Epictetus and Stoicism

Epictetus has been popping up a lot lately, and Stoicism in general is an interesting topic. Like everything else, when you fire up the youtubulator or oscillate the wikiplunger, you get a thousand versions of an introductory synopsis, and they mostly don't do anything for you. The reality is you have to go read stuff for yourself, and you have to admit that you don't know anything until you do. 

Epictetus is colloquially known as the loser's philosopher (not to be confused with Diogenes, the actual bum philosopher), and Stoicism is usually dismissed as the philosophy of prisoners and slaves (Epictetus being a slave, then freed from slavery, then exiled in the Great Roman Ban on Philosphers). But even that is too deep, because i'd bet money you think Stoicism is like Vulcan Logic, the complete suppression of emotion. That's just wrong, and the biggest problem we face with any philosophical study is that we imagine it's a lifelong dedication, a menu we select from and have to adhere to for the rest of our lives. That's stupid. Philosophy is a garage full of tools, schools of thought are individual tools, you fill up your brain box with the things you need to go do stuff. You wouldn't try to tighten nuts and bolts with a tire inflator any more than you'd only use the green handled screwdriver on Thursdays. The choice of tools is based on knowledge, experience, and intention. 

Stoicism is a philosophy of control; it won't help you pick out an appropriate birthday present for your cousin, it won't help you lower your golf score, it won't make pain and sadness evaporate. What it will do is help you keep a more objective perspective on what is or is not useful for living your life during the deluge of garbage people sometimes throw at you. 

What can you control? Well, for the most part, you can control your thoughts, emotions, and actions. Not control the fact that you have or don't have them, but rather how and for what purpose you react to them. We like to pretend that we can't, we like to blame external forces for our internal misery, we love to identify legitimate disorders that prove we can't control our thoughts and actions, then deny their validity as a bizarre substitute for the control we have chosen to give up. 

Fame, fortune, popularity, material wealth, all of these things lie outside of our control. Obviously, we can base our choices and thoughts on known strategies for obtaining those things, but ultimately their acquisition rests not upon ourselves, rather in the accumulative actions of others. These are things we receive from others, and therefore we have no control over their actual materialization or the quality of their acquisition. 

We like to believe that a good choice is preferable to a bad choice, but again, do we have control over the distinction itself? To some extent yes, but many of our choices are defined by society at large and the burden of choice placed upon us rather than of our own devising. If one admits freedom of choice for others, one must equally relinquish control of the choosing: assembling alternative choices is itself the act of giving up control. If one can change the future by choice, then there is a future over which our own future selves have no control, and that is a paradox that renders the entire exercise absurd. We can of course control our choice of actions, but we have no control of their future value after failing or succeeding to accomplish them. 

So, while we cannot control the experiences that engulf us in the future, we can control our perception of those experiences by choosing to experience them as fully as possible now. I don't mean ridiculous things like intentionally breaking your arm to know how much it hurts, i mean to be psychologically conscious of our experiences as they happen and apply that knowledge to their recurrence rather than avoiding them through delusion or intentional misinterpretation. 

Strangely, this central notion of consciousness as the foundation of Stoicism is itself frequently misinterpreted as a delusion. So, for a rebuttal, we turn not to Zeno's "virtue is sufficient for happiness," but to the sage wisdom of John Candy's character in Cool Runnings: "A gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it."