My Problems with Stoicism

There’s the old adage about men and the mid-life crisis: sometime in their 40s they look around, realize mortality is real and upon them, and they respond in kind. They divorce their wives, buy a red sports car, and eventually settle on a new (and younger) second wife.

I suppose maybe that’s a Baby Boomer version of the story, because I’ve never found someone who loved me (at least as much as she loved her mother); I can’t afford even a Matchbox sports car, and judging by my exes’ next paramours, I’m not rich or handsome enough to ever actually find someone to settle for me longterm.

So what do we have left? Well, there’s the adage at that by their mid 30s men will develop keen interests in either barbecue (check) or World War II history (also check). So I guess we are good there.

My buddies and I did start reading on stoicism a couple years back, courtesy largely of writer Ryan Holiday, whose Stoic virtues series introduces readers to the tenets of the life philosophy without requiring them to wear cardigans or smell like a pack of menthol Camels.

To the uninitiated, Stoicism is a philosophy developed over time but largely emanating from Greek thinkers such as Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, and others. There’s basically four key virtues that dictate the ways in which one should live his or her life. These virtues are Courage, Justice, Temperance, and Wisdom. By allowing these virtues to guide one’s decisions, a person should be able to live a more complete (and virtuous) life. Holiday’s website actually offers a pretty good explanation of them right here if you’d care to know more.

In fact, former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink offers a really amazing 2:19 example of stoicism in the video below. I used to show it at the beginning of every course I taught. Take a second and watch it. You’ll be glad you did.

On the outset, all of this seems good, and in fact, I have tried as best I can both before my formal introduction to Stoicism and after to abide by these principles. I don’t lie; I live a life of service; I labor to be kind to people. I go out of my way to see that people are treated fairly. And I must admit to sense of satisfaction when I know that I am abiding by the principles. And generally, these guidelines have benefited the people with whom I often engage. And besides, who is going to disagree that we should seek to be wise or courageous, or seek moderation in our actions and justice in the world?

So we know that Stoicism offers what most would consider a good path in the world. That is good.

What Stoicism does not offer, however is why we should do what we do. I’ve been reading intently for the last few months, looking for some sense of direction, a reasoning if you will.

Look at the world around you. The mayhem. The genocide happening in the Middle East. The fact that it is going to be 86 degrees in Colorado in the middle of October. Look at water levels. Watch them shrink. Starvation in Africa. Hell, starvation right here in the United States. Drug abuse. Cancer. Jimmy Fallon. Thomas Hobbes famously concluded in his Leviathan that outside a functioning society, human life amounted to being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”¹

My guess is that is why mankind created its gods and religions, both to give human life a purpose (God made you and there is a divine plan), and an order (follow the rules and we will end up with that functioning society that Hobbes guys dreams of). I saw this first hand growing up in the Southern Baptist Church (motto: those other guys are going to Hell). But witnessing my little sister get sick of an incurable kidney disease at age 11 before standing at the foot of her bed as she died six years later convinced me of two things: if there was a God, it was either a) all good and not all powerful; or b) all-powerful but not all good. In either case, not a diety worth worshipping at all. My final rejection of Christianity came when I saw my son for the first time and I knew that in him the idea of original sin was a likely as a properly funded American educational system.²

But back to the question of why.

So with the idea of a supreme power safely nullified, why must we live a stoic life? Is it for the betterment of others? For our legacies? Let’s dive in.

As a historian, I spend a lot of time looking around and up and down the temporal vortex of human habitation on this planet. All that disease, warfare, and general bad things I mentioned earlier? You can find it before our time. And in fact, Hobbes knew it, leading him to his pronouncements.

Think about it for a second. Really think. Picture your grandparents. Warm memories, right? You know so much about them. What about their parents? You know their names, but when and where were they born? What about your grandparents’ grandparents? Do you know them? What about their parents? My guess is that somewhere around there you stopped remembering. And that’s ok. That’s the human condition. Because with rare exception, history teaches us this: most people will live their lives, die, and be forgotten by their own descendants within a few generations. Think about the last funeral you attended. People were sad, yes. They cried. And within half an hour of leaving they were making dinner plans.

