The One You Feed - Massimo Pigliucci on How to Live a Happy Life

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Massimo Pigliucci is a Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, former co-host of the Rationally Speaking Podcast, and former editor in chief for the online magazine Scientia Salon. His research interests include the philosophy of science, the relationship between science and philosophy, the nature of pseudoscience, and the practical philosophy of Stoicism. He’s the author and editor of many books, including the one discussed in this episode: A Field Guide to a Happy Life: 53 Brief Lessons for Living. In this episode, Eric and Massimo discuss what Stoicism teaches us about how to live a good and happy life.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Massimo Pigliucci and I Discuss How to Live a Happy Life and…His book, A Field Guide to a Happy Life: 53 Brief Lessons for LivingWhat the term Stoicism meansThe Cardinal Virtues of practical wisdom, courage, justice, and temperanceOrigins of the Serenity PrayerHow the judgments we have are ultimately in our controlComing to acceptance with our own death and then continuing on with life in the present momentThe Dichotomy of ControlThe Discipline of Desire and Aversion in StoicismThe most important characteristic of a person in lifePhilosophical JournalingMassimo Pigliucci links:Massimo’s WebsiteTwitterWhen you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed. Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you!If you enjoyed this conversation with Massimo Pigliucci, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Applied Stoicism with Professor William B. IrvineEveryday Courage with Ryan HolidaySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everything that you can influence itself turns out to be dividable into these two categories. The bit that you do control completely and the bit that you don't control at all. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason

bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. the relationship between science and philosophy, the nature of pseudoscience, and the practical philosophy of Stoicism. He's the author and editor of many books, including the one discussed here, A Field Guide to Happy Life, 53 Brief Lessons for Living. Hi Massimo, welcome to the show. Thanks, it's a pleasure to be here. I am happy to have you on. We are going to be discussing your book called A Field Guide to a Happy Life, 53 Brief Lessons for Living. But before we start with that, let's start the way we normally do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,

which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, it's an interesting parable. I mean, I suppose the basic idea is that there are different aspects to human nature in this particular case, too, and that it is up to us, to some extent, to feed, so to speak, the aspect that we want to nurture. And I mean, there is quite some truth in that. A lot of philosophical traditions seem to

focus on one or the other. Some philosophers, like Thomas Hobbes, for instance, famously thought that human beings are nasty, brutish, and our life would be very short if we were not under the authority of an absolute ruler. So that would be one side that we feed on a regular basis. Other philosophers, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, thought exactly the opposite, that human beings are naturally good and that it's society, actually, that ruins us, right? As a biologist, especially, I think that a much better and more realistic understanding

is that we really have a combination of both natures and they interact in complex ways. And I think, however, that something can be said, in fact, a lot can be said for the fact that we do have choices of which side do we feed and how. And so ultimately, we are responsible for what comes out of our nature, even though we have this kind of mixed heritage. Yeah, yeah. You are a, I think you would use this description of yourself, a modern Stoic, and you're sort of working to reinterpret Stoic philosophy for modern times. Could you, for listeners, share to you what that term Stoicism means?

Well, Stoicism is a framework, is a way of looking at life that is supposed to be helping you just like any other philosophy of life, or in fact, for that matter, any religion. Buddhism is another such framework. Christianity is one such framework. Stoicism is one way of looking at life, setting priorities, figuring out what is important and what is not, and generally try to navigate your life in the best way possible.

In fact, every such framework also provides you with some kind of idea of what best means, What is a good life? Depending on which philosophy or religion you subscribe to, that means different things. If you are an Epicurean, for instance, a good life is one in which you reduce pain to a minimum, especially mental pain. If you're a Stoic, a good life is one in which you use reason to solve problems and in particular to improve society. And the reason for that is because the Stoics think that the two fundamental aspects of human nature, that distinguish human nature from any other animal on earth, is the fact that we are highly social and the fact that we are capable of sophisticated reasoning.

So once you put the two things together, then a satisfying, you know, good human life, human life worth living is one in which you actually use your brain to improve society at large. You talk about eight years ago or so that you said, my life changed instantly and for the better when you first read a particular philosopher. Who was that? That philosopher was Epictetus, who was a late first century, early second century Roman stoic. In fact, that wasn't actually even his name. We don't know his name. Epictetus just means acquired because he was a slave. And he started out his life in Hierapolis, which is in modern day Pamukkale in Western Turkey, a highly recommended

place to go and visit. It's a UNESCO International Heritage Site, just gorgeous. And then he was acquired by the personal secretary of the Emperor Nero, and so he was brought to Rome, and he lived part of his life in Rome, eventually was freed, as it was not unusual for particularly promising slaves. He studied philosophy with a major Stoic philosopher of the time, Mussonius Rufus, and then eventually he started teaching his own brand of Stoicism. Now, one of the interesting things that happened was that

the Stoics in general, and Epictetus in particular, had this penchant to, as we would say today, speak truth to power. And as we know, power usually doesn't like to be spoken truth to. And so in that particular case, the emperor in charge at the moment was Domitian, and Domitian didn't really appreciate these Stoics going around telling him that he was unvirtuous and that he wasn't doing the right thing. So at some point, he actually promulgated an edict according to which every philosopher, especially the Stoics, were kicked out of Italy. And that included, of course, Epictetus.

