Massimo, thank you for this excellent essay. Once again you have touched on the primary points of Stoicism, applying them to the modern world with references to the words of the ancient thinkers. All without getting lost in the weeds. I especially like your emphasis on recognizing facts (distinct from ‘alternative facts’), using reason and compassion (cosmopolitanism), to work toward a worldwide community. I love your work. Keep up the good fight! I will continue to make my own small contributions within my community.
Yes, all good and much-needed points. The false dichotomy of helping yourself vs helping the world to me is the fundamental illusion that needs shattering
My only sort of, I don't even know if I want to call it a disagreement, but issue is on death (in a final ending sense) being (inherently) crucial for something to have meaning in life as opposed to it just being meaningful by being temporary in general.
Take a relationship, if a loved one was not even dying, just moving away by the end of the year for a half a decade with little to no contact, I'd still feel a need to try to spend more time with them and it would still be sad once the time comes. The fact that most likely we would see each other again and possibly still repeat some of the same experiences doesn't render the time we spent valueless, nor would I probably feel absolutely no grief at the time spent apart. I imagine this is why even the religious who don't believe in reincarnation still hold funerals even if they believe in an immortal afterlife reunion.
As for urgency? While undoubtedly death increases it, especially if a terminal illness gives more of an estimate, I don't see why a lack of it would render it obsolete either. If I needed to repaint my wall in a month simply because I think it's getting ugly, I'll admit, I'm not the type to do it ASAP, but the fact I have a relatively large amount of time and it's not that important of an issue doesn't mean I won't feel the need to do it earlier either, I can't see having infinite time changing things for that, let alone less trivial life pursuits.
Granted, none of this addresses other issues with immortality like resource depletion, boredom (unless it came with a huge change to the target's mental nature), the rest of the universe not being immortal, and what type of immortality is even being considered* and of course a lack of evidence or satisfying reasoning means that it's not possible/doesn't exist or if there was a way or it already exists in some capacity that no one has ever thought about, we'd still have no idea what it is/really be like to experience so there's no point in caring about it either.
*A Christian heaven, ancient Greek underworld, Transhumanist (over)optimism, or the Force from Star Wars have far different ideas on a life after death (or elimination of).
Willy, I think your objections carry weight if we are talking postponement of death, but much less so if we are talking actual immortality. A lot of philosophical and psychological literature has argued that the human psyche simply did not evolve for dealing with infinity.
Your counterexamples all have to do with a little bit longer time available, which I agree would have the effects you suggest. But here we are talking immortality, the complete lack of death. That is what the Stoics argue would make our lives into an endless Groundhog Day and lead us first to meaninglessness and eventually to utter despair. Of course, that's ultimately an empirical question, one we will not settle any time soon...
A real human psyche probably. If there was a way do make a human psyche deal with it, well it probably wouldn't be completely human anymore.
I suppose I'm just being a bit greedy? or selfish? because despite also being an atheist*, I don't want to suddenly see every work of fiction I've come across from any genre that has some form of heaven, ascended/godhood, or other forms of eternal existence suddenly be shifted into the category of tragedy or horror. I play an online medieval multiplayer fantasy game that once had a story that also argued death is necessary for a meaningful life despite it also letting me be friends with the world's grim reaper who your character has helped several times with afterlife security**. I don't mind simply imagining (headcanon as a lot of people call it) that in these works, dying causes a shift in psyche in some way that the effects of Groundhog Day*** doesn't occur/can be countered**** but still has enough consequences of separation or said shifted psyche that killing off a character is still sad for their friends and families and for the audience, but if something is inherently logically nonsensical, no amount of world building can fix that. But if the issue of immortality is an empirical question simply based on the nature of the psyche, I suppose I can shift it back to lore writing quality.
*On a side note, you're the one who many years ago made me confident and comfortable identifying myself as one. Thanks.
**No really, one time the game had a Halloween event where after an extradimensional world devourer was killed, the worlds it consumed turns out also had their underworlds eaten, and as a result a huge refugee crisis of souls flooded into our own, which prompted an attack by a mad soul devourer goddess. As a result, the overstretched Reaper and his Anubis-like partner, hired the playerbase as mercenaries to help them to a new resting place by fishing them out of the underworld river they fell in, then escorting them from a variety of terror beasts via combat (not necessarily even magic, physical melee and projectiles still work) or divine energy siphoning. For me, this is probably the strangest "laying the dead to rest" concept I have encountered so far.
