Category: Stoicism

Philosopher Marcus Aurelius urged people to get rid of ‘needless actions.’ Here’s how to do that today.

Philosopher Marcus Aurelius urged people to get rid of ‘needless actions.’ Here’s how to do that today.

“I just didn’t have the time.”

That’s one of the most common phrases I hear from my psychotherapy clients who’ve neglected to do the exercises we talked about — things like keeping a record of upsetting thoughts or practicing a mindfulness meditation technique. Over and over again, people call me and apologize uncomfortably for ignoring their homework, as though I’m there to scold them instead of help them.

I can certainly understand being stretched thin right now. We’re all living under pressures we’ve never experienced before. But in my own clinical practice, I’ve found an effective way to help my clients find more time, and that’s to challenge them to stop doing the things that do not serve their deeper goals in life.

It’s a tool I borrowed from the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius. In Meditations, his collection of writings, Marcus cites a quote from the Greek philosopher Democritus: “Do little if you want contentment of mind.” However, Marcus puts a Stoic twist on this ancient maxim, suggesting that we should do only what is necessary for achieving our fundamental goals in life:

For this will bring not only the contentment of mind that comes from acting aright, but also that which comes from doing little; for considering that the majority of our words and actions are anything but necessary, if a person dispenses with them he will have greater leisure and a less troubled mind.

Marcus describes a very simple technique for achieving this, one that we all can practice: Before engaging in an activity — at least one that might be of questionable value — ask yourself: Is this really necessary? Pause and consider whether doing it will actually be good for your well-being. He writes:

And we should dispense not only with actions that are unnecessary, but also with unnecessary ideas; for in that way the needless actions that follow in their train will no longer ensue.

It’s a powerful strategy that’s not unlike ones we use today in cognitive-behavioral therapy. (I recently wrote about Marcus’ influence on cognitive psychotherapy in my book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.) Here’s how to do it in practice.

Watch out for early warning signs

Whether it’s jumping on Facebook to kill an hour of your time or ruminating pointlessly about some old grievance in the privacy of your own mind, habits are processes with a beginning, middle, and end. To change them, we will have to notice when we’re doing them — something that usually happens only once we’re in the middle of them. The tried-and-tested way of doing that is to watch out for the early warning signs.

But with practice, we can catch ourselves in the act sooner, at the very beginning, or before we’ve even really started. The key is self-observation. That’s why the Stoics practiced a kind of mindfulness they called prosoche, which literally means “attention.” Pay close attention to the way you use your body and your mind in general, throughout the day. As soon as you notice the first inkling of a questionable habit, treat that as your signal that it’s time to stop and think. For example, you might begin to notice slight changes in your breathing or facial expression when you’re starting to get frustrated with a work project and are considering checking Instagram as mental relief.

Ask yourself: Is it necessary?

The rather abrupt-sounding question is actually Marcus’ way of making the consequences of his behavior more obvious to his mind. “Is it necessary?” means “Is it helping you?” What’s it doing for you — or your loved ones, or your community — in the long run?

Another way of putting it: In his book The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama suggested that we should pause to consider whether, in the long run, our own thoughts and actions lead to suffering or to happiness. Behavior therapists often ask a similar version: “How’s that working out for you?” (This open-ended phrasing is one of those tools of the trade that tends to be surprisingly effective.)

All the questions above direct our attention toward the function of whatever it is we’re doing. They ask: Where is this leading? Find the version of the question that suits you, but make sure it performs a similar function to Marcus’ “Is this necessary?” Focus your attention on the consequences of your action. Could it actually be leading you in the very opposite direction from where you want to be going in life?

When you’re able to spot the early warning signs of the behavior you want to change and question the value or consequences of your actions, you free yourself of habits that do not serve you. Now you’ll have a new problem: What are you going to do with all that time?

The Stoic Way to Find More Time in Your Day

Philosopher Marcus Aurelius urged people to get rid of ‘needless actions.’ Here’s how to do that today.

“I just didn’t have the time.”

That’s one of the most common phrases I hear from my psychotherapy clients who’ve neglected to do the exercises we talked about — things like keeping a record of upsetting thoughts or practicing a mindfulness meditation technique. Over and over again, people call me and apologize uncomfortably for ignoring their homework, as though I’m there to scold them instead of help them.

