A Guide to the Good Life - William Irvine

Gems

• If a contemptible person insults you, it can be ignored. Maybe even find comfort in that, if they're upset with you, you must be doing the right thing.
• Seneca: old age is full of delights and should be cherished. We graduate out of many vices and appetites; we live with the full benefit of our years of wisdom.
• "Someone who thinks he will live forever is far more likely to waste his days than someone who fully understands that his days are numbered."
• "By contemplating the impermanence of everything in this world, we are forced to recognize that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent. We will no longer sleepwalk through our life."
• "Social fatalism" — Marcus is resigned to accept people as they come.
  • "Even though it is possible to change others, we can take some of the agony out of dealing with them by telling ourselves that they are fated to behave as they do."
• My other self is a coward
  • "When doing things to cause myself physical and mental discomfort, I view myself — or at any rate, a part of me — as an opponent in a kind of game. This opponent — my 'other self', as it were — is on evolutionary autopilot: He wants nothing more than to be comfortable and to take advantage of whatever opportunities for pleasure present themselves. My other self lacks self-discipline."
  • (Externalizing our unproductive desires, separating them from our identity, so they can be dispassionately managed.)
• "It is curious, but my competitors in a race are simultaneously my teammates in the much more important competition against my other self. By racing against each other, we are all simultaneously racing against ourselves."
• If one becomes unable to enjoy "anything but the best", it's a state worthy of pity. It is more of an achievement to be able to find delight in the most primitive things.
• Stoicism calls for plain living, but not for poverty. A luxurious lifestyle has the danger of compromising our character and consuming our attention.
  • Increasingly discerning tastes is a curse.
• Tool: asking "will this improve my long-term happiness?" is a good way to extinguish our desires for short-term gratification and consumption.
• Seneca: old age is full of delights and should be cherished. We graduate out of many vices and appetites; we live with the full benefit of our years of wisdom. (This is a great framing.)

Intro

• "A grand goal in living is the first component of a philosophy of life. This means that if you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy of life."
  • This grand goal is the most important thing that you want "out" of life.

The first stoics (chap 2)

• "The Stoics enjoyed whatever 'good things' happened to be available, but even as they did so, they prepared themselves to give up the things in question." In contrast to the asceticism of the Cynics.
• Stoic virtue, which leads to a well-lived life.
  • "In the same way that a 'virtuous' (or excellent) hammer is one that performs well the function for which it was designed — namely, to drive nails — a virtuous individual is one who performs well the function for which humans were designed. To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live, as Zeno put it, in accordance with nature. The stoics would add that if we do this, we will have a good life."
  • Cultivate the Earth, honor and take care of others, be rational.
• Later the Roman stoics emphasized tranquility as the desirable by-product of pursuing virtue, and made tranquility the ultimate goal.
• "By pointing to the tranquility people would gain by pursuing virtue — they would make Stoic doctrines more attractive to ordinary Romans."

Roman Stoicism (chap 3)

• Compared to the deep joy of living virtuously, with contentment, and self-reliance, "pleasures of the flesh are 'paltry and trivial and fleeting.'"
• Pairing life-philosophy with religion
  • "Epictetus would then tell the prospective student that if he wishes to have a good life, he must consider his nature and the purpose for which God created him and live accordingly."
• "According to Marcus, it was Apollonius who impressed on him the need to be decisive and reasonable, taught him how to combine days full of intense activity with periods of relaxation, and taught him how, 'with the same unaltered composure,' to withstand sickness and pain."