***Haven't seen the film, have seen similar concepts in other stories.
****When I haven't watched, played, or done something for a long time, it starts to feel fresh again when I do, I currently lean to prefer an evolved version of this phenomenon for non- reincarnated fictional dead.
Willy, glad I was helpful in your coming out as an atheist!
As for Groundhog Day and the human psyche. Right, if we were made differently perhaps things would be different. But we are what we are, at the least at the moment. And of course there is no chance for actual immortality to come our way any time soon.
Therefore, as good pragmatic Stoics, we focus on what is real and what we actually have to deal with.
I find Zeno's threefold division of knowledge into three interdependent parts – physics, logic and ethics – of great help in cutting through various nonsenses. And that Stoicism brings clarity and incisiveness to many of our current hot button issues. To take one current example, many will be aware of the Cass Report into "gender affirming care" formerly taking place at Tavistock in the UK.
Summarising under Zeno's three headings:
Logical failures
Dialectic fails on two levels:
– at the level of the child – the critical examination of the child's own diagnosis does not take place
– at the level of what explanations are acceptable – failure to take account of all relevant facts (or rather, to choose not to discover relevant facts) about the child's situation. That is, an ideology is applied.
Failures of (role) ethics
Counselling and psychiatric services are to provide therapy, not to judge and not to impose an ideology.
Failures of physics
Cass found no evidence of the effectiveness of therapies.
Thank you Massimo. I agree with your conclusion that Stoicism is a confusing (in a good way) philosophy that encourages critical thinking and figuring out what's right situationally, rather than fitting neatly into modern political categories. The points you so eloquently made challenge both conservative and progressive viewpoints in various ways.
Superb! This essay was a nine-course meal. I savored every word that it felt like reading one of the “great three” contemporaneously! These New Stoic insights are archers’ arrows hitting marks surrounding today’s zeitgeist. In doing so, you subvert their thinking by virtue and reason. Brilliant.👍😊
This essay is sorely needed in these times. I just wish that those who really need to read it would do so. Thanks!
To write the essay was up to me, who reads it is not up to me… 😃 But that’s for the appreciation!
Massimo, thank you for this excellent essay. Once again you have touched on the primary points of Stoicism, applying them to the modern world with references to the words of the ancient thinkers. All without getting lost in the weeds. I especially like your emphasis on recognizing facts (distinct from ‘alternative facts’), using reason and compassion (cosmopolitanism), to work toward a worldwide community. I love your work. Keep up the good fight! I will continue to make my own small contributions within my community.
Paul, thanks for the kind words and for your continued support. Let’s keep trying to make this a slightly better world, one virtuous act at a time.
Continue to ‘pay it forward’!
Yes, all good and much-needed points. The false dichotomy of helping yourself vs helping the world to me is the fundamental illusion that needs shattering
My only sort of, I don't even know if I want to call it a disagreement, but issue is on death (in a final ending sense) being (inherently) crucial for something to have meaning in life as opposed to it just being meaningful by being temporary in general.
Take a relationship, if a loved one was not even dying, just moving away by the end of the year for a half a decade with little to no contact, I'd still feel a need to try to spend more time with them and it would still be sad once the time comes. The fact that most likely we would see each other again and possibly still repeat some of the same experiences doesn't render the time we spent valueless, nor would I probably feel absolutely no grief at the time spent apart. I imagine this is why even the religious who don't believe in reincarnation still hold funerals even if they believe in an immortal afterlife reunion.
As for urgency? While undoubtedly death increases it, especially if a terminal illness gives more of an estimate, I don't see why a lack of it would render it obsolete either. If I needed to repaint my wall in a month simply because I think it's getting ugly, I'll admit, I'm not the type to do it ASAP, but the fact I have a relatively large amount of time and it's not that important of an issue doesn't mean I won't feel the need to do it earlier either, I can't see having infinite time changing things for that, let alone less trivial life pursuits.
Granted, none of this addresses other issues with immortality like resource depletion, boredom (unless it came with a huge change to the target's mental nature), the rest of the universe not being immortal, and what type of immortality is even being considered* and of course a lack of evidence or satisfying reasoning means that it's not possible/doesn't exist or if there was a way or it already exists in some capacity that no one has ever thought about, we'd still have no idea what it is/really be like to experience so there's no point in caring about it either.
*A Christian heaven, ancient Greek underworld, Transhumanist (over)optimism, or the Force from Star Wars have far different ideas on a life after death (or elimination of).
