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You Are Not Your Thoughts But You Are How You Think (Episode 157)
683 Plays10 days ago
Michael and Caleb explore how understanding ourselves as our faculty of choice—not our bodies, possessions, or reputation—transforms our approach to life's challenges.
Learn how clarifying what we are (and aren't) guides self-improvement and decision-making, unlocks insights in Stoic theory, and ultimately leads to a more tranquil existence.
(06:10) Why It Matters Who We Are
(09:30) What Are We?
(16:28) You Are Not Your Thoughts
(24:25) Personal Identity And Indifferents
(30:29) Solving What Is Up To You
(34:34) So How Do We Live?
(43:22) We Really Really Cannot Be Harmed By Others
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Transcript
Introduction to Stoicism and Personal Identity
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to And today we're going to be talking about stoicism and personal identity. ah Michael put together some notes um to go through this one. It's both, of I think, of an interesting intellectual topic, but gets at one of these core questions, you know, who are we, what are we, as humans, which has clear upshot, I think, for guiding one's life, providing a direction really to Stoic philosophy. So I'm excited to ah go through this.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there, Caleb, where it's one of those things that seems very intuitive, very obvious. Maybe people don't ask that question very often as in, who am I? Maybe they they think, who do I want to be?
00:01:00
Speaker
what what kind of life do I want for myself? But they might not ask that and even deeper question of what am I essentially, what is not me? um And the Stoics took these questions to be really, really important, um really essential to the project of living a good life and self-improvement. And so they're important questions to ask. And we'll i'll talk but talk about what the Stoics thought about personal identity and then the implications that has for living well, for ethics, and for self-improvement.
00:01:30
Speaker
Before we do, I wanted to kick things off with a couple quotes by Epictetus that shows how this question of personal identity can really ground ah ethical questions and questions of how to live well.
Epictetus on External vs. Internal Pride
00:01:41
Speaker
So the first is from Handbook 6. So this is Epictetus's Handbook, Chapter 6. He says, Be not elated at any excellence, not your own. If a horse should be elated and say, I am handsome, it might be endurable.
00:01:56
Speaker
But when you are elated and say, I have a handsome horse, know that you are elated only on the merit of the horse. What then is your own? The use of impressions. So that when you're in harmony with nature in this respect, you will be elated with some with some reason for a good reason, for you'll be elated at some good of your own." um Just to translate that, just to take out the ah more outdated language, basically saying,
00:02:26
Speaker
It's a bit weird when people are proud of things outside of themselves. They go, I have a really nice horse, and today you might say, well, I have a really nice car, or you might even point to to your kids or something. Oh, look how impressive my children are, or my family, or if you inherit money, your bank account, or something like this. And he says, that's really weird. It's a really weird thing to do to point to these things that aren't you and be proud of them. It's a little strange, if you see it says.
00:02:51
Speaker
Um, you know, substitute a horse, some people are still proud of their horses, uh, horse raisers today, but substitute that for whatever you want. Another one where identity comes up. This is Handbook 9. Epictetus says, disease and is an impediment to the body, but not to the will, unless the will itself chooses. Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the will. Add this reflection on the occasion of everything that happens to you, for you will find that it is an impediment to something else, but not to yourself.
00:03:23
Speaker
And so there's another idea of personal identity, which is when you think you've been harmed or you think something bad has happened to you, Epictetus has pointed out a lot of the times what's ah happening, the bad thing that's happening, the harmful thing or the disagreeable thing, that's happening to something that isn't actually you. um Maybe that's the body, maybe that's you know your leg in this example, or maybe that's your horse.
00:03:47
Speaker
from the previous example. But Epictetus is pointing out, look, these things, ah you know, bad for what's bad for the body is not necessarily bad for you. What's bad for your horse is not necessarily bad for you.
Stoic Views on Harm and Identity
00:03:58
Speaker
And that's another question of of one of identity. So I wanted to open with those to to dis situate ourselves before we get into the nitty gritty. any Any thoughts on those two quotes, Caleb? Well, they're two good examples, I think, of how identity matters both for positive evaluations of our lives, you know, I'm happy because of this external fact, wealth, maybe even that case is I think is pretty obvious for especially if you're familiar with stoicism, but even achievement, you know, because I achieve something external, I'm happy, or I think something good happened to me, because of that sense of achievement. And then the line about, you know, disease is is an impediment to the body, but not to the well, I think brings out just how
00:04:41
Speaker
radical Epictetus's view on this and how both negative evaluation identity matters for negative evaluations as well in really, I think, a a challenging challenging way.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point. yeah well I didn't even make that connection, but I think you're dead on about, you know, it's not just the way to not be sad about bad things. It's also folk clarifying this idea of our of personal identity of what we are.
