Endgame Vision

"Where there is no vision, the people perish." ~ Proverbs 29:18

In many versions of that passage it says with prophetic vision people cast off restraint, but I think vision works as well on its own and is more inclusive, and perish gives a clearer image of the end result. It doesn't mean we'll all be free without a vision guiding us, but that we'll all go haywire. The proverb actually goes on to say that we'll all still be happier if we follow the law - or moral restraint - despite a lack of vision, but I'm dubious about that part of it. It can be better for everyone if we're moral, but I'm not convinced it makes us all happier. All of Proverbs 29 is about turning away from evil motives and doing the right thing, but something that jumps out to me as vital is our need for a sense of where we're headed, especially during times of chaos, even while we pretend everything is normal.

This reddit post is making the rounds. It expresses the experiences many of us are having and asks some good questions about where we go from here:

Practical issue first: I'm not sure how living with minimal Covid risk is dwindling their savings away. Five N95s can last a month (rotate them, one/day of the week) for $10, and there are several organizations that provide them for free for people in need. So I wonder if they're not going in to work or quit their job or if they're taking cabs instead of the subway or something like that. If they lost their job just for wearing a mask, that's a different issue specific to a few states in the US and a few places outside there. 

Menakem's Somatic Therapy Approach to Anti-Racism Work

Resmaa Menakem's My Grandmother's Hands came highly recommended. The title refers to the effect that being enslaved had on his grandmother, and Menakem traces the violence of racism through the specific perspectives of people on either end of racial conflicts. Beyond just explaining how racism affects all of us in variable ways, he provides specific exercises for overcoming our past. The book contains some excellent and unique ideas about healing from trauma and responding to pain within the context of ongoing racial oppression, but it takes some liberties with explanations of neuroscience and might be better approached as philosophy.

Psychotherapy in General

I've previously written about healing advice from Gabor Maté focusing on trauma as the cause of all our ills, Viktor Frankl finding a purpose for himself in order to cope in a concentration camp and advocating for the courage to have an authentic experience of the self and world, Mark Solms reworking Freud to better understand the process of tracing emotional experiences to the past, and the use of Buddhism to stop seeking something outside ourselves in order to find slivers of peace between our thoughts. All of them, more or less, aim to get to something akin to this point:

"Once we can find the spaces between the cacophony of thought, in that tiny gap between trigger and reaction, we can reclaim our agency to decide how to act. When we focus on the nothingness instead of following our personal thoughts and feelings, then we’re no longer dragged along by the drama in our lives."

Menakem's book is no different in that respect. This quest has been repeated for thousands of years in various ways and shows up over and over because there's something to it. It works.

In current psychodynamic terms, we've developed maladaptive behaviour patterns that were established to meet some need at a time when we were too young or too overwhelmed to act otherwise. Now we need to become aware of behaviours that don't work for us, go back to find our error, and reintegrate it all. Menakem goes further than just our personal experiences to look at generational experiences, explaining that,

On Comparing Existentialism and Stoicism

This summer, I went on one camping trip with a book on Stoicism, then another camping trip with a book on Existentialism, and I was intrigued by the many similarities. Then I came across this video that has some overlap with what I had noticed. As they say in the video, Massimo Pigliucci (MP) on Stoicism and Skye Cleary (SC) on Existentialism, both are philosophies that offer a way to live instead of just a way to think about the world. I'm putting it all together here with quotes (names linked to sources) to sort it out for myself. I'm just thinking out loud here. This is too long for any normal person to want to read.

These are both philosophies that allow surveyors to pick and choose from variations on a theme as neither has one authoritative dude overriding all others, and, it would appear, few of the big guns cared to adopt either label anyway. For the Stoics, defining yourself as one is avoided because it's pretentious. In The Role Ethics of Epictetus, it's clarified that we are simultaneously different things, and how we play each role is more important than what our roles are. The roles are often not our choice, but how we do them are, i.e. whether or not we're a virtuous son, mother, teacher, or waiter (MP). For Existentialists, we can't be defined by the roles we take on because we're more than the mere facts about ourselves (SC), so labels become meaningless.

