The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence?
I think this is the main reason I am drawn towards stoicism. I always enjoyed the philosophy courses I took but stoicism has more practical applications in real life.
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The match to desert.
Sounds great. Just added to my kindle.
I am copy and pasting the email I received from the Daily Stoic today. I enjoyed it because it reminded me that practicing Stoicism doesn’t mean being a robot and stuffing emotions:
"The popular image of the Stoic is of the unfeeling beast. The tough person, gritting, gutting, it out.
But this is wrong.
Just look at the story we have of Marcus Aurelius, consumed with grief. After the death of one of his favorite teachers, a young Marcus could barely drag himself out of bed. One of his attendants tried to rouse him from this seemingly un-Stoic state, thinking it was the right thing to do, but Antoninus Pius, Marcus’s adopted stepfather, stepped in and stopped him.
“Let him be human for once,” he said, “for neither philosophy nor the empire takes away natural feelings.”
This is an important counterpoint to the Stoic mythology of the superman, the unfeeling, invincible, immovable philosopher robot. Of course a Stoic grieves! Of course they love and favor and get knocked down by life. A Stoic gets scared, a Stoic mourns, a Stoic worries.
A Stoic feels .
There must have been many such moments in Marcus’s tragic life. He lost multiple young children. He lost his wife. He lost Antoninus. He lost Rusticus. He lived and led through a terrible plague. We know he cried then too. Who wouldn’t?
If he had stuffed those emotions down, it wouldn’t have made him tougher. It would have hurt him. It would have been to swallow emotional poison that would have made him more irritable, more vulnerable—vulnerable to the straw that would eventually break the camel’s back. No, it was good that he felt these things, processed them, and worked through them.
What a Stoic does try to do is to not be carried to excess by any of these natural feelings. We try not to be enslaved or destroyed by them. Antoninus intervened and gave Marcus the space to mourn the loss of a dear teacher who had just died because that was a perfectly reasonable response. Now, if a year later, or even a month later, Marcus still wasn’t getting out of bed? You can imagine Antoninus would have intervened there too, but on the same side as the attendant this time, because to allow death to ruin the lives of the living is not natural or human either.
It’s OK to let it out sometimes, don’t feel bad if that’s what you need. Life can be a bit of a pressure cooker at times, and like an actual pressure cooker, you’ve got to hit the release valve every so often so that the whole thing doesn’t explode in your face. You’re only human. So be human—not just once, but all the time—and let yourself feel."
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Stoicism seems to overlap quite a bit with Zen philosophy, which for some reason resonates with me better.
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His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools – the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans – and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods (Discworld, #13)
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So I just finished the book The Stoic Challenge by William Irvine, and it raised an interesting idea.
Previously I’d thought of the tactic of Premeditatio Valorum only as a preparation mechanism. PV is the idea that we visualize all of the worst outcomes, so that we’re not surprised by them and prepared to deal with them if they do occur. For example, as an online poker player, I might visualize that I’m playing a tough pro and he happens to win 4 crucial coinflips in a row vs. me. In the past I’d probably whine about how unfair this is, but maybe by using PV I can plan out a proper reaction beforehand using my more logical mind.
However, Irvine recommends using Premeditatio Valorum as an anchoring technique. That is, imagining all the ways our lives could have turned out worse and appreciating how lucky we are to be where we’re at. As humans, it’s so easy to think of all the ways things could be better: if I’d won that MTT, if I had gotten the promotion, cool car, etc. etc. But instead of this thought pattern, we can try using PV as an anchoring technique and realize that there are hundreds of small ways that are lives could have been much worse and instead opting for the route of appreciation.
Finally, he raised the idea of framing setbacks as Stoic tests, and not as setbacks. He uses the example of a delayed/canceled flight at the airport. Most would react with anger at the inconvenience, but he advocates catching ourselves within the first 5 seconds and saying to ourselves something like “ahh this is another test by those crafty Stoic gods. I could react with anger, or I could realize the situation is out of my control and take control of my emotions and remain content, thereby passing the Stoic test with flying colours.”
Anyway, not really sure where I’m going with this post, but just figured I’d pass it along as I find these ideas very interesting, especially as someone who often struggles w/tilt and anger while playing online poker. Sometimes it helps me integrate ideas by writing them out and maybe someone else will find some utility in this post.
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BTW, all in all I found the book to be so so. The 2 ideas I presented were very interesting for me, but the rest of the book is kinda filler and just rehashed ideas/anecdotes I’d seen elsewhere.
I also recently read The Stoic Guide to a Happy Life by Pigliucci and found that to be an excellent read. Basically he takes the works of Epictetus and updates them for 21st century living. I really like his writing and will likely dive into another of his books soon. Also reading Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday, but that’s more of a light read to learn a bit more about the key figures in the Stoic movement rather than any insight to be gleaned.
Didn’t realize it had a name, but I do this. Sometimes, it puts me through an emotional wringer because I cause myself to endure all the feelings I might have if I actually experienced those worst outcomes.
Maybe it’s not healthy to force myself to taste the sadness I would feel due to a sudden death in the family, but sometimes I just sit there and go through that.
Oops, I mis-spoke. It’s actually Premeditation Malorum. I suppose “malo” from Latin meaning bad/evil.
Anyway, yah I can see the practice being a double-edged sword. Maybe you might appreciate your current life more, but the point of these practices is that we experience the goods without being too affected by the bads, but if we have to experience them anyway with the negative visualization practice, then maybe it kinda defeats the purpose.
As for me, I think I will use it more as a re-framing exercise. Instead of comparing my present situation to a positive one, why not compare it to negative outcomes? Treat is as a kind of gratitude exercise and appreciate what I have rather than lament what I do not have.
BTW, I believe poker is an almost perfect platform to put to practice many Stoic ideas. Amor fati, love and acceptance of whatever happens, even if it’s 10 bad beats in a row. Premeditation Malorum, planning for every possible negative outcome and being prepared. Stoic tests, treating these setbacks as a game in and of itself, rather than viewing them as personal affronts. I think a poker/Stoic book could be very interesting.
I like the idea of using the technique in both ways. Imagining the 1000 ways the warrior will die in battle can be very “stoic centering” imo and using it as an anchor for preferred indifferents is very helpful as well.
ETA: I agree with you that the poker table is a great stoic training ground.
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But doctor, I’m the great Pigliucci