Contemplating Death. Using Memento Mori with Donald Robertson
I checked my bill at the end of the month, cost me about three times as much in Toronto.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know for some reason there's loads of people I know in the tech industry who live in Toronto. I think it's got a
Speaker 1:techy. Somebody once had it thought they have a little complaint at me and they were kind of like, it's all very lucky for you, like being able to like, be afford the expensive holidays in Greece. And I was like, dude, it cost me a fraction of what it would be to live back home. I went on holiday to Greece and then didn't go back because I thought it was too expensive to go home. It's much cheaper just to stay here.
Speaker 2:There's a story that guy you knew was you want see his grandmother for the weekend and then he ended up staying there for a year because of COVID?
Speaker 1:Today you get a bit trapped. Yeah, that's kind of happened to me a little bit a couple of times. I kind of got a bit stuck because of the pandemic.
Speaker 2:Vanessa saying, this colour looks good to me. Well, this is imperial purple. I'm going to.
Speaker 1:Is that you're going to regal?
Speaker 2:I've gone to Marcus, this is purple Donald. It's good.
Speaker 1:He needs to get like memento, he needs get like a Socrates t shirt or something maybe.
Speaker 2:What colour would Socrates represent? Red? Annoying. Annoyance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think he normally, yeah, maybe. But I think he usually wore like, just kind of like white or gray or whatever. It's gray. The philosophers traditionally wore gray robes. It's cheap.
Speaker 1:It wasn't dyed or bleached. Like it was the cheapest type of material. Obviously. Dumbledore, like a younger Dumbledore.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't mind going around like I might look, it would be quite a beard, like a white long beard. I
Speaker 1:was cursed with a slightly ginger beard, which went white before the rest of my hair. I should probably shave it off because like, was looking at beard, it's gone completely white now, the ginger bits on it. But
Speaker 2:you can be a full philosopher now. You can't a philosopher unless you got a white beard. Yeah, I guess so. That's the rules. People are joining in.
Speaker 2:Anyone got questions for Donald by any chance? If you've got questions just throw them in now.
Speaker 1:Probably not. Do you know the thing about Epictetus like the under Domitian, the Roman Emperor, he didn't like philosophers. And he said, you guys all pack it in with this philosophy nonsense, right? Otherwise, you can all beat it and go on X, I will see how you like them onions, said the mission. Because if you want to stay in Rome, you're gonna have to stop doing philosophy.
Speaker 1:That means you're gonna have to wear proper clothes, you have to shave your beards off, right? And Epictetus says to his students, right, so you might just be bragging about this, right? But he says, when the officials came, and they told him that, he said, Listen, buddy, if you want to cut off my beard, you're gonna have to cut my head off first. Like, it sounds like real tough guy talk.
Speaker 2:Probably he's ex slaves. He probably would have rather die than me. Not against what Epictetus is all about.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, people say that they say surely he should be indifferent to his beard. But he would say it's what it symbolizes. He's like, not really bothered. I think he would just said, I'm not really bothered about my beard, but it'd the equivalent of shaking hands with a dictator. Like, you know, these politicians know, I don't know if I should shake hands with Donald Gaddafi or whoever, you know, you get kind of cutting them as a photograph that haunts them for years later.
Speaker 1:But I think it's like, I shave my beard off and I'll go, okay, boss, you know, do whatever you say to this guy that's a tyrant and a dictator, which just kind of like symbolising I'm giving into his regime. I think was more of a bit like what it signified in terms of like allowing somebody to threaten him and stuff like that. But I don't know, would you do that, Scott? Like, if you'd an evil dictator, would you shake their hand?
Speaker 2:No, God, no.
Speaker 1:What if they were really polite about it? They would be embarrassing in a social situation, you had to go, no, sorry. No.
Speaker 2:I'm like Kate, I'm not, is Kate the other one who sacrificed himself?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've fallen your sword.
Speaker 2:That's me.
Speaker 1:Rather than shake Julius Caesar's hand.
Speaker 2:See, have actually thought of it, reading all these books about philosophy back in the day when they would end their lives in the Japanese as well as a new Netflix thing on the samurais. If it came to it, boggles my mind how people regard it to go through with it, it's a big thing. I mean wow, I
Speaker 1:can't even
Speaker 2:punch myself, like I try and punch yourself, like it's quite hard.
Speaker 1:I say trying to bite your tongue on purpose, it's like, that's quite hard to do. Do it by accident all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So yeah, the human mind is crazy. But then again, it's like, you probably know more of this, when people are like depressed and stuff, their biology is different, isn't it? Isn't the mind completely different? So it's hard to a lot of people are like, oh, stop being depressed.
Speaker 2:Their classmates.
Speaker 1:Snap out of it. Yeah, that doesn't really tend to help much with depressed people,
Speaker 2:unfortunately. But there's a lot of in The UK now you heard about that, stay right over the girl who got kidnapped by the police officer.
Speaker 1:Actually, don't really follow the news that much at the moment. I did see it on Twitter and stuff. I don't know all the details. I just got the general gist of it.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, like interesting. Like, obviously, there's a lot of problems that come up like, like awareness of the problems of like, there's a one guy that put a beautifully is like, put a man in a room full of women and it's a dream for him. Put a woman in a room full of men and it's a nightmare for her. It's like when you think of it that way, it's actually true. So there's this more awareness thing going on now with protests but back in the day, what was the relation between women and men over the history that you know of?
Speaker 1:Well, women, generally speaking, throughout most of history got a pretty raw deal. I mean, in ancient, I think in the time of Socrates, women were almost like slaves. We don't know entirely for sure, but it seems that they weren't really allowed to leave the house very much. I'll tell you what, a classicist here told me that Greek theatrical masks, they had these wooden masks that were painted, and the male masks were painted brown and the female masks were painted white. Because in their mind, looking at the stage from a distance, women, they thought generally looked pretty pasty, because they weren't allowed out of the house.
Speaker 1:And men spent most of their time outdoors, like doing sports and hanging out in the Agora and stuff like that. So it was real, like that was how big the divide was. They thought, yeah, women are white and men are brown, like they're in completely separate
Speaker 2:How did like, I know like there's Cleopatra for example, how did she manage to then climb the ranks to then if that was the male thing, how did she turn the tide of that because if it was so bad?
Speaker 1:If I remember rightly, she assassinated her brother or something like I'm not an expert. I'd say I would Google it. I'm pretty sure she had somebody assassinated. She read a
Speaker 2:lot of books. She was like, this is
Speaker 1:an interesting recipe for poison. But the bare conception of her was it? The Romans were freaked out by her. This is why I think she was actually quite interesting, and really cool. Because the Romans were terrified of her and she kind of really, in a sense, it was partly kind of her fault that the Roman Republic fell and became the Empire.
Speaker 1:Because once Julius Caesar get involved with our way, the Romans really thought he's going to try and make himself into a pharaoh. Like, not only do we not want a king, but the pharaohs are like a a step beyond that. And Cleopatra was a pharaoh. She was last pharaoh basically. Because they're gods, they're worshipped as gods while they're still alive.
Speaker 1:So Julius Caesar has a kid with her. And the Romans are like, Oh, man, no, no, no, no, no, we don't want any of this. Like, it completely went against our values. So and Caesar, you know, every ruler always found that kind of attractive, all the Roman generals and, and senators and stuff always thought, but if we because they knew they go, they would go, but when we go on holiday, like to the Easter, people cannot like treat us like we're divine beings or something. They're all prostrating themselves.