And Epictetus moved to Nicopolis, which is a town that still exists today on the northwestern coast of Greece. Once there, he reestablished his school. And the joke was on the mission because Epictetus' school became one of the most sought-after. The Roman aristocracy who sent their kids to study with Epictetus' school became one of the most sought-after. The Roman aristocracy who sent their kids to study with Epictetus. And later emperors like Adrian became regular visitors. So this is a guy that went from literally the lowest possible rank of society, you know, being a slave, to being one of the most renowned and respected teachers of antiquity. And the reason he spoke to me particularly is because he's very clear when he speaks. He's very no-nonsense. There is no ambiguity in what he says. He tells you exactly

what he thinks, and you don't need any background in philosophy to understand what Epictetus is telling you. And also, he has a wicked sense of humor bordering on sarcasm, and I appreciate that. He didn't write any books, that. You know, he didn't write any books, just like Socrates, he didn't write anything. But we have two books sort of by him. One is called The Discourses, which is a long book in four volumes, and the other one is a very short thing called The Enchiridion, or The Manual for Life. And actually, these books were put together by one of Epictetus' students, Arian of Nicomedia. Now, I have to tell you, as a teacher myself, I would be really worried if I knew that the only thing that survived in terms of my writings were notes taken by one of my students.

It's like, oh my gosh, do I trust this thing? But it turns out that Arian of Nicomedia was actually a pretty interesting guy in and of himself. He wrote a biography of Alexander the Great. He was the governor of the Roman province of Cappadocia in modern Turkey. He was a serious guy. And so we hope that what he wrote down is close enough to what Epictetus actually taught. But the interesting things about those books, especially the discourses, is that you really hear Epictetus talking because Arian didn't write down the lecture part. So in antiquity, what a typical teacher would do, we do lecture during the day. And then in the evening or late afternoon, you would have sort of these open discussion sessions with his students.

And what Arian did, he transcribed some of these. So we have a series of conversations between Epictetus and his students where the students ask questions and Epictetus answers. And so you get a really interesting sense of sort of the lively exchange between teacher and student. And I was just, I got hooked as soon as I started reading the Discourses. Now, it is not the Discourses. It's the other book of which I'm not going to... The Enchiridion. Thank you. I'm staying away from that pronunciation. Listeners know I struggle with pronunciation, so I'm staying away from that one. But it was that book that you sort of adapted, as I understand it, to create this field guide to a happy life. It's your sort of

modern version of that book. Correct. So The Enchiridion, which is typically translated as just as handbook, is a very short book. It's like 53 paragraphs, basically. I mean, they're called 53 sections. But each section is only a paragraph for sometimes two or three, but no more than that. And it's meant to be a summary of Epictetus' teachings. So one common mistake, actually, that people do is that when they approach Stoicism is, oh, they see that the Enchiridion is very short, so it's like, oh, let me start with that one. Bad idea, because it's short, yes, but it's very condensed. It's a very dense little booklet. If

you don't actually have background in Stoic philosophy, you're likely either not to understand what you're reading or even worse, to misunderstand what you're reading. Nevertheless, once you have the basics, it's really a very handy thing to do. In fact, it was meant to be brought with you and then consulted on a regular basis. The reason I focused on the Enchiridion is because it was highly influential, not just in ancient Stoicism, but really throughout medieval and early modern history. So to give you a couple of examples, the Enchiridion was used by Christian monks throughout the Middle Ages as a manual for spiritual exercises, with the only change that every time that Epictetus mentions Socrates,

they replaced him with Jesus. But other than that, it was the same thing. And in fact, even in modern times, the Enchiridion has been influential on people that you might not necessarily associate with the Stoics. For instance, most of the American founding fathers, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin, all of them had their personal copies of the Enchiridion annotated. Washington even brought the Enchiridion in battle and read it as an inspiration before getting into action. So it has been a very influential book, essentially for almost two millennia. And then what happened was that at the beginning of the 20th century, both Stoicism in general and Epictetus in particular kind of got forgotten. Philosophy became more of a technical profession, you know, with the rise of the modern academy. You know, this is what I'm doing now.

I'm in my office now, and I normally don't do ancient philosophy when I'm here at City College. I do philosophy of science, which is a very specific, very technical field. And so in the 20th century, kind of Epictetus and Stoicism went into a little bit of an eclipse. And I think that's unfortunate. Fortunately, Stoicism has been revived. Attention has been revived over the last 20 years or so.

And my intention with writing the field guide to a happy life was twofold. On the one hand, to bring back Epictetus to the attention of the general public, because I think he deserves it. It has been one of the most influential philosophers of literally the last two millennia, and he's a very practical philosopher. Even if you disagree, which I do with some of the things that he writes, they're certainly inspirational and they're certainly worth thinking about. The other goal was to update Stoicism. That may sound a little weird, but if you think about it, Stoicism started out near the end of the 4th century BCE in Athens. So it's more than, it's almost two and a half millennia old.