I can certainly understand being stretched thin right now. We’re all living under pressures we’ve never experienced before. But in my own clinical practice, I’ve found an effective way to help my clients find more time, and that’s to challenge them to stop doing the things that do not serve their deeper goals in life.

It’s a tool I borrowed from the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius. In Meditations, his collection of writings, Marcus cites a quote from the Greek philosopher Democritus: “Do little if you want contentment of mind.” However, Marcus puts a Stoic twist on this ancient maxim, suggesting that we should do only what is necessary for achieving our fundamental goals in life:

For this will bring not only the contentment of mind that comes from acting aright, but also that which comes from doing little; for considering that the majority of our words and actions are anything but necessary, if a person dispenses with them he will have greater leisure and a less troubled mind.

Marcus describes a very simple technique for achieving this, one that we all can practice: Before engaging in an activity — at least one that might be of questionable value — ask yourself:Is this really necessary?Pause and consider whether doing it will actually be good for your well-being. He writes:

And we should dispense not only with actions that are unnecessary, but also with unnecessary ideas; for in that way the needless actions that follow in their train will no longer ensue.

It’s a powerful strategy that’s not unlike ones we use today in cognitive-behavioral therapy. (I recently wrote about Marcus’ influence on cognitive psychotherapy in my book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.) Here’s how to do it in practice.

Read the rest of this article on Medium.

How Stoicism Teaches us to Welcome Refutation

How Stoicism Teaches us to Welcome Refutation

Nobody likes being wrong, we’re told. Least of all those individuals who suffer from pathological narcissism. They have to believe that they were right all along, even when it becomes obvious they are very much in the wrong.

Figures who live in the public eye, such as celebrities and politicians, if they become overly-incentivized by praise, risk turning this into a habit. As Aristotle once said, habits become our “second nature”. They solidify into character traits if we’re not careful.

Perhaps sometimes the person who gains the most is the one who loses the argument.

So do we always have to be right? The ancient Greek philosophers — who loved paradoxes — said the opposite: maybe true wisdom requires the capacity to delight in being proven wrong. My favourite expression of this idea comes from Epicurus:

In a philosophical dispute, he gains most who is defeated, since he learns the most. — Epicurus, Vatican Sayings, 74

How crazy is that? Perhaps sometimes the person who gains the most is the one who loses the argument. The one who wins the argument gains nothing, except perhaps some praise — but what does that matter? The one who loses, though, gains knowledge, and perhaps gets a step closer to achieving wisdom.

It wasn’t Epicurus who first stated this paradoxical insight, though. Much the same attitude was characteristic of the famous method of Socrates, over a century earlier.

I’m certainly not less happy if I’m proved wrong than if I’ve proved someone else wrong, because, as I see it, I’ve got the best of it: there’s nothing worse than the state which I’ve been saved from, so that’s better for me than saving someone else. — Socrates, in Plato’s Gorgias, 458a

Socrates goes on to say that if someone proves him wrong, he won’t get cross with them, even if they did with him. Instead, he jokes, he’ll make sure public records list that person as his greatest benefactor.

The Stoic school of philosophers, which was greatly influenced by Socrates, taught essentially the same thing. This article will focus on what one Stoic in particular, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, said about the benefits of being proven wrong. (For a more in-depth discussion of Marcus’ life and philosophy, see my book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.)

The Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius looked up to one man above all others: his adoptive father, the preceding emperor, Antoninus Pius. In his private notes, which we call The Meditations, Marcus carefully lists the qualities he most admires in Antoninus, despite the fact that by this time he had been dead for over a decade. Marcus does this more than once, in fact, and with such care, that I think it has all the hallmarks of an exercise that he’s engaged in repeatedly over the years.

If someone showed him he was wrong, rather than being offended, he was pleased.

