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Why You Should Compare Yourself to Other People (Episode 5)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
In this episode, Caleb and Michael discuss why you should compare yourself to other people – but not just anyone.
They discussion focuses on Caleb's recent article: You Should Compare Yourself to Other People
Stoa Conversations is Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay’s podcast on Stoic theory and practice.
Caleb and Michael work together on the Stoa app. Stoa is designed to help you build resilience and focus on what matters. It combines the practical philosophy of Stoicism with modern techniques and meditation.
Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): stoameditation.com/pod
Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com
Caleb Ontiveros has a background in academic philosophy (MA) and startups. His favorite Stoic is Marcus Aurelius. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/calebmontiveros
Michael Tremblay also has a background in academic philosophy (PhD) where he focused on Epictetus. He is also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His favorite Stoic is Epictetus. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/_MikeTremblay
Thank you to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Stoa Conversations
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week, we'll share two conversations. One between the two of us, and another will be an in-depth conversation with an expert. Welcome to Stoa. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. I'm one of the founders of Stoa.
00:00:26
Speaker
And I'm Michael Trombley, one of the founders of Stowe as well. Happy to be here, Caleb, chatting with you. Always a
Why Compare Yourself to Others?
00:00:32
Speaker
lot of fun. Today, we're going to theme our topic around a piece you just wrote and has a controversial opening and it connects to the Stowe exercise of contemplation of the sage. But one of the things that you were writing about is why we should compare ourselves to others. A bit provocative, a bit maybe counterintuitive, but what were your thoughts on that? Why should we compare ourselves to others?
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, so it's a provocative opening, of course, but there are a number of different arguments for thinking why one should do this. But the main reason why I wrote this piece is that people often push up against it. And it's not clear that what people are complaining about or worried about really has to do with the act of comparing oneself to others as opposed to other things.
00:01:23
Speaker
The positive case for comparing yourself to others is essentially it is a role modeling activity, a way of potentially emulating another person is to compare yourself with what they have done, what their results are, and compare that with your own situation with what you have done and what results you have seen.
00:01:45
Speaker
So there's a nice anecdote in Plutarch about Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar is reading a biography of Alexander the Great. And while he's reading this biography, he starts tearing up. And his friends are shocked. They're like, why has this story brought you to tears?
Historical Comparisons: Julius Caesar and Alexander
00:02:08
Speaker
And in the anecdote, Caesar responds,
00:02:13
Speaker
Do not think it is a matter for sorrow that while Alexander at my age was already king of so many peoples, I have as yet achieved no brilliance." So in this case, the comparison serves as a spur, a form of motivation to be better or at any rate what Caesar saw as better. There's always the question of whether Alexander is a good role model
00:02:41
Speaker
But the point stands is that comparing oneself to others expresses one's values. This is what Caesar values is a life, like the life of Alexander the Great, and it provides a measurement. Seneca talks about a ruler, and he mentions Cato or Laelias as examples, that these lives can serve as rulers, and rule is for what? The measurement for how well one is doing in life.
00:03:11
Speaker
express one's values and provide a possible way to evaluate how well one is realizing your values is the way to put it. So it's something that all of us naturally do, I think, and there's no strong reason to completely push back against that tendency.
When is Comparison Beneficial?
00:03:31
Speaker
So that is the positive case for comparing yourself to others, is that it serves as motivation, expresses one's values, and so long as those are good values, good things to be motivated for, it is a worthwhile activity. And that's true even if it might in some cases be a painful exercise.
00:03:50
Speaker
I'm convinced by this idea of having kind of a measure or something to motivate yourself against or something to compare yourself to. And obviously you'd want that to be people because for trying to be good people, you want to compare yourself to other human beings. And also because they show us what's possible too. It is not an abstract measure. It is a measure that's within our reach or within our grasp. I want her to be charitable to this view of not to compare yourself to others.
00:04:15
Speaker
I wonder if we could think of this thing as consisting along kind of moral progress. So maybe is it something like the beginner should not compare themselves to others because, or the person that's just starting to make progress shouldn't compare themselves to others. And then of course the advanced student can because they understand what they're trying to model, but more, maybe it just does more harm than good. If you're a teenager, right? Or you're a child, you know, sometimes we really say that to kids. We say, don't just think about yourself. Don't focus on other people.
00:04:43
Speaker
Any thoughts on that? And maybe it being the right thing to say in some cases, even if it's not something we should never do. I think that in some cases, the question is who are you comparing yourself against and not so much whether one should be comparing oneself against others at all. So.