And every other tradition that you can think of, let's say Christianity or Buddhism again as examples, they have changed over the last two or two and a half millennia. I mean, nobody is a Christian today in the way in which people were Christian two millennia ago. is a Christian today in the way in which people were Christian two millennia ago. Even if you consider yourself a so-called fundamentalist Christian, you're still nowhere near what Christianity was 2,000 years ago. Same goes for Buddhism. I mean, modern Buddhists are of a variety of types, for one thing. Buddhism has evolved so much as a set of traditions that we really should be talking about Buddhisms in the plural

because they're very different subsets of it. Yes. Now, the problem with Stoicism, on the other hand, is that it kind of got interrupted. It started out as a setting at the end of the 4th century BCE, and then it flourished throughout the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. But then it kind of stopped with the 2nd or 3rd century. I mean, the last big Stoic we know of is Marcus Aurelius, who died in the year 180. We know of a few other Stoic teachers after that, but not much. Why? Well, probably for a variety of reasons, but, you know, the same happened to all the other Hellenistic and Greek schools. The last one to close down was the Plato's Academy

in the fifth century. Basically, the major reason probably, arguably, is the rise of Christianity. You know, once the Christianity, not only Christianity became very popular and kind of replaced or at least competed directly with these other philosophies, but once the Christians got hold of the Roman army, they became the official religion of the Roman Empire, then they started using that army to really shut down everybody else. So then Stoicism got interrupted, let's say, in the second or third century. It did still have an influence throughout this intervening time. As I mentioned, Christian monks were using the Enchiridion, but all the major Christian writers from Paul of Tarsus to Thomas Aquinas, all of them

were familiar with the Stoics,, all of them were familiar with the Stoics and all of them actually engaged with the Stoicism. It took something out of Stoicism and incorporated it in their own version of Christianity. The early modern philosophers from Rene Descartes to Baruch Spinoza were all influenced by the Stoics. So it's not like Stoic thought went away, but Stoicism as a school did. And so the question then is, well, here we are now at the beginning of the 20th, well, no longer the beginning, the second decade of the 20th century. And then what are we going to do? Are we going to really be Stoics or interested in Stoicism in the way in which Seneca or Marcus Aurelius were 2,000 years

ago? That doesn't seem reasonable. And then the question is, therefore, what would a modern Stoicism look like? What is it that we want to change? What is it we want to keep and why? Yep, yep. We're not going to, obviously, in the time we have, talk about Epictetus. We're not going to talk about the 53 lessons for living and all of Stoicism. But let's hit a couple of Stoic principles. And I think that one of the underlying ones is cardinal virtues. Share a little bit about those. The cardinal virtues, which were actually not introduced originally by the Stoics, the Stoics took them on as an idea and they became a point of reference for Stoics. But in fact,

the first mention of the four cardinal virtues is found in Plato's Republic. So it actually predates the Stoics. The cardinal virtues are practical wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. Practical wisdom is a kind of an awful word. It really doesn't roll off your tongue very well. The original term in Greek is phronesis, and it used to be translated from the Latin as prudence. But prudence in modern English means something different, so we're not going to use that word. Practical wisdom.

So, practical wisdom is the ability to navigate complex situations in the best possible way. ethically wise or prudent, as we used to say, it means that that person has a good notion of how to balance different things, how to manage trade-offs. And especially has, according to the Stoics, has a good understanding of priorities. What is really important for that person and what is not important, what that person should go after and what should be avoided and that sort of stuff. Ironically, our tagline on our website is practical wisdom for a better life. And I didn't even know that that was one of the cardinal virtues. So I hope it rolls off the tongue. Okay. That's right. Yes. It's not as good as prudence, I think, but it will do. All right. All right. Now, the second cardinal virtue is courage. We

usually associate courage with physical acts, especially going into battle. And I would call that bravery more than courage. Courage here has a definitely moral connotation. It's the courage to do the right thing, because it may cost you something. And so it does take courage to do it. Justice is the virtue that tells you what that right thing to do actually is. The Stoics took justice as a virtue that makes you behave in a way to other people that includes respect, dignity. You behave to others in the way in which others want to behave toward you. So that's justice. And then temperance is doing things in the right measure, neither too much nor too little. So let me give you an example. Suppose that tomorrow I come back to work and I see

my boss harassing somebody, which he would never do. He's a really nice guy. But let's say for the sake of discussion that he does. The question then is, what do I do? So I consult the four cardinal virtues. Practical wisdom tells me that I have to intervene because one of my priorities in life is to become a better person, cultivate my character, and intervening in situations where I can help others improves my character. Not intervening undermines my character. So practical wisdom says, yep, you got to get in. Courage tells me that, yes, this is a thing to do and it will require courage

because he's my boss. So there could be consequences. It could be retaliation. It could be unpleasant situations. Justice tells me that, yes, again, I should intervene. Why? Well, because if I were the one being harassed, I would like somebody to come in and try to diffuse the situation, try to help things out. Now, what about temperance? Well, temperance tells me that, yes, I should intervene, but neither too little nor too much. So I don't want to just mumble something under my breath so that my boss doesn't even hear me.

And yet, technically, I've done something, right? Technically, I intervened. That's not good enough. At the same time, I don't want to jump in and start punching him on the nose because this is not that kind of situation. There is no physical danger. There is nothing like that going on. So that would be an overreaction.

So temperance tells me that the right way to intervene is firmly with a calm tone of voice and trying to diffuse the situation. And that's the way the Stoics use the four cardinal virtues. Think of them as, you know, they're called cardinal for a reason, not only because they're most important, but because the analogies with cardinal geography, cardinal points, that is, they orient you in life. You can use them as a compass to figure out what to do and what not to do. So that's how the cardinal virtues work. And Stoicism in general is pointing at that the highest good is to be and develop virtue? Correct.