We can think of this as Marcus’ attempt to study and emulate what today we would call the Emperor Antoninus’ leadership qualities. He tells himself to be, in every aspect of life, a student of Antoninus (Meditations, 6.30). It’s a fascinating analysis of the man’s character. However, for our purposes, I just want to draw attention to one of the things that Marcus says:

[Remember] how he would tolerate frank opposition to his views and was pleased if somebody could point to a better course of action. — Meditations, 6.30

Earlier in the book we find something related:

And most admirable too was his readiness to give way without jealousy to those who possessed some special ability, such as eloquence or a knowledge of law and custom and the like, and how he did his best to ensure that each of them gained the recognition that he deserved because of his eminence in his particular field. — Meditations, 1.16

In other words, although he was a hard-working and intelligent ruler, the Emperor Antoninus also had the wisdom to know when to listen to experts. Marcus admired this as an example of the man’s strength of character, self-awareness, and humility. If someone showed him he was wrong, rather than being offended, he was pleased. It didn’t hurt his pride or damage his ego, as we say today. Antoninus was a big enough man, and emotionally mature enough, not only to deal with criticism but to actively seek it out and welcome it as an opportunity for personal growth. That was one of the qualities which made him such an exceptional leader.

Stoic Therapy

Marcus says that it was his Stoic mentor, Junius Rusticus, who first persuaded him that his own character required correction and even therapy. (Literally, he uses the Greek word therapeia.) He also tells us that he often became irritated or angry with Rusticus and was thankful that he never lost his temper with him over the years. Elsewhere, Marcus tells us that showing a man his moral faults is like telling him he has bad breath or body odour (Meditations, 5.28). People often don’t like hearing it and so there’s an art to communicating criticism effectively. It requires a delicate combination of honesty and tact. Rusticus was adept at this. Nevertheless, Marcus found that it required lifelong training to genuinely welcome plain speaking and criticism from others.

Showing a man his moral faults is like telling him he has bad breath or body odour.

Marcus was probably about fifteen years old when he first met the philosopher Rusticus — there’s a hint that he may have a been a friend of his mother’s. Over three decades later, on the northern frontier, in the middle of the First Marcomannic War, Marcus was writing his famous Meditations. He’s still working on himself. He tells himself to always be ready to apply the following rule to any situation:

Be prepared to change your mind if someone is at hand to put you right and guide you away from some ill-grounded opinion. — Meditations, 4.12

Someone like Rusticus, although he’s now dead. Marcus adds, though, that this change of opinion should always be motivated by the belief that it is not only true but also serves justice and the common welfare. We should not, in other words, be swayed by others, such as the silver-tongued Sophists, merely because it feels easier to adopt a more popular opinion. As a leader, in particular, Marcus believes he should change his course of action when he’s persuaded that another way would actually be better for everyone.

We have a curious piece of evidence that Marcus meant this quite sincerely and had adopted this attitude from his youth. In a private letter to his rhetoric tutor, Marcus Cornelius Fronto, written when Marcus was aged about eighteen, he says:

I have received two letters from you at once. In one of these you scolded me and pointed out that I had written a sentence carelessly; in the other, however, you strove to encourage my efforts with praise. Yet I protest to you by my health, by my mother’s and yours, that it was the former letter which gave me the greater pleasure, and that, as I read it, I cried out again and again “O happy that I am!”

As we’ve seen, the Greek philosophers love paradoxes. Marcus knows that the majority of people think it’s a sign of weakness and subordination to acknowledge that someone else is right and you’re wrong. The Romans would have been tempted to say it’s slavish and, in their sexist way, they actually called Marcus an “old woman”. The powerful are always right, these men would say.

Marcus was the most powerful man in the known world, though, and he saw through this lie. He remembered that Antoninus, the greatest man he knew, welcomed criticism and was the first to change his mind when someone showed him he was wrong.

Remember that to change your mind and follow somebody who puts you on the right course is none the less a free action; for it is your own action, carried out in accordance with your own impulse and judgement, and, indeed, your own reason. — Meditations, 8.16

We enslave ourselves to external things and other people whenever we betray reason. True, absolute freedom would consist in doing what we know is right, regardless of the cost. Sometimes it takes courage to admit you’re wrong, and in that moment you’ve broken free. If you change your mind to please other people, sure enough, that’s a form of slavery. However, if it’s because you genuinely recognize that you were in error then the opposite is true — you’ve liberated yourself by admitting your mistake.

