Stoicism for a Better Life – Weekly exercise (July 5, 2020)

Hello there, 

For this week’s exercise, I will look for inspiration from one of the Stoics staunchest rivals, the Epicureans. This is from the founder of the school himself, Epicurus, as reported by Diogenes Laertius:

“No one was ever the better for sexual indulgence.”  

So for a practical exercise this week, just give up sex. Become celibate. Ha, no no no. We’re not living a life of asceticism or hermitage. Although, I have nothing against people who have chosen a life of celibacy. In fact, at times I wish I had the fortitude to be able to do it if I chose to, and you may feel the same way by the end of this article.

This quote seems backwards when one considers the fact that, for Epicureans, the pursuit of happiness in life is found in the pursuit of pleasure. So giving up a sensual pleasure, a really really fun and intense one, seems backwards. And it is. But giving up sex is not the lesson here. Epicurus is merely pointing out the simple fact that although the pursuit of pleasure does not have to be an evil and harms us, it does not necessarily make us better people either.

Now the Stoics differed from the Epicureans in that for a Stoic, happiness (or rather a good life) is to be found in the betterment of the humanity. It is in working to improve life for the human Cosmopolis (which includes oneself, of course). However, any pleasure along the way is not something to be shunned necessarily. If it was obtained in an ethical manner, and it’s benefits are used in an ethical manner, then any pleasure fate throws our way is a preferred indifferent. An indifferent, of course, is something external that has no bearing on whether we are being good people pursuing good lives worth living. 

So the lesson here is that although pleasure may not necessarily be a bad thing, it most definitely is never a good thing when our own moral good is concerned. And our own moral good is, of course, the only thing that can truly be good or bad, since it is the only thing we control with 100% certainty. A pleasure may come and go without affecting our moral good, but it will certainly never make it better.

So as a practical exercise this week, try and identify a pleasure that distracts you from being the best version of yourself. This may be feelings of anger, resentment, jealousy, etc you feel from missing out on a myriad of pleasures (food, cigarette, sex, gaming, drugs, toys, habits, wtv). Identify a time when emotions took over your thoughts and you lost contact with your rational mind for an instant, or minutes or hour or a day. Then reflect on this and see if there is anything you can change in how you live your life to remove this distraction that is hurting you, and preventing you from being the best possible version of yourself.

I wish you a tranquil week, and you know where to find me if you want to keep the conversation going.

Anderson Silver

(Author of “Your User’s Manual” and “Vol 2: Your Duality Within”)