Speaker 1:Go back to Rome, why nobody gives two hoops about it.
Speaker 2:Can we not make it a bit more
Speaker 1:like that here? And, you know, I quite like it when people bow and scrape and all that
Speaker 2:kind of stuff. I get to wear all my purple robes, little crown and all that way, I
Speaker 1:kinda like it. They can
Speaker 2:know it was when they
Speaker 1:went on holiday to the edges of the Empire, particularly the East, got these ideas, way above their station about maybe it's not so bad being a God King. Why I could handle that.
Speaker 2:Does sound appealing, especially if it's within grasp, like we just got to do this one thing and then we're Gods.
Speaker 1:And that's why sometimes they quite like to hang out in the East, like Marcus Aurelius, his brother. I don't think he really wanted to come back from Syria. Was in the same to Syria, quite like it. They almost like they treat me almost like my favorite or something here. He loved it.
Speaker 1:And I had to go back to Rome and people like, it's just an idea.
Speaker 2:Well, on the topic of like, know you've got to work on women coming up, which everybody else, send the link out again. But before you go into your slides, what is in your professional experience? What's the difference you see between men and women when they come to you? And then maybe the stoicism angle. Have you seen the same strategies work or not in general?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, I wouldn't like to generalise, but women and men are diagnosed as having problems at a different frequency, right? Depression, for example, is more common among women. Social anxiety is the one that gets men and so I actually it's about equal if I remember rightly between men and women, whereas depression and a number of other anxiety disorders tend to be more commonly diagnosed among women. Panic attacks are also a lot more common, twice as common if I remember rightly among women.
Speaker 1:And that might just be the way that we diagnose things. You know, the cliche, I don't want to stereotype too much by saying this, but I'm just trying to simplify Kind of the traditional received wisdom in psychiatry put very coarsely, well not very coarse, but very simplistically was that women go to see doctors and therapists and men go to prison because the rates of incarceration are much higher among men. So psychiatrists would say, is it possible that men express their mental health problems through crime and drug and alcohol addiction more frequently. And women are more likely than men to seek professional help for mental health problems. So there does seem to be these kind of demographic differences and maybe that's changing a bit over time.
Speaker 1:Stoicism, about a third. So sometimes what I don't like hearing is people go there aren't any women that are into stoicism. And like about a third of the people that are into stoicism are women. And so it's a significant minority, it's not zero, it's lower than 50%. But it's still it's a third of the people that into stoicism are women.
Speaker 1:And also, it's not really getting anything to do with stoicism per se, it's more reflects our gender bias and philosophy in general. And so for example, this is true of philosophy courses at university, but there's groups for Aristotelianism and Epicureanism communities and they also only have about 30% women in them. So I think this is more of a general thing rather than a feature of stoicism per se. Also feel like those things about stoicism that maybe particularly in a sense can have a special attraction to certain groups of women. At least that's what people tell me.
Speaker 1:So I know that some women have told me that they kind of don't really like the more new agey or the more touchy feely kind of self help stuff. So they want some kind of psychotherapeutic self help type of literature that they can use, but they'd rather have something that's a bit grittier and more down to earth. And so that stoicism appeals to them for that reason. Yeah, like ironically, the Stoics were the main school ancient philosophy that thought men and women should both be philosophers. The other schools of philosophy didn't accept women into their lectures or most of them didn't.
Speaker 2:Crazy, it's mad. And I know you're not a fan of Jordan Peterson because I've seen some cheats, but he goes on about he loves this putting himself in the middle and be like yeah, wherever he says he thinks. He keeps bringing up, I don't know if you've come across it, he keeps bringing up this study, I don't know how they did this study about like in Sweden they didn't put any gender pressure on males and females and ended up the women did more feminine roles like nursing and men ended up doing more manly roles. It's like how can you even not condition someone in this country where it's not like know full on control? Like how has he come like, is that even true?
Speaker 1:Like, I don't know why. I mean, the funny thing about Jordan Peterson is he's Canadian. And he was right. Don't have anything against Jonathan Petersen as a person.
Speaker 2:Just think it really there's a couple of
Speaker 1:really very strange things about his kind of influence or popularity or whatever you want to call it. I he's a clinical psychologist, he's a professor of clinical psychology, I would never have guessed that his book was written by a clinical psychologist, let alone someone who's a professor in that field. I mean, that's how far removed it is from what I would have expected him to be saying. He doesn't mention CBT once. And like, I don't really get the impression that he knows much about CBT or he doesn't give any indication of being fat.
Speaker 1:It's very strange to me. I'd never heard of him, like until he got into the debate about gender pronouns. And so some people say, that's kind of a mean thing for you to say. But he's not mentioned in any clinical textbooks that I'd ever read. So he wasn't a well known author in the field of clinical psychology or psychotherapy.
Speaker 1:But he suddenly became famous because he got involved in this controversy about gender pronouns. He's not mentioned, he's not cited in the literature in the field. And he says stuff that seems to me to be the I guess the disagreement I have is that a lot of the advice he gives to me seems like quite bad psychological, not all of it. Some of it seems profoundly pseudoscientific to me, like the stuff about lobsters, for instance, which just seems like if you were a first year psychology student, and you wrote that in an essay, you'd kind of get a flea in your ear from your department for talking complete sort of scientific nonsense. Like, so I'm amazed that he really, I would never guess that was written by a psychology professor.
Speaker 1:And the stuff that he says about depression and anxiety, also to me seems to fly in the face of what the research actually shows. And sometimes to look like quite bad advice. Apart from that, I think he seems like a great guy. Do you know what though?
Speaker 2:You need to position yourself against these claims he's making. Do know do you know why?
Speaker 1:I wrote an article. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You have. But he he basically was the problem is, John Peterson attracts these guys who are very just like, oh, I'm a man, I'm alpha male guy.
Speaker 1:I've noticed, yeah. He's got the
Speaker 2:far right in his back on.
Speaker 1:I've noticed that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's like, it's actually a problem because every guy I speak to now, they're like me, the leader of John and I don't like him. They're like, he's class bro. But he talks about religion a lot as well, he says
Speaker 1:None of those guys have ever read his book in my experience. When I was reading his book, which I've read twice because I got paid to do a professional review of it. I was reading it, I was thinking, I'm sure these guys can't have read this. Like those pages and pages and pages and about the Old Testament. And like this weird union kind of arcades, which is kind of interesting to me from a kind of narrative point of view, I cannot think it seems really way out there.
Speaker 1:But I cannot reminds me of reading Jung when I was a teenager or whatever. I'm like, these guys that really love him, I'm sure they've not read all this religious stuff that he's got in the middle of his book.
Speaker 2:Claims you can't be morally right unless you follow religion. He claims that. I
Speaker 1:don't know, I haven't read that. He does say things like that. He says things in his book that are difficult to critique, because they're so bonkers that if you were to say this is just bonkers, it sounds like you're being rude. But also, doesn't deserve even to be dignified with a kind of normal critical. Like at the beginning of his book, he says he had a dream where he was suspended from a huge cosmic crucifix in massive cathedral.
Speaker 1:And that's where he got his inspiration. At the beginning of 12 Rules, that's what he says. Like he's Jesus or something, it seemed to me like a really weird way to open a self help book. And then a lot of the other stuff, all the lobsters and he also wants to say people say, I'll just mention this, right, because he says a lot of things that are quite obscure. But regarding what he says about gender, throughout that whole book, he says men are order and women are like, the masculine older and the feminine is chaos.