Although the qualification here is we need to understand exactly what the word virtue is, because especially in modern times, when you hear virtue, most people think of the Christian version of the term, right? So things like chastity and purity and things like that. That has nothing to do with what the Greeks and the Romans were actually talking about. So, the word virtue actually comes from the Greek arete, and arete is often translated as excellence. So, really, what we're talking about is the point of Stoicism is to make you into the best human being you can possibly be, the most excellent human being that you can possibly be. And what does that mean? Well, that means a human being

who is a good reasoner. For instance, for the Stoics, reasoning well is a virtue. Somebody who pays attention to evidence, for the Stoics, paying attention to evidence that is doing what we would today call science is a virtue. And of course, the moral virtues, the four cardinal virtues that I just mentioned. So being an excellent human being for a Stoic means thinking well, paying attention to the evidence, and then trying to become a morally better person. And that's a kind of a program

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So Epictetus is, you'll correct me if I get this wrong, but is, if not the creator, one of the earliest sources of what later became one of the fundamental pieces of wisdom in my life, which is the serenity prayer. Tell me a little bit about Epictetus' version of that, and maybe we can dive deeper into it, because I think there's so much in there. Modern Stoics refer to that as the dichotomy of control, which I don't particularly like as a term because the word control is often misinterpreted in this context, but probably there's no point in opposing the general trend, so we'll just call it dichotomy of control. It's not original with Epictetus. It's found in earlier Stoics.

We find it at least in Cicero, for instance, from the first century before the current era. Although Cicero himself was not a Stoic, but he was very sympathetic to the Stoics, and he does mention essentially the same concept. Epictetus, however, makes it into a centerpiece of his philosophy, and that's why he's very often associated with it. As you pointed out, however, the same idea pops up in different contexts and different cultures. You find it in 8th century Buddhism, in 11th century Judaism, and in 20th century Christianity under the Serenity Prayer.

So the Serenity Prayer asks God to give us the wisdom to tell the difference between what we can change and what we cannot change, the courage to change what we can, and the serenity to accept what we cannot, right? And it's often used by 12-step organizations like Alcoholic Anonymous. Now, the Epictetus version goes something like this. Epictetus says that some things are up to us and other things are not up to us, and that a wise person focuses on the things that are up to us and tries to accept the rest with equanimity. The real question there is, okay, but what are these things? What is up to us and what is not up to us? Fine, I can get behind the general idea, but what about when it comes to the details? And here's where different cultures do different. The Christians will have a different version in terms of details. The Buddhists would have a different version.

For the Stoics, the situation is actually fairly simple. It's pretty straightforward. There's only one thing, ultimately, that is up to us, and that's our judgments. That's it. Now, our judgments include our priorities, the values that we endorse or reject, every decision we make to act or not to act, all of those are the results of our judgments, right? And in fact, Epictetus actually mentions each one of these categories separately, but ultimately, it all comes down to judgment. So, that's the only thing, according to Epictetus, that is, in fact, up to us, meaning that the buck stops with me if I arrive at a certain judgment. It is true that my judgments may be influenced by others or by external factors, of course,

right? But ultimately, if I decide to do or not to do something, like for instance, if I decide to come on your podcast, well, that's my decision. I can say, well, but I was influenced by so-and-so who told me that this is a really cool guy and it's a great idea. Sure. But ultimately, the buck stops with me, the Americans say. Our strong-arm podcast guest tactics. We made you an offer you couldn't refuse. Right.

But in fact, Epictetus says you could always refuse offers, right? He actually says if the tyrant threatens you with your life, well, you still have a choice. You can decide to die. So now that's a hard choice. He's not saying, he's not minimizing the issue. It's a hard choice. But when we say, it's funny that nowadays, in modern days, we say things like, oh, I didn, I couldn't have, I didn't have a choice, he pointed a gun to my head. And Epictetus says, so what? You still had a choice. You could have said no, and he would have shot you. So what? What that means is that you valued your life more than that particular choice, right? But not that you did not have a choice. And it may very well be

reasonable to value your life more than, you know, whatever it is that you are asked to choose. But nevertheless, it is in fact your choice. Everything else, Epictetus says, is not ultimately up to you. It kind of works in the reverse. You can influence a lot of other things, but ultimately, you don't control them. What are these other things? Well, pretty much everything. He mentions health, career, reputation, wealth, you know, everything that, you know, relationships, everything matters to us. It's not really up to us. What does that mean? Well, let's say, for instance, let's talk about health. As you pointed out before we started this conversation, you know, last week I happened to pay a visit to the ER and I was in the hospital

for three days. Well, that was certainly not my choice. It's like, okay, something happened and I have to have doctors looking at it. Now, the question there is what is up to me and what is not up to me, according to Epictetus. Up to me was the judgment that there was something wrong, that I was experiencing something sufficiently serious in terms of physical symptoms that I better go to the ER because I was risking otherwise my life. That choice is up to me. Nobody else can make it for me, unless I'm unconscious. But I was conscious, so I made the choice.

I can also make the choice of following what the doctors and the nurses are telling me to do or not, right? I could refuse. If somebody says, okay, here's this medication or here's this exam that we want you to do, I could say no. So that's up to my judgment. And then I can, since I was there for three days, it's up to me how to behave to other people, not only nurses and doctors, but also fellow patients, right? Do I want to be cranky and irritable and start yelling at people or do I want to try to be a good citizen at the hospital, et cetera, et cetera? And then also up to me is how do I want to spend my time when I'm there and not undergoing either procedures or exams?