00:05:04
Speaker
Sometimes comparing oneself with others can lead to feelings of inadequacy and sometimes those feelings are in a sense justified and other times they are not, they're a mistake. So I've been listening to Nassim Taleb's book on Fooled by Randomness and he has an anecdote about
00:05:26
Speaker
an intellectual trader type who doesn't care that much about material goods and lives in New York. He's trading as more of an intellectual, interesting exercise and is not a particularly material person. And then one day he bumps into his neighbor who is an exceptionally material person, has a much nicer house, much nicer clothes, rubs it into this character's face and
00:05:50
Speaker
There's a natural tendency that the intellectual trader type now feels somewhat inadequate. They don't have this nice house, these nice clothes, and they haven't made the same amount of money as this person has. And in that case, there's a sense in which comparing to another warps your values.
Comparison for Personal Development
00:06:08
Speaker
This person doesn't value material things.
00:06:11
Speaker
that much, but now that this other life is salient, they feel like they are missing out on something. So in that case, it's a question of, I think, who are you comparing yourself to and remembering to stick to whatever original models you had or whatever original principles you had?
00:06:32
Speaker
and not letting yourself being caught up by entering some competition, which is the sort of thing you may not even want to win. There's the line by Marcus Aurelius that his fame is nothing more than the clapping of tongues. And to paraphrase another remark, he says something like, why would you seek the approval of people whose opinions in some sense you don't really even care about?
00:06:58
Speaker
And it's a natural tendency, I think, to see people's approval and compare oneself to others. And that is mistaken when those others don't have good values or they're not the sort of thing where if you would look back and say, oh, this is a, this makes for a good life is the life that these people I'm in competition with. Is there a difference there between full and comparison? Is there something to be pulled out there? Maybe don't seek
00:07:29
Speaker
the approval of others, but to compare yourself. I'm interested there, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, there's certainly a distinction.
00:07:38
Speaker
There's certainly a distinction. I think it can be, there's almost a similar argument to make here about approval, which is that there's a meme that you shouldn't care what other people think. And quite often that might be true, but in another sense, you should care a lot about what people you respect think about you or what people
00:08:05
Speaker
who are another thing you want to be good at. Think about you. Not because you are some obsequious person seeking their approval, but because you respect them for a reason and their judgments are good information. If you're the beginner, you should care about what your teacher thinks about you or even what some advanced student might
Role Models and Environment Influence
00:08:29
Speaker
think about you. To some extent, of course there are.
00:08:31
Speaker
exceptions to this but often it is an informative exercise and it's always the question of okay what are they approving or not approving you for and is that thing relevant to what you're trying to do with the activity does it have to do with if you're thinking about the
00:08:52
Speaker
student case again, does it have to do with the craft that you're practicing? Or does it have to do with clashing personalities or simple personality match or mismatch? Whatever it may be.
00:09:04
Speaker
The importance here is comparing yourself to the right person. It's not that we shouldn't do this. We should compare ourselves as long as we compare ourselves to the right person in the right way. How do you go about choosing the correct role models? How do you engage in this exercise in the right way when it can have potential harms, but it does, it can't have potential goods if you do it. Yeah, it's a big question and it's.
00:09:30
Speaker
Almost a question about what are the correct values? What are the ideal roles for a given person? And that's certainly a large question that I wouldn't want to answer for.
00:09:45
Speaker
all people and is a complicated matter even for people like myself. But in broad outlines, if one thinks about the question, who should one emulate? There's deep questions about what sort of values do you have? What sorts of virtues do you admire? Are there single traits that someone exemplifies that you admire?
00:10:14
Speaker
What sorts of roles do you have and who fulfills those roles really well? Perhaps one way to think about this is to step outside of the moral domain, these questions about values, and think about in the case where I just want to be good at a profession, how would I go about seeking a role model?
00:10:38
Speaker
And in that case, probably what you want to do is find someone who has got the results that you're trying to get at. In some cases, you cannot always do this, but often this I think is very good advice is go find the person who is like you and you can copy what they do or at least learn from what they have done to get to that position.
00:11:01
Speaker
So say you want to become a professor, find a person who has succeeded in the relevant field and ask how they got there. And it's important to ensure that this person is like you in the right respect. So it's probably better not to talk to the 70 year old, 80 year old.
00:11:19
Speaker
professor who's at the end of their career and came up in a completely different environment and much better to talk with the professor who has been in the game for maybe five years or something of that nature and ask them how they got there, ask them detailed questions and so on. So that's what one does in the professional case. So I suppose one can use that as an analogy and apply that to you.
00:11:42
Speaker
other values one has. Think about, okay, where do I want to be? Who do I want to become? And what sorts of people really exemplify the outcome that I want? And in Caesar's case, he thought Alexander the Great was awesome. Caesar was very concerned about honor, authority, being a excellent general. So you can see why he would choose someone like Alexander. Though, of course, there's certainly a case to be made that he made a mistake in that judgment.