Speaker 1:And he says that repeatedly, and he can refer back to it quite a few times. And then sometimes he's kind of says he's not meaning to be negative about chaos. But repeatedly throughout the book, makes it sound like he thinks older is good and chaos is bad. And order is masculine and chaos is feminine, like yin and yang or whatever. The subtitle of 12 rules is an antidote for chaos, ie for femininity, which seems like a really strange way to phrase the subtitle of his book, if he doesn't intend it at some level to come across as if it's being a tad negative about femininity.
Speaker 2:I think he knows what he's doing. I think like someone just commented, they've read his stuff and they think he's good. Like he's definitely said some decent stuff, but he knows what he's doing. He pits himself, he's positioning himself.
Speaker 1:He does say some interesting things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he knows he's positioning himself masculine anti anything, like the gender stuff, which is fair enough for Edward's opinion.
Speaker 1:I'd be surprised if he didn't know that. Like, I'm an author, right? Like, I mean, he's sold like, way, way, way far infinitely more books than I have. But like if I saw somebody on Twitter saying Donald Robertson said this thing, and you know, that that kind of gives me an excuse for slapping my girlfriend about or whatever. Right?
Speaker 1:I would dissociate myself from that
Speaker 2:way, I'd go woah, that's got nothing to do
Speaker 1:with what I said in
Speaker 2:my book. Why, if that's what you took from my book,
Speaker 1:then you've completely misinterpreted it. And so people say he's not responsible for his audience, but he doesn't seem to do that much to kind of address the fact that there are lots of these outright kind of misogynistic Islamophobic guys that see what he says is validating what they're saying and doing. So the very least, I think he has an obligation as an author to say, I don't agree with the way that people are interpreting my work. You can't just do nothing about that.
Speaker 2:When he answers the question he will say like, he's also got a lot of other different people and that's like, but he doesn't seem to want like same as Trump, they say like Trump, you're like rallying and fighting. He's like, no, no, but he knows he is, he knows he's got that power behind him. He knows he's got that big group of people behind him. Scott,
Speaker 1:if somebody went online tomorrow and said, was listening to Scott Fleer's webinar, and he gave me a really good idea about how I should go out and do some racism tomorrow. You would probably be like, woah, woah, woah, that's not what I meant. Don't be taking my words that way. It's not rocket science. Like if you do something in public, and you people interpret it in a really unethical or criminal or offensive way, you kind of feel obliged to say something about that and dissociate yourself from it, and then tell them to stop it.
Speaker 1:So these guys have a duty, in my view, to speak up more if they don't agree with it. And yeah, like I've met these guys, because if you say anything, like I don't agree with the science in his book, you'll get kind of, they'll descend on you. His
Speaker 2:audience is aggressive as I've seen. I could easily just be like, I'm a guy and I agree with what he says, because it's all pro man and pro me. But then you're like, some of the stuff as Gordon says on the other people is terrible. There was one question, trans woman was asking him, okay, but if I ask you politely, you refer to me as a he or she or whatever it was, would you do it? He's like no, she was like what's the point then, just ask you nicely and you just won't do it and he's like no I don't do it, he's like but you just said if you were to be nice I would think of it and then she says okay I'm very nice would you do it?
Speaker 2:No, I was like, come on, how bad is that for you? Like, do know mean? Like there's nothing for him to say, I agree with, it's fine, you can identify wherever you are. I think there is a line though, there's a massive line that people are going like.
Speaker 1:He became famous because he started this controversy about this bill in Canada that he, if I remember rightly said would mean that it would be a criminal offence. You could go to prison for not using the gender pronouns that students prefer, which is not true. So he misinterpreted the implications of this bill. That was what catapulted him to fame in the first place. Like I said, I'd never like heard of his work.
Speaker 1:Prior to that, it's mainly in personality theory, strangely, although he's a professor of clinical psychology, like it's this area that's not really directly related to clinical practice. But something else I'd say about that guy, that he was publicly sanctioned for by his professional body for a breach of ethics with one of his clients. That's something I take very seriously, because I've sat on ethics boards, my as a therapist before, and if his professional body made that public, they were obviously quite concerned about it. So that's the first thing why for somebody who's writing about ethics and stuff like he's been sanctioned in public by his professional body. And the other thing is that people, this wouldn't be obvious to people, some of the controversial things that he says, if you are treating clients, you have to be particularly cautious about things that you say in public, because they may have implications for the clients you're working with.
Speaker 1:So John Peterson, one of the controversial things he said was there's no such thing as Islamophobia. Now, I don't know exactly what he meant by that. And clearly, a lot of the people that follow him kind of took it to justify Islamophobia. He even posed next to a T shirt, a guy wearing a T shirt that said that. But what I do know as a therapist is that he could easily have a client tomorrow who's a Muslim, and has been victimised and bullied as a result of the religion.
Speaker 1:And then if they find out that he's involved in a controversy when he's saying stuff like that in public, it's going to impinge on the therapy. It's for that reason, like therapists often think if you want to get into political controversies, you probably need to end your clinical practice. But if you're seeing clients, you need to be a little bit more cautious and at least tactful about the way that you express contentious religious or political views in public, because that can be quite potentially quite damaging to clients who have issues related to that. I read a lot of things he's saying, I think that must seem strange to some of his clients, if they go online and see some of the things that he's been talking about in public.
Speaker 2:Well, we know the extremes views are the ones that get views and clicks and followers and stuff these days. Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:He says weirdly, says, this is the last thing I said, then we'll get into our fact like it's like, at the beginning of 12 rules, he actually says that. So else as a writer, it's really strange to read like the introduction because he says, he went on Quora, that website where you answer questions and he was like answering questions about psychology and he got a bit disappointed because he wasn't getting many upvotes. So he says he started to give responses in his words that were more tongue in cheek, right? And he says he noticed he was getting lots and lots of responses. And then a publisher contacted him and said, Could you get a book out about this really quickly, because we think it would sell really well.
Speaker 1:And so when I read that, I thought, does that mean when he says he wrote stuff that's tongue in cheek in order to sort of be more sensational and get more attention online? Does that mean he doesn't entirely believe the stuff that he's saying? Or he does or it seems like a strange thing to say right at the beginning of the book, though. I thought, I'm not sure. But it sounds like he's saying he was just saying online, this is we talked before about Sophus, right?
Speaker 1:That's the definition of a Sophus. Exactly. Why? So using I changed and started saying more sensational stuff, my tongue in cheek as he puts it, because it was getting me more upvotes online. And then I turned that into a book.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to be as faithful as possible to what he actually says at the beginning of the book. So I don't want to put words in his mouth, that's what he says.
Speaker 2:His justification would be, whilst you and I got more attention and I help more people. That's exactly what he would say back to that. Then you could argue, but then you're muddying the waters with what is truth and what isn't and you know, causing even more carnage in a way.
Speaker 1:You can say, we can say, we can debate on that Scott, we can say sensational things that get people's attention that we actually believe. That's more fun.
Speaker 2:We be celebrities now, tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Let's do it, it doesn't work quite that well.
Speaker 2:Me and you know, I'll be the other one side, you'll be the other, you start saying stuff, I'll start saying stuff back.
Speaker 1:Controversial stuff. Creativity, stoicism.