So I asked my wife to bring me my iPad, and I read and wrote a little bit as much as I could. Those things are up to me because they're all results of my judgments. What is not up to me? Well, pretty much everything else, right? First and foremost, the outcome of all of these procedures and all, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, I could regain my health or not. That is certainly not up to me. The specific consequences of each one of those particular actions is not up to me. The behavior of the doctors and the nurses is not up to me. The behavior of my fellow patients is not up to me.

The functioning of the instrumentation, the medical instrumentation, that's not up to me either. So in other words, all of those other things, all that Stoics call externals, anything that is outside of my judgment, I don't control. I can influence it because, of course, I can talk to my doctor, let's say, and what the doctor is going to say or going to do is going to be influenced by what I say and by how I interact with him. But ultimately, it is his decision. That's his judgment of what to do or what not to do. And that, I find, that notion of keeping in mind very clearly, as clearly as possible,

where my agency, another way to put it, all this thing is where my agency lies and where it doesn't lie, right? So what I can actually affect and what I cannot, I found that very calming and very useful. In fact, already in the ambulance, when I was going to the hospital, I started making up two mental lists. What is going to be up to me under these circumstances is what is not going to be up to me under these circumstances. And what you do then after you have that list, not only you go over the list over and over to remind yourself, you know, afresh that, okay, this is up to me, this is not up to me. But also, then you're supposed to be focusing on the first list, what is up to you, and trying to develop this attitude of equanimity and

acceptance toward the second list, toward the things that are not up to you. That is difficult, obviously, because we have a tendency to want to control the outcomes, right? We want certain things to go in a certain way, and we are really low to say, no, I don't control it. It's not up to me. I mean, in the case of going to the ER, one of the outcomes might be they're going to die. Yeah.

If it is a life-threatening situation, you might die. And we recoil from the whole idea. It's like, oh, well, if I die, I die. But that actually is, according to the Stoics, the only rational and useful attitude you could possibly have. In fact, one of the first things you asked me early on why I was so interested in Epictetus. One of the very first things that I read by Epictetus is right at the beginning of the first volume of the Discourses, where he says, well, do I have to die? Apparently not today. And if it's not today, then let me not think about dying. On the other hand, it is the

time for lunch. So let's think about lunchtime and what we're going to eat for lunch. I mean, I remember I laughed out loud when I read this thing, but then I stopped and I said, you know, this guy really is onto something. Yes, we all have to die. And at some point, that moment will come and you have to deal with it. But the only thing you can do about it is acceptance. There's nothing, you know, it's an inevitable thing. Meanwhile, however, if it is not today, then I can do other things. Then I have other priorities and I can redirect my mind and my attention to something that is more productive than dwelling on the fact that one of these days I'm going to die. Seneca, who was a little older, about a contemporary of Epictetus, a little older. And he writes, you know, we die every day,

meaning that every day we get closer and closer, obviously, to that moment. But he says, you know, when I get up in the morning and I realize that I probably have yet another day ahead of me, I say, yay, that's something to celebrate. So let me see what I can do with this day. And then if tomorrow there isn't going to be another one, then fine. One of these days it will have to happen anyway. So this dichotomy of control, this grouping things into things I can change and can't change or can do something about, there's another stoic

philosopher, Bill Irvine, who we actually talked to not that long ago, but he talked about breaking this into what he calls a trichotomy of control, meaning things we can control, things we can influence, and things that we have no control over. You felt like that weakens the core piece of this. Talk a little bit about why you don't think that model is as useful. I know Bill very well. We're friends, and with all due respect, and I think he's just wrong on that one. very well. We're friends and we all do respect. And I think he's just wrong on that one. What it does comes pretty natural. One of the reasons I said earlier on that I don't like to label this concept that we're talking about, dichotomy or control, is because people immediately

start thinking along similar lines to what Bill suggested. But wait a minute, there are things that I control, there are things that I don't control, and then there's a bunch of stuff in between, right? And yes, you can think that way, but then you're kind of missing the point. The point is that in a sense, almost everything is in between, right? There are very few things that you literally do not control. Like I don't control the weather, that's for sure. Right, right. What I do control is, of course, checking the weather forecast and decided whether to bring an umbrella or not to bring an umbrella, weather forecast and decided whether to bring an umbrella

or not to bring an umbrella, right? And if I do bring an umbrella, then it might seem like I'm now into one of those intermediate situations where I have some control over things. I may not control the weather, but I control the umbrella so I don't get wet as a result of it, right? It seems like a perfect example of something that is in between. But the point of Epictetus is, yes, but think about that particular situation very carefully. Everything that you can influence itself turns out to be dividable into these two categories,

the bit that you do control completely and the bit that you don't control at all. When the two come together, you have something intermediate, something that you're influencing, right? So in the example that I just gave, again, if you think about it for a minute, the only bits that I really control are my judgments. Do I need to check the weather forecast before I leave? That's a judgment call. And do I need to bring my umbrella or not? That's a judgment call. Once I made those decisions, then the rest is actually not up to me. Even if I bring my umbrella,

I might still get wet because it may pour down really heavy or with a lot of wind and whatever it is. And so my umbrella is entirely useless, right? Or my umbrella would be very effective. But whether the umbrella is effective or not, it's really not up to me. It's a question for the weather.

