There are just going to be days when we feel, or perhaps we have the
absolute certitude, that we have no control over our lives. Days that are chock
full of the ‘Oh, sh—t!’ moments that the world hands off to us from time to
time, and far too often for most of our tastes. However, the very fact that we at
least realize that we are being clocked by life is a very good thing indeed, philosophically
speaking, because it shows that we are observant about how life in this world actually
works!
(NB—I appreciate
that this line of conversation sounds a little like the tired old joke about
how good the Irishman feels after he stops whacking his head against a brick
wall, but we need to do this just a little bit longer.)
As a matter of fact we do not have control over every single thing
in our lives, but we do, always, have the ability to control some things in our
lives. The trick is to learn what kinds of things we can control, and to go for
it, and what kinds of things we cannot control, and to walk away from them! This
is a lesson well learned by a former slave, Epictetus, whose thinking
encourages us to imagine that, in the midst of a world full of confusion and chaos,
there are still some things about our lives that we can control.
Despite this
hectic, compulsion-driven world that seems to think we are some kind of Raggedy
Ann or Raggedy Andy to be tossed about on the winds of fate, this
once-upon-a-time slave still thinks that it is possible to make meaningful
choices in our lives relevant to how best to live out our days.
Here is E’s first Stoic recipe, amplified for our thinking pleasure, for
a life of freedom from oppression — both from within and from without:
Epictetus, On Things Within Our Control: “There are certain things we can control and then there are those things
that are beyond our control.”
OK… one has to
admit, this is a promising if rather uneventful beginning.
“Types of things we can
control are our own (re)actions, such as thoughtless assumptions, impulsiveness,
cravings, and allowing ourselves to be led by our inclinations –in a word,
those types of (re)action that come from ourselves.”
We can control
our own actions-reactions, says E, because after all we own them—they are the works
of our own flesh, as the Apostle Paul might have said; the fruits of our loins,
as it were, which no one has pushed on us from the outside; the first-born children
of our own personal imaginings.
First, on this
non-exhaustive list of personal (re)actions that we can absolutely control, are
thoughtless or hasty assumptions, which include unformed and uninformed opinions, a
suspicious mind or knee-jerk reactions, rejoinders and comebacks (smart, snotty,
and other), and any manifestation of the will to mis-take or to mis-understand
someone or some situation. The rather straightforward way to break out of the
prison we create for ourself by the thoughtless
assumption is to take a little time to educate ourself concerning ‘stuff’
happening around us. The old adage, attributed to 18th-century
English poet Alexander Pope, has it that “a little learning is a dangerous
thing”; but the will-to-ignorance is ultimately lethal: its asphyxiating
effects on the mind are no different than wrapping chains around the slave’s body.
Next, on Epictetus’
shopping list of ‘stuff’ that we own all by ourself and that we can therefore
control, comes impulsiveness, which
is all about us rushing about like a lunatic; being in a hurry; being
emotionally hasty because we are too lazy to be emotionally thoughtful; and, in
general, being way-too-eager about wanting what we want.
Then come the cravings, a concept reminiscent of the
old biblical notion of coveting. But beyond not coveting ‘your neighbor’s wife’
(which is the obvious biblical no-no), Epictetus reminds us that craving after anything, that longing or
yearning for anything (aside from the occasional Ben & Jerry’s, of course), is an attitude that
chains the craver to the cravee—and that we effectively sell ourselves into
slavery, we become ‘owned’ by the cravee (e.g., by the Ben & Jerry’s) until
our craving is sated. We become the perpetual unsatisfied… the eternal malcontent,
and as the otherwise permanent inhabitant of our own private winter of
discontent, we begin slowly freezing to death.
By way of closing
out his list of controllable attitudes and emotional strategies—finally, says
Epictetus, we ‘go to jail’ without a get-out-of-jail-free card when we allow
ourselves to follow our inclinations,
both intellectually and bodily; because this means that we ‘tend’ to or ‘incline’
to exclude things based on feelings or on predispositions instead of thinking about them, which means that, very
often, we may tend to reject things (good, bad, and indifferent) out of hand,
or we may refuse to try new things. Is it possible that Immanuel Kant borrowed
his thinking on practical reason, esp. in terms of inclinations, from this
slave of yore?
Epictetus, On Things Beyond Our Control: “Types of things we cannot control, on the other hand, are our body,
possessions, our reputation, legal or political power that others have over us,
and in a word, types of (re)actions that do not come from ourselves.”