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah. So what I'm taking from your argument is I think that makes a ton of sense. Once you move it out of the moral sphere, we get tied up and right and wrong, good and bad. And these can be complicated questions, but just the practice of comparison, the practice of modeling, we do that in terms of professional.
00:12:30
Speaker
progression, craft progression. We do that all the time, right? When you try to become a musician or an artist, you begin by emulating other musicians or artists you look up to as you develop that craft and you begin to build that skill on your own. That makes a lot of sense to me. And that's something that I've done. That's something that I've done athletically on my Brazilian jitsu competitive career is just the exact process. You said, I try to find somebody who came from a similar circumstance, did it and learn from them and emulate that. That's one point is like, we already know how to do this.
00:13:00
Speaker
Or people already do this very successfully in the non-moral sphere. Let's pull, bring that value into character development as well. I find that compelling. And then the second point that I was thinking of was really this focus on why you're doing it, the focus on the function of the purpose. I think of Plato here, Plato and the Republic talks about the three parts of the self, three parts
Family and Field Comparisons
00:13:24
Speaker
of the soul, the appetitive, the spirited and the rational. And.
00:13:28
Speaker
If you're comparing yourself to somebody else to satisfy spirited desire, the spirited is the part that wants honor or wants to feel good. So if you're comparing yourself with someone else because they're worse than you and you want to feel good about it, or you're comparing yourself with someone else for just to feel good about yourself, but they happen to be excellent and you feel bad about yourself. It's like you're doing it for the wrong reason, but this.
00:13:50
Speaker
When you make that analogy to craft, and then I think of character or ethics or any sort of excellence as a craft in that sense, not accolades or approval, but the craft of developing yourself, if you look for that sense,
00:14:04
Speaker
You won't really be disappointed because you're not looking to compare yourself to feel good. You're just comparing yourself to get information, to gain perspective and inspiration too. That's another thing. Part of the comparison, when I did this athletically, part of the comparison was like, they did it. Like I know a human being can do this because they did it and I'm also a human being. And that's really empowering. One thing I wanted to ask you though, was who you've compared yourself to and what effects that has had positive or negative.
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's always a good question. So I think that there are some family members who I think are, have a number of traits that I admire. I was fortunate enough to really admire my grandparents and my parents, of course. And I learned many values from them and they have done a handful of impressive things that I've learned a lot from on the positive side.
00:14:59
Speaker
And I think that can be useful because I'm not in direct competition with them or anything of that sort. So I think that's one, I think not everyone has the option to ask where their dad was at this point in their life, where their grandfather was at this point in their life. But if you do and you happen to admire, share the values with your family, I think that's always a very good thing. That's always the first answer that comes to mind for me.
00:15:27
Speaker
And then to say a little bit more, I think like you, if there are particular crafts or skills I care about, then I'll often compare myself to people who did well in those fields. So when I was in academic philosophy, there were a number of professors who I admired, philosophers whose work I thought was excellent. I would compare myself to what they did.
00:15:52
Speaker
And when I got outside of philosophy and went to the startup world, I think there were people who... I think one thing I would say about the startup world that is different from the world of philosophy is that
00:16:09
Speaker
Being in San Francisco can have the effect, not just San Francisco, but other places of raising one's aspirations in a way that other places has not. So that is one positive effect of San Francisco is that you see people like you do extremely well in either their company or whatever project they care about. And there's a general attitude that people can figure things out and get things done. And that's very highly valued here.
00:16:39
Speaker
Of course, both in academia and within startups there are more concerns about direct competition with people, getting your values warped by what people care about. In academia, that's largely prestige.
00:16:56
Speaker
You might start out caring about ideas but of course to be a good academic you need to get things published and there are certain kinds of ideas or work that is more likely to be published and that does track some valuable metrics but it also tracks some ones that you may not care so much about and
00:17:19
Speaker
there is a chance that one's values can get distorted by that. In the startup world, of course, there's a lot more pressure to compete. You have cases like the case of that Taleb was talking about with the intellectual trader type and the more materialist type that certainly both of those tropes are people who you might bump into and both of them have the potential to change one's values depending on what it is. So I think for
00:17:48
Speaker
me, it's always a matter of trying to be careful about who I spend time with, and that means both in the sense of physical time, speaking who I'm speaking with, but also the media that I'm consuming.
00:18:04
Speaker
And I try to be quite controlling about that, about most interactions and then perhaps leave some amount of interactions just up to chance because there's always a chance that there's some additional person you can run into and learn quite a lot from even if someone you might not know from your immediate circle or what have you.
