How To Be a Stoic, Massimo Pigliucci

Chapter 1: The unstraightforward path

• To best approach living requires understanding the nature of the world (metaphysics), how it works (natural science), and how (imperfectly) we come to understand it (epistemology, i.e., a theory of knowledge)

  Chapter 2: A road map for the journey

• Stoic framework: living a gold life requires understanding the nature of the world and the nature of human reasoning (physics and logic)
• Good character arises from a nurturing of understanding of the natural world, nurturing our garden so that knowledge can flourish; but also, understanding our thought, acting as a fence to protect our garden so that it can grow unimpeded of bad reasoning

  Part 1, The discipline of desire: what it is proper to want or not to want

  Chapter 3: Some things are in our power, others are not

• Some parallels between lines of different traditions of ancient thought are from direct/indirect reciprocal influence, some from independent convergence of wise minds reflecting deeply on the human condition
• These common ideas are those that have withstood the test of time, so we would be wise to draw from them in our own lives
• We have a strange tendency to worry about, or concentrate energy on, things we cannot control
• Focus instead your attention and efforts where you have the most power to influence it, and otherwise let the universe run as it does. Save yourself the energy and worry.

  Chapter 4: Living according to nature

• Nature in this sense refers to human nature. In the stoic sense this means being reasonable and sociable. Being unreasonable and antisocial runs counter to our nature
• To be sociable is to recognize that the closer you bring relationships with others, the closer you bring them to the degrees of importance you rate yourself and related kin. Refer to others as brother/sister, elders as aunt/uncle. When someone asks where you’re from, say the universe—don’t fall prey to separation via fictional boundaries.

  Chapter 5: Playing ball with Socrates

• Preferred indifferents: things like health, wealth, education, and good looks are preferred indifferents. We’d prefer to have them rather than not have them, and we can pursue them, but really matters is our values and whether we act in accordance with them. The preferred indifferents should never come at the expense of virtue: your values (e.g., accepting a job you feel ethically uncomfortable with because it pays more). ###Chapter 6: God or atoms

  Part 2: The discipline of action: how to behave in the world

  Chapter 7: It’s all about character (and virtue)

• Socrates believed that all virtues are different aspects of the same underlying feature: wisdom
• Six “core” virtues found across all major religions (the four Stoic virtues are bolded):
  • Courage: exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition (external or internal), e.g., bravery, perseverance, and honesty
  • Justice: fairness, leadership, citizenship
  • Humanity: “tending and befriending”, e.g., love and kindness
  • Temperance: strengths that protect against excess, e.g., forgiveness, humility, self-control
  • Wisdom: acquisition and use of knowledge, e.g., creativity, curiosity, perspective, judgment
  • Transcendence: forging connections to the larger universe and thereby provide meaning, e.g., gratitude, hope, and spirituality
• The true value of a person lies in their core, not in the clothes they don or the role they happen to occupy in society

  Chapter 8: A very crucial word

• When a man agrees with what is false, know that he had no wish to agree with the false: “for no soul is robbed of the truth with its own consent,” as said by Plato, but the false seemed true to him
• People don’t do “evil” on purpose, they do it out of ignorance
• Story told about a Nazi, and his complete disregard for Russian prisoners of war. “There’s…nothing demonic [about the Nazi] …simply a reluctance ever to imagine what the other person is experiencing.”
• Intelligent stupidity (amathia) is not an inability to understand but a refusal to understand, and any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, greater accumulation of data or knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings. Intelligent stupidity is a spiritual sickness in need of a spiritual cure
• Show pity for the intelligently stupid, as we pity the blind and lame, as one who is unreasonable is blinded and lamed in their sovereign faculties. Remember this and be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile none, blame none, hate none, offend none.

  Chapter 9: The role of role models

• “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” - James Stockdale
• Aristotle thought that we have what is called moral virtue and intellectual virtue. Moral virtue consists of that obtained by natural endowment and habit (especially in early development) and intellectual virtue can be acquired intellectually

  Chapter 10: Disability and mental illness

• “Stand by a stone and slander it: what effect will it produce? If a man then listens like a stone, what advantage has the slanderer?”

  Part 3: The discipline of assent: how to react to situations?

  Chapter 11: On death and suicide

• In reference to suicide, one of Epictetus’ friends provided his reason for suicide as ‘A man must abide by his decisions.’ “What are you doing, man?” Responded Epictetus, “Not all decisions, but right decisions. Stay where you are and depart not without reason.”

  Chapter 12: How to deal with anger, anxiety, and loneliness

• Not every problem has a solution. Don’t focus on finding a solution, but on how to handle the situation, including the possibility of failing in the endeavour
• The difference between loneliness and being alone, is that the latter is a factual description, while the former is a judgment imposed on the description of being alone, which makes us feel worse about it

  Chapter 13: Love and friendship

• There is a difference between what is natural and what is right, and we ought to use sound judgment to override what is natural in favour of what is right
• Simply recognizing the truth of something is not enough: you need to practice it enough until you develop a habit

  Chapter 14: Practical spiritual exercises