The Plague

Marcus lived during a terrible pandemic, known as the Antonine Plague, which historians believe may have killed up to five million Romans. It was certainly far more severe than the current novel coronavirus pandemic. He wrote The Meditations in the midst of the death and decay that the plague brought to the army camps and major cities of the empire. Yet he only mentions it once. And what he says might shock some people. He says that terrible though the Antonine Plague is, there’s an even more severe plague corrupting the souls of men.

Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, reputedly said that nature gave us two ears and one mouth so that we might listen twice as much as we speak.

Viruses, by themselves, do not cause pandemics. Without transmission, most viruses eventually disappear. Transmission is caused, though, by our behaviour. The novel coronavirus is spread mainly by humans in close proximity to one another breathing in contaminated droplets of saliva suspended in the air. That’s caused mainly by travel and too much physical proximity. We’ve known this since the start of the pandemic.

However, if everyone had listened to and followed the public health guidance issued by the world’s leading scientific experts on epidemiology, the virus would have spread much more slowly. The more slowly the virus spreads, the lower the overall mortality rate, because treatment procedures improve, medical resources improve, and eventually vaccines will, most likely, become available.

Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, reputedly said that nature gave us two ears and one mouth so that we might listen twice as much as we speak. Knowing when it’s sensible to be quiet and listen to the experts requires humility. As a young man, Marcus Aurelius watched his adoptive father, the emperor of Rome, happily deferring to the wisdom of experts whenever it was appropriate to do so. He was intelligent enough to realize when they knew more than he did. However, modern politicians often still view admitting their own limitations or acknowledging their mistakes as a sign of weakness. Saving face is more important to them than saving lives.

Most ancient Western philosophy is predominantly written by men and many of them were not “people of colour”, although it depends how you…

Well, I’m not sure what sort of answer you’re looking for to that question so if I have to be brief I might not give the response you want. Stoicism has a long history of political action. Social justice is one of the cardinal virtues in Stoicism — you can’t be a Stoic without seeking social justice. But because it pertains to things outside your direct control you’d pursue it with what Stoics call the “reserve clause” in mind, accepting the outcome without becoming frustrated.

Most ancient Western philosophy is predominantly written by men and many of them were not “people of colour”, although it depends how you define that term — it’s a modern racial construct. So we shouldn’t be surprised as Stoicism originated in a culture very different from our own. There are, however, quite a few modern female authors who write about Stoicism. And (this is a separate but related topic) the Stoics were explicitly advocating for certain types of equality between men and women in their writings, perhaps from the outset, based on the surviving evidence.

Just wanted to get in touch with our first real update about this publication. It’s kind of taken off like a rocket, to my surprise.

Just wanted to get in touch with our first real update about this publication. It’s kind of taken off like a rocket, to my surprise.

Stoicism — Philosophy as a Way of Life now has 43 writers (!) including some well-known authors and academics, such as John Sellars and Massimo Pigliucci. We have already published an astounding 290 articles on Stoicism and more are coming out every week. You can browse the most popular ones in our archive.

The most viewed recent articles include:

• Stoic advice: what do I do with my rage at the injustice I am witnessing? by Massimo Pigliucci

• How to be a Stoic on Social Media by Yours Truly

• Courage in Stoicism by Greg Sadler

• Hadrian: An Ideal Stoic Leader by Franklin Annis

• Stoicism and Comics an interview with Kasey Pierce

• The 7 Best Stoicism Videos by What is Stoicism?

• Marcus Aurelius: All-Round Philosophy by John Sellars

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Finally, please respond to this newsletter if you’re interested in becoming a writer and submitting a draft article or if you have any questions or suggestions for future articles.

Thanks, as always, for your support,

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On Conquering Oneself Rather than Fortune

On Conquering Oneself Rather than Fortune

In the 17th century, Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, described how his famous epistemological meditations led him to develop a moral code, based upon three central maxims.

The first two of these refer to respect for custom and consistency in life. However, Descartes’ account of his third maxim provides a remarkable expression of certain ideas that have a markedly Stoic flavour.

In the third chapter of his Discourse on Method, he writes:

My third maxim was always to try to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world, and generally to accustom myself to believing that there is nothing that is completely within our power except our thoughts, so that, after we have done our best regarding things external to us, everything that is lacking for us to succeed is, from our point of view, absolutely impossible. And this alone seemed to me sufficient to prevent me in the future from desiring anything but what I was to acquire, and thus to make me contented.