00:05:17
Speaker
essentially is also a way to stop us from ah falling victim to this to to these positive feelings. And ultimately, the stoic thinks that these positive feelings will come back to bite us and to harm us down the road. yeah it's not just They're not just sticking their nose up at somebody who's happy about their horse. They're pointing out that that's a way of thinking about the world that will lead to more suffering, lead to more bad than good because it's an incorrect way of thinking about the world.
00:05:45
Speaker
It is not just the, you know, they're not just being snooty and being like, well, you know, that who cares about your horse? Like stop bragging. It's, uh, it's saying that you've kind of, you've twisted, you you have a twisted perception of what you should be proud of. You're extending that outside of yourself and that's not a good way to live. Um, yeah, great points.
00:06:06
Speaker
So those ideas from Epictetus, they ground us in that this discussion of personal identity. And so let's talk about it some more and what that means to the Stoics. So the question of personal identity really matters to Stoicism because Stoicism is about improving ourselves. It's a virtue ethic.
00:06:22
Speaker
And virtue is about achieving excellence, and the that's what virtue means. That's what Areté in the Greek means, about being an excellent thing. And the Greeks thought, and anything could have virtue, right? You could have a virtuous horse.
00:06:38
Speaker
to use the same example. And that would be a horse that is great in the way that horses are great. ah Great in the way that ah you should judge a horse. That might be its speed, its agility, maybe its ah ability to listen to instructions. and And so everything has a set of qualities that you it's appropriate to evaluate a thing by. you know If we evaluate a horse by how well it does math or how well it paints,
00:07:05
Speaker
The stoics would say, well, you're kind of missing the point. You're you kind of getting away from the essential nature of the horse. And so likewise, we have an essential nature as humans. And a good life is about maximizing or achieving that nature. It's about achieving human excellence. And um so it matters very much, in that case, what a human is. What a human essentially is, what we essentially are. Because if we think we are um you know if we think we are our body,
00:07:41
Speaker
then a good human life becomes one of the elite athletes, one where people that have lameness in the leg have a bad life. People that have disease are necessarily unhappy regardless of the other parts parts of their life because we are our bodies.
00:07:58
Speaker
But if we're not our bodies, then those things matter a lot less, or they matter in a different way and in that they they matter in in terms of how they interact with what we actually are, like our character or our personality. So that's that's a bit of the the stakes of it before we get into what the Stoics actually thought we were.
Proheiresis: The Faculty of Choice
00:08:16
Speaker
um Anything to add there?
00:08:20
Speaker
yeah Well, I like this line you have here in the notes. you know this Why does personal identity matter? This matters because stoicism is about improving ourselves, so it matters ah what we are. I think that's an excellent summary. Many worldviews have this account of what we are fundamentally and that you know in a way determines what our deepest good is how we should make decisions. And I think but part of stoicism that is maybe underrated is
00:08:56
Speaker
how much ah suffering or how many of our mistakes come from misidentifications of what we're identical to. So I think in terms of you know other worldviews, Buddhism is probably most well known for making that point that so much suffering is due to a mistaken view about personal identity. But I think that's an equally useful frame for the Stoics as we'll get into. So yeah that's ah another way to motivate the the importance of of of this question. Yeah, you're right. we see We see it a lot in Buddhism, but it it pops up almost everywhere. or if it If it doesn't pop up, it's almost taken for granted because it's the it's it's that it's that baseline question. And I think that i think you're right that the Buddhists were one of the people to really
00:09:48
Speaker
hammer down how much is at risk if you get this wrong ah you know if maybe if other if other ethical schools take it for granted but yeah we're talking about a person and matters what a person is the Buddhists were really really clear that yeah well if you get that wrong if you slip in that conception there's a lot of there's a lot at risk and I and we'll get to this the stoics feel the same way there's a lot of risk if you get this wrong um so what are we essentially for the Stoics. Where does our identity lie? I'm going to base this on what Epictetus says because I think Epictetus makes this, the of all the Stoics, he's the most clear about this that I've read and he makes this the the such a fundamental part of his philosophy.
00:10:30
Speaker
I think if we go back into the earlier Stoics, you're probably going to get an answer that is similar, which is that every Stoic is going to say that we are our minds, we are our character. um More technically, the ancient Stoics before Epictetus are going to say that we're our hegemonicon.
00:10:50
Speaker
which is the ruling center, which is the the that's what hegemonicon means. It means just the part of our minds or brains that experiences sensations and reflects and ascends and experiences impulses to act and things like this. So you think of this as um You know, the the hegemonicon had these other things, like it had the capacity to to reproduce, the capacity, I think, they like to form language. So it had these these other functions. We really think of it as that that that essential part of our minds. So so the the Stoics are going to be consistent right up from the founding of Stoicism, that we are that ruling part of our minds, that part of our minds that reflects, that thinks, that makes decisions. They call that the hegemonicon.
