Practice like a Stoic: 23, Don't speak about yourself

Combating the narcissism of talking too much

Wood engraving after George Du Maurier, 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. 144-145 of the paperback edition.]

“In your conversation avoid frequent and disproportionate mention of your own doings or adventures; for other people do not take the same pleasure in hearing what has happened to you as you take in recounting your adventures.” (Epictetus, Enchiridion, 33.14)

You know the stereotype of the couple who go on vacation and then invite their friends over in order to subject them to an excruciatingly long slideshow featuring every moment of said vacation? Well, that’s when there were slides. Now there is social media, and our audience is made of hundreds of “friends,” potentially—depending on your privacy settings—the entire world. Oversharing hasn’t gotten any less annoying as we’ve become more efficient by electronic means.

Now ask yourself: Why do you overshare in the first place? Granted we’re all excited about updates that we want to share with friends and family, but what causes us to overdo it? Are we engaging in some sort of virtuous activity, perhaps sharing so that people will develop a better understanding of the world? That seems unlikely. More probably we’re simply indulging in a bit of narcissism—and narcissism has little, if any, redeeming value.

This narcissism can come at the expense of paying attention to what’s going on in other people’s lives, as it did in Valerie’s case. By focusing on our own lives, we leave little mental energy to concern ourselves about the lives of people we care about. That’s a problem according to the commonsense notion of what friendship should be, as well as in terms of the Stoic virtues.

In deciding what and how much to share, which virtues are we calling on? Temperance comes to mind, the notion that we should do things in the right measure—neither too much nor too little—as we previously explored with Musonius Rufus in the context of eating (see Week 11). But speaking less about yourself also exercises the virtue of justice: By using less mental energy to focus on our own exploits, we free up space to care more about other people. When thinking about our public persona, then, we can act in a similar manner and exercise moderation.