He continues by explaining that we tend by nature to desire only what we perceive as within the realms of possibility. In some cases it’s obvious that something is, for all practical purposes, unachievable. We all accept that it’s pointless to desire things that we know are totally beyond our power — like wishing we’d been the first man on the moon. That would be absurd. However, in many cases the situation appears more ambiguous.

Nevertheless, if we were to regard everything external to us to be equally beyond our power, says Descartes, we would have no more regret about lacking those of which we’re deprived “than we have in not possessing the kingdoms of China or Mexico”.

…making a virtue of necessity, as they say, we shall no more desire to be healthy if we are sick, or to be free if we are in prison, than we do to have a body made of a material as incorruptible as diamonds, or wings to fly like birds.

This is one form of the Stoic contemplation upon necessity and determinism. It is clear, as the ancient philosophers observed, that nobody really feels pity for an infant because it cannot yet walk or speak, although we may feel differently about an adult who is mute or lame. People do not become frustrated because they cannot grow wings and fly but they do often envy the wealth and possessions of others.

And this alone seemed to me sufficient to prevent me in the future from desiring anything but what I was to acquire, and thus to make me contented.

Accepting that something is outside of our control often seems to mean that we give up our desire for it but people often seem to torture themselves with goals that, although possible for other people or for them at another stage in life, are not currently within their power to achieve. For example, many people wish they could change the past, or wish that they were rich and famous, demands which are either illogical, physically impossible, or unrealistic given the limitations of their current circumstances.

Descartes continues by admitting that “long exercise is needed as well as frequently repeated meditation, in order to become accustomed to looking at everything from this point of view”. However, he says that he believes that it was mainly in this practice that the secret of certain philosophers consisted “who in earlier times were able to free themselves from fortune’s domination and who, despite sorrows and poverty, could rival their gods in happiness.” This could apply to many ancient philosophers, although his remarks bear an obvious resemblance to the way that the Stoics were traditionally described.

For occupying themselves ceaselessly with considering the limits prescribed to them by nature, they so perfectly persuaded themselves that nothing was in their power but their affection for other things, and they controlled their thoughts so absolutely that in this they had some reason for reckoning themselves richer, more powerful, freer, and happier than any other men who, not having this philosophy, never thus controlled everything they wished to control, however favoured by nature and fortune they might be.

In short, when it is beyond our power to obtain something we should admit it clearly and unambiguously to ourselves. We should not allow our desire to linger on because of some ambiguity. Like a fish that slips through our nets, we should accept that it is gone for good. Perhaps it once seemed possible that it could be ours but it is no longer so. In that case, rather than continuing to desire it we should file it away under the category of “absolutely impossible” so that we can forget about it and move on.

Applying Stoicism to Online Debates

Applying Stoicism to Online Debates

I run several online groups, including the largest Facebook group for Stoic philosophy — it currently has over 78k members. I’ve been running large online discussion forums since way back in 1999, when I created my first Yahoogroup. Since then I’ve written several books on applying Stoic philosophy to modern life. The most recent was called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. A good Stoic would follow Epictetus’ famous slogan when on social media: endure and renounce. So when it comes to getting sucked into arguments online or wasting too much time on Twitter and Facebook — I should probably know better by now.

I am convinced that Stoicism is especially relevant to the challenges of coping with social media.

I guess I do have the excuse that social media has been an important part of my job for as long as I care to remember now. So maybe I can’t avoid it completely. I’ve been thinking for a long time now, though, that I should be applying the teachings of Stoicism more consistently to my own online behaviour and the way I deal with arguments, etc. I get plenty of practice. If you write books then trolls will eventually come after you online. Also, if you run forums often you’ll have to ban people for becoming abusive, usually following complaints from other group members. Most of the time they’ll be angry and you’ll get quite a few abusive messages from them. In this article, I’m going to explain why I think this is really just a modern version of an age-old problem and how some specific techniques from ancient Greek philosophy can help us.