00:11:38
Speaker
And then Epictetus is actually going to shrink this even further to what he calls the proheiruses. Some people might have heard this before, some not. It's a Greek technical term. It means something like the faculty of choice, the will to choose, it sometimes gets translated as. The the Greek means that which selects, you know, that which reaches out and chooses.
00:12:02
Speaker
And so for Epictetus, this is ah it's it's it's a subsection of our mind. It's a subsection of our hegemonicon. So he actually restricts our identity to something really specific and even smaller than the previous stoics. And so if the hegemonicon was maybe this is this more robust part of our, more robust part of our minds, like all the things we experience, all the things we think and do, Epictetus is going to shrink that to just the choosing part of ourselves.
00:12:31
Speaker
um and And he does this because um there's a difference between our proheiruses and the rest of our mind because there's plenty part any parts of our mental life that are not within our faculty of choice. They're not things that are up to us. um And the proheiruses is going to be just those things that are up to us. And so an example of something not up to us, you know, if you think of ah when you experience pain,
00:12:55
Speaker
chronic pain, where you hear a loud noise. These are things that infiltrate our mind. These are these are really strong impressions that infiltrate our mind. ah they They enter the hegemonicon, but they don't enter um the prohyrasis, that smaller part. they Those are things that are not up to us, that are parts of our mind. And Epictetus is going to shrink our, says that our id identity is actually that small part that is that is just up to us.
00:13:22
Speaker
um And so what is what is the actual prohyrasis? What is the subset of our minds that is up to us that doesn't involve ah anything outside of ourselves, um that we can put our personal identity in? Well, for Epictetus, it's three things. We talked about this in our episode on Stoic Psychology. It's our reflection on impressions.
00:13:43
Speaker
are assent to impressions. So when we turn those impressions into beliefs, and then the impulses or emotions we feel from those beliefs. So the impulses to act, the desires that we feel when we assent to impressions, when we form beliefs. ah yeah this is what This is a good thing. I should do this. This is a bad thing. I shouldn't do this. Or I should be angry about this. Then the anger is that impulse is that feeling. um So the psychological consequences of our beliefs.
00:14:12
Speaker
um So, we can think of our identity in Epictetus' as terms then is this really small box in our minds. The box receives impressions, ah but we are not the impressions. it see It hears the sound, it sees something, and then we are the thing that then receives the impression and then does something with it. We either ah admit ignorance and we we we don't let the impression in the box. We say, I don't know.
00:14:36
Speaker
I don't know if that's true or not. The example I always use tobacco, tobacco a bit is that impression of somebody bumps into you and you think, Oh, maybe that person's a jerk. Um, that is not ourself. Ourself is that impression comes up against ourselves, which is this choosing faculty.
00:14:52
Speaker
And then we either admit ignorance. We say, look, I don't know how to judge this. I don't know how to judge this impression. I don't have enough information. We don't let it into the box. Or we accept the impression as true. We say, yeah, that person is a jerk. We let it into the box, which is ourselves. And then it changes us. We become angry. We have a new belief.
00:15:10
Speaker
Or we reject the impression, we say, no, it's false. That that person's a, you know, that person's actually and and a nice person. they They made a mistake or they were just joking around. It was my friend bumping into me on purpose. And then we've, we've still let it into the box ourselves and it's changed us. Just be formed a opposite belief, be formed a belief that it's false.
00:15:30
Speaker
So that was a lot, but just to just to to reiterate that one more time, what are we? Earlier Stoics say we are our hegemonicon, which is something like our minds, the commanding faculty, the the part of us that thinks and feels and perceives. And Epictetus rightly points out, well, if we're that, then our minds aren't up to us because that hegemonicon's not up to us because there's plenty of things that enter our mind that we don't have control over.
00:15:54
Speaker
ah that we don't determine, like if somebody but bumps into me, I feel that that enters my mind. So what I really am is actually something even smaller. I'm that part of my mind that reflects on the impressions we receive. I'm that part of my mind that decides to either accept these impressions as true or reject them as false. And then I'm the part of my mind that experiences the consequences of these new beliefs ah once I've formed them. So Epictetus shrinks our identity, that really small part of ourselves.
Thought Patterns and Identity
00:16:26
Speaker
Anything to clarify there? i don't and yeah I don't think I have anything to clarify there, but I think it's it's interesting to connect this to the popular phrase, you are not your thoughts, which I think connects really nicely to this point that you're not an impression. Someone bumps into you, some immediate physical sensations pop up, some you know perhaps ah you know immediate ideas about whether you've been wronged or that you're annoyed and so on.
