Practice like a Stoic: 12, Put temptations out of sight

Resisting temptations is very much up to you

Temptation of Adam and Eve, Genesis chapter 3 verse 6, after Raphael. Image from Wikimedia, CC license.

[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic. Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosophical background. Check the book for details on how to practice the exercise, download the exercise forms from The Experiment’s website, and comment below on how things are going. Greg and/or I will try our best to help out! This week’s exercise is found at pp. 84-86 of the paperback edition.]

“Just as he who tries to be rid of an old love must avoid every reminder of the person once held dear (for nothing grows again so easily as love), similarly, he who would lay aside his desire for all the things which he used to crave so passionately, must turn away both eyes and ears from the objects which he has abandoned. The emotions soon return to the attack; at every turn they will notice before their eyes an object worth their attention.” (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 69.3–4)

People often ask why on earth we, sophisticated denizens of the twenty-first century, should pay attention to what some long-dead folks wrote two millennia ago. This quote from Seneca is a splendid answer to that question: The ancient Greco-Roman philosophers, and the Stoics in particular, had a very sophisticated, intuitive grasp of human psychology. And living a good life has a lot to do with human psychology, obviously.

Seneca states what has become a truism in modern psychological research: The best way to avoid temptation is to minimize exposure to the source of the temptation. In a study published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, social drinkers of alcohol were exposed to two experimental conditions: sniffing water (control) and sniffing alcohol (temptation). The researchers then measured people’s ability to exercise self-control. The results were clear, as people were significantly less able to resist a drink after sniffing alcohol than after sniffing water. Just as Seneca said, exposure to what we crave is a sure way to lose control and yield to our emotional responses. It goes further, again as predicted by Seneca, as the researchers found that the intensity of the urge to drink also negatively affected the ability to exercise self-control. The more we want something, the less able we are to resist it if we are exposed to the thing we desire.

It’s fascinating that Seneca compares unhealthy cravings with falling in love again. Modern research shows that the neural correlates of romantic feelings are similar to feelings of craving and even addiction. A study conducted by cognitive social scientist Helen Fisher, an expert on the biology of love, and her collaborators investigated how the brain responds to images of people who have rejected us romantically. The researchers found that the parts of the brain that became active in response to romantic rejection were those normally involved in evaluating gains and losses, motivational relevance, craving, addiction (including specifically cocaine addiction), and emotion regulation. Seneca was no neuroscientist, but he had a keen sense of the inner workings of human beings, a sense that was just as useful in ancient imperial Rome as it is in the modern day.

What are we to do, then? Simple: Avoid the stimulus. This is easier than relying on brute willpower for two reasons. First, a healthier lifestyle is a preferred indifferent, and second, by removing temptations that may compromise our self-control, we can improve our character. Self-control is most effective when exercised preemptively by removing the temptation altogether. Should our character improve enough down the road, we may not have to put temptations out of sight. While putting them out of sight may be seen as a crutch, crutches are necessary for healing.