Social Media as the Digital Sophist

Funnily enough, I am convinced that Stoicism is especially relevant to the challenges of coping with social media. That surprises many people. They can see that it might help a bit but why would an ancient philosophy, one that originated in 300 BC, offer anything special when it comes to problems that only arise in the Age of the Internet? Well, here’s the thing… Socrates developed his philosophy in response Athenian intellectuals called the Sophists. The Stoics stand very much in the Socratic tradition — they further developed the practical application of his ideas. Maybe you’ve heard of the Sophists. I’m going to say that Facebook is a Sophist.

In fact, social media in general, IMHO, is the digital equivalent of the ancient Sophists. Let me explain. The Sophists were orators who often became fabulously wealthy very quickly if they achieved celebrity status. They would go from one Greek town to another, like rock stars on tour, delivering speeches to audiences consisting of hundreds, perhaps even a thousand or more, wealthy young men. They claimed to teach wisdom and improve their listeners. You could say they promised to impart sophistication, an English word with a long history that actually derives from “Sophist”.

Now, curiously, Socrates actually said that the Sophists often appeared indistinguishable from philosophers. They might talk about the same things, often about the virtues. Indeed, the Sophists would borrow concepts and arguments from philosophers. Likewise, philosophers, even Socrates himself, would often quote from the Sophists. You might even loosely describe the Sophists as sort of like philosophers. However, Socrates said there was a fundamental difference that actually meant they were quite opposed to one another. Although they may both say identical things, at times, about virtue, they were doing so in a different way and for different reasons.

The Sophists would say whatever people wanted to hear. They would literally, when delivering speeches, compete with one another to win the most applause from a crowd. You could call that a simple algorithm. If they borrowed something from Socrates and people applauded — they’d keep saying it. If the audience weren’t impressed, though, they’d change their tune and try saying something else. They were only interested in the appearance of wisdom — at least that’s what Socrates alleges — and not the real pursuit of it. Social media works in pretty much the same way. Content that gets the most likes, or the most engagement, gets the most exposure. It’s a popularity contest — the ancient Sophists would have been in their element today.

Modern-day self-improvement gurus, motivational speakers, and social influencers are also the Sophists’ descendants.

Now, sometimes that means the Sophists actually said things that were true and virtuous — they appeared wise and good. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, though, isn’t it? They didn’t really live in accord with their own teachings. How could they? They changed them to suit whatever their audiences wanted to hear. They also tended not to be very good at defending them from rational criticism. Socrates notes that they liked to deliver long speeches, where the audience would lose track of the steps involved in the argument. He employed a completely different method, known as the “question and answer” approach, which required clear definitions of key terms and proceeded more slowly and cautiously, one (relatively) short statement at a time, so that each could be properly evaluated in turn.

That’s a simple observation that’s often forgotten today: it’s easy to blind people with rhetoric if you’re allowed to speak for a long time without interruption. What if the assumption upon which your entire argument is based turns out to be false though? In reality, that’s often the case. The audience lose sight of that pretty quickly, though, as long as you keep talking and can maintain their attention. Today we get to watch videos online of people ranting for ten minutes about the political hot potato of the day, from “Antifa” and “cultural Marxism” to the “alt-right” and even the word “racism”. It would be less fun to watch if someone interrupted them after one minute and asked them to clearly define these terms. That would be more likely to happen in a face to face conversation but we seldom get that opportunity online, for various reasons. So, yes, I’m saying that, in a sense, social media makes us all stupider.

How did the Sophists win applause? By capturing and maintaining the attention of the audience. By using rhetoric to manipulate their emotions, often stirring up anger or anxiety, pride or patriotism, etc. It’s the art of persuasion rather than logic, which seeks praise rather than truth, and does so by every shortcut available. Sophists would dress in fine clothes and develop their speaking voices to create an attention-grabbing appearance, by seeming exotic, unique, and important. They had the status of celebrity experts but were ultimately professional showmen. Modern-day self-improvement gurus, motivational speakers, and social influencers are also their descendants.

So what’s the problem? Well, suppose your real goal is to get the biggest rounds of applause from the largest crowds possible because that’s how you make the most coin. You’re going to find yourself in competition with a bunch of other people doing the same thing. So you’re engaged in a battle for the public’s attention and their approval— to catch their eye in the first place, keep their attention as long as possible, and win their praise. One easy way to get their attention is to say something shocking. Then you keep their attention by provoking an emotional state of fear and anger, and puffing them up with a sense of their own importance. Then you win their approval by telling them whatever they want to hear — like an echo chamber.