Speaker 2:Ryan Holiday, Trust Me, I'm Lion, where he was basically creating false marketing campaigns against companies and then I
Speaker 1:haven't read that one actually. Actually, I went into go and read it.
Speaker 2:Story is like one company- Have you read it? I've read it.
Speaker 1:Did you
Speaker 2:read it? It's all cool. Was it good?
Speaker 1:You read it?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's quite well back in the day.
Speaker 1:I've read his other books.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good. It's like a marketing book though. So it's kind of strange you came from that to be a stoic, one company put a billboard up, or they like vandalize to put a billboard up and then vandalize it and then claim to the newspapers that vandalize their own bill.
Speaker 1:Oh, you think we should do this kind of guerrilla marketing stuff for stoicism then?
Speaker 2:Yeah, basically.
Speaker 1:Well, you should, well, okay, I'll get you a poster of me and you can vandalise the beard or something like that. Then I'll complain about it online and say this, Scott used to be my friend and now he's vandalising my beard on posters.
Speaker 2:I'll to Scotland and I'll start at a bit.
Speaker 1:He's been bad mouthing me. See if can see if we can get some attention. We'll start a fake argument.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this team's doing this Donald, this campaign managers doing all these things. And then you've got to fight fire with fire. Someone did comment earlier, bought your book.
Speaker 1:That's good. That's another 20ยข in coffee fund of royalties. That's good. Like I mean, I do I really like selling books, because
Speaker 2:don't know if you're an author, you
Speaker 1:don't write your book, so nobody reads it, you want as many people to read it as possible. So I do always get really pleased when people read it. And if they're kind of learning about Stoicism and stuff like I think that's awesome. Because I know that they like the benefit from it. And the audio book, really like when people listen to the audio book as well, because I really wanted them to kind of be able to immerse themselves in it and get the experience.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be even more excited about the graphic novel, because it's not entirely my work like there's other, it's more like a team effort. So I get more excited about that in a way because I think I really like the illustrators artwork and I kind of want to show it to people and stuff like that. So I feel like I can be more legitimately excited about that. I'm not just kind of blowing my own trumpet. Blowing his trumpet, my illustrators bragging on his behalf.
Speaker 2:I want to see a copy.
Speaker 1:Before we get into this,
Speaker 2:we've reverend joining, Don's got a presentation of course.
Speaker 1:It's about death.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's the wrong thing.
Speaker 2:Look at you with your big stats on medium. Look
Speaker 1:at all my stats.
Speaker 2:Well I'll shut up.
Speaker 1:Love like Louise, stoicism, death and the view from above is what I'm going to talk about. Can chip in. Scott, don't know if Scott, you haven't even noticed that there's no Lalia?
Speaker 2:I have noticed by thinking that you might pop in and I thought you shouldn't do a big entrance to the door.
Speaker 1:No, I sacked her.
Speaker 2:You sacked her.
Speaker 1:You know what I found out, Scott, I went to floss my teeth the other day, and the little plastic thing with the dental floss was empty. The thing was still there, but there was no dental floss in it.
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I thought either it's a ghost, or Laui has been stealing my dental floss. So she's fired her on that basis.
Speaker 2:It's a habit, habito, thief.
Speaker 1:I think she's busy or something, but she, it's a pity of this actually, it'd be good to have her come back or whatever, but
Speaker 2:I'll tell people I've really enjoyed her Yeah, the charts and stuff. So we'll definitely do more in the future anyway.
Speaker 1:Cool. We'll get to do more stuff. She's doing a master's degree at the moment, actually. She has incredibly busy, she works all day long. So we're going to the view from above.
Speaker 1:And then I'm going to talk about the contemplation of death. It's like everyone's favourite subject for some reason. Also at Christmas, everyone wants to talk about the stoic contemplation of death. I don't know why that is But at Christmas time, everyone's like, stoic contemplation of death. I think also like what do call it Christmas Carol with Ebenezer Scrooge, it's kind of like all about the contemplation of death.
Speaker 1:The ghost of Christmas yet to come shows Scrooge's own grave and stuff like that. It's kind of like part of the culture.
Speaker 2:Scrooge is my mother's favourite Christmas film. Think I've seen every version of Scrooge.
Speaker 1:Really? Even the Muppet one.
Speaker 2:I don't like the old one, the really old one. My mother used to say my father was like Scrooge and I shouldn't be like him.
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 2:I've got it ingrained in me not to be like Scrooge.
Speaker 1:I've gone the other way. I thought it was quite generous when I was a young guy and now I've never spent money on anything like as I get older, I think I'm telling more Scrooge like everyone says, I used to get annoyed when people said that Scottish people are stingy. I was like, that's not true. I'm Scottish. I'm like, I'm not really stingy with money.
Speaker 1:Now as I got older, I'm like, I'm stingy. I'm proud of it, Scott. I don't mind. Why. So what's that?
Speaker 1:Like, I just wanted to, I don't know why I threw that up actually, just because there's a pity I'm not in it, right? I was looking for a picture of where I'm actually in it. But this is the empty studio in Toronto, where I did the audio book
Speaker 2:for How to Think Like
Speaker 1:a Roman Emperor. So I'd like to mention that because the last chapter of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor I wrote specifically, so with the audiobook in mind, so I put it in the first person. And it's kind of like a guided meditation. And I made it about the view from above and about the contemplation of death. And when I was writing it, I thought this is a bit risky, people might think this is too much.
Speaker 1:I'm asking them to almost like really immerse themselves for like fifteen-twenty minutes, as an extended meditation on death. It's like a guided meditation or whatever. I thought people are going be freaked out by that. But in all the reviews, people say that's their favorite chapter. And the audiobook sold way more copies than we would have expected, like twice as many or something compared to how many it should have done.
Speaker 1:Because a lot of people I think like that chapter. So that's where I was when I was recording it in Toronto. And I guess what that tells me is, normally I'd be a little bit hesitant to talk about the contemplation of death because it seems a bit dark and a bit gothic and stuff. But I've done so many talks and webinars over the years, I know people love it, Scott. They love a bit of death.
Speaker 2:I think they're all
Speaker 1:secretly like cure fans or something like they're all a bit gothic. Like, because people actually quite like talking about it. So this is a little quote from Marcus Aurelius, he says take a bird's eye view of the world. It's endless gatherings and endless ceremonies, Scott, many journeys in both storm and calm, and the transformations of things coming to be existing, and then ceasing to be. So just look at all the changes that go on around us and picture it as if from a bird's eye view.
Speaker 1:Says, and he goes on about this a lot. It's obviously a passion of his, a favourite thing of his. He talks about it a lot. So I'm going to show you another couple of quotes just for I'll tell you something weird I discovered the other day, like I literally just discovered that there's a set of stairs that there's a secret door in our apartment. And there's like stairs that go all the way up to the roof.
Speaker 1:And there's a view of the Acropolis from the roof in our apartment. I didn't realise that. I've been here for about six months. So I went up there all day and I was like, oh my God,
Speaker 2:we can have lunch on the roof.
Speaker 1:The view from above is kind of the view from the Acropolis. Marcus says a fine reflection from Plato, one who would converse about human beings, that's you and me Scott, should look on all things earthly as though from some point far above upon herds, armies and agriculture, marriages and divorces, births and deaths, the clamour of law courts, deserted wastes, that's Wales, alien peoples of every kind, that's Scotland, festivals, lamentations and markets and uses what agoras for the market, which is what you see, you look down on the Agora, like the Athenian famous city centre of Athens, the marketplace of Athens, it's what you look down on from the Acropolis. Acropolis literally means the high up part of the city, Acro like acrobat and polis like metropolis. Acropolis high up, but of the city. That's what the Acropolis looked like in the oldie times when everything was made of wood.
