The Stoa

There is a thread in Stoic conversations that seem to imply that a Stoic should be truly apathetic towards things outside their power. This is, in my opinion, a faulty understanding of how the philosophy is supposed to guide us in our lives. The Enchiridion opens with a note about what is in our power and what is not in our power. It is in many ways the first exercise we need to practice on our journey through Stoicism. Unfortunately I see the results of this leading to people dividing things into "this is in my control" and "I don't care about this". It may be that for some beginners, this is the broad stroke that needs to understand the distinction, but I suspect for many it is not the right way to start. I see this in too many responses online: The opinion of others doesn't matter to me because I'm a Stoic. This is selfishness, not Stoicism. Our reputations are the aggregated opinions of others about us. Reputation is even one of things listed right there in the Enchiridion's first paragraph about what is outside our power, but it is also a powerful tool for Stoics. Our reputation is also information. Our reputation is feedback from the world around us. We want to see things clearly. We are after the truth:

If anyone can refute me--show me I'm making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective--I'll gladly change. It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in in self-deceit and ignorance.

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.21

Those who have excellent metacognitive skills can examine their own minds and ask the important questions: Am I Wrong? Am I the Asshole here? Those whose metacognition skills are weak need to rely on information given to us by others. Sure, the information they give is biased, but so are our thoughts about ourselves. It is a human trait to see oneself as the hero of their own story. So listening to the stories about us where we are a supporting character or even a villain are important. They let us know if our perceptions about ourselves are accurate.

So to ignore reputation is to be selfish. We are rational and pro-social beings according to Stoicism. Using reputation to refine our self-perception is the rational thing to do. Other people see things differently than we do, and so they could make us see things in a new light. Being rational creatures, we take and judge all impressions, so to dismiss reputation is to mishandle an impression. It is also pro-social. Ad hominem fallacies abound in society. We dismiss people's ideas because we think some demographic quality of theirs makes their idea invalid. This is not pro-social behavior. Treating people's ideas as coming from an individual instead of a demographic is a socially-positive action. It is not reducing another person to a set of adjectives.

So why is reputation listed as the sort of thing outside of our power? Because it is not something worth pursuing. If we act towards others solely to bolster or shape our reputation, we will probably go wrong. If you make a conscious effort to be nice to people solely so they develop a positive attitude towards you, you are learning to manipulate others instead of learning to be a genuinely good person. Your metric is not "am I being virtuous" but "do I have power of these people".

We should do the right thing because it is the right thing. The intrinsic reward of practicing virtue has more value to the Stoic than extrinsic rewards of mere reputation.

#apathy #dichotomy-of-control #enchiridion #meditations #reputation

Last week I answered a question on r/Stoicism about progress in a skill. The exact skill wasn't disclosed, so my answer felt a little generic:

There is nothing in the rulebook of the universe that growth is a constant. We do not survive by inhaling only. The path towards any skill will have sprints and stumbles. The best thing to do with a stumble is to laugh at yourself. We are not machines, after all. When in a stumbling phase, go back to the basics. Slow down. Think about things in the tiniest details. Walk through a process completely before starting. Don't let yourself get away with "I know this so I don't have to think about it".

My answer didn't feel very Stoic when I wrote it, yet I was thinking only of Stoicism when I wrote it. I was expecting a challenge of some kind to justify my answer in Stoic terms, but no challenge came from anyone else so this is my answer to my own challenge.

The work of the Stoic prokopton is to manage impressions. I saw this situation as an exercise in impression management. Here, an impression is the input (either a sensory input or a random thought) and it is packaged up with a judgement into an appearance, and then we react to that appearance.

When we start an endeavor, we have made a judgement that the topic is interesting and worth exploring. As we begin our journey, we come to a point where we realize how much we don't know, and this feels like a massive weight, but it is just another appearance. It will take forever to master this, you might think, but forever is a much longer time than we think it is. We are letting impatience skew our judgments. The proper response is to remind us that it is the work, not the results, that matter. Our practice of anything matters more than the end result.

Later, as we gain more of the skill, we look forward so much all we see is the gap to mastery. Even if that gap is smaller, we forget to look behind us and say "I have learned so much already". The impression is that we are not bound by our past. In some ways, this is a very helpful thing to say. I used to be an emotional manipulator of people around me. I thought I had it beat but recent musings have led me to wonder if I am still, in some way, manipulating the emotions of those around me, although to a smaller degree and for different reasons. This opens a sidebar of our relationship to our pasts, and if we are relying on our past for help, or trying to break the habits we built.

As we get get closer to mastery, well beyond feeling like a beginner, we think our progress slows down. In many ways it does. It is like a logarithmic function. It keeps increasing, but does so very slowly after a while. We make the mistake of judging ourselves as "in a rut" or even falling behind. Here is where I was focused with my answer, I think. I was thinking about this level where mistakes seem inexcusable or inexplicable.

I have been taking voice lessons for six years. I have gained a lot of knowledge from my teacher and my voice is stronger and purer and more comfortable than ever. I can hear problems that my teacher cannot hear, because I have learned to hear and feel what my instrument is doing. I can be dissatisfied with my performance when I'm hitting about 95% of perfect technique because I can feel and hear that missing 5%. Here the mistaken judgement is that I have to sing with 100% perfect technique 100% of the time.

This is nonsense, of course. I cannot sight read so learning a new song that I've never heard and only have the music for is not going to get me very far the first time I sing it.

So to manage impressions while learning a skill is to, well, manage impressions. Ask if your feelings reflect reality or an alternate reality you have made up. This is a skill that we must practice, and we will follow the similar path to learning any other skill along the way.

#impressions #appearences #judgment #progress