Yup, that’s basically what social media, the news, and politicians, are trying to do to you every day as well. “Trump supporter leaves CNN anchor speechless”, the headline says, or “Biden’s comment on black voters leaves ‘The Five’ [Fox News] speechless” — they both use essentially the same type of emotive rhetoric to mess with your head and hijack your attention for five or ten minutes. And you know what else? I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Internet trolls do more or less the same thing. The media make money by gaining your attention because their sponsors want to sell you things. Trolls just desperately crave your attention because they’re ultimately narcissists who feel more lonely than they’re capable of recognizing or admitting to themselves — they need your reaction to temporarily fill the emotional black hole inside them.

How Stoicism Kills the Digital Sophist

Then Socrates walked into town, into the agora, and the game changed. He started asking people difficult questions, which often provoked their anger, but he never got into arguments with them. That took self-discipline on his part. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus repeatedly tells his students that they should take Socrates as their role model. This might surprise you but do you know what he says the main thing is that we can learn from Socrates?

Now this was the first and chief peculiarity of Socrates, never to be irritated in argument, never to utter any thing abusive, any thing insulting, but to bear with abusive persons and to put an end to the quarrel. If you would know what great power he had in this way, read the Symposium of Xenophon, and you will see how many quarrels he put an end to. — Epictetus

Sometimes people, who don’t know very much about Socrates, say that he was the Athenian equivalent of an Internet troll. He was actually the opposite. Socrates didn’t try to provoke arguments. His goal was always to get a step closer to wisdom, for both his own sake and that of the person with whom he was conversing. Socrates was always exceptionally polite to other people, even when, as often happened, they became abusive or even violent toward him because they didn’t like being questioned so much. Epictetus understood this aspect of Socrates very well and emphasized it to his students.

Socrates and the Stoics also didn’t allow themselves to be baited by the Sophists. In fact, they actively employed counter-measures against the emotive power of rhetoric. How? Well, the Stoics developed this into an art form that consists of many different psychological techniques. The most fundamental is perhaps the separation of our judgments, particularly our value judgements, from external events. (I call this “cognitive distancing”, borrowing a technical term from cognitive psychotherapy.) This notion is summed up in perhaps the most famous quote from Epictetus: “It’s not things that upset us but rather our opinions about them.”

So let’s begin translating this into practical advice for the modern world… When someone gets angry with you or tries to make you angry online, you should remind yourself of this quote from Epictetus. Ask yourself, as Epictetus does in the very next sentence actually, whether other people would necessarily feel the same way about what just happened. How, for instance, might Socrates, Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius respond to an Internet troll? Exploring these alternative perspectives can create something we call “cognitive flexibility”, the ability to entertain several ways of looking at an event. By contrast, when people are really upset they tend to get rigidly locked into a particular viewpoint, and fused with that way of thinking. It’s normal and healthy to be able to say: “I guess I could be angry about this… or I could view it differently.”

In a sense, you’re choosing to be angry. So a Stoic would also consider the consequences of doing that. One of their favourite slogans is that “Anger does us more harm than the things we’re angry about.” Marcus Aurelius actually imagines saying this to someone who’s angry with him, possibly even his own son, Commodus.

No, my son, we were born for something other than this; it is not I who am harmed, it is you, my son, who are causing harm to yourself. — Meditations, 11.18

Getting annoyed with the Internet troll or the alarmist news that Facebook’s algorithms think you want to read, will do you moral harm, destroying your character, whereas the most that external events can do is kill you. And Internet trolls can’t really do much harm at all unless you let them. (Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me, as the rhyme goes.) That goes for people who are angry with you as well — it’s their choice ultimately. You’ll find a lot of people online get angry just because you don’t agree with them. Other people respond very differently to that, though. And they do themselves more harm by getting angry than you ever could just by saying something they don’t like.

Now, that’s no reason to deliberately go around saying provocative things, though. Quite the opposite. Unless you get a kick out of upsetting people, why bother if it’s not helping anyone? Nobody is perfect. We should anticipate that other people will sometimes get mad unnecessarily. They’re only human after all. That’s why Socrates was known for being so patient and courteous to others. He had no desire to harm or upset anyone but he accepted the fact that sometimes they would get angry even though he was trying to help them.

