For some,
Stoicism is pessimistic.
Stoicism wants you to expect the worst, to constantly remind yourself that you'll die, that passions are forbidden... But that's not the case - and besides, it doesn't matter what these people think, because you know what's good for you.
The exercises I just mentioned, and which I mentioned in the middle of the program, only exist because they are, paradoxically enough for their detractors, **tools** - no, you aren't meditating on death because you're a pessimist. Exercise is not an end, but a means.
Here's another tool: the so-called "physical definition".
for if Stoicism denounces the judgment we make about what surrounds us, it also denounces the **false values** we ascribe to things.
What stoicism {{username}} advises you to do is to give things a physical definition in order to free them from the emotional value you attach to them, and consequently from the dependence you create on them; and thus to suffer less in case of deprivation or separation.
Many things around us, especially in modern society, have only a relative value depending on how much we value them. But only their intrinsic, objective value is really important. Everything else, the subjective, is just the fruit of our minds.
An example from Buyology 1 has always come to my mind on this topic. I'd like to share it with you:
_ Imagine a stone given to you by a relative for your birthday. You'd certainly find the intention strange, but would politely accept it before sheepishly taking a sip of champagne.
__ Now imagine the same person offers you the same stone, this time explaining that the stone comes from the ruins of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of the reunification of a divided world that marked the end of three decades of Cold War in 1989.
___ Imagine being offered this stone, which comes neither from the field next door nor from the Berlin Wall, but from the moon. This piece of rock is one of only 382 kg brought back from the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972. There are only 382 kg on Earth, and tonight we're giving it to you. The moment when a relative gives you something that represents both the evolution of humanity and its history will be etched in your memory forever.
In itself it's just a piece of stone, but what makes the difference between these three scenarios, these three stones, is the symbolic value we place on things and their rarity.
This example reminds us of the power of images and the mind. The power that distracts us from the true value of the things around us.
Most things around us pass through a mental filter that distorts reality.
If we were to strip events and material things to their pure nature, many would appear meaningless or bland.
Marcus Aurelius gives us a vivid image of the intrinsic value of things, detached from judgment:
“As your bath appears to your senses—
soap, sweat, dirt, greasy water, all disgusting—
so is every piece of life and every object.” 2
And:
“Surely it is an excellent plan, when you are seated before delicacies and choice foods, to impress upon your imagination that this is the dead body of a fish, that the dead body of a bird or a pig;
and again,
that the Falernian wine is grape juice and that robe of purple a lamb's fleece dipped in a shell-fish's blood;
and in matters of sex intercourse, that it is attrition of an entrail and a convulsive expulsion of mere mucus.
Surely these are excellent imaginations, going to the heart of actual facts and penetrating them so as to see the kind of things they really are. You should adopt this practice all through your life, and where things make an impression which is very plausible, uncover their nakedness, see into their cheapness, strip off the profession on which they vaunt themselves. For pride is an arch-seducer of reason, and just when you fancy you are most certainly busy in good works, then you arc most certainly the victim of imposture.” 3
And again:
“The rottenness of the matter which underlies everything. Water, dust, bones, stench.
Again:
marble, an incrustation of earth;
gold and silver, sediments;
your dress, the hair of animals;
the purple dye, blood,
and so all the rest.
And that which is of the nature of breath is also another thing of the same kind, changing from this to that.” 4
Epictetus also uses separation, linking it to memento mori :
“With everything which entertains you, is useful, or of which you are fond, remember to say to yourself, beginning with the very least things, ‘What is its nature? ‘ If you are fond of a jug, say, ‘I am fond of a jug‘; for when it is broken you will not be disturbed.
If you kiss your own child or wife, say to yourself that you are kissing a human being; for when it dies you will not be disturbed.” 5
This way of looking at things can be unsettling.
Even repulsive: all these beautiful things are reduced to their pure essence, decomposed, robbed of the humanity that makes them so special.
Is sex, to take the most allegorical example, which Marcus Aurelius reduces to friction and spasms, but is sex not the expression of love? Of longing for the other, of intimate moments when two beings unite their bodies in a rare and precious alchemy to be fully appreciated?
I'm torn myself about these rules {{username}}, and I'll share my conclusion with you. It's up to you, as an apprentice Stoic, to decide what to believe.
My conclusion is this, if you'll allow me 6:
We must fully appreciate the **present moment**: an excellent meal, an unusual adventure one afternoon in the company of friends, the company of a man or woman when you both make love under a bedsheet, a gift from a relative, a garment that makes you feel beautiful when you wear it. All these things spice up your life. And I, for one, couldn't give them up.
But what I'm willing to give up as part of my stoic quest is attachment.
I don't care what I enjoyed yesterday that isn't there today.
Because everything changes.
And what has changed and no longer exists, is not of my making.
So why should I torture myself?
What is your conclusion {{username}}?
Do you choose to live in the pure, sometimes austere Stoic tradition;
or not. "We are our choices.
This is a phrase attributed to the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre.
Whichever side of the line you're on, the important thing is to remember the true intrinsic value of things.