Cultural Impact on Values
00:18:23
Speaker
I think those are good examples. I think one thing you speak to is, you know, we're talking about comparing yourself to other people, but there is something to be said for
00:18:31
Speaker
cultures, even the environment of a specific city, as you said, or the environment of a certain academia was the other example. I think there's a certain culture that comes from martial arts, which is my background, a certain culture in fighting gyms and fighting sports. And there's a certain
00:18:50
Speaker
there's a certain desire to conform or a certain natural tendency to conform when you're around certain kinds of people, for better or for worse, because I think as we pointed out, there's things of benefits from these communities and there's downsides to these communities. So there's this tendency to conform and then there's this tendency to warp your values. And then you could have, that's really the, I think that's where you need stoicism
00:19:16
Speaker
or some sort of ethical philosophy to pull yourself out of this, right? Because when we just say comparing yourself to others is like a craft, then you could compare yourself. You could be a person that wants to be like the very materialistic traitor you provide the example of. Wants to do whatever it takes, even if they have to harm other people, even if they have to exclude other values to acquire material wealth. And then they spend a time around those people. And then the role models are the people that got the richest. Caesar's role model is, uh,
00:19:45
Speaker
Alexander, not considering the ethics of Alexander's conquest, presumably possibly, but still admiring him for his military power. So I guess my question is how do we make it easier to compare ourselves to the right people? And I guess even that question of what right looks, I know that's a loaded question, but we have to get out to the other side. Otherwise this is just a tool that can be used for good or bad.
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's always a difficult question to answer just because there are so many different scenarios one might find oneself in, so many different roles and different arguments for why one might hold a particular person.
00:20:31
Speaker
Maybe one way to get a handle on the issue is just ask directly with some of our examples, do we think they are modeling the right person? So Julius Caesar was modeling himself after Alexander. In my view, that's probably a mistake. Alexander engaged in essentially pointless wars and Caesar did the same.
00:20:52
Speaker
They also were exceptionally competent and did impressive things on the battlefield, but also impressive bureaucratic projects that they are both involved in, thinking of what Caesar did in a short time in Egypt. So they have some admirable traits in that sense. But ultimately, I don't think the model of someone as honor-seeking conqueror is a good one.
00:21:21
Speaker
So then there's the question of how can I make sure that I don't find myself in a similar situation where my dominant culture favors something like a Alexander? And that would be one's natural tendency to see that as an honorable life, something worth pursuing. How can I ensure that I don't turn into the person who emulates that and tries to follow in their path?
00:21:48
Speaker
And one way to think about it is look at people who avoided that mistake and see what sorts of traits they had or how they thought about the issue.
The Role of Anti-Role Models
00:22:00
Speaker
So in this case, we could think about many of the Stoics didn't value conquerors all by themselves. You have Marcus.
00:22:09
Speaker
Aurelius, who probably did not think that highly of Julius Caesar or Alexander, he would remind himself that these people did all these so allegedly impressive things, but for what? They both, they all ended up dead regardless.
00:22:30
Speaker
I think that that is a way to combat what might be a risk of this tool, this tool of comparing oneself to others is to get a range of models and see how they thought about the issues at hand and compare and see if you can
00:22:52
Speaker
avoid becoming like the people who were impressive, effective, but did not pursue the right aims. And what that got me thinking of, I think that all makes sense. What that got me thinking of was also the value of maybe anti-models or anti-role models. So I often think of these people who are, they might say,
00:23:17
Speaker
And maybe they didn't look up to their parents, but they say, I had to be this way because I didn't want to emulate my parents. I didn't want to repeat their mistakes. We've talked about these kinds of aspirational, what's your perspective on people comparing yourself to others as a mechanism of understanding what not to do or understanding what you're currently doing? I think that's a useful exercise, certainly.
00:23:40
Speaker
Now, going back to the earlier example, Marcus Aurelius probably saw Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar as anti-role models, in a sense, and wanted to ensure that the pursuit of power for power's sake was not something that got to his head or corrupted his decision making.
00:24:01
Speaker
So he would remind himself that the symbols of power were empty. What's this robe but the dyed blood of a shellfish and some sheep's wool? It's not this sacred symbol of power. He just breaks it into its parts and sees it as it is.
00:24:19
Speaker
So I think that's a good example of using anti-role models and anti-role models is thinking about that as a very useful endeavor. It's also good to do, I think, when one thinks about one's own life. So you can imagine the best version of yourself living throughout your week.
00:24:37
Speaker
And you might also imagine a realistic but other version of yourself that ends up in a place you don't want to be. As a person you don't want to be, but you could see it happening and contrast those two ways of being. And we can, one, use that as some motivation to avoid being the mediocre person, the anti-model version of yourself.
Fictional Role Models: Goku and Beyond
00:25:02
Speaker
and more seriously or more practically think about what would cause me to slip into the mediocre version of myself and how can I ensure that I avoid making those mistakes, whatever it is.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, I'm convinced of the value of this. I think this is the right way of thinking about it. I am curious what you would say about role models that come to mind for you, specific individuals or perhaps anti-role models that come to mind. Yeah, that's a good question. In terms of role models for me, I actually think of
00:25:43
Speaker
fictional characters quite a bit. We haven't necessarily talked about that too much, but I can extend my role models into the fictional world as cheesy as it is. I even think of somebody like Goku from Dragon Ball Z. I think that is from way back in the day, one of my first role models.