00:16:57
Speaker
occur. but But those aren't, you know, that's not you. And you can apply that to more serious situations too. And when you react in a specific way or feel sensations of pain, pleasure, and such, I think at this at the same time, to sort of dive into this idea of thought, I suppose, and add at add some complication there. I think the Stoics would say, if you have a kind of way of thinking or a disposition to think in a certain way, a way of responding to these impressions, that is you. So in a certain sense, you know you you might be that that part that
00:17:41
Speaker
always responds with, say, curiosity if you're whenever you're bumped or responds with immediate anger that you've been wronged. Those patterns, you know, that's those patterns of responses of judgments, you know, that's what you are. So in that sense, ah you know, this word English word thought has some is a bit vague and hides some complexity. I think the stoic idea, you know, the stoic idea of personal identity teases out nicely.
00:18:11
Speaker
Yeah, i think that's what I think that's so insightful, right? You're not your thoughts, but you are how you think. And there's some ambiguity there or vagueness, but that's the stoic view. You're not your thoughts, but you are how you think, which is to say you are you are the habits, tendencies, patterns, and ways that you reflect on your thoughts. um That is the part that's up to you. that's That's the part that you're responsible for because it is you.
00:18:38
Speaker
So I think you gave the great great example of the person who, you know, curious person that, what what do we say when we say curious person? Well, that's the that's the way that they tend to respond to impressions. They receive an impression of something new. They go, oh, what is that? I want to know more about that. The skeptical person, the angry person, what is the angry person but a way of tending to respond to impressions? So when other people, when you encounter other people, you tend to blame them, you tend to,
00:19:05
Speaker
want to get back at them, um that that is you. right that is um And that's the that's the classic Stoic example, which is to say two different people receive receive the same impression, they respond in totally different ways, and that tells you about the person. It doesn't tell you about the impression. right some person if Two people get bumped into, one person brushes it off, and one person gets angry. Well,
00:19:32
Speaker
you the You haven't learned that that's ah that's ah that was an impression that must deserve anger. You've learned about the kind of person. One person is ah ah more laid back and one person is more high strung. and Those are the things that we can judge. Well, we're judging because those are the things that we should judge when we talk about you because that's what you are. um and so that That gets to my next point. I think that's yeah crale that's a really good way of putting it is is you're not you're not those thoughts, but you are your thinking patterns. um And so Epictetus's point is that we are always, or one of his points is that we are always existing, which is to say we are always encountering impressions.
00:20:17
Speaker
And then we're always responding to them. As Epictetus talks about, the point of philosophy is making the right use of impressions. and this has basic Another way of saying this is to say, to be a good, happy person, you have to be excellent and excellence for people as things that respond to impressions is responding to impressions well. um And so we've talked about responding in an angry way.
00:20:43
Speaker
um But really what what what Epictetus would say is is the the goal here and what a good person looks like is one who is skeptical or admits ignorance when they don't know better. So someone who is cautious about forming false beliefs is careful not to fall into false narratives, ah not to be tricked. It's someone who has a good standard of judgment to identify which impressions are true. So you're not skeptical all the time, but you have a way to to say, well, what is actually the truth of the matter here and how can I get to the bottom of it?
00:21:23
Speaker
And then you're willing to accept the things that are true and you're willing to reject the things that are false using that good standard of judgment. So that's what, I think in as simple as term as possible, that's what a good prohyrasis looks like. it's one that it except that's It's one that admits ignorance when it doesn't know and it's one that uses a good standard of judgment to figure out what's true and what's false.
00:21:46
Speaker
And if that's what a good proheiruses looks like, the next step in Epictetus' argument is to say, well, that's what a good person is, right? Because you are your proheiruses. You are that part of you that thinks and chooses. And so um when you're proud of yourself,
00:22:05
Speaker
You want to be proud of yourself when you make good ah judgments, when you you know suspend judgment when you don't know, and you apply a good standard of judgment for what's true or what's false. And when you're ashamed of yourself or embarrassed about yourself, this should apply the same way as well. It should apply to this capacity to think well and reflect well.
00:22:27
Speaker
And so when we're judging people, we should be judging them on this, not the quality of their horse and not the the if they have a disabled leg. It's about, well, how well do they, you know, how nice is their proheiruses? How well do they reflect and think? and come about truth. When you say you're not your thoughts, you're your way that second part, you are the way you think about them. We judge ourselves based on how we think about them, how we reflect. And as you said, are you a curious person? Are you a kind person? And that's where the virtues come in. So when we think about virtues, they're not these innate um they're not these innate things developed
00:23:05
Speaker
And so when we think about the virtues, I think there's something to connect there when you made made that claim about, oh, are you a curious person or are you an angry person? When we think about the virtues, they're not these um irrational dispositions. Wow, he's a courageous person. He always rushes into battle.