So legacy is out.

I’m going to ask you to stay with me here because we are about to tread some ground that makes people really uncomfortable. Just bear with me.

I think the fundamental premise shared by both Stoicism and most religions is that they assume that life is fundamentally good or at least worthwhile.

But what if it isn’t?

I say this looking at my own life as an example. I was born to two teenage parents, neither of whom graduated high school. I inherited from them decent but not a special amount of intelligence, physical skills, or aesthetic appearance. I certainly did not inherit any wealth, nor the structure to ensure that I succeeded. Oh but Jason, you inherited your skin color and your sex, both of which benefited you. I’ll grant that, though neither played a significant role in overcoming the other handicaps. As best we can admit, I turned into a fairly mediocre white man. A punchline in our society.

I remember when my mom visited in July. We had real deep talks. Mom, I implored, why did you not get an abortion? Your life would have been so much better. My life would have been so much better.

Mom told me that it was 1977 and access to those services were hard to find in western Kentucky, though I imagine the family’s religious background played a strong role in bringing yours truly to term.

Now I’m gonna lay one on you here: I still wish she had gotten the abortion. Her life would have been so much better without a child around as a child. She could have lived. Or at least had the opportunity to have lived. And I wouldn’t have gotten dragged into any of this.

I gotta tell y’all. I look around at the world around and I’m not impressed by any of it. There’s no wonder here for me. I see this world as party I was brought to that I’m not allowed to leave, no matter how much I hate the music and hors d’oeuvres. My buddy Mike implored me to look around and see how amazing this world is. But I cannot. I simply don’t see it. What I have learned is an essential truth:

The things that you love can and will be taken from you.

This will be jobs and relationships and children and opportunities. Life is going to hurt. It is going to be painful. Maybe not for everyone. Maybe things worked out for you and you’ve got a home and a family and a career and money in the bank and you think this Stoicism thing is alright.

But for me, all I can speak from is my experience. I’m 47, I live two thousand miles from my children, and every relationship I have had has failed, whether from not being in her league, or forced to leave because of a job (or lack thereof), or because a bunch of “patriots” refused to wear a goddamn mask and literally do anything to avert a global fucking pandemic.

I’ve lived a stoic life, but why? Where is the payoff? Others have had it worse than me. Are the only rewards moral? Because those don’t mean anything.

I think now on the words of Buckminster Fuller, a 20th century architect who recalled an epiphany during a near-death experience: You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all you experience to highest advantage to others.

I must admit tonight that I, middle aged mediocre white guy, am angry. I am angry that despite my best intentions for myself and for others and attempts to walk a stoic line, life as not turned out for me the way I had hoped. I have not succeeded. I do not have a family. There is no clear indication either will change. And in the best middle aged crisis there is a fear now as I approach 50 that it will not at all. I opened the Coca-Cola bottle of life and found it to be half-empty before I took my first sip.

This has been a long post and emerges from an argument I had with a buddy tonight. I am angry that I was brought into the world against my will. I see no rhyme or reason for human existence and I am not moved at all by the fact that we are all sucking down a nitrogen/oxygen mix at the same time. My existence, thus far, has not been one of happiness or reward. 47 years in, we are on the negative side of that equation.

Should I reject stoicism? If I know that life is ephemeral and the clock is ticking, then perhaps a heel turn? Why not embrace petulance and jealousy and selfishness and greed? It sure seems to work for a lot of people. And god knows just writing this post I am wrestling with enough of that on my own.

No, I suppose not. Because that would be untrue to whatever character I have left in me. There is a way for me to be and I know that when I hurt most it is because I am straying from that path. I have lost so much these last few years, some of it recently. To lose what is left of myself, even if I never gain anything from it, might be the last tragedy.

But a win would be nice.

1. https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2013/04/05/thomas-hobbes-solitary-poor-nasty-brutish-and-short/

2. I also remember begging for some God-any will do- to intervene in my divorce ten years ago so that perfect little baby and his little brother didn’ have to suffer through the damnation of two households that I did. Application denied.