On Regret

I've taken many questionable risks in my life. I lean toward leading a life that's lived fully over a safe and secure existence. Most I bounced back from easily from typical childhood falling from trees when I've climbed too high to dropping out of high school and somehow ending up with a Masters. Sometimes it's gone extraordinarily well for me. When an elderly woman next door to me died, I went deep into debt to buy and flip her crumbling house only to find it packed with cash. People thought I was crazy for my efforts to save my school from the chopping block until it all worked, and I'm still there. People were adamant that I can't possibly hold my head high as a teacher and unwed mother back a few decades when premarital sex was shameful, but I ignored them all with the most delightful results. And when my third pregnancy was fraught with complications, and doctors strongly advised me to terminate because of a high risk of Edwards syndrome, I, still single, took a chance and have another healthy daughter to show for it. I've been very very lucky over the years.

But then there are the times that didn't go as well. That time I was convinced I was overinsured and cancelled the insurance on a property, then it promptly went up in flames. That time I got scared of my debt load and hastily sold the slightly charred land - 24 acres with 2000' of waterfront, then soon realized there's nothing else like it out there in my price range. And that time I was convinced by a couple doctors, in opposition to others doctors, equally educated, to get an auxiliary lymph node dissection (ALND), and only afterwards found out about, and succumbed to, the risks of lymphedema.

Like most people, I imagine, I have an easy time ignoring my luck and a really hard time coping when my decisions don't pan out as well. Regret is a bugger.

So I wrote to Stoic advice columnist, Massimo Pigliucci, explaining my surgery situation in very general terms so it could be applied to and/or understood by more people, and I made it sound worse than it is to get a response to the worst case scenario. In general I asked "How were the Stoics so able to get on top of these types of thoughts so well?"

On Wasting Time

I had a brief Facebook conversation with Massimo Pigliucci about my decision to fritter away a morning watching the rain and petting my cat. He said, "It's up to you to determine whether your morning was wasted or not. But from a Stoic perspective the good use of time comes when one is doing something virtuous." And I started wondering further about what specifically counts as wasted time. So I turned to a thorough re-reading of Seneca's On the Shortness of Life. Here are the bits that stood out to me with chapters noted after each quotation:

Seneca points out that people complain about the cruelty of nature because life is short, even Aristotle did, but it's not short, it's just that we waste much of it (1). Then he lists many examples of what a waste of time looks like:

"soft and careless living...no worthwhile pursuit....held in the grip of voracious avarice....diligence that busies itself with pointless enterprises....sodden with wine....slack with idleness....tired out by political ambition, which always hangs on the judgment of others....desire for trading...in hope of profit....passion for soldiering....striving after other people's wealth....thrown...by a fickleness that is shifting" (2).

Taking Comfort in Stoicism

When thing take a turn for the worst, no philosophy helps me like re-reading the writings of Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius.

I had a dream last night that I was at a bike show (about bicycles, not motorcycles), talking to a distance rider, when, after a long conversation, I noticed that his one arm ended just this side of the elbow. He had a prosthetic, but nothing fancy, just something to help him grip the handlebars. And I felt so sheepish for whining about my trivial issues.

What, then, is to be done? To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it naturally happens. (Epictetus Discourses B I, Ch I)

We have to figure out what's in our power to control, then stop griping or trying to fix what's not in our power to change. It is what it is. So, right now, I can't change the fact that I had this surgery and that things went wrong. That's in the past where I exercise no control. But then we have to learn to affect what we can control with courage. I can control my behaviours: how well I do my painful stretches and care for my wonky arm, and I can certainly control my attitude, but most importantly, I can control my perception of things (which will, in turn, affect my attitude and behaviours).

Before I get to controlling perceptions, be aware the tricky part isn't actually changing how we see things, but that earlier bit: knowing what's in our power to control. Does it makes sense to rally against powerful interests in order to shift energy consumption in order to save the planet? Is saving our habitat actually within our control? Likewise, in this situation, does contacting my MPP about the problems with the current health care system, which I've done, actually do a hill of beans to change anything? It's harder than it looks to have the wisdom to know the when to accept our lot and when to have the courage to fight for change. We have to take a chance and fight for what's right, yet not hang on to the outcome, not have any expectations that our actions will see results in our lifetime.