The only part that I control was the judgment call. Do I bring the umbrella or effective or not, it's really not up to me. It's a question for the weather. The only part that I control was the judgment call. Do I bring the umbrella or do I not, right? So I think that there is a danger. In fact, Bill has been warned about that by other modern stoic authors like Don Robertson, that if you start talking in terms of intermediate situations, then you kind of lose the force of the metaphor. And all of a sudden, now you don't have a guidance for action. Because if almost everything turns out to be intermediate, then the answer to

anything is, well, it depends. It begins to depend on the details. Instead, if you go with the actual dichotomy of control, then it's very clear. You have to remember only one thing. The only thing that is up to you are your judgments. That's it. Your decisions to act or not to act. That's it. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Obviously, these things get more subtle when we start talking about real-world situations. So if we were to talk about health, for example, I don't mean your trip to the hospital, but let's say health in general, right? There are certainly lots of actions I can take that make it more potentially likely that I will have good health. But as you say, at the end of the day, whether or not I do have good health, I don't have control over, right? You know, I can do the action that gives me, you know, based on what we know, today's best guess of what causes good health, but it's a roll of the dice, you know, to some degree.

And I think to your point, when you look at anything closely enough, we do see that we have the thing we can do, and then there's the point where that ends, and then what happens after is up to us. But we can make our best guess about how our actions will impact the world? Yes, that's right. So I mentioned a few minutes ago that actually an earlier version of the dichotomy of control is found in Cicero. And Cicero uses an interesting metaphor, which is known as the metaphor of the archer. He says, consider you're an archer trying to hit an enemy soldier with your arrows, right? What is up to you and what is not up to you?

And he goes through a list of things. And it turns out, however, that the only things that are up to the archer, again, are decisions, judgments, right? So he can decide how much to practice archery before the battle. That's always a good idea. He can choose which arrows and bow to actually take with him in battle. He can decide how to take care of those arrows and bow. He can decide where to aim, when to aim, and when to let the arrow go all of those are decisions they're all judgment calls but once the arrow leaves the bow that's it yeah nothing else is under his control right the enemy soldier might turn in the last moment and see the arrow coming and that's it he ducks

and the best shot is ruined or a gust of wind might interfere with the shot or all sorts of things could happen and you don't have any more decision-making on those things. Your will stops the moment in which you actually let go of the arrow. The same goes with health in general, you know, without the ER trips kind of stuff. Sure, I can make a lot of judgment calls. I have to make a lot of judgment calls based on what I think is the best information, right? So I can say, hey, I need to get to the gym at least three times a week

or for a certain number of hours. I can decide to eat in a certain way, decent portions, healthy foods, et cetera, et cetera. All of those are my decisions and they will certainly influence the outcome. There is no question about it. But in terms of the outcome itself, I can do all of

those things and still get sick. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it is helpful to keep that line pretty clear. Now, I think where it gets difficult, and this is something I thought maybe we could talk about next, which is one of the disciplines of stoicism. We talk about three disciplines, and maybe we'll get to all of them, but one of them is called the discipline of desire. And I'd love to talk about that in how it also relates to the dichotomy of control, because what people will say is, okay, great, I may not be able to control that thing, but I still really care deeply about it and I really want it. You know, I feel very attached to it. So talk about how the discipline of desire and aversion plays into that. First of all, you're absolutely right that the discipline of desire and aversion, as it's called,

it's directly connected to the dichotomy of control. The two are very deeply connected. So the three disciplines that you mentioned are actually, as far as we know, they are Epictetus' invention. So they are actually one of Epictetus' original contributions to Stoicism, which incidentally, let me open a small parenthesis here, makes a point that Stoicism has been changing from the beginning. Epictetus was living five centuries after the origin of Stoicism, and he was still making changes into the philosophy. So when people say,

oh, we should stick with the original, there is no such thing as the original, because philosophies and religions in general change over time. As soon as somebody has the initial idea, then somebody else is going to challenge that idea and make changes. So the three disciplines are one of Epictetus' original contributions to Stoicism. And there are three of them, as you mentioned, desire and aversion, action and assent. Maybe we'll get to the other two. But desire and aversion, the first thing that we need to understand here is that there is an issue with the English translation of these terms, especially as far as desire and aversion are concerned. First of all, aversions are the opposite of desires, right? So desire is something

I want, aversion is something I don't want, right? I have a desire for chocolate and I have an aversion to vanilla or something like that. However, the English words in this case are misleading because, you know, very often it has happened to me that people say, but wait a minute, I don't control my desires. If I have a desire for something, it just comes to me. It's an emotion. Yes, that is true as far as the modern English word desire is concerned, but that is not at all what Epictetus meant. If you go to the original Greek, desire is not exactly a great translation of that terminology. What Epictetus means is it's translated better as endorsed values, or in the case of aversions, endorsed disvalues.