Speaker 1:It would have been much better with big statues that got pulled down. And also Boris Johnson literally the other day just said, we're not going to return the stolen Parthenon marbles to Athens. I'm a bit biased and that you're already talking about politics. I think I can get away with saying this a lot about politics. I think that the because I'm British, just about like Scottish, half Canadian, like I think they should give back the Parthenon marbles Byron said that Lord Elgin stole them.
Speaker 1:And who cares if on some technicality there was some kind of justification, they belong to, they clearly belong to the Greeks. We don't need them in the British Museum. They don't belong to us. It's ridiculous. Why Greece is an impoverished country, the only thing it's got really going to support its economy is tourism, give them the path and then marbles back.
Speaker 1:We stole the marble score. It's shocking. And that they pretend that you know, anyway, that's a lot about politics. But there's not that many people that think the Parthenon Marbles should stay in Britain. Think anyway.
Speaker 1:I think most British people give them back if you want. I mean, it's pretty obvious who they belong to.
Speaker 2:And also-
Speaker 1:Can pretend we just found them.
Speaker 2:Like how did, yeah, like you've got to think of how they got the hands on them. When you think of the British stole a lot of stuff from India as well, like trillions, pound of trillions in pounds worth of stuff. Now we know it's wrong, but back in the day, probably thought it was fine. Now we know it's wrong. Maybe we should go, do you know what, this probably is wrong.
Speaker 2:We should it back.
Speaker 1:It's kind of obvious where it belongs. And it's not a small thing. It's like one of the great treasures of European civilization, like it would be like as if somebody nicked the crown jewels from the Tower Of London and said, Oh, they belong in Turkey or somewhere from now on, we've decided they're ours. Anyway, a lot about politics. I think I can get away without that politics.
Speaker 1:It's not that controversial. It's only Boris Johnson that disagrees with me. The view of the Agora is the view from the Acropolis, where the path and the marbles were originally located. And Marcus also says remember that your mind becomes invincible, that's strong talk Marcus, when it withdraws into itself and rests content with itself. A mind free from violent passions is a mighty citadel and the word he uses is acropolis.
Speaker 1:For man has no stronghold more secure to which he can retreat to remain unassailable from that time onward. So not only does he say the view from above is like looking down at all the chaos of life and the interaction, the markets and the law courts, That's what you see in the Agora, he says the Agora. But where you look down upon that from would be the Acropolis, which is what he name checks in this other quote. I didn't realise that until recently, looked more closely at the Greek versions of those and I went, oh, he says Agora and Necropolis. So I think Marcus probably had at some level in mind, this idea of the view from above is the view looking down on the city centre from this, what was once a hilltop fort and became a temple in the centre of Athens, it's very famous.
Speaker 2:Think of how many conversations and dinners and stuff are happening right now Donald, across the world. Yeah. That's a lot.
Speaker 1:We're just you know ants in this vast network of human beings but honestly, I mean I'm being a lot bit glib about it, I think it's incredibly important. We've talked about this before. What research shows us about anxiety and other strong emotions is that people narrow the scope of the thinking down. We engage psychologists call it selective thinking, or mental filters, different names for it. But basically our viewpoint becomes very narrow and that's dangerous.
Speaker 1:Means that our thinking becomes biased, our emotions get amplified and distorted. And when we're seeing things more clearly, we're usually viewing them from a broader perspective. And so the Stoics were right on the money and thinking we should train ourselves systematically thought we should do this every day. Marxist really says every day, imagine that you're looking down on events from high above. So you're getting more of the bigger picture, you're expanding your horizons, expanding your perspectives.
Speaker 1:And there's other ways you can do this. Someone was talking to me earlier about kind of getting bad reviews and or criticism from people. Think and I do, I've got an advantage. As a therapist, I specialise in treating anxiety disorder, which is tied up with something we call fear of negative evaluation. So social anxiety is all about fear of negative evaluation.
Speaker 1:But as a therapist, that's the problem that I mainly worked with. And as a writer, and also as a trainer, I've had reams of feedback, know, if you're a writer, you got like 1000s of Amazon reviews and whatnot. And so you get loads of feedback from people
Speaker 2:that you've never met in your life
Speaker 1:before, like a very strong opinions about things that you've said and done. And you kind of get used to after a while. But one of the things that happens is that, of course, occasionally, you'll get somebody that's really mean, and they can't stand you and they give you a really scathing review. But if you've got lots of feedback for a course, or a movie, or a play, or a book, or something you put out in public, potentially, of course, you would look at the full range of feedback. You think if I ask enough people, Scott, you know that if we asked enough people, Scott, eventually we'd find somebody that would say they just don't like the look of your face.
Speaker 1:Eventually, I know that's hard to believe. And if we asked enough people, like, we'd find people that think you're like the best thing since sliced bread. But it just depends who you ask. Right? Like if you ask enough people, you get a full range of opinions and stuff.
Speaker 1:And so again, in daily life, we meet somebody and they don't go on with us or they say something really mean. I think like when you're reading reviews, it helps to make a conscious effort to expand your perspective and go this is just one person's opinion out of billions of people who I could potentially have consulted about this. So this is like one bad review out of like 1,000 reviews, right? So it's kind of interesting, but it's diluted when you take it alongside all the other stuff. And I'm emphasising that because when people are depressed, they only remember the bad review, right?
Speaker 1:Or the bad interaction with somebody. So I'm emphasising this to you because we have the way our brains work, we have to make a conscious effort to avoid getting sucked into the selective thinking trap. Like we all do it, it's a vulnerability we have.
Speaker 2:What about if you only care about like one or two people's opinions, that's the only thing that matters to you in your life, like how would you out of that trap?
Speaker 1:I think you should question why those opinions are the only ones that matter. Is there any reason to put so much importance on just one or two people's opinions? What about all the other billions of people in the world? Don't they have valid opinions as well? I think pulling out and viewing things from this kind of wider angle, this broader perspective tends to be healthier.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's not always possible, there would be reasons to put more emphasis on an individual's opinion. But generally, we can, we're too quick to put someone on a pedestal, or to give them that amount of influence over us. I think it's because as children, we're used to viewing our parents, like when we're toddlers as being like these godlike authorities. And that's how we soak up so much information so quickly from them. But then in adult life, I think we revert back to that.
Speaker 1:And we give certain individuals way too much influence over us, when they might be quite biased or might be quite poor judges so it's better to kind of take a wider sample of opinions in many cases. So this is a view of the gods looking down from Mount Olympus, I think it's meant to be in a movie. Good. So the view from above can take two forms, either it's like the zoo is looking down from Olympus, or like looking down from the Acropolis, it's just picturing things from high up, or it can get more metaphysical, where we ask ourselves, what would it be like to imagine our current situation within the whole of space and time? And how what a tiny user suspect a duster Scott, Scott, your entire life Scott is like the blink of an eye in the history of the universe.
Speaker 1:Like it's nothing Scott, like it's tiny, like a tiny little tiny blip. Right? But I think it's quite liberating to view things that way. Because it should remind us to think well, we need to make the most of the opportunity that we have. And also cannot blow events out of proportion to realise there's a lot more stuff that goes on to make up the story of the universe.