00:26:00
Speaker
who characterise or portray this ability. For those that don't know Dragon Ball Z, this is an anime where these aliens have superpowers and they're fighting against each other and it's all very anime-y. It is not realistic. But the main character's main kind of core sense is that they're
00:26:17
Speaker
very loyal they're willing to stick up with their friends they're willing to put in the work to become a better person and they're willing to challenge themselves and do scary things even if that's hard and in the process of doing that they end up becoming stronger they end up leveling up as a as an
00:26:33
Speaker
Saiyan fighter. And that's like a paradigm or an approach. I don't know if I actively compare myself to Goku, but it was something that kind of set a paradigm for me quite early. In terms of anti-rule models, I like the idea of, so I guess that's one thing is like, I do fictional characters quite a bit. I also, I think of the main character in Dostoyevsky the Idiot, the main character in Dostoyevsky's brothers, Amazav, where I would say that it's called Holy Fool archetype. So these people who are
00:27:03
Speaker
In a sense, practically incompetent, like in a sense, poor at navigating the situations and they're taken advantage of, or I guess they fail at the materialistic game. They fail at winning the kind of the game that most other people are playing.
00:27:18
Speaker
because they're not playing that game. And you could see that kind of some people, and I think in many, those were characters I looked up to before I discovered stoicism.
Personal Development as a Craft
00:27:27
Speaker
And in many ways, you see that in somebody like Socrates, somebody who's not well dressed in the typical, not professionally successful.
00:27:35
Speaker
Not tight, no winning in terms of success as normal people, but it isn't, they aren't really caring because the success they care about is a success of character. That's something I find really compelling. And that's something that I remind myself of and try to compare myself to and motivate me to be better.
00:27:52
Speaker
In terms of the anti-role model, I don't think necessarily compare that to other people. I think I do that in terms of a personal comparison. So I think of tendencies I have, whether those are tendencies to be vain or tendencies to care what other people think or get bogged down in these things that I ultimately don't think are important. And I can imagine the kind of life I would live by leaning into those.
00:28:16
Speaker
And even just an abstract recognition of the worstness of that life not being the kind of life I want to have is quite motivating for me and really helps me make the right choices.
00:28:28
Speaker
So I would say that's my perspective, but yeah, definitely in the positive role model, in my own practice, a lot more fictional character based because it is more aspirational than practical, but it provides a real North star. The fictional characters can be exceptionally useful. There are thought experiments that clarify how we think about the world, our values, and they're exceptionally motivational. I think you can have an image of a person and
00:28:52
Speaker
There are many compelling characters in fiction and that are psychologically realistic. So I think that's always a good thing to do. One other person who comes to mind, a historical example that connects to some of the issues we've raised is a fellow named Benjamin Lay. He was an early abolitionist and was almost a Diogenes-like character. He lived in a cave, refused to use any
00:29:21
Speaker
products that were involved in the slave trade at all, opposed the death penalty, was a staunch vegetarian, which were all radical views in the time. And he's an instance of someone who managed to reject incorrect views about his dominant society he lived in, and regardless of the social consequences.
00:29:51
Speaker
So I think he has some traits that are worth admiring in that respect.
Rejecting Social Norms for Virtue
00:29:55
Speaker
Yeah, it makes me think of, we could almost do an episode on contemporary cynics. We talked about last episode about cynicism being this kind of rejection of social convention, this rejection of social norms in the pursuit of character and virtue. And the person you were just mentioning, I think of, although not perhaps a bit more complicated, I think of Thoreau who went and lived in a single room cabin in the woods to
00:30:23
Speaker
get away from it and kind of remove to himself. But people still really look up to throughout, right? People still really look up to that role model or that example. If, as you said, if not to emulate the behavior, to emulate the possibility of deciding a character for yourself that exists outside the dominant culture of the day, that seems to be self-determined, seems to be autonomous. I think even just the example that's possible is very compelling for people, myself.
00:30:51
Speaker
Yeah, Thoreau's interesting. I'm almost inclined to think Thoreau's an anti-model because he almost did the right thing, but didn't commit and put himself in a position where it almost seemed like he was more concerned with the symbolic sort of meaning of his actions as opposed to...
00:31:09
Speaker
the actual outcome of living in a cabin that is really not so far removed from the world. And also, why is he doing that at all? What's the justification behind this there? Some good naturalist reasons, but it also smells a little bit like the Epicurean life of retreating to the garden and avoiding the city.