Negative visualization (chap 4)

• "Misfortune weighs most heavily on those who 'expect nothing but good fortune.'"
• Hedonic adaptation
  • "We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires."
  • This adaptation happens as our wealth increases, we accumulate nicer belongings, and as we marry. We take it for granted. The antidote is negative visualization.
  • This adaptation has the power to extinguish our enjoyment of the world.
  • Satisfaction treadmill: "There are doubtless many things in our life to which we have adapted, things that we once dreamed of having but that we now take for granted, including, perhaps, our spouse, our children, our house, our car, and our job."
  • "The easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have."
  • "One reason children are capable of joy is because they take almost nothing for granted. To them, the world is wonderfully new and surprising."
• Negative visualization
  • Seneca says "she should remember that all we have is 'on loan' from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission — indeed, without even advanced notice." (including our dear ones).
  • Vividly picture yourself without all the things, your kids, etc. This elevates your appreciation and will make us more attentive.
  • It's a technique for promoting optimism. Appreciate the marvels that we have and the age that we live in.
• "Epictetus counsels that when we say good-bye to a friend, we should silently remind ourselves that this might be our final parting. If we do this, we will be less likely to take our friends for granted, and as a result, we will probably derive far more pleasure from friendships than we otherwise would."
• Most of us spend time thinking about the things we don't yet have. "We would be much better off, Marcus says, to spend this time thinking of all the things we have and reflecting on how much we would miss them if they were not ours." Or how we would feel if we lost our freedom.
• "Contemplating our own death can dramatically enhance our enjoyment of life."
• Catastrophes
  • A catastrophe has great value in that it can blast people out of their jadedness. Ironically, those who have experienced hardship are often more joyful than those who haven't.
  • The benefits of negative visualization, in contrast to catastrophes:
    • We don't have to wait to engage in negative visualization the way we have to wait to be struck by a catastrophe.
    • Being struck by a catastrophe can easily kill us; engaging in negative visualization can't.
    • Because negative visualization can be done repeatedly, its beneficial effects, unlike those of a catastrophe, can last indefinitely.
• Saying grace before a meal can be a form of negative visualization. Transform an ordinary meal into a cause for celebration.
• On proud adults who look down on people who are satisfied, the author argues that drive is not worth having if it comes at the expense of satisfaction.
  • "They have somehow gotten the idea that by refusing to take delight in the world, they are demonstrating their emotional maturity: to take delight in things, they think, is childish."
• "Enjoy and appreciate what you have without clinging to it."
  • "At the same time as the practice of negative visualization is helping us appreciate the world, it is preparing us for changes in that world. To practice negative visualization, after all, is to contemplate the impermanence of the world around us."
• Periodically contemplating the impermanence of life, and recognizing that some things we do will be the last time we do them. E.g. walking the halls of our high school. Eating at a favorite restaurant before it closes down.
  • "Previously, when we thought we could repeat them at will, a meal at this restaurant or a kiss shared with our lover might have been unremarkable. But now that we know they cannot be repeated, they will likely become extraordinary events: the meal will be the best we ever had at the restaurant, and the parting kiss will be one of the most intensely bittersweet experiences life has to offer."
  • "By contemplating the impermanence of everything in this world, we are forced to recognize that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent. We will no longer sleepwalk through our life."

The dichotomy of control (chap 5)

• Summary
  • Save a ton of mental bandwidth and anguish by identifying the things you worry about, over which you have no control, and stop worrying about them.
  • For the rest, set internal goals about your inputs, because you can control your inputs, your values, and character.
• Set internal, not external goals.
  • One cannot fully control whether he wins the tennis match, but can control his internal goals, and inputs: play the best game possible given his current abilities.
  • "what better way is there to win a tennis match than by playing to the best of your ability? The Stoics realized that our internal goals will affect our external performance, but they also realized that the goals we consciously set for ourselves can have a dramatic impact on our subsequent emotional state." (So set your goal to play your best game, not to win, and let that goal naturally carry you to victory).
• Rather than a goal of having my spouse love me, a related internal goal is to "behave in a lovable manner."
• Reducing the sting of getting a manuscript rejected: "she should have as her goal not something external over which she has little control, such as getting her novel published, but something internal over which she has considerable control, such as how hard she works on the manuscript or how many times she submits it in a given period of time."
• Internalizing one's goal to do one's best to change society is the only way to remain tranquil while participating in civil affairs and politics, because so little is under your control.