So you make conscious decisions about what you value and what you do not value, or what you should value, let's put it that way, or should not value. For instance, let's go back to one of your earlier examples. You said, you know, I can do all sorts of things in order to improve my health. Well, that reflects a desire in the sense of Epictetus that is the judgment that health is valuable and sickness is not valuable, right? It's a disvalue. Now, it may not come natural to you to have certain values or these values. For instance, I do realize that

going to the gym is something that improves or at least maintain my health, but it's certainly, I have never, never had in my life a desire to go to the gym. When I get to the gym and, you know, the nice lady behind the counter says, you know, enjoy your workout. I said, what do you mean? nice lady behind the counter says, you know, enjoy your workout. I said, what do you mean? This is not a nice meal or a glass of wine. I'm not going to enjoy the workout. But I do it because I decided, I made the conscious decision that this is a positive value for me, that exercise is a positive value, right? Even though I don't desire it. In fact, I kind of averse. In the English sense of the term, I actually have an aversion toward exercise. But in the Epictetian sense of the term, I have a desire, meaning that

I decided consciously that physical fitness and exercise is actually a positive value. So the discipline of desire and aversion, therefore, is not about reshaping our desires in the normal English sense of the term. It's about prioritizing or more likely reprioritizing things. So Epictetus told these students that you probably have the wrong priorities in life and therefore you should change them. Now, in fact, he went on and said, you probably think that health and wealth and fame and reputation and career, you think that those are good things, don't you? And he says, fool, you're fools. Epictetus was pretty direct with his students. There's the direct part you like.

Yeah. He called them fools or slaves, which, you know, coming from a slave, it's kind of interesting. Slaves because they were slaves to common opinion. They were not thinking with their brains. They were slaves to common opinion. Oh, your parents and your friends tell you that being rich and famous is a good thing, so you just automatically agree. It's like, what are you, a fool?

Or are you a slave of other people's opinion? So Epictetus says, no, those things have value. I mean, he's not crazy. He's not saying that those things are without any value. But those are not the really important things in life. There is, in fact, only one really important thing in life, and that's your character, which for Epictetus is synonymous with your ability to judgment, of judgment, your ability to arrive at good judgment.

Now, that may sound strange, but think about it for a second and you realize that Epictetus is right. Why is it that the only thing that is truly valuable in life is judgment? Because from your judgments depend how you use everything else. Wealth, for instance, let's take money and, you know, wealth in general. Well, wealth is a good thing if you use it well. If you don't use it well, it's a bad thing. You know, if you're wealthy and then start corrupting politicians or buying your way out of, you know, criminal record or something, then it's a bad thing. It's not a good thing. In fact, another one of the things that Epictetus tells us right at the beginning of the discourses is, you know, so you want some money,

good for you. Now, how are, so you want some money, good for you. Now, how are you going to spend your money? How are you going to use that money? Who is it going to tell you how to use your money? The money isn't going to tell you. Your faculty of judgment is. And the same goes for everything else. We tend to think that health is a good thing. Like, wow, who would argue that? Well, I don't know. If I were thinking of a dictator, for instance, in this moment, I hope he's going to get sick. Health is not necessarily a good thing. It depends on how you use it. If you use your health to oppress other people, then it's not a good thing. The people will be better off if you were sick and dying rather than being healthy. The same goes

with wealth. Reputation, well, the same idea. If you have a good reputation and you use it well, that is, in fact, indeed a good thing. But if you use your reputation in order to corrupt other people, to swindle other people, et cetera, et cetera, then it's not a good thing. So it turns out, therefore, that there are no good or bad things per se. The things become good or bad only because you use them in a certain way, right? And I use that analogy also for things that are more controversial these days, such as certain technologies. Like, you know, it's pretty common these days to rail against social media. It's like, oh, you know, the disasters of humanity are this, this comes, they all originate from the social media. But social media are a tool, right. It's up to you how to use it.

In other words, it's up to your judgment how to use it, right? So are there bad uses of things like Facebook and Twitter? Hell yes. Are there good uses? Yes. I am regularly on social media and I use them only and exclusively either to keep in touch with my relatives from overseas, and that is a good thing, or to promote my work and the work of people that I think is worth reading. And that is also a good thing.

There's nothing bad about that. Now, of course, if on the other hand, you use social media to harass people or to promote fake news and stuff like that, then it's bad. But it's not the technology that is good or bad. The technology is neutral. Like for the Stoics, every external is neutral. What makes it a good external or a bad external is only our judgment. That's why Epictetus says to his students, you really need to reprioritize things. The only thing that you should be desiring in the sense of prioritize, is good judgments. And the only things that you should be averse to is bad judgments.

And then everything else follows from that. What's the process of going from the desires that arise somewhat naturally? Maybe I'll stay away from the word naturally because I think Stoics use that word in a certain way. I'm going to walk away from that word. Desires that arise as a result of either our biology or our conditioning. Right. And that conditioning could come from lots of different places.

But desires that arise through our biology or our conditioning, which are to seek pleasure and avoid pain, the sort of desires you were talking about. That's right. What's the process of going from those things that arise to cultivating wanting a good character? Because that can seem like a pretty big gap. Right. And a lot of retraining that needs to go to get to that point. There is a gap there, and it's an important one, which the Stoics do address. And yes, it is difficult. That's why Stoicism is, like Buddhism or again, like Christianity,

it's a lifelong commitment. It's training for the entire life. It's not like you're going to just do it today and then say, okay, I'm done. In a sense, in fact, it's like going to the gym. Imagine if I went to the gym, again, to use the same metaphor, and then I asked my trainer, you know, explanations about how to use properly the different machines and the weights, etc. And then I walk out and never come back in. I've done nothing. I understood the theory, right? Now I know how to use the machine. But if I actually don't commit and don't come back every day and use the machines, my muscles and my aerobic capacity aren't going to go anywhere other than down, right? So it's the same thing with your

character. The commitment is on a daily basis. Now, what about that gap that you were just talking about? That's why the Stoics have put so much emphasis on reason, or Epictetus uses the Greek word prohiresis, which is translated as judgment, again, your faculty of judgment, which is right here. The frontal parietal lobes of your brain are the ones that are in charge of your rational decision-making. And basically, you can think of stoicism as a lifelong program to improve your rational decision-making.