Speaker 1:And even in the space of your life, if you're going through a difficult period, on a simple level, many people will tell you that they get through difficult situations by telling themselves like Abraham Lincoln said this too shall pass. I think that to me one of the deep elements of this, the subtle kind of metaphysical part of this, there's a way of experiencing the presence of something unpleasant, while simultaneously recognising its potential absence. That sounds a bit abstract, right? So I imagine that I've got toothache or say like I have toothache at the moment but I also know that once I've gone to the dentist and dealt with it properly, eventually it will be resolved. And so if I focus on the fact that it's temporary and this too shall pass, at some level I'm kind of presenting to my mind its potential to be gone, its absence.
Speaker 1:And the presence and the absence together in my mind will moderate the amount of distress that it causes me. If you get too absorbed in an unpleasant feeling, you focus on it as if it's the be all and end all, you amplify the amount of distress that it's causing. So I think there's a mindset that recognises things won't last forever. And having that in mind helps to moderate the intensity of our emotions. And that's part of what's going on with the view from above, it's both spatial and chronological.
Speaker 2:Well also, do you know what we got in common right now, Donald? That we're moving through space at 66,000 miles per hour on a piece of rock.
Speaker 1:Makes me dizzy when you say that Scott.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right now we're going 66,000 miles per hour. Think of mental, that is. We're just like, our life is just me, only me. We're going through the galaxy at such speeds. My God.
Speaker 1:Scott, did I ever tell you about the theory of the eternal recurrence?
Speaker 2:No, but you can tell me.
Speaker 1:It's gonna blow your mind, Scott. So Nietzsche talks about this. And Nietzsche is another one. Used to love Nietzsche's writing, but he's a weird guy because he kind of borrows loads of ideas from other people and then doesn't really say where he's getting them from. So he talks about this thing called the eternal recurrence.
Speaker 1:He doesn't say where it came from. I think he may even claim that he made up. But he was a classical philologist. Wasn't a professor of philosophy. He was a professor of Greek and Latin.
Speaker 1:And he studied classics. And clearly, he took this idea and many of his other ideas from well known ideas in classical literature. So the eternal recurrence, there was an idea that the Stoics had, and I think before them the Pythagoreans and it goes like this. So they think, look, the universe must have come from nothing, they think. Like there must have been a time when nothing existed.
Speaker 1:And then the universe appeared. And they believed in determinism. So they think that everything in the universe is caused by what comes before it. It's like clockwork. It's like a chain, a causal chain reaction.
Speaker 1:Like one event causes the events that follow-up. And Stoics thought well one day the universe has to end eventually, like there's an infinite amount of time, like eventually the whole thing's got to collapse somehow and come to an end. But when it's all gone, it would return to nothing. And they said, the one thing we can be sure of is that nothing, absolute nothing and absolute nothing are identical. Like absolutely nothing that we came from and the absolute nothing that we return to are going to be identical.
Speaker 1:But the universe sprang forth from absolute nothing. So surely it would do that again. But if we believe in causal determinism, it would spring forth and follow exactly the same sequence of events and then return to absolutely nothing and then the same sequence of events would begin again. So you'd have this eternal cycle of exactly the same story being told, like the same events unfolding because each time it returns to the same identical absolute state of nothingness. And then the whole causal sequence would emerge from that again.
Speaker 1:So what that would mean, Scott, is that they get to have their cake and eat it, because they get to say that the conversation that we're having at the moment is transient, like it will be completely gone, but it's going to happen again and again and again. So it's both transient and eternal at the same time in a weird way. And so the conversation we're having right now, Scott, we've already had zillions of times before, and we're going to continue to have zillions of times again in the future, exactly this conversation that we're having right now.
Speaker 2:So basically it's a matrix.
Speaker 1:It's like the matrix or something. That's a really weird theory.
Speaker 2:Well, you seen the CIA released a files called experience. Have you heard of it? The CIA in the 80s were like, we need to fight the Russians and we need to
Speaker 1:go to
Speaker 2:the future. Need basically project our minds into time and space and go to the future and see what happens. They released this document on how you would do that. Honestly, it's about connecting the left brain and the right brain and apparently I'm going to listen to these tapes. I'm not going to do it because I'm scared I might end up in a future round.
Speaker 1:You might end up traps in the future?
Speaker 2:Yeah, me and you were just in an eternal fight to the death.
Speaker 1:Oh my God,
Speaker 2:that's it. But I mean, yeah, there's some crazy stuff.
Speaker 1:The CIA have done some strange experiments for I'm kind of like surprised at some of the things
Speaker 2:that They're releasing documents about everything they know about UFOs in about six months because Trump put the trigger in Covid, in eighteen months you need to release everything about UFOs and aliens that we know of. I don't know what's gonna happen, there might be nothing but if it is
Speaker 1:Even if the aliens came, Scott, I'd be like, meh, to be honest, I'm not that bothered. I think they're already here, right? Actually, like in Greece, Scottish people, right and octopuses, I'm convinced octopuses are aliens. Like, I'd be like aliens, whatever, I'm more interested in reading books about Socrates to be honest.
Speaker 2:Aliens, do you think like, they would be amongst us or do you think that they would be seeing us as ants?
Speaker 1:I feel like they've, yeah, I think they would just, they think I can't really be bothered with them. Like, you know, they take one look at us and run the other way. Surely, they'd be like, I think they'd look at us and they'd be like, Oh, this Socrates guy seems interesting. But all this crap on TV about the royal family is like, you know, I think we'll just leave these humans to come back in another billion years. See if they've evolved any beyond the other idle chatter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think they'd look at us and think, geez, really? Like, Do we want to know these people?
Speaker 2:True, why would we want know us? You know what's interesting, have you read Sapiens?
Speaker 1:No, I'm not actually.
Speaker 2:There's a weird genetic leap in Homo sapiens where they went from you know, to, woah we've got some brains and we can talk, they do say there's a massive genetic leap in humans DNA, what caused that then?
Speaker 1:Magic mushrooms. That's a good theory. Some people claim that I don't have idea why
Speaker 2:it could be drugs, it could be the result of forever.
Speaker 1:Just started to think one day, yeah, through history, people have been kind of puzzled by, you know, the Greeks thought the gods had given us this gift. So, I should say actually, there's a movie coming out called On the Creation of Earthquakes allegedly, it's in production at the moment, I think with John Malkovich, maybe they mentioned that and he's going play Seneca. And so on Earthquakes is a book by Seneca. And this is he says this and it's a lot about philosophy, couldn't stop doing philosophy. He's maybe writing about earthquakes, but he put that philosophy in.
Speaker 1:He says forget all else, Lasilias and concentrate your thoughts on this one thing, not to fear the name of death. Through long reflection, make death one of your close acquaintances, so that if the situation arises, you're able even to go out and meet it. So Seneca is saying it's really important to get used to the idea of your own mortality, so that it doesn't freak you out anymore. And this is such a common theme. I think, know, again, it's evidence of how people find it fascinating.
Speaker 1:It's in the arts, like throughout history and religion, this idea of memento mori, we call it in Latin, it means remember that you must die, remember you will die contemplating around mortality. It's such a recurring thing. You get it in the East and Buddhism and things like that as well. But it's very central to Socrates and to the stoic tradition. There's lots of beautiful works of art that relate to as well.