00:23:20
Speaker
When we call someone courageous, disciplined, just, it's the same way you might call someone curious or angry. We say it's a tendency, it's a way you tend to relate to your impressions. A courageous person tends to do a good job at identifying what's worth being afraid of and what's not worth being afraid of.
00:23:42
Speaker
A just person tends to do a good job when they receive these kinds of impressions of correctly identifying when they owe somebody something, when they when they don't, and what people deserve in certain situations. um And so you think of these virtues as um really ways of acting, but the but the fundamental action we take is is that ah an initial judgment, that use of a prohyrasis.
00:24:07
Speaker
um And that's a that's a real paradigm shift if you if you have are used to quantifying humans at the level of results at the level of either what
Stoicism, Indifference, and Value Selection
00:24:17
Speaker
they go about achieving out in the world or External appearances or results, right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think yeah, this is Really well put I love how it's such a in a way such a simple idea that unlocks a lot of stoic value theory and of course can also be applied practically to you thinking through how to manage emotions, to making decisions about you know what what one ought to do. And even so, they maybe be more theoretical matters. like I think it took me
00:24:57
Speaker
ah a while, you know, when I first came across stoicism, ah initially, it took me a while to understand the idea of indifference, you know, a pretty natural understanding of indifference is it's just something that you never sacrifice for the sake of virtue. and I think that's a pretty that's a good first pass. But another way to put it is, you know, indifference are just the material of virtue, they're what you're selecting. And of course, for high resist, that's us as that faculty of selection, of choice. And so, you know, and a difference, these are just these things that stand outside of us that are the material of life. And, you know, you know, I think that that gives you the same result that, of course, you never sacrifice.
00:25:45
Speaker
indifference for the sake of virtue, but provides more grounding to to to why that's so, ah which is just that indifference. Those are the things we choose, we select between, not the things that you know make a life a good one or a bad one. you know That depends on us what we are, according to the stoic picture, which is the thing that chooses indifference. So perhaps that's a bit abstract, but I thought that was really nice and something that um ah maybe a way to unlock, at least for me, was a way to unlock this idea of indifference more deeply then ah the than the initial explanation that's commonly given.
00:26:24
Speaker
yeah I'll try to use an example to make it less abstract, which is we we all i could take I could take a non-stove, I could take anybody off the street and say, like look, um imagine somebody 500 years before, you know someone who lived 500 years before you, their name was Greg, and it's like, okay, I'm imagining them. Okay, now imagine Greg was poor, and you're like, okay, and it's like, has your life gone work gotten worse? And the person would say, no, I feel bad for Greg, but what does that have to do with me?
00:26:53
Speaker
And you'd be like, exactly, it has nothing to do with you, right? um And this is the same way the Stoics would think about indifference. It's really radical. It's really hard to wrap your head around, but it's the view of to say, okay, well, if I'm born poor or I'm born rich,
00:27:09
Speaker
What does that have to do with me? There's nothing to do with me. um Right? As Epictetus would say, it is nothing to me. And that's what he means by that. is It says has nothing to do with my identity. Now, if I go and I use, if I um If my poverty causes me to lie and cheat and steal, or i I turn to that life because of that poverty, now that's a bad thing. um But the bad thing is the actions that I've taken. If my wealth has caused me to become you know callous to other people, or you know not very just, and and kind of um disrespectful to others, well, now that's a bad thing. But on its own, on its own it's nothing to me. and And I think we all get that first example.
00:27:54
Speaker
you know if i told you i epic to another epi bigcte example If I told you the number of stars in the sky was even instead of odd, you feel like I do not care. what is This does not matter to me. and that's the That's the way the sage feels about you have a beautiful horse or you have an ugly horse, right? good goes Okay. okay like What does that have to do with what we're talking about? um and that's that real I think it's really hard to get there, but that's the real idea of indifference, right? um It's like that. Now, I might be i might be taking that a bit a bit too far because we we have that notion of things being preferred. That would maybe be like a true indifference.
00:28:33
Speaker
Some things are preferred and some things aren't, but um it's still
Practical Implications of Identity in Stoicism
00:28:40
Speaker
it's still this idea, I think even if you get to the idea of it's nothing to me first, then you can start working in the preference later. um Yes, and that's that's for me why that idea of identity is so helpful with indifference, as you were saying.
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. Well, I suppose that just to and expand on that a little bit, you know, preference, dispreferred, that just helps you. yeah I suppose that's just a way to help you select between indifference, health, pleasure, pain, good reputation, ah both for yourself and for others is a general reason to prefer, you know, those are preferable. And maybe, you know, if if if there's a decision that can be expected to result in one of those preferable indifference for yourself or for others. That's a reason to do it and in that sense. And it's something that just needs to be weighed against other every other consideration. So I suppose yeah know that's where the preferred or dispreferred comes in into play is in helping us decide how to make these decisions.