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point. For those that don't know, yeah. I guess this would have been late 1800s, middle 1800s. After Roe, he was like lived outside of Boston and he went to Walden Pond and lived by this pond. But I think it was only a mile or two from the nearest town and he would sometimes go back. So like on one side, there's that idealized picture of that and he like lived in the wilderness to really
00:31:51
Speaker
understand what it was to live just as a part of nature. So that one hand, that's very cool. And then I think what you're talking about is B, he also lived really close to people still. So he didn't actually like make that full division. He would sometimes go back. He was also ended up writing this book. So there seems to be something that's a bit kind of exhibitionist about
Meditation and Visualization Techniques
00:32:08
Speaker
it. Hey, I did this thing for a little bit and look that I did it. Look how, look how impressive that was. Yeah. So definitely a complicated character. Yeah, certainly. So coming to that next point,
00:32:21
Speaker
in terms of how we practice.
00:32:24
Speaker
Uh, looking to role models, comparing ourselves to others. This stoic exercise of contemplation of the sage will be familiar to many people that study stoicism. We're listening to this podcast on the stoic app. We have contemplation of the sage exercises. That's something that's an active part of the meditation practice. What is your perspective on meditating on role models on incorporating this into a practice? People are convinced it's a positive thing worth doing.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think there are two aspects to the contemplation of the sage. One is having that bank of role models, if you will, that roster of people who you can contemplate in sufficient detail. Some people, I think they might sit down and find it difficult to think of people that they clearly admire or difficult to think of that many.
00:33:20
Speaker
And if you find yourself in that position, there are fictional solutions and different historical solutions. So you can look at collections of biographies of people who are, you think you could potentially admire, learn more about their life, the decisions they made, the mistakes they made as well.
00:33:39
Speaker
And on the fictional side, there are a number of excellent works. Simply by going through, I think, any great books list, you could find a number of modern and anti-models, as it were. So that's one aspect, making sure you have a large enough portfolio of people who you can visualize or contemplate in sufficient detail.
00:34:03
Speaker
You almost want to be in a position where if you thought, if I had this model next to me on my shoulder, would I be able to simulate what they would say about particular simulations and want to know people at that level of detail if you can. So once you have that, there are different ways we can contemplate the sage. I think that the most useful ways are taking the practice of simply asking what would this person do in different situations.
00:34:34
Speaker
There's a strong tradition of doing this practice in a number of religions, and that tradition is there for a reason. It is informative and is a useful thing to do. You can also ask, how would I behave if this person were observing me? How would that change the decisions that I make?
00:34:57
Speaker
or think about what would this person advise if I asked them about particular situations in my life or if they simply saw the sorts of simulation situations I was confronted with. I think one large note here, one important note I should say is that when doing this in a meditative way, it's important to think about this
00:35:23
Speaker
both in the explicit sense, your reasoning, your sort of verbalizing, making what you value concrete, but also in the more physical, intuitive sets. So if you were to imagine how a role model might handle a situation, you can do it in a detailed way where you imagine these precise movements, the appearance of the room when you do this act, the smells that might be wafting around the area, the sounds.
00:35:53
Speaker
What you're trying to do is be like the musician or athlete who is mentally rehearsing, acting in a specific way. And in order for that mental rehearsal to be worth anything, it needs to be realistic. And the way one gets it to realism is by visualizing the most important details. So those can be triggers for your behavior, or they can be walking through the actual behavior itself in a detailed way.
00:36:23
Speaker
It's interesting that you brought the athletic analogy because this is something that mindfulness visualization is something that I came to before stoicism in an athletic context. And what we would do, or what I was trained to do and what I would practice is increasing levels of realism.
00:36:43
Speaker
So if I'm imagining myself executing a technique, the first thing I would do is imagine someone else executing the technique. Just observe what the technique is. Just see what it is for that technique to happen.
00:36:54
Speaker
I would visualize myself completing the technique or winning the tournament. If what I was trying to visualize was to gain confidence instead of doing a technique, I would visualize myself winning, but it would be in a third person perspective, like you're watching television or something. And then I think that final step is the one you mentioned where you're winning the match and you can feel it. You can smell it. You feel the pain. You're right in it. A kind of first person perspective embodied realism.
00:37:20
Speaker
but it was something that we would always train up to or would be difficult to get to at the start. Do you find that in your own practice that it can be difficult to get to that level of realism from the start? Is that layering something that you incorporate?
00:37:37
Speaker
It's important to have the training data so you can simulate things in an accurate enough perspective. So I can simulate what it's like to, or rehearse what it's like to give a public speech, but I will not be so good at simulating what it's like to scuba dive because I've never done that in my life.
00:37:57
Speaker
So at some level you need to have enough familiarity with what you are trying to do. So that's certainly an important factor. In terms of the leveling, I think that imagining another person going through the act is useful and reminds you of what is possible. And you can do that in an exceptionally detailed way. I think if you are having difficulty imagining yourself doing the relevant actions.