Speaker 1:But right in the very, very kind of pre history of Greek philosophy, I've mentioned before, we have this woman, I like to be a bit contrarian and say, you know, there aren't many female voices we're told in ancient philosophy, but I think they are but they're just kind of hidden. Like they speak through the men sometimes. So there are these priestesses called the Pythias in the Temple Of Apollo. And they play a very important role in ancient Greek culture. And they give these pronouncements, these sayings that were often just two words, like little colons, we have 137 of them that survived today from Stobias, if I remember rightly.
Speaker 1:And the Pythia, the priestess, provided these sayings and philosophers would go away and think about them. So I think in a sense that Pythia kind of invented Greek philosophy, she was kind of in the background, stirring it all up with these little wisdom sayings. Like it does all go back to women. And one of them, like luckily, Lawy is not around, like she'd get me into trouble for my life. I do have a habit of mixing up modern and ancient Greek, right?
Speaker 1:But no, no. So I think that's is my best ancient Greek pronunciation, nowhere near as good as It's accurate says maybe it's probably something in written Welsh. So the Delphic Oracle said, we should think things befitting a mortal, it means think mortal stuff in Greek, like literally think thoughts that would be appropriate for a mortal way and that's kind of cryptic, but it sounds like it means memento mori, remember you must die, like think about life in a way that takes account of your own mortality, know don't go around acting as if you're going to live forever. It sounds like that's probably what she meant. Seneca says that the most famous pronouncement of the Pythia know thyself, he says that's what it means as well.
Speaker 1:He says those whom you love and those whom you despise will both be made equal in the same ashes. This is the meaning of that command know thyself which is written on the shrine of the Pythian Oracle, the Temple Of Delphi just down the road from me. So everyone's heard the phrase know thyself. Synacha says it means know that you're mortal, remember that you're going to die. Remember to know yourself is to know that your life is transient and to take account of that, not forget that, but to really seize the day and be grateful for the opportunities that you have.
Speaker 1:He goes on to say, what is man? What is Scott Flea? Nothing more than a potter's vase, which could be shattered into pieces for the slightest knock. I could smoke any moment. You're
Speaker 2:a bag of water that I could pop at any moment with the left hand. You just got an electric battery in the top of it and your water balloon.
Speaker 1:I'd explode like that. Well, during the pandemic, I think a lot of people have been coming more to terms with their
Speaker 2:mortality and thinking about it.
Speaker 1:There are many in the Victorian era in particular, this theme of contemplating your own mortality was very popular. It's in a lot of funerary inscriptions and monuments and gravestones like in Highgate Cemetery and stuff, you'll see it in churches and a lot of traditional books and artwork. So you can see this is like an engraving, an etching from a book. It says remember to die, remember that you will die mementum mori. It is appointed for all men once to die, therefore think upon eternity and as I am so must you be, therefore prepare to follow me.
Speaker 1:It says, it's a cheery little poem, kids nursery rhyme. So memento mori means remember that you must die, like remember to die is a bit more of a literal translation of it, but the gist of it is remember you're mortal. There's a Latin phrase that's found on some tombs that says, that Laue would be, that would be her area of expertise, maybe I should have got her in today. What it means like these little sayings are kind of cool though, right? It says, it's usually this will be inscribed on a tomb, like so there's a dead body and sometimes next to a depiction of a skull or a skeleton.
Speaker 1:So it's referring to the corpse of the skeleton and it says, Scott, what you are, I once was, what I am, you will become. I used to be alive like you but now I'm just a pile of bones and so will you be too one day. Why
Speaker 2:very
Speaker 1:gothic, you're hanging about. Yeah, well, that's fine,
Speaker 2:know, every day Scott, when I'm like in the mirror, my beard's gone all white. Like I think about my mortality. And then there's this thing I like
Speaker 1:to call the stoic kiss of death, just because it sounds a little bit more heavy metal or something. Right? So Epictetus refers to this, this is the most controversial thing he says, he says, if you kiss your own child, like F, surely when, if you kiss your own child or your brother, like how often do you kiss your brother? Yeah, or friend, like that what the Romans used to kiss male friends on the lips, like that was part of the culture, which is probably a bad idea during the Antonine Plague.
Speaker 2:I wonder where he's fed. Yeah, I can't
Speaker 1:imagine right. Yeah. So if you kiss your own child or your brother or friend never give full licence to the appearance, the impression and allow not your pleasure to go as far as it chooses, but check it and curb it as those who stand behind men and their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal. So Epictetus here is referring to something that classicists are intrigued by, there's a number of references to this. So when a Roman general or the emperor who was a general, a victory, they would go back to Rome and they would have a big celebration, they'd gain titles and stuff.
Speaker 1:They'd parade through the streets with captured slaves and treasure. And the emperors or the generals would stand in a chariot, their face would be smeared with red dye, they'd wear purple regal robes. So they were dressed kind of to look like the god Jupiter. And there would be a slave standing behind them holding a laurel crown above their head. And the slave would whisper in their ear, Memento Mori, or Remember that you must die.
Speaker 1:Like it was apparently what the slave would be whispering while everyone's like, yeah, you're so awesome. You're like a God, you know, he defeated the Germans or the Parthians or whoever it was at the there was a guy that stood behind them and went remember, you must die, like to stop him getting too big of an ego. That's what Epictetus is referring to here. Like, Kerber is those who stand behind the men in their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal. Do you also remind yourself in like manner that he whom you love is mortal.
Speaker 1:So Epictetus is saying, also not only remind yourself that you're mortal, but remind yourself that your loved ones are mortal as well. And he goes on to say that he thinks that this is a key to loving people rationally, like because otherwise we take them for granted, he thinks, or we get too attached to them or dependent on them or whatever. And he thinks there needs to be a certain amount of non attachment. We need to accept that other people aren't entirely under our control. Like we need to view them as he says on loan to us from the universe, so that we're grateful for the presence of other people, rather than kind of being too demanding or taking them too much for granted.
Speaker 1:So Epictetus, this is the most famous quote about stoicism and most people don't realise it like I like to show people things they've never seen before. Like most people who read about stoicism will hear this quote over and over. It's not things themselves that disturb us, but rather our judgments about those things. It's a cliche, it's a very famous quote, but most people don't know what he says in the next sentence. So he gives an example, he says, for example, death is nothing catastrophic or else Socrates too would have thought so.
Speaker 1:Rather it's the judgment that death is catastrophic, that is the catastrophic thing. And this actually is a very cliche, very stoic thing, most people don't go on to read the rest of the quote. So when he mentions Socrates and mentions the contemplation of death, it's the first thing, most important thing that he thinks we need to apply this to. So he says death in itself is neither good nor bad. What matters is the value judgments that we impose on it.
Speaker 1:And he says Socrates thought his time was up. He would much rather stand in accord with his moral principles. He thought that was more important, even if he risked his life in doing so. And in a sense he was right because he changed Socrates more than just about anyone else, except maybe Jesus Christ or something like that. Socrates changed the face of Western civilisation, to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche actually, Scott, Socrates pressed his hand upon aeons as though upon wax, like he moulded the history of Western civilisation because he wasn't frightened of dying.