00:29:41
Speaker
yeah Why do Stoics have this idea of preferred and does preferred difference to begin with? It's kind of odd. Maybe it seems like a way to sneak in some kind of value theory, but I think it makes sense because you need a way to determine how to make choices. Otherwise, every decision becomes like you know the number of stars, odd or even. um So so that that's, I think that's another I think and another ah important ah theoretical thought, I suppose, on why you need preferred and dispreferred indifference and then how that comes in to play for thinking what we are. you know These are the things that are natural for us, but that just guides decisions. It doesn't determine them.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, it guides it guides decisions, but you can be a you can be a great person um with a diseased body. And by the stoic, right that's the stoic argument is that, well, you're a great person. You should be judged as a great person. You should be judged to have had a great life. If you were making the right decisions, um you you you have a great priorisis, great virtue, character, regardless of what happens to your body or what happens to your horse.
00:30:58
Speaker
um But in in a normal situation, we want to kind of we we use those indifference to select and to to navigate the world. um And so so to connect this back, i think I think if there's one idea about personal identity, it's going to be this one. And you'll get this reading Epictetus. And it's such a paradigm shift, as as you were mentioning.
00:31:18
Speaker
I think it's that this is our, the pro heiress is our fundamental action. It's our fundamental way of being, um, which is to say, you know, ah if ah a runner runs a builder builds a human forms belief, a human thinks they, they, they practice reflection and a sense to impressions. That's the thing that we do. That's the thing that we should be judged by.
00:31:40
Speaker
Another thing, another consequence of this, I don't see this as much, but I know some people run into this when they first learned about the dichotomy of control, so it's worth touching on. Another consequence of this is is it's another reason why the dichotomy of control is ah sometimes confusing language, because when you first hear it, you might think, well, I control my mind.
00:32:05
Speaker
Oh, I don't control you know what other people think of me, but I control my mind. And we wanna be careful here not to put the eye outside of ourselves, which is to say, we don't wanna think we are something we are something that sits outside of that mind and then controls it.
00:32:23
Speaker
looks down at the way we're thinking and then pulls the strings because we are the thing that thinks, right? We are the mind doing the thinking. And so we can, um through mindfulness and intentional reflection and study, is we can change those patterns. We can change that trajectory. We can um on a moment by moment basis with an incredible in ah focus, almost allow no false impression to come through. But when you think, oh, that's a courageous person, a just person, an angry person, you can't just step outside yourself and say, i've i'm no longer I've chosen no longer to be an angry person because you are those built up patterns of thinking and reflecting and those built up beliefs that have made you angry. And so
00:33:13
Speaker
The study of stoicism is kind of unwinding those patterns, unwinding those habits, turning yourself into a better thinking thing over time. And so that's why we talked about this a bit in the um the dichotomy of control episodes. That's why you're responsible for how you think, but you don't control how you think in terms of you can't on a moment by moment, rewire the system entirely. right You're only ever working with the material you have and the material you have is yourself.
00:33:41
Speaker
That's a bit abstract, but I'm just saying this point that you don't you don't stand it's not like you' you're holding a controller and you stand outside yourself and um you choose how you think. you're You're only ever bringing yourself to those moments, those moments where you're getting angry or being cowardly or courageous. You're only ever bringing yourself to them with your current level of progress, with your current level of uh, your current ah degree of stoic beliefs or lack of stoic beliefs. And so you're only ever working with that material and you can modulate your success with mindfulness and intense focus, but you can't, uh, can't rewrite yourself. You can't stop being yourself, which I think something is something, you know, you agree with Kayla, but I think it's something that people, um, it's easy to misunderstand sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think that's ah always good to clear up and, uh,
00:34:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think i think that's that's helpful for to understand. Oh, and I was going to finish. So if that's the view of identity, we are our pro-hyresses. I'm going to talk on some consequences. We are our choosing faculty. We are the thing that thinks, right? um Some consequences of that in terms of how we live and how we think about these questions ethically. So I have three of these and um kill ads feel free to add any others that come up to you. The first is that The first consequence of this is that we're not the things we own or what people think of us. We're not even our bodies. We're not things external to us, which is everything outside of our minds. And so we shouldn't be afraid when people threaten those things. People shouldn't be able to control how we think and how we act by threatening the things outside of ourselves.
00:35:22
Speaker
Because that is not us, so and so there's no there's no real harm or threat to us at that fundamental level. And so a famous Epictetus goes from Discourses 1.1. He's asked to betray a secret. And Epictetus says, I will not betray it, for this is in my power. Then I will chain you up, they threaten.