A recent interview with contemporary Stoic author, Massimo Pigliucci, sums it up well:

We should very much try to change things for the better, that’s the whole point of the Stoic discipline of action, and that discipline is connected to the virtue of justice. But we should also be rational about it, and understand that sometimes things go our way, and at other times they don’t. We have varying degrees of influence over external events, but the only things truly under our control are our judgments and actions, for which we are morally responsible.

My disposition leans towards fighting anyway, so I'm more likely to need to be reminded to accept those things so obviously outside my limits. It is what it is.... It is what it is....

To change our perception of things, we just need to be grateful for what we have and remind ourselves of those worse off than us. Regularly imagine the worst thing possible happening, and consider how you could cope with it, and then we'll be ready for anything.

No prospect of hardship comes to me new or unexpected I anticipated it all and have rehearsed it in the privacy of my mind....And so a wise person gets used to future misfortunes, and what other people make bearable by long suffering he makes bearable by prolonged thinking. (Seneca Letters from a Stoic 76)

I'm very good at preparing for the worst when it comes to big things. I had a new will drawn up last September and showed my kids where to find all the important documents, just in case. But it's the minor annoyances of life that we sometimes overlook and allow to build up until we're in a tizzy.

When stretching is painful, and I note an ounce of self-pity because I haven't prepared myself for the unexpected pain, then a quick mental image of Franco playing Ralston in 127 Hours can do the trick to help me get over myself and recognize how minuscule my troubles really are - and how much much worse they could be.

We're also advised to remind ourselves that if this were happening to an acquaintance, we wouldn't be so affected by it, so it's silly to be affected by it when it happens to us.

For example, when our neighbor's boy breaks a cup, or the like, we are presently ready to say, "These things will happen." Be assured, then, that when your own cup likewise is broken, you ought to be affected just as when another's cup was broken. Apply this in like manner to greater things. Is the child or wife of another dead? There is no one who would not say, "This is a human accident." but if anyone's own child happens to die, it is presently, "Alas I how wretched am I!" But it should be remembered how we are affected in hearing the same thing concerning others. (Epictetus The Enchiridion 26)

I know if it happened to another, I'd think, "It's unfortunate and frustrating, but it's not the end of the world, for heaven's sake!" This too shall pass. Just thinking like this, a little each day, affects our attitude towards things, makes us less upset at minor annoyances. And that in turn affects our behaviours, making us far more patient and understanding with one another.

If we can affect our perception of things, then we're well on our way to want what we have and not want what we don't, and actually be content for a moment - that is, when we can remember all this!

He who fails to obtain the object of his desire is disappointed, and he who incurs the object of his aversion wretched. If, then, you confine your aversion to those objects only which are contrary to the natural use of your faculties, which you have in your own control, you will never incur anything to which you are averse. But if you are averse to sickness, or death, or poverty, you will be wretched. Remove aversion, then, from all things that are not in our control, and transfer it to things contrary to the nature of what is in our control. (Epictetus The Enchiridion 2)

The sooner we can accept that some pain and suffering is part of life, and that death is coming for all of us, the sooner we can get on with things and enjoy each day.

And then we can use these seemingly unfortunate events to a greater purpose by using them for self-improvement, like bombarding parliament with letters of concern about the state of our ER departments, or, more to the point, by acclimatizing ourselves to greater troubles. Look how much I can tolerate!

With every accident, ask yourself what abilities you have for making a proper use of it. ....If you are in pain, you will find fortitude. If you hear unpleasant language, you will find patience. And thus habituated, the appearances of things will not hurry you away along with them.  (Epictetus The Enchiridion 10)

Aurelius predated Nietzsche's, "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" somewhat with this bit:

Everything which happens either happens in such wise as thou art formed by nature to bear it, or as thou art not formed by nature to bear it. If, then, it happens to thee in such way as thou art formed by nature to bear it, do not complain, but bear it as thou art formed by nature to bear it. But if it happens in such wise as thou art not formed by nature to bear it, do not complain, for it will perish after it has consumed thee. (Meditations 10)

This won't consume me. I was formed by nature to bear it!

So, that one day when my daughter changed my dressings and the blood shot out from my side a little like this:

I was a little traumatized that we had to catch it all in the sink - not just woozy, but made quite afraid to take the bandages off again. But I'm still healthy and active, living and breathing and using my arm a little more every day. And, like my dream reminded me, some people don't even have two hands to work with. I'm very much one of the lucky ones!