00:38:26
Speaker
Another similar point here around leveling is that you always want to be ambitious but also be realistic. One potential trap is imagining situations in low enough detail where
00:38:44
Speaker
you are imagining your
Philosophy as Treatment
00:38:46
Speaker
model succeeding at focusing and working for six hours straight and not being distracted at all. But if you are starting from a baseline of only being able to sit and focus for 20 minutes, that is going to be exceptionally difficult and you may not be able to visualize
00:39:08
Speaker
or even rehearse what that sort of thing is like to a good enough detail for the exercise to be useful. So it is, I think it's always good to ensure that you have sufficient training data as it were, and ensure that you are modeling things in a ambitious but realistic way.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's most effective when you're modeling something that's realistic and that's achievable for two reasons. One is because you're going to have more data. You're going to be able to do it better if it's the thing you've done before or a thing you've gotten close to. Maybe you're imagining yourself giving a successful speech in front of a hundred people because you've given one in front of 50 before. Right. So it's like you're at least, you at least recognize the kind of. The kind of situation it is as opposed to scuba diving, who knows?
00:39:59
Speaker
We should, there's still time they'll kill. We can get the most scuba diving eventually would be great. But yes, that's a really compelling point. I think, I think that's right. And then realism in general, that kind of come back full circle to what I would say at the start is this idea of.
00:40:14
Speaker
If this isn't an exercise, I was proposing at the start that maybe this is an exercise you should avoid if you're a beginner. Oh, should only the advanced people compare themselves to others? And I think you raised a good reason to not do that. It's something you should start right from the beginning. Same way, the first time you pick up a guitar, you can compare yourself to a musician you admire. But even though you can do it from the beginning,
00:40:38
Speaker
It has to be what you're imagining in order for it to be most effective should be an incremental step, should be something that is achievable. Otherwise we're just, is it the case that you're just fantasizing as opposed to practicing? What about that?
00:40:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's always a risk. Also there's some advice to imagine success that is largely out of the, I think, self-help water, but you still occasionally hear on occasion.
00:41:10
Speaker
which is often not useful, at least not useful, done alone. If you imagine a violinist time trying to practice, just imagining the applause of the audience is not a very useful exercise in terms of being able to be better at
00:41:30
Speaker
the violin instead of what you want to mentally rehearse while you're on the bus or what have you is the actual movements of your fingers and your arm as you play the instrument. And that technique is a useful reminder or useful
00:41:47
Speaker
heuristic for avoiding mirror fantasizing is focusing on the act instead of the results and if you want more information on what the act or acts may be you can work backward from
00:42:02
Speaker
the desired results. And so if you want a public speech to go, you might start with everyone clapping their hands, what have you, but then ask what are the things that I have done to get myself to this situation? What decisions did I make? What obstacles did I face? And then work through those.
00:42:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's really smart. Sometimes we just imagine where we want to be. Nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with thinking about the end state that you want. But as you point out, you need to think of it in actionable steps. And the way you do that is by working backwards from that end state. I think that makes a lot of sense and it's pretty practical, pretty applicable. One other thing I wanted to talk about, one thing you mentioned in your piece
00:42:50
Speaker
Is the difficulty of comparing yourself to others or how this can be a difficult thing to do? You raised the stoic metaphor or analogy that philosophy is like a hospital. It doesn't feel great when you enter, but the point is to come out better, healed, less sick. I wonder what your take on it is on that. Is philosophy like a hospital and what is the difficult part of this? Because we've been talking about it in a very positive light so far, I think.
00:43:19
Speaker
I think on the margin, more people should think of philosophy or self-improvement like a hospital. I think that there are memes around self-acceptance or a lot of materials function almost more as entertainment than actual steps for improvement. So on the margin, I think there could be more of a push for thinking of things like philosophy as
00:43:46
Speaker
going to the hospital in the sense that you're trying to get better and getting better is not always a fun thing to do. And in fact, you might think about maybe using a different analogy as if you want to learn something about biology, you could start by reading some pop science books about biology. That might not be a bad way to get inspired about the field, but if you are
00:44:14
Speaker
serious in the sense that you want to be a biologist. The sorts of things you should be doing might not be obviously fun. Things like going through textbooks, running detailed experiments if you're on the empirical side, or learning all kinds of math if you want to go into the more theoretical aspects of biology. But potentially a useful heuristic here is the activity that I am doing. Is it something that I'm doing for
00:44:43
Speaker
entertainment type reasons or symbolic type reasons or is this the sort of thing that someone who cares about the outcome that I at least state I care about would directly be doing in order to get to that outcome.