Alright, says Epictetus, we have seen some types
of things, mostly our own personal (re)actions, over which we can exercise some
control. So la vie est belle, right? Well, almost; and not always—because there
are
also things in and of this world that seem, whether we will or no, to be able
to move us around like the proverbial winds of fate, helter-skelter and higgledy-piggledy,
like so many Raggedy Anns
and Andys.
First of all
there is our body itself, which, it
would seem, has its own mysterious ways about it, and is not always the most agreeable
or good-natured partner in the mind-body duo. Damage control in this area is
going to be pretty much a full-time job, says E. Have you ever tried to master
some skill, like playing the piano or ballroom dancing or doing some sport or
playing darts, only to discover that your body has its own ideas about
performing the necessary tasks at hand? And what about all this aging business?
‘Nuff said.
Then, of course,
there are all those pesky, ego-satisfying possessions
we have to think about. Why is it that we spend so much time and money on
getting lots of toys, lots of stuff, property, and acquisitions of all sorts,
only to discover after we ‘own’ all the stuff that, in an ultimate and
tremendously unfunny irony, it is really the stuff that owns us? A simple case
in point: we take out student loans to get a college education; we consume the
education we choose, whose diploma is out of date even before we have finished
chewing, swallowing, and taking a drink of our beverage; and then we pay off
the student loans for the next 20-30 years. Where is the ‘ownership’ in this
scenario, and who has it? Who is slave and who is free, who possessing and who
possessed?
Do you care what
people think about you? Big mistake, says Epictetus; because reputations always hang in the balance
and on a whim. How can movie or stage or pop stars ever hope to have everyone
like or at least appreciate their work? It is true that they can hire P.R. guys
to work on public opinion, image, et al, but at the end of the day the opinion others have of us is
all their own. “Our” reputation is ultimately just “their” opinion. And because
we have no real way to control “their” opinion, Epictetus advises us just to
walk away from it. Sometimes “their” opinion will be fair, sometimes not; but
always the opinion will be theirs, although the reputation will be ours!
Finally, the
world being what it is –full of bean counters and all, Epictetus reminds us that
there will always be those who have legal
or political power over us. E calls these folks simply magistrates [aÓrcai], but we have the post-historical luxury of being
able to fill in the blank with our favorite words for those, both
well-intentioned and a---holes, who administer our daily life, such as judges,
bureaucrats and administrators, bankers, lawyers, politicians, and other ‘seech
vermin’, to borrow on yesteryear’s hillbilly tones from Walter Brennen.
Perhaps one
way to amplify Epictetus’ thinking on the inequality in the power relationship between
those who have been given bureaucratic authority and those who are called to
submit to bureaucratic authority, is to consider the issue in the light of the
timely topic of gay marriage. Here is the scenario: the U.S. Supreme Court just
recently (June 26, 2015) legalized gay marriage and the recognition of gay
marriage in all 50 of America’s states. This means that, for better and for
worse and whether the individual want it or not, nine American magistrates have
decided, and have imposed their ‘decision of nine’ on all 318.9 million (2014)
Americans, that gay marriage is now the ‘law of the land’ in the United States.
And yet, one might ask, how should the individual think about this and what might he eventually do, given that a panel of nine is compelling all Americans to
accept something that, perhaps, many individual Americans might not privately wish
to accept?
Well, it seems pretty clear at least
how one group of Americans, Christian Americans, are called to act in this
scenario. In Romans 13:1-7 the Apostle Paul, who is by the way,
Epictetus’ almost exact contemporary, lays out a perfectly clear course of
conduct to be followed by the Roman Christian community in moments when it is actually important to
recognize
the inequality of power between those who have legal or political power over us, what Paul will call “governing
authority,” and the rest of us who do not have that authority. First, says
Paul, the overarching principle for the Christian to respect is that “The
authorities that exist have been established by God,” and that Christians therefore
should bend the knee before the governing authorities as though to God Himself.