Fatalism (chap 6)

• "We must learn to welcome whatever falls to our lot and persuade ourselves that whatever happens to us is for the best. Indeed, according to Marcus, a good man will welcome 'every experience the looms of fate may weave for him.'"
  • "The fates" write the play, in which we are the actors.
• "We can either spend this moment wishing it could be different, or we can embrace this moment. If we habitually do the former, we will spend much of our life in a state of dissatisfaction; if we habitually do the latter, we will enjoy our life. This, I think, is why the Stoics recommend that we be fatalistic with respect to the present."
• (What's being described is like a form of negative visualization: rather than thinking about how our situation could be worse, so that we can enjoy it more, refuse to think about how it could be better, so we can remain present, and enjoy it.)

Self-denial (chap 7)

• "Voluntary discomfort"
  • Consider pretending that bad things have happened, and deprived you of your comforts, to appreciate more what you have. "Practicing poverty".
  • Like living in a cold climate for a season to appreciate your warm climate back home.
• Benefits
  • A form of training, to prepare the body and mind
    • "We harden ourselves against misfortunes that might befall us in the future."
  • Reduce anxiety about future calamities, after voluntarily experiencing minor ones
  • Appreciate what we already have
• In addition to voluntary discomfort, Stoics advised periodically foregoing pleasure. Develop the muscle of self-control. Allows us to be able to focus and not be distracted by temptations.
• "This self-control makes it far more likely that they will attain the goals of their philosophy of life, and this in turn dramatically increases their chances of living a good life."
• Abstaining from pleasure can itself be a pleasure
  • "If you refrain from eating the ice cream, you will forgo this gastronomic pleasure but will experience pleasure of a different kind: As Epictetus observes, you will 'be pleased and will praise yourself' for not eating it."
  • "If we weighed the costs and benefits of eating it against the costs of not eating it — we might find that the sensible thing for us to do, if we wish to maximize our pleasure, is not eat it."

Meditation (chap 8)

• Western meditation is very different from Eastern meditation. Rather than an emptying of the mind, it's a period of active inquiry.
• "Self-review of daily living."
  • To help us advance our practice of Stoicism, Seneca advises that we periodically meditate on the events of daily living, how we responded to these events, and how, in accordance with Stoic principles we should have responded to them."
• Seneca: "His advice to himself: when contemplating whether to criticize someone, he should consider not only whether the criticism is valid but also whether the person can stand to be criticized. He adds that the worse a man is, the less likely he is to accept constructive criticism."
• "Seneca's conclusion: if you are going to publish, you must be willing to tolerate criticism." Just don't take it heart.
• "We should likewise be careful observers of the actions of other people. We can, after all, learn from their mistakes and their successes." (As case studies).
• Becoming less sensitive to external inputs when practicing stoicism: "We will shrug off their insults and slights. We will also shrug off any praise they might direct our way."

Duty (chap 9)

• We usually seek the approval of other people — to appear good in their eyes — and this creates a lot of work in us to come off well, and the outcome isn't really in our control. This will disrupt our tranquility.
• Marcus said "fellowship is the purpose behind our creation." Fulfilling our purpose requires being social; it's our social duty.
• Marcus did not think very highly of humanity: "Marcus suggests that when we know our death is at hand, we can ease our anguish on leaving this world by taking a moment to reflect on all the annoying people we will no longer have to deal with when we are gone."
• Marcus concluded that doing his social duty was the best chance at having a good life. There's a certain kind of delight that comes from fulfilling one's purpose.

Social relations (chap 10)

• Be selective of our friends; corrupted values and vices are contagious. Avoid those who are whiners and complainers; they destroy tranquility.
• When annoyed by people, 1) empathize. no doubt we annoy others at times. 2) Discard our annoyance. It only makes the experience worse for ourselves.
  • (It seems to me the most productive thing to do is to help the person correct their annoying behavior — that helps everyone, and is an act of kindness to the annoying person).
• It's wasted energy and a negative exercise to speculate about what an annoying person is thinking.
  • "We can also, Marcus suggests, lessen the negative impact other people have on our life by controlling our thoughts about them."
• "Social fatalism" — Marcus is resigned to accept people as they come.
  • "Even though it is possible to change others, we can take some of the agony out of dealing with them by telling ourselves that they are fated to behave as they do."
• "If we detect anger and hatred within us and wish to seek revenge, one of the best forms of revenge on another person is to refuse to be like him." (fun)
• "It is easy these days to find people who will agree that their life would have gone better if they had shown more sexual reserve; it is hard to find people who think their life would have gone better if they had shown less."