Then again, I lieu of reading the Stoics, it helps just to keep this song in mind: 

On Boredom

 I'm not talking about the "nausea of ennui" discussed from Seneca ("many who judge life to be not bitter, but superfluous") to Sartre, that total lack of interest in anything that makes it difficult for some to get out of bed in the morning, but of that feeling that overcomes us when we are required to do something painfully tedious.

We often elevate simple boredom to the lofty realms of melancholia or depression, as if it's worthy of great sympathy and profound relief efforts, when a mere change of scenery (or attitude) can save the day. But often it's the word we use when we have unrewarding work to do.  It's a trapped feeling that we escape with any little thing we can - cat videos or video games - anything to avoid beginning.  And that's easily solved if we can just get on with it.  And sometimes the task is so repetitive, it takes all we have to get to the end of it - like marking 60 almost identical essays or tests.  We muscle through it to the end, sometimes rewarding ourselves with treats after every five papers to keep us alert and focused.

A Stoic Resurgence

In reading a few other blogs lately, Stoicism has come up a few times, and I'm seeing it in a few books I've been reading lately too.  Maybe it'll stick this time.

In Robin Hanson's blog discussing why middle aged people are most pessimistic, I suggested that maybe it's a point in life where we know too much horrible crap happening in the world, and it's making us miserable.  And we're just before a point in which we've found a way to cope with the unending tragedies that are part of being alive.  Maybe my cohort will become happier in a stoic manner - once we get our heads around how little control we have over the world, accept that many of these problems aren't ours to solve, and develop a tranquility around it all.

Then stoicism came up again in arguments about the relationship to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy via Lieter Reports, a N.Y. Times article by Kathryn Schulz about self-help books' suggested dualism of selfhood.

On Gun Control and Coping with Death

I've been reading way too many articles about the Sandy Hook massacre followed by an unbelievable number of inane and hurtful comments:  "Cars kill more people than guns, and cars pollute too.  So we should ban cars before we ban guns."  "If God were allowed in the schools, He would have been there to protect the children."  "If we ban guns, then only criminals will have them, and we won't be able to protect ourselves!"

You get the idea.

Until a few days ago, it was legal to carry a concealed weapon in all but two areas of the U.S.  But then, by a two to one vote just last week, it was deemed unconstitutional to ban people from carrying a concealed weapon in Illinois.  Now the only place so restrained is Washington, D.C..  Curious.  But state to state, there are still different levels of restrictions on guns, and different types of guns that can be bought and sold, and, according to one study, that has a clear link to the safety of that state.

On A/C and Cars: Luxuries or Necessities?

"If we keep doing what we are now doing, we are screwed. This we know now."  - David Roberts

It's going up to 42 today!  That's really hot.  So far my house is a reasonable 28.  I don't have A/C.   I open the windows only when the temperature outside is cooler than inside; otherwise, I keep them closed.  I keep all the lights off almost all the time, and I avoid cooking.  These three things really help.  

When we were kids and we whined for an air conditioner, my dad insisted that it was his duty as a good father to ensure we were raised to tolerate the temperature extremes of our part of the world so we could learn to adapt to them.  If we were raised with air conditioning, his theory went, we'd grow up intolerant of the heat and then, he assured us, we'd be no good to anybody.  We were allowed to have heat in the winter however (20 max) because even strong healthy people die of the cold, but if you're healthy and fit, you should be able to tolerate whatever heat waves Southern Ontario can deliver.

On Friendship

"Because it was he.  Because it was I." - Montaigne on how he chose his one true friend.

It's curious to me how we qualify what counts as a friend. Since the invention of Facebook, this has been discussed at length, mostly focusing on the inauthenticity of the one-click relationship. This actually has a long history of being a topic of debate.

Seneca (pictured here) advised that "a wise man should be so good at making new friends that he can replace an old one without skipping a beat" (Bakewell, 107).  But Montaigne spent half his life looking for a friend that could match the connection he had with La Boetie, who died of the plague with Montaigne at his bedside when he was only 30.