Willy, I think your objections carry weight if we are talking postponement of death, but much less so if we are talking actual immortality. A lot of philosophical and psychological literature has argued that the human psyche simply did not evolve for dealing with infinity.
Your counterexamples all have to do with a little bit longer time available, which I agree would have the effects you suggest. But here we are talking immortality, the complete lack of death. That is what the Stoics argue would make our lives into an endless Groundhog Day and lead us first to meaninglessness and eventually to utter despair. Of course, that's ultimately an empirical question, one we will not settle any time soon...
A real human psyche probably. If there was a way do make a human psyche deal with it, well it probably wouldn't be completely human anymore.
I suppose I'm just being a bit greedy? or selfish? because despite also being an atheist*, I don't want to suddenly see every work of fiction I've come across from any genre that has some form of heaven, ascended/godhood, or other forms of eternal existence suddenly be shifted into the category of tragedy or horror. I play an online medieval multiplayer fantasy game that once had a story that also argued death is necessary for a meaningful life despite it also letting me be friends with the world's grim reaper who your character has helped several times with afterlife security**. I don't mind simply imagining (headcanon as a lot of people call it) that in these works, dying causes a shift in psyche in some way that the effects of Groundhog Day*** doesn't occur/can be countered**** but still has enough consequences of separation or said shifted psyche that killing off a character is still sad for their friends and families and for the audience, but if something is inherently logically nonsensical, no amount of world building can fix that. But if the issue of immortality is an empirical question simply based on the nature of the psyche, I suppose I can shift it back to lore writing quality.
*On a side note, you're the one who many years ago made me confident and comfortable identifying myself as one. Thanks.
**No really, one time the game had a Halloween event where after an extradimensional world devourer was killed, the worlds it consumed turns out also had their underworlds eaten, and as a result a huge refugee crisis of souls flooded into our own, which prompted an attack by a mad soul devourer goddess. As a result, the overstretched Reaper and his Anubis-like partner, hired the playerbase as mercenaries to help them to a new resting place by fishing them out of the underworld river they fell in, then escorting them from a variety of terror beasts via combat (not necessarily even magic, physical melee and projectiles still work) or divine energy siphoning. For me, this is probably the strangest "laying the dead to rest" concept I have encountered so far.
***Haven't seen the film, have seen similar concepts in other stories.
****When I haven't watched, played, or done something for a long time, it starts to feel fresh again when I do, I currently lean to prefer an evolved version of this phenomenon for non- reincarnated fictional dead.
Willy, glad I was helpful in your coming out as an atheist!
As for Groundhog Day and the human psyche. Right, if we were made differently perhaps things would be different. But we are what we are, at the least at the moment. And of course there is no chance for actual immortality to come our way any time soon.
Therefore, as good pragmatic Stoics, we focus on what is real and what we actually have to deal with.
Very refreshing thank you Massimo!
I find Zeno's threefold division of knowledge into three interdependent parts – physics, logic and ethics – of great help in cutting through various nonsenses. And that Stoicism brings clarity and incisiveness to many of our current hot button issues. To take one current example, many will be aware of the Cass Report into "gender affirming care" formerly taking place at Tavistock in the UK.
Summarising under Zeno's three headings:
Logical failures
Dialectic fails on two levels:
– at the level of the child – the critical examination of the child's own diagnosis does not take place
– at the level of what explanations are acceptable – failure to take account of all relevant facts (or rather, to choose not to discover relevant facts) about the child's situation. That is, an ideology is applied.
Failures of (role) ethics
Counselling and psychiatric services are to provide therapy, not to judge and not to impose an ideology.
Failures of physics
Cass found no evidence of the effectiveness of therapies.
Excellent observation. I didn’t think of applying it that way. 👍🏻
Much needed, Massimo! Thanks!
Thank you Massimo. I agree with your conclusion that Stoicism is a confusing (in a good way) philosophy that encourages critical thinking and figuring out what's right situationally, rather than fitting neatly into modern political categories. The points you so eloquently made challenge both conservative and progressive viewpoints in various ways.
Superb! This essay was a nine-course meal. I savored every word that it felt like reading one of the “great three” contemporaneously! These New Stoic insights are archers’ arrows hitting marks surrounding today’s zeitgeist. In doing so, you subvert their thinking by virtue and reason. Brilliant.👍😊
Thanks Mike, much appreciated!
Welcome aboard, and thanks!