Insults (chap 11)

• Insults can be intensely painful, because they affect our pride and identity, and can be remembered long after they've occurred, upsetting our tranquility.
• "One of their sting-elimination strategies is to pause, when insulted, to consider whether what the insulter said is true. If it is, there is little reason to be upset."
• "As we make progress in our practice of Stoicism, we will become increasingly indifferent to other people's opinions of us."
• "A Stoic sage, were one to exist, would probably take the insults of his fellow humans to be like the barking of a dog."
• If a contemptible person insults you, it can be ignored. Maybe even find comfort in that, if they're upset with you, you must be doing the right thing.
• The voicing of an insult doesn't intrinsically carry a string. The harm only occurs if we let it, by judging the words as harmful and then reacting negatively to them.
• How to respond to insults? With humor (particularly self-deprecating humor), or with no response at all — with a magnanimous air. A non-response robs the insulter of the pleasure of having upset us and seeing that effect.
• Some insults require a vigorous response, if they are likely to encourage more insults. Like checking a disruptive student in class. Correct them as you would a child, with the intention of teaching them.

Grief (chap 12)

• The goal is not to silence grief; doing so would not honor the affection we have for the lost life. The goal is to avoid being excessively grief-stricken.
• Negative visualization helps anticipate and remove the shock of losing a loved one.
• "Retrospective negative visualization" is comparing the time that we had with a person to having had no time at all. In doing so, we can be thankful of the time we had.
• (some of the material in this chapter doesn't sound like a healthy, in-touch approach to me. E.g. "overcoming grief with reason")

Anger (chap 13)

• Seneca argues that anger is an unhelpful emotion, too damaging to be worth its benefits.
• Being overly sensitive makes one susceptible to anger. Harden yourself by avoiding too much comfort, and experiencing conflict often.
• Marcus: consider one's angry moments over offenses. What cosmic insignificance those offenses are.
  • "(Marcus) reflects on the times, almost a century earlier, of Emperor Vespasian. People everywhere were doing the usual things: marrying, raising children, farming, loving, envying, fighting, and feasting. But, he points out, 'of all that life, not a trace survives today.'"
• It will combat our anger to remember that we are all sinners and worthy of anger. We are no different than the next man.
• If you do lash out, apologizing is very calming and helps us look past the original offense. And it feels good to demonstrate a high quality character.
• Seneca: instead of being angry, "why not make yourself a person to be loved by all while you live and missed when you have made your departure?"

Personal values - on seeking fame (chap 14)

• Optimizing for popularity leads to being enslaved by others. Popularity is not something we fully control.
  • "Stoics value their freedom, and they are therefore reluctant to do anything that will give others power over them. But if we seek social status, we give other people power of us: We have to do things calculated to make them admire us, and we have to refrain from doing things that will trigger their disfavor.... We will, he says, have enslaved ourselves."
• The foolish desire for "immortal fame"
  • It's a strange, impractical ambition. We will not enjoy our posthumous fame and praise. It's unlikely anyone will praise us, not having met us. It's
  • "Instead of thinking about future fame, Marcus says, we would do well to concern ourselves with our present situation; we should 'make the best of today.'"
• Sometimes even your friend won't root for you to succeed, because if you do succeed, it will make them uncomfortable.

Personal values - on luxurious living (chap 15)

• If one becomes unable to enjoy "anything but the best", it's a state worthy of pity. It is more of an achievement to be able to find delight in the most primitive things.
• Increasingly discerning tastes is a curse.
  • "People who achieve luxurious lifestyles are rarely satisfied: experiencing luxury only whets their appetite for even more luxury."
• Musonious: eat for nourishment, and favor foods that require little prep.
• "Life's necessities are cheap and easily obtainable. Those who crave luxury typically have to spend considerable time and energy to attain [and maintain] it; those who eschew luxury can devote this same time and energy to other, more worthwhile undertakings."
• Stoicism calls for plain living, but not for poverty. A luxurious lifestyle has the danger of compromising our character and consuming our attention.