Speaker 1:And he made this big stand like to defend philosophy and the Athenians executed him and then they felt really bad about it afterwards. In the prison, the Athenians dug it up and they found something really strange there. Not a lot of people know this, but because I'm in Athens, I've got the insider gen, the insider info, like from the school of archaeology, like they you can see in the Museum of Ancient Agra, they found something surprising in the prison where Socrates was executed. They found a little tiny statuette of Socrates, which would be the sort that they would normally have in a shrine. So it's almost like the Athenians felt bad about the fact that they killed Socrates and then they had like a little shrine honouring him in the place where he was executed, like maybe a generation or so later.
Speaker 1:But again, they say, look, Socrates had what they call a noble death, a good death. That's where our word euthanasia comes from. Like it actually is just the Greek word for noble death. And the most famous example of a noble or a good death in Greece and Rome was Socrates, that's who they'd refer to. So they say he died, he went out in a blaze of glory, Scott, standing up for the things that he believed in And he wasn't scared.
Speaker 1:And he had a good innings, Scott, he was 71, which is pretty old, like from back in the day. Xenophon actually implies that part of his reasoning was that if he had to pay a huge fine, which was the other option, he wouldn't have been able to afford it and he might have had to stay in prison, like in debtors jail to pay off the fine. And that because he was 71 in an ancient Athenian prison, his life would have sucked anyway. So Xenophon was like, Oh, he was kind of like thinking, yeah, that would be so miserable. He's better off just taking the hit, know, and making this one last big stand and going out in the proverbial blazer glory.
Speaker 1:But we're still talking about them today.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. That's good. Well, Donald, what about, so should we like five minutes? Are we going to wrap up? We've got like How many slides we got?
Speaker 1:Only a few, it doesn't need to take long, we'll go through those.
Speaker 2:Straight on, oh, here he is.
Speaker 1:Socrates' famous little snubby nose. So there's an obscure dialogue called the Axiochus, it's a pseudo platonic dialogue, not a lot of
Speaker 2:people know about it, but it's the
Speaker 1:one where they talk about death. We don't know who wrote it. It wasn't Plato, it was probably one of his students. But it's about Socrates. And he talks about death.
Speaker 1:And he's talking to one of his friends, a guy called Axiochus, who's really scared of dying. And Socrates says, but death does not exist either for the living or the dead. And what he means is the dead aren't conscious anymore, and the living haven't experienced it yet. So nobody ever actually experiences what it's like to be dead. And he says to Axiochus, that's really cool phrase, he says vain then is the sorrow in Axiochus grieving for Axiochus.
Speaker 1:That's a really cool way to put it. So this guy is really anxious about dying. Socrates says, it doesn't make any sense for Axiochus to grieve for Axiochus. Why? Because you're not dead yet and when you are dead, you won't be conscious of it.
Speaker 1:So what sense does it make even getting stressed about this? Seneca says death is a release from all our suffering and a boundary beyond which our ills cannot pass. And then there's a cool little argument in this dialogue. So Socrates says, well, death is neither good nor bad. It's a state of non existence, right?
Speaker 1:You don't experience good or bad in it. Axiochus pushes back against it though. He says, yeah, it might not be good or bad, it may be unconsciousness, but I'll be deprived of all of the opportunity to experience good things in life. And Socrates, because he's relentless, says yes, but you won't be aware of the fact that you're deprived of all of the good things in life, which is a really neat little bit of dialectic. Like because it seems like Axiochus is an objection and then Socrates says yeah, but maybe your objection doesn't really work.
Speaker 1:So I don't know, again, I don't expect everyone to agree with that argument necessarily. But you know, many of things you find in socks, you go, I'm not sure whether I agree with that or not. But it's kind of a co argument. And sometimes they stick with you and they get you thinking about things. Talking about something really important.
Speaker 1:This reminds me of a famous anecdote that Diogenes is a cynic. So I want to tell you because he's everyone's favourite Greek philosopher, actually, he's the kind of, I saw there's a meme that rates philosophers in terms of how punk they are. And Diogenes always comes up as the most punk rock Greek philosopher. So supposedly Diogenes was dying and his followers said, but what we're to do with your body because you don't have any money, like you live like a beggar and funeral ceremonies were really important in Greek culture, they thought it was terribly sacrilegious not to dispose of a body properly. And dodging he said, Well, why don't you just grab my ankles and drag me outside the city walls and dump me and the rubbish and you just leave me there.
Speaker 1:And they thought that's shocking. So they said, but master, we can't do that. Because then wild animals will come and they'll eat your body. And that would be like a shocking sacrilegious thing. And Dogeny says, Good point, buddy.
Speaker 1:He says, you know, stay always at a wooden staff. He said, you know, the staff I carry about, what you should do is just lie that down beside me, then when the wild animals come to eat my body, or pick up the staff and just go knock them on the head with it. And I'll keep them away. How about that? And his followers are like, yeah, but like, master, like, you won't be able to do that.
Speaker 1:But you know, like, you'll be dead and you won't be like conscious and stuff. And dodging he said, Exactly, you bunch of my pets. So if I won't be conscious, I'm not going to care really, if I'm eating by dead animals, so this was just his kind of quaint way of saying what difference does it make to me? I'm going to be completely oblivious. So I wish I care whether I'm eating by dead animals or not.
Speaker 1:And there's another argument that's common in ancient philosophy that says why should you worry about non existence after death? You've already been dead for zillions of years before you were born, you'll return to the same state of non existence that you came from. And I want to quote this because this is also found in ancient tombstones and it's really cool. It's non phooey phooey, non sum, non kuru. It's like a little poem almost it says, I was not, I was, I am not, I do not care.
Speaker 1:And that sums up this argument. It says, like, for a huge expanse of time, I didn't exist, then I did exist for a while. And now I've returned to complete non existence. I'm oblivious, so it doesn't make any difference to me. But I was not, I was, I am not, I do not care is a common thing it seems to have engraved on tombstones in the ancient world.
Speaker 1:Shall we wrap up there, Scott or do we have time for
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yeah, I've got two minutes left to join on this other thing.
Speaker 1:No, let's wrap up. I was just sort of finished with the last slide, Like I just wanted to say Seneca, I'll finish with this because it's my favourite quote. People ask me, what's your favourite stoic quote? And I say, it's this controversial one from Seneca where he says to learn how to die is to unlearn how to be a slave. And what he means by that is that to contemplate and come to terms with your own mortality, overcome your fear of death liberates you and allows you to be free from many other attachments and anxieties in life.
Speaker 1:So they think that to overcome your fear of death, come to terms of your own mortality is what existentially deep down will really kind of like set you free. To learn how to die, he says, is to unlearn how to be a slave. And with that, Scott, I conclude. We conclude.
Speaker 2:Well, Donald, you've done a fantastic six weeks with us. I'm sure we'll be seeing you again very soon, but I have asked people for questions, but it seems people have just been taking in what you've been saying.
Speaker 1:You've just been chilling.
Speaker 2:Happy days. Well, I'll be in touch to do another Q and A. Is that linked to you, Dunamea?
Speaker 1:Does it link to? Yeah, eudaimonia is really the goal of life and stoicism and other philosophy. It's almost like that word almost means something about like nirvana. It's a state of complete flourishing. It's the peak of human achievement.
Speaker 1:And so you, the Stoics think you have to come to terms with your own mortality in order to truly experience fulfilment from you, Dymena.
Speaker 2:I'm right. Well, thank you very much, Donald. I'll be in touch to do another Q and A, but appreciate everybody's love there.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Scott. Pleasure as always my friend.
Speaker 2:Bye
Speaker 1:everybody.
Speaker 2:Bye bye.