Another important aspect of Stoicism is sophrosune, which is traditionally translated as “temperance” in Victorian English or nowadays as “moderation”. Those aren’t perfect translations, though. For the ancient Greeks, it was a more subtle concept, which implied a kind of moral wisdom and self-awareness. In many ways, it also resembles what we mean today by mindfulness. In one of the Socratic dialogues, Plato’s Charmides, the boys wrestling in the gymnasium are asked to define the virtue of sophrosune and they give what seems to them the most obvious example: speaking quietly and walking slowly, as opposed to running around being noisy and boisterous, and annoying others.

Socrates quickly notes that this isn’t exactly wrong but it’s too specific to be a good definition. However, it’s still a good example of one type of moderation. It’s about having the self-awareness to realize what’s appropriate. The person who speaks loudly and annoys other passengers on the bus, without realizing, lacks this virtue — they’re not being mindful of their surroundings. We should use social media with moderation and self-awareness. We’re entering into a wrestling match, in fact, with algorithms and obnoxious individuals who are out to trap us by grabbing our attention and provoking an emotional reaction.

Some philosophers, such as the Epicurean sect, might advise us simply to withdraw from contact with things that ruffle our feathers. The Stoics think we need to face these challenges, though. Nevertheless, that’s necessarily going to require the deployment of psychological counter-measures, which will take at least a little bit of consistent effort on our part. We have to be motivated to help ourselves, in other words. Moreover, the only realistic way to deal with a threat like the digital Sophist is to exercise more or less permanent vigilance. That’s precisely what the Stoics taught. They call it prosoche, or continual “attention” to the way you’re using your mind, particularly your value judgements and how they interact with your emotions and desires.

The Stoics have various ways of helping us to do this. One would be to pause and ask yourself whether each interaction is really necessary. Does it actually serve your fundamental goal in life? For Stoics, that’s synonymous with asking whether it’s going to make you more fulfilled, whether it’s going to help you flourish as a human being, or whether it’s leading you astray, in the opposite direction from genuine flourishing (eudaimonia).

Psychologists now know that ­people often engage in habits they consider pleasurable — ­from social media to crack cocaine — as a way of distracting themselves from or suppressing unpleasant feelings. […] Someone compulsively checking social media might stop and ask if not reading each individual notification would ­really be so unbearable. If you practice self-­awareness in this way, you’ll often (but not always) realize that the plea­sure you obtain from such habits is actually much less than you previously assumed. — How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

Someone says something you don’t like online. Stop and think. Do you really need to respond? Does it actually benefit you or them? If you’re not sure then guess what? The answer is that it probably benefits you more to exercise restraint and develop the virtue of sophrosune. That’s a good guide in life. Precisely when it takes an effort to hold back, even if you’re not sure what else to do, learning to hold yourself back is probably going to make you stronger. You can always, as Epictetus tells his students, wait until your emotions have settled down naturally, and respond later if it still seems worthwhile.

Conclusion

There are many ways in which Socrates and the Stoics help us to deal more wisely with the digital Sophist, or social media, and Internet trolls, etc. I believe that the most powerful tool we have available in this respect is simply to shift the discussion on to this question. I spent years training psychotherapists, a notoriously argumentative profession, and I became very aware that if I started talking about ways in which we can communicate better and learn more in group discussions, well, that changed the whole atmosphere dramatically. So let me ask you: how can the teachings of Socrates and the Stoics help us to live more virtuously in cyber-space?

How would Marcus Aurelius use Facebook? Some people, I know say he wouldn’t, but I’m certain he would. We’re told the Stoics believed that a wise man engages in public life, if nothing prevents him, and that the good naturally have an inclination to write books, or blog posts, that help other people. So how would a Stoic use social media wisely? What do you think their teachings tell us about responding to argumentative people online. I think the famous slogan of Epictetus can help: endure and renounce. We should be mindful of ourselves and learn to endure provocative behaviour without getting upset about it, and renounce our desire to respond angrily or to indulge excessively in online behaviour that’s not contributing to eudaimonia. What do you think, though?