That's really what it comes down to. Now, you're saying, well, what about the gap between our, shall we call it naturally Epicurean attitude? You know, I want pleasure and I don't want pain, right? That's basically Epicurean philosophy. How do I go from there to things that actually do require pain, and maybe even to forego some pleasures, right? Well, in the same way in which you do other things, we use the metaphor of either exercise or health several times in this conversation. And for a reason, the Stoics themselves do. The Stoics often go back to either health. They say that a philosopher, meaning a teacher of philosophy, is like a doctor.

In fact, Epictetus at one point says, philosophy should feel like going to the doctor. If you're not in pain when you come out of it, you've done nothing. Right? Or they use the metaphor of the gym. The English word gym comes from gymnasium, which is the Roman translation of the original Greek word. And that's because the Stoics themselves often were spending a lot of time in the gymnasium, taking care of their body, not just their mind. So it's the same idea. Another example, which has also to do with health, but I think that addresses that gap that you're talking about. I think I'm not the only person in the world who would rather eat and drink to his own pleasure and contentment

than not, right? So I have that little problem. There is a gap between what my reason tells me I should eat and drink and what my body wants and craves, right? And that is, in fact, the result in part certainly of biology and in part even of social pressures and things like that. You know, when you go out with friends, oh, have a second drink, right? Or have a third drink or something like that. That's a social pressure. But there is also a result of biology. I mean, evolutionary biologists made the argument that one of the reasons we have so much trouble controlling our eating habits is because we evolved in a situation hundreds of thousands of years ago where food was not available all the time and cheap, right? As it

is today. I mean, today, if I feel like eating something, I literally have food available 24 hours a day for cheap. If we were back in the place to scene, I would have to get up, get my tools and start hunting, right? So that's a whole different thing. Totally. Yeah. So we have these cravings for eating and drinking that are disproportionate, either because of biological reasons or because of social reasons. They're disproportionate with what is reasonable. But if we are responsible adults and we're trying to do the right thing for ourselves in this case, what do we do?

I look at, you know, like just last night, I went out with friends and we had drinks. And then, of course, the waiter comes around and says, would you like another one? And everybody's looking at me and I look at the weather and I said, I would, but I'm not going to have it. So that's where your pro-hiresis kicks in. That's where your faculty of judgment kicks in and says, look, of course, you're craving another drink. That would be nice.

It would be even more relaxed than you're now and you're with friends. You know, why not? And your reason says, well, the reason why not is because you're going to feel sick later or this is not a good thing in general. That is exactly the same gap that you're talking about between behaviors that we crave naturally and behaviors that reason tells us we should engage in. And you can, again, think of the entire point of Stoic training as bridging that gap. That is the reason why, for instance, Seneca says at some point in one of his letters to his friend Lucilius, that are kind of an informal curriculum in Stoic philosophy. It says, virtue is nothing but right reason. So when the Stoics talk about what the virtue is going to do, well, the virtue thing to do is the reasonable thing to do.

And essentially, the rest is just practice. Once you understand that, once you understand that there is that gap and that your goal in life is to fill the gap so that you align your actual behavior with what is in your best interest as well as the Stoics would say in the interest of humanity in general, then that's it. You understood the theory. Now it's a question of practice. So it's very similar to once your trainer has told you

how to use the basic machinery in the gym, then you're done. The theory is not difficult. This is not rocket science. The practice, however, takes commitment. And, of course, inevitably, you will slide back, right? There will be situations where, to keep using the same example, I will go out with my friends, and this time I'm going to say yes to the waiter for the second drink. And then later I'm going to regret it, and I'm going to say, oh, damn it, I shouldn't have done that.

Well, the Stoics have an answer for that as well. Don't indulge in regret. Regret is a waste of time. Regret means that you are emotionally distraught by something you did. But the past, by definition, is not under your control. So what the hell are you doing spending your time, you know, beating yourself up? What you should do is to learn from the past and try not to repeat that in the future and say, look, let me analyze that situation.

What made me say yes when I should have said no? What kind of circumstances? And what can I do better? How can I preempt that the next time that something like this happens? That's what stoic training is about. It's about reflecting. That's why one of the major tools in the stoic toolbox is something that is referred to as philosophical journaling, where every night you analyze your more important actions and

you ask yourself, what did I do wrong? What did I do right? And what could I do better the next time around? And again, the point is not to indulge in regret, but to learn from your experiences and then warn yourself, prepare yourself for the next time around. It's like, okay, here's the plan. Here's what I'm going to do next. But never beat yourself up. If you made a mistake, fine. File it under the mistake category. We're all human beings after all. And then next time, try to remember, oh, wait a minute, under similar circumstances, I made a mistake.

So let me try to do different this time around. Well, Massimo, thank you so much for coming on the show. It has been such a pleasure talking with you. There's so many different things we could follow up on, and maybe we will do it another time. But thank you for being here. And I hope that whatever was going on health-wise with you is resolved, even though it's not in either your eyes' control. Thank you, Eric. It was a pleasure being here.

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