Balancing Enjoyment and Duty
00:45:00
Speaker
And in a lot of cases, you might just think that the activity that I'm doing is mostly for entertainment. I listen to that podcast not so much so that I can master the history of the states or what have you, but just because it's fun and along the way, I might learn a little. And I can see myself as a source of person who listens to a history podcast. And that's not so bad. There's nothing especially wrong with that, but it's always good to be clear about
00:45:29
Speaker
I think what you are doing and if what you really care about, if there's a part of you that really cares about the direct results, being sure that you're doing the things that get you there is obviously important.
00:45:43
Speaker
Yeah, this reminds me of what Epictetus talks about because everything reminds me of what Epictetus talks about, to always have Epictetus on the brain. But we often don't think of kind of intellectual joy or intellectual, like we think if something is learning, I must be doing it for self-improvement reasons, or at least
00:46:03
Speaker
A lot of young people, or at least I had that kind of perspective coming out of high school where you think, wow, school is not the funnest. If I'm putting my hat, if I'm reading, if I'm learning about something, I'm not being forced to learn. It must be because I'm trying to improve, but.
00:46:19
Speaker
especially I think people that attracted the philosophy, there's a real kind of joy to solving intellectual puzzles. There's a real kind of joy to learning about interesting ideas and an interesting history of ideas. There's a joy to wrestling with different concepts and Epictetus encountered this in his students of philosophy. They would enjoy reading the Stoic texts, they would enjoy solving the logic problems, but they would think just because it was logic or just because it was Stoic philosophy they were reading, they were doing the right thing or they were getting it right.
00:46:49
Speaker
And those things can be merged. I think you can have fun. And I guess the way of framing is this, is that if you don't enjoy it, you're probably doing it for the right reasons. If you do enjoy it, it might be entertainment or it might be for also for the right reason, but you have to be a little bit more careful when you do enjoy it. This reminds me of Kant and Kant says like the only indication, you know.
00:47:11
Speaker
You can only really tell somebody's a good person if they're doing something out of duty, because if they're also enjoying helping people, they might just be doing it because they get
Smart Approaches to Self-Improvement
00:47:21
Speaker
a kick out of it. They might be doing it for selfish motivation. The Stoics would say that's okay. It's okay to be enjoying it if it's the right thing to do. But I think the idea stands that if you want to make sure you're progressing and improving, one way to make sure you're progressing and improving, or one way to be pretty sure you're on the right track,
00:47:38
Speaker
is if you're doing the kinds of things you wouldn't do otherwise, because then you're probably only being motivated by a pursuit of improvement. Whereas if it is the kind of thing you would do otherwise, it's the kind of thing that's easy, it's entertaining, then it's something you might just be doing out of kind of a fun or kind of an intellectual exercise or game. What did you think about that?
00:47:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a useful heuristic. Of course, with these heuristics, there's the idea of equal and opposite advice. So some people might go the other direction and think there's something heroic about suffering and working through something when really there's a simple solution. If you want more heuristics thinking about these sorts of situations, you could almost ask.
00:48:18
Speaker
is suffering here, the high status thing, or is it the, maybe the lower status thing? And if it's the high status thing, then maybe you might wonder, is a suffering itself functioning as the symbolic thing that I want to communicate? So these sorts of things always have additional layers. What comes to mind is the Gordian knot.
00:48:39
Speaker
So I think most people when they saw this Gordian knot that was unbreakable, they thought that it's a test of strength and they wanted to be the strongest person who tore, that he was able to tear the knot. That was what they saw. You can think of the traps of comparing yourself to others. There's this value of strength that is being tested.
00:49:00
Speaker
when Alexander comes and sees the gourd or not of course he just cuts it with his sword he goes direct to the point and it's a brilliant solution and it's also lame but it solves it solves the issue there wasn't a test of strength at all to begin with there was a test of a kind of intelligence yeah and i guess that's boring but it's but it i think it's the theme not boring simple it's the theme that cuts for this entire conversation which is
00:49:28
Speaker
Make sure you're doing it for the right reasons, comparing yourself to others.
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:49:32
Speaker
Make sure you're doing it for the right reasons, engaging in self-help or self-improvement. Make sure you're doing it for the right reasons, not because it's entertainment and not because you want to show off how much you've suffered or how hard you've worked doing unpleasant things. Just that, as I just cut through to the core of it. And that's, I think the right way to approach things. Yeah, absolutely.
00:49:52
Speaker
Excellent. Okay. Great. Campbell, great talking to you as always. This is the, that's the end of our show and I think a good topic and a deep dive into a specific stoic practice, but also just a general kind of self-improvement practice. Appreciate your insights on that. A lot of fun. Of course. That's the conversation. Chat soon. Thanks. Bye Mike.
00:50:19
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Stoic Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform you use, and share it with a friend. We are just starting this podcast, so every bit of help goes a long way.
00:50:35
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientlyre.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.