00:35:41
Speaker
What do you say, man? Chain me up? You'll chain my leg, but not Zeus himself can get the better of my faculty of choice. That's what Proheros is there. And so, Epictetus is pointing out, man, you're threatening. You can't actually threaten me. Not even Zeus could threaten me. You can chain me up. You can destroy my house. You can, you can you know,
00:36:00
Speaker
Uh, you can threaten my beautiful horse, but not even God can control that freedom I have to think and reflect. That is something other people can't threaten. Yeah, that's awesome. Um, yeah, so that's, I mean, that's just, that that it's just important to remind ourselves when we get stressed or worried, say, Hey,
00:36:25
Speaker
I'm not actually at risk here and so i shouldn't I shouldn't feel like I'm threatened and I should remember that. I'm not threatened. It's just things that I have are threatened maybe. and so Another consequence, a second consequence of this theory of identity is that we need to we need to build a life focused on improving ourselves.
00:36:47
Speaker
And too often, we attach value to improving something that is literally not us. We are literally, like in the terms and in the sense of self-improvement, not engaged in self-improvement when we improve things outside of ourselves. We are engaged in external improvement. And that comes back to the quote from the beginning of the the beginning of the episode. I'll read it again.
00:37:12
Speaker
ah Be not elated at any excellence that is not your own. If a horse should be elated and say, I am handsome, it might be indurable. But when you're elated and say, I have a handsome horse, know that you're elated only on the merit of the horse. What then is your own? The use of impressions. So that when you're in harmony with nature in this respect, you will be elated for some reason, for a good reason he means. For you'll be elated at some good of your own.
00:37:39
Speaker
And that's just that point of how often, you know, I think of people today, let's say if you take something like fitness and people decide to focus on improving their bodies, I think there's something really valuable in improving your body and and developing fitness and getting into weightlifting or dieting or something like that. But the stomach would say the things that are valuable about that are the things that are your own, which is to say the discipline you develop, the ability to avoid temptation, the ability to be consistent, to stick to plans that you cite for yourself. These are things you can say about yourself, and these are the things you should should be proud of. But when people start putting the pride actually in the external, they put it in in their bodies, for example, that they're making a mistake. They're no longer engaged in self-improvement.
00:38:28
Speaker
they're and it's It's them pointing out their horse. and that's maybe The horse is something you could buy immediately. so Even even the the body example is a bit more extreme, but it's not you. right You are the discipline and the choices and that's the thing you should be proud of. and so That's not something we do in today's society. you know you think If you think of the bodybuilder, we don't reward the bodybuilder who had the most discipline, we reward the one who has the best objective body. And there's something just stoked there about recognizing that, look, the world is not going to necessarily recognize self-improvement, they recognize external development, but I need to be after self-improvement. And that's a key lesson.
00:39:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I wonder if that's some of the intuition people have behind things like performance enhancing drugs or something like that. Those are less evidence about someone's character. but Maybe there's, you know, I wouldn't want to make too much out of that, but I think there's, there's something to that, um, line of thought. Yeah. I don't know. I think absolutely is that we.
00:39:34
Speaker
We kind of mix these things together in in sport. we We want it to be a meritocracy, but then we also just admire talent. And those two kinds of things get mixed together where the Stoics are the pure meritocracy.
00:39:49
Speaker
oh i don't you know I don't care if you finished 100th or you finished you know last. right maybe you have a Maybe you have some sort of disability or physical impediment that makes you actually unable to compete at a high level. If you showed the discipline, the character development, um then that's the that's the real win. that's the It is in in a way the participation trophy trope as the participation trophy rewards what's in the person's, what's up to them, right? Which is like you registered, you did it. You get a trophy for that because you showed you showed the thing and you showed something admirable that is up to you, that is a part of you.
00:40:33
Speaker
and so I think that I think there's something to that in that I think is um because often stoicism can get us this rap for being kind of hardcore, but I think there's something kind of sweet and I guess just egalitarian about that. Yeah, I think it is. I think one reasons. So teachers advise not to judge others is that the most obvious way to judge people is and the results of their actions, their achievements, mistakes and so on. But, you know, we don't have as good access to people's character, you know, how they think.
00:41:14
Speaker
So we should always be be careful of of our judgments about others, especially when we're considering questions, you know, are they a good person, the bad
Conclusion on Stoicism and Ethical Living
00:41:23
Speaker
person, and so on. Ultimately, that those sorts of things are are really difficult to get at on on the stoic picture because, you know, what it is to be a good person or a bad person is not immediately obvious from their someone's actions. It's it's almost you know maybe ah an analogy that that doesn't quite work. Maybe maybe it works as you know you have the first, second, third place type trophies. You've got participation trophies. Stoics, they're almost you know in between. you We want excellent participation. You participated and you know you did it to the best of your ability. and yeah how do you know How do you assess that? That's difficult. So I think that's ah why Stoics put a question mark around a lot of
00:42:05
Speaker
you know positive and negative evaluations about people. Well, I think that's great, yeah. ah Because that's the criticism against participation trophies that you didn't do anything, you didn't work hard, um you didn't earn it. um And so I think you're right, which is to say that that's what the stoics want is they want excellent participation. I never thought of it that way. That's the middle ground.
