

55:10 And that's not literally a pound of literally dirt, but but to be exposed. To um Germs growing up is a very healthy thing because you'll have a healthy immune system. And a kid left to his own devices will do strange things, will suck on the remote control for the TV, we'll taste the dog, you know, if you have a dog, we'll do these things. A psychological immune system is a similar thing. If you lived in a psychological bubble That is in an environment in which you never had

55:41 Challenges. in which people never insulted you, in which it was just all was smooth and easy going, when someone else took care of whatever bothered you, uh, you would be like the bubble boy. And uh as a result, as soon as you were exposed Two psychological Challenges.

56:00 You would crumble. They would seem like major major incidents. I worry We live in a time when a lot of people are in, to some extent, one of these psychological bubbles, and we're protecting them from being exposed.

56:16 to um these irritants and we want to help them. We're we're trying to protect them. But uh uh it could be. I think if you brought the travel the um stoics forward in time to today, they would say, you know, what what they need is just a a a kind of a more challenging environment, and then they will be able to cope. with the challenges they experience. What's the stoic advice on decision making?

56:42 Stoic des uh advice on decision making is you uh fragment it into the part you can control and the thing you uh the part you can't control. and you focus your attention on the part you can control. And of course they were also uh logicians, so you know, there's a very rational way you can go about making decisions Uh number one is you map out your options. Um So I'm actually at work on a project right now where I uh go into that in greater detail.

57:12 You know, mapping out your options. there will usually be the obvious thing to do. which might not be the optimal thing to do. And so uh one thing I I tell my students when I teach critical thinking is it's very important that you invest quality time into thinking about what your options are. And that can involve a degree of brainstorming.

57:35 There's no guarantee you're gonna pick the optimal option. You can put all the thought you want, but one thing's for sure, and that is that if you don't even consider the optimal option. There's no way you can pick it. So that notion of okay, control Things. That you can

57:54 have control over, or or worry about things that you can have control over, and spend active thought Laying out the options'cause there can be multiple options. Uh so my wife and I, when we're trying to decide um whether to go somewhere, what to do when we get there, I'll say, Okay, well, here's a bunch of different options we have available to us. And so for me, that's just second nature. Use.

58:19 Actively Think about options and some of them can be way out there options'cause you never know. And then you choose among those in a rational way. Can we talk a little bit about the tension between being sceptical and being open minded?

58:35 Right now, uh the project I'm working on is about being simultaneously skeptical. and open minded. And I think that's the key if you want to be a person whose mind is full primarily of true and useful beliefs. So imagine somebody who was open minded but not skeptical.

58:54 uh before you knew it, their their mind would be full of uh conspiracy theories and all sorts of strange stuff because there'd be all sorts of ideas flowing in without filter. Okay. Now imagine the opposite of that. Somebody who was skeptical, highly skeptical of but not open minded. So that person would end up

59:16 Basically with true and useful beliefs, because that skeptical guard would only let those in, and But there'd be all sorts of other beliefs that are both true and useful. That he simply wouldn't open. uh himself to. And we have uh this psychological phenomenon called confirmation bias. Which unfortunately left to run will make us more and more closed minded. Uh confirmation bias is when you believe something.

59:45 You start looking for evidence that what you believe is true and you start ignoring evidence that what you believe is false. So you can imagine it like dropping a little little one crystal of sugar into a super saturated sugar solution, and that one tiny little crystal will grow into a massive uh crystal. That's how it is with your beliefs. So a little tiny belief can get into your mind. And once it's there, It can grow.

1:00:13 until it becomes a major major obsession. So uh the trick, uh if you wanna have a healthy mind is your Simultaneously Not only letting new ideas in, but exploring new ideas. One of the new ideas is that many of your old ideas are mistaken. That's a sign of open mindedness, you know, if you sort of acknowledge, yeah.

1:00:35 A bunch of what I believe right now. Those beliefs are mistaken. Uh things I was told when I was a kid wasn't true. Things my tribe believes believes they aren't true. And so one thing you'll do is you will reach out. to intelligent, articulate people.

1:00:51 On the other side of the debate. And you'll listen very carefully to what they have to say. You'll talk to them, not trying to refute them. Not trying to disprove them, not trying to show your mastery. But to learn from them. And and then the follow up thing a lot of people say at at at that point is, well, in this particular debate, there are no intelligent, articulate people on the other side.

1:01:15 Which I should add is a sign of closed mindedness on your part. So then you're precisely the person who needs to seek out those people,'cause almost invariably They're out there. Almost invariably you can gain something from talking to them. We talked a lot about stoicism. What are the other competing sort of philosophies of life?

1:01:37 Uh well there is one, uh s uh the skeptics, there's uh the Epicureans, uh there are uh numerous schools. These were schools in ancient Greece, so they had Uh it was like schools of martial arts, right? So if you wanted to start a school of philosophy, what did you have to do? You had to have a formula and then you had to gain students. But there was an ongoing business of creating philosophy schools. And you uh you kinda had to come up with a you capture one corner of the market by coming up with one particular way of uh of thinking. Uh the people who went there, some of them came for self improvement. But parents would have sent their kids there.

1:02:18 So they could gain skills that the kids could use uh in their adult careers. So there might be politics, so you learned logic, you learned speaking skills, might be the law, so you you uh you did that. So it was very much unlike um in modern times. a academic schools of philosophy, and these would be departments of philosophy and universities. I don't have to attract students. They have to take me. Right. Uh that's just the the way it is, but then you realize, gosh, what it would it be like if I had to have a product.

1:02:52 that students and their parents said, Okay, you gotta do this. You gotta take this guy because he's gonna give you some very important insights about something. And in fact, most of my students, if they weren't forced to take my classes, would not take my classes because they're they're in it for a career. And uh there are people who who are interested in law or politics who actually take philosophy. So it's curious we still have have that aspect going. So I regard myself primarily as a teacher, uh professionally. I'm a teacher and I regard my teaching as having uh Uh two

1:03:28 uh forms of outreach I teach in the classroom. And I teach through publications. Uh, and I'm one of the luckiest people alive in that I get paid for thinking about things I want to learn about. And then sharing what I've learned with a broader audience. And I regard it as a a wonderful form of uh of teaching. I reach a whole lot more people. than I do in the classroom and I I get uh emails from people. It's wonderful.

1:03:56 to be changing people's lives and if I'm changing them for the better, that's better still, right? But uh that I'm reaching uh an audience. That's wonderful. How do you want to be remembered? Father. Uh husband and teacher. That would do it. So on my tombstone, i if if I have one, I I would actually like to be uh uh describe this somewhere. Uh

1:04:19 compost it down, uh spread in a tomato uh garden, and uh be served as a tomato salad on some fine summer day. But if I did have a tombstone, uh uh husband, father, teacher would be the three. Thank you so much, Bill. This has been a really great conversation. Oh thank you, I've had fun. The Knowledge Project is produced by the team at Farnum Street.

1:04:46 I'd love to get your advice on how to make this the most valuable podcast you listen to. Email me at shane at fs.blog. You can learn more about the show and find past episodes at fs dot blog slash podcast. To get a transcript of this episode, go to fs.blog slash tribe or check out the show notes. Can you do me a small favor?

1:05:07 Go online right now and share this episode with one friend who you think would love it. Thanks for listening and learning with us. Till next time.

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