In "Of Friendship," Montaigne compares Seneca's notion of easy friendship with what he once had and finds it lacking,

"For the rest, what we commonly call friends and friendships, are nothing but acquaintance and familiarities, either occasionally contracted, or upon some design, by means of which there happens some little intercourse betwixt our souls. But in the friendship I speak of, they mix and work themselves into one piece, with so universal a mixture, that there is no more sign of the seam by which they were first conjoined."

Montaigne had one friend his whole life, and only for a short time, yet he talks of lengthy conversations with many people throughout his essays. None of those people count.

I can relate to that, yet I question the wisdom of it. Years ago, I had a group of three friends that I did everything with for about a decade. We laughed at the same things and could talk and debate into the wee hours regularly. From time to time a few of us lived together. We could support one another when needed, and never ran into Montaigne’s concern with having more than one true friend: that one friend might need something that harms another.

Unlike La Boetie, they didn’t die; we all just changed and grew apart. We let romantic relationships get in the way of our friendship I suppose. And if we try to reconnect, it’s not the same. The people we were don’t exist anymore.

Any friendship since pales by comparison. But it seems foolish to compare at all. If we say someone’s not a friend unless our souls are entwined, then many of us will live our lives friendless. This is where, I think, philosophy does itself a disservice. It may be more accurate to think that friendship is a rare occurrence, but is it useful?

There’s a different perspective discussed by James Conlon a few years back (in an essay that, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be on-line): perhaps all friendships, instead of lying on a hierarchy from completely entwined to completely utility-driven, lie in a mosaic of different but equal. Perhaps comparing relationships is more like comparing a poem with an essay than it is comparing $50 with $100.

The demarcation of friendship is useful only to honour what once was, to clarify to self and others that it was special. Beyond that, comparing a potential friend to another person or to a set standard is offensive and just closes us off to new experiences. Not to harp on Happy Days, but remember when Fonzie had a list of all the qualities a girlfriend should have, and he ditched the perfect girl because she was a stripper? The hope of an ideal made his life worse, not better.  (The sound's a bit rough, and deconstructing the sexism needs a post of its own, but I still laughed!)



It’s not to say we should have no standards for burgeoning friendships, but that it’s better for us if our standards are less rigid and more encompassing. We can connect briefly over a shared interest without the necessity of merging souls. Every connection has some value.

I do agree, however, that if a friendship is utility-driven, then it’s something else altogether. We all sense that, but don’t always name it when it happens. Friends see us as an end, not a means. People who use us as a means to an end are opportunists or ladder-climbers or slimebags or just plain lazy.

Although I disagree with Montaigne on the wisdom of elevating one friend above all others, I also disagree with Seneca. There has to be some significant connection to call someone a friend. Just anyone won’t do.

Perhaps it's the case that these relationships made expediently aren't superficial, for utility or for the status of having lots of friends, but that people like Seneca are capable of developing substantial connections with myriad people. That seems beneficial to all if it's possible.

But is it possible? What's the number of friends we can have before they're not really worthy of the title?

Aristotle tackled this one too. He suggests there is a range of the number of friends we can have with a maximum set at the number of people we can comfortably live with. He points out similar problems of too many friends: we're pulled in too many directions, and that it can be tricky if one is sad and the other happy. How do you share both emotions at once? Furthermore, "those who have many friends... are thought to be no one's friend." So, a few is a good guess.

Aristotle's last line is a good point. The more friends someone has, the more we believe each relationship to be watered down as if our capacity for loving and caring for others is finite. Practically, if someone has 1,000 friends, they could only meet for a meal once a year if they're treating all friends equally. But, that assumes they have to meet one-on-one. Facebook is actually the ultimate friendship-equalizer. We can talk to all friends at once now and share the same information and pictures and links we like to everyone simultaneously. So, maybe it's the case that back in the day it was only possible to have one or a few real friends, but now we can have a limitless number.

A recent study suggested that 150 is the perfect number of friends. However, the article discusses the benefits of friends including a rise in income with an increase in friends in university. Now we're back to utility, not the kind of friendship Montaigne's on about. And I think what we have on Facebook doesn't fit the bill either. So I'm back to: Is it impossible to have a profound connection with more than a handful of people?

I think it’s possible for some people, those who can always fine a way to connect to almost anyone they meet. But I’m not one of them.