Exile (chap 16)

• "It may be true, says Seneca, that by being exiled he has been deprived of his country, his friends and family, and his property, but he has taken with him into exile the things that matter most: his place in Nature and his virtue."
• Exile is just a "change of location."
• Exile has helped some — by curtailing their pace of luxurious living, and by causing some to become philosophers.

Old age (chap 17)

• "A twenty-year old might reject Stoicism in the belief that the world is going to be her oyster; an eighty-year-old knows full well that the world isn't her oyster and that her situation is only going to worsen with the passing years. Although she may have believed she was immortal when she was twenty, her own mortality is now painfully obvious to her. Faced with death, she might finally be willing to settle for 'mere tranquility', and she might, as a result, be ripe for stoicism."
• Seneca: old age is full of delights and should be cherished. We graduate out of many vices and appetites; we live with the full benefit of our years of wisdom. (This is a great framing.)
• Using our knowledge of our proximity to death to our advantage:
  • "In our youth, because we assumed that we would live forever, we took our days for granted and as a result wasted many of them. In our old age, however, waking up each morning can be a cause for celebration. As Seneca notes, 'If God is pleased to add another day, we should welcome it with glad hearts.' And after celebrating having been given another day to live, we can fill that day with appreciative living."

Dying (chap 18)

• "Someone who thinks he will live forever is far more likely to waste his days than someone who fully understands that his days are numbered."

On becoming a Stoic (chap 19)

• "Musonious observes that the time and energy people expend on illicit love affairs far outweighs the time and energy it would take them, as practicing Stoics, to develop the self-control required to avoid such affairs."
• Having a philosophy of life reduces the effort required to make life's decisions
  • "It is, after all, hard to know what to choose when you aren't really sure what you want."
• The reward for practicing Stoicism is the ability to frequently take delight in the world around us.

The decline of Stoicism (chap 20)

• Argues Christianity promoted many of the same values of Stoicism and crowded out Stoicism.
• "The Stoics understood that there is at best a loose connection between our external circumstances and how happy we are. In particular, it is entirely possible for someone banished to a desolate island to be happier than someone living a life of luxury."

Practicing Stoicism (chap 22)

• Start with negative visualization. Upon completing, you are left only with gratitude for what you have.
• Having dark thoughts about a person when you can't openly confront them:
  • "Instead I find myself having black thoughts about him. Again, these feelings of anger are pointless: they disturb me but have no impact at all on the person at whom I am angry. Indeed, if anything, they serve to compound the harm he does me. What a waste!"
• Practicing yoga can be a good vehicle for voluntary discomfort.
• Proactively looking for situations to practice stoic techniques:
  • "I like to engage in activities, such as competitive rowing, that give me butterflies simply so I can practice dealing with them."
• My other self is a coward
  • "When doing things to cause myself physical and mental discomfort, I view myself — or at any rate, a part of me — as an opponent in a kind of game. This opponent — my 'other self', as it were — is on evolutionary autopilot: He wants nothing more than to be comfortable and to take advantage of whatever opportunities for pleasure present themselves. My other self lacks self-discipline."
  • (Externalizing our unproductive desires, separating them from our identity, so they can be dispassionately managed.)
• "It is curious, but my competitors in a race are simultaneously my teammates in the much more important competition against my other self. By racing against each other, we are all simultaneously racing against ourselves."
• "As a consumer, I seem to have crossed some kind of great divide. It seems unlikely that, having crossed it, I will ever be able to return to the mindless consumerism that I once found to be so entertaining."
• Tool: asking "will this improve my long-term happiness?" is a good way to extinguish our desires for short-term gratification and consumption.
• "I have likewise gone out of my way to put myself into situations that test my courage and willpower, in part to see whether I can pass such tests."
  • Those practicing Stoicism often desire some kind of hardship, to truly see if their skills are actually strong enough to weather hardship. They desire a test. E.g. welcoming insults, or even death.