This is actually the meaningful end and conclusion of Paul’s argument at this
point, because it obviously means by application, in the context of our gay
marriage scenario, for instance, that the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices are
“God’s servants,” and that the will of God Himself is favorable to the idea
that equal standing before the law should govern marriage of any sort in the
United States, hetero- as well as homo-sexual. Following Paul’s reasoning, God
is obviously pro-gay marriage in his contemporary dealings with the United
States.
 |
| From Dreamstime.com |
On the other
hand, would Epictetus have us think and act any differently in this situation
of gay marriage in the United States? Well, yes and no. Paul advises the Roman
Christians to cultivate both submission and right attitude in such situations,
which are beyond our personal control, calling them not only to accept but also
to respect the Supreme Court’s decision as a ‘good’ because it is a ruling that
derives from “servants of God” acting at the behest of the Big Guy Himself. So, like the Apostle Paul, Epictetus also recognizes
that there are going to be things beyond our control. However, unlike Paul, E
does not encourage us to participate in any sort of trans-psycho-babble-ation whereby
we forcibly translate such things either into something ‘good’ (because, for
example, it is said to correspond to the unveiled will of God) or into
something ‘evil’. Rather, E encourages us to be indifferent to all things that are beyond our control:
“We must,” he says, “consider things beyond our control as of
lesser importance, as enslaving, as restricting us, as alien to us because they come from others.” So what is important
to Epictetus is not whether we like or dislike the specific things those in
authority over us do that concern us, but rather to acknowledge whatever real control
we have had in and over the situation, and to make the occurrence of such
situations a background issue of being alive in the world, rather than a
foreground issue of high drama and high blood pressure.
Full translation (Aiken 2015) of the first precept of E’s Enchiridion:
Says Epictetus About Things Within Our Control: There are certain
things we can control and then there are those things that are beyond our
control. Types of things we can control are our own (re)actions, such as
thoughtless assumptions, impulsiveness, cravings, and allowing ourselves to be
led by our inclinations –in a word, those types of (re)action that come from
ourselves. Types of things we cannot control, on the other hand, are our body,
possessions, our reputation, legal or political power that others may over us,
and in a word, types of (re)actions that do not come from ourselves.
Now, naturally,
the types of things we can control are easily accessible to each one of us,
they are without coercive force, and they do not restrict us. On the other
hand, we must consider things beyond our control as of lesser importance [aÓsqenh = unimportant,
irrelevant, feeble], as enslaving [douvla = slavish, unquestioning, unoriginal, mindless;
submissive-subservient, servile], as restricting us, as alien to us because
they come from others.
[Here is the Greek text for you hellenophiles. Notice the
efficiency of language, which is pretty predictable give the aphoristic
structure of this handbook for good thinking and conduct.]
Tw◊n
o¡ntwn ta» me÷n e˙stin e˙f’ hJmi√n, ta» de« oujk e˙f’ hJmi√n. e˙f’ hJmi√n me«n
uJpo/lhyiß, oJrmh/, o¡rexiß, e¶kklisiß kai« e˚ni« lo/gwˆ o¢sa hJme÷tera e¶rga: oujk
e˙f’ hJmi√n de« to\ sw◊ma, hJ kthvsiß, do/xai, aÓrcai« kai« e˚ni« lo/gwˆ o¢sa
oujc hJme÷tera e¶rga. kai« ta» me«n e˙f’ hJmi√n e˙sti fu/sei e˙leu/qera,
aÓkw¿luta, aÓparapo/dista, ta» de« oujk e˙f’ hJmi√n aÓsqenhv, douvla, kwluta¿,
aÓllo/tria. [Epictetus, Enchiridion (TLG reference: Author 557, Work 2 “Ench”,
.1.1.1.1, etc.)]
A
brief background of The Enchiridion
of Epictetus.
The
Enchiridion or The Manual of
Epictetus is an aphoristically short guidebook of Stoic ethical advice,
of practical precepts for living the good life, which was collected and
assembled by Arrian of Nicomedia (c.87 - after 145), Greek historian and
senator of the Roman Empire, in the 2nd century C.E.
According to Wiki sources: “For
many centuries, the Enchiridion maintained its authority both with Christians
and Pagans. Two Christian writers – Nilus and an anonymous contemporary – wrote
paraphrases of it in the early 5th century and Simplicius of Cilicia wrote a
commentary upon it in the 6th. The work was first published in Latin
translation by Poliziano in Rome in 1493; Beroaldus published another edition
in Bologna in 1496. The original Greek was first published in Venice with the
Simplicius's commentary in 1528 and an English translation appeared as early as
1567. The book was a common school text in Scotland during the Scottish
Enlightenment. Adam Smith had a 1670 edition in his library, acquired as a
schoolboy.”
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