00:42:28
Speaker
um Right? They want you to do the things that are up to you the best you can. And then once you've done that, you that's a first place in the stoic the stoic metal system, um which might put you pretty low if you tend to be actually quite bad at the thing, um especially extreme especially sports where you can actually just like hit a physical limit, right? You can actually just not be you know not be genetically able to do something.
00:42:52
Speaker
And so that's the second lesson. First lesson is that look, people can't really threaten us because they can't really touch us. um And that that there's something empowering about that. Second is that when you want to focus on self-improvement, you got to improve yourself. And often we make these proxies for self-improvement and we miss, we forget what we are. The third lesson, um well, i think i think it um I think it connects back to that first one.
00:43:21
Speaker
um it's that it's that It's that idea of we really, really can't be harmed by others. um And not only not harmed, but we lose then because I guess the the next stage is that because we can't be harmed, we actually lose these ideas of resentment or anger.
00:43:43
Speaker
or that we that we have because those are rely on this idea that we've been harmed. You know, Epictetus has this other quote about how um the beginner blames other people, the intermediate blames themselves, and the advanced person blames nobody. And there's there's something to that about the beginners blaming other people because they think, oh, it didn't go this way because of this person. you know this I was harmed because of what that person did. did And the advance the the the progressing stoic recognizes that
00:44:15
Speaker
Look, these other people aren't actually as involved in my success or failure as I thought them to be. They're actually not as big of a deal in terms of my self-improvement. And I'll connect this back to Epictetus's handbook, just chapter one, the very the very start. But people often glance over this part when they talk about the dichotomy of control. Epictetus says, if you take for your own only that which is your own and view what belongs to others just as it really is,
00:44:40
Speaker
that no one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you, you'll find no fault with anyone, you'll accuse no one, you'll do nothing against your will, no one will hurt you, you will not have an enemy, nor will you suffer any harm. And so that's that that's that idea of just taking that step further of you know not only not only can people not threaten you or control you, but you actually when you adopt this perspective on identity, gain some permission to let ah let go a lot of the anger, resentment, or or fear that you've been carrying. Because if you can make this identity division right, if you can take for your own only that that which is your own and view what belongs to others as what belongs to others, then you'll then you you really will not be harmed. You will accuse no one. You'll find fault with no one.
00:45:38
Speaker
And that's a i dont know that's a pretty empowering ethical ideal that you get to just by clarifying and really focusing on what you are and what you're not, and eliminating all the false beliefs and then ah unhealthy emotions that come from getting that distinction wrong. Absolutely. Great. Anything anything else, Kilbun? Identity? I don't think so. Do you have anything else to add?
00:46:02
Speaker
No, I just think that um i think that's a great place to end, as you were saying. that
00:46:11
Speaker
Understand that people you know don't be threatened by people that threaten things that aren't you. Don't take pride in things that aren't you. And then when you really focus in and really realize that what you are is just your yourself, your mind, your capacity to make choices, then a lot of those angers, accusations, resentments, fears, they dissipate. And that's a pretty um so pretty cool place to get with just a couple of clarifications.
00:46:40
Speaker
And that's why I think the Stoic theory of identity is so important to their ethical project and to our self-improvement. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. often I suppose open up the episode with this thought that This question matters because it provides a direction to life, a way of guiding decisions. It helps with our decision making because ah it's essential in order to improve oneself to know what you are and for the stoic sense of thinking things, what matters is is is thinking well, responding to your impressions well. And I suppose i suppose that's the project.
00:47:22
Speaker
as as we said at the start, yeah. So this is about improving ourselves. So really take the time to understand what you are. Otherwise, you can't really engage in that project. Yeah, yeah. That's something one always needs to remind oneself of. i Because so many habits we've already established, so many parts of the outside world are telling you that you know, you're something else, you're something bigger. And you know, those those sorts of messages are, whether they come from yourself or from others are, are mistaken on the stoic view and they're, they're going to lead to ah less than ideal decisions and a less than ideal life. Yeah, great. Good point. Cool. I'll send it there. Thanks, Gil. All right. All right. Thanks, Michael.
Podcast Wrap-up and Listener Engagement
00:48:14
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Stoa Conversations. Please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend. If you want to dive deeper still, search Stoa in the App Store or Play Store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become more.
00:48:33
Speaker
Stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyre.com. And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.