Q&A with Donald Robertson: Impermanence and The Here & Now
Two interesting people who just left.
Speaker 2:I love that insult. It's such a quality insult.
Speaker 3:I love insults like some people won't get it, that's what makes it better.
Speaker 2:Have to think about it.
Speaker 3:God, they were doing those insults back in the day though, Donald, this is May. So, Marcus was long dead by this time. He's gone.
Speaker 1:No, people were quite good. And so, mean, must be some good insults in Roman poetry over the thought.
Speaker 2:Isn't the famous story about the guy that walks into a hairdresser and hairdresser says, how would you like your haircut? And the answer is in silence. Really? That's Cicero. It's Cicero, that joke about how do you want your haircut in silence.
Speaker 2:It's a Roman joke. It's a Roman joke, it's applicable to like, you
Speaker 1:know, would you like to speak to your mother-in-law through a medium?
Speaker 2:Who said that?
Speaker 1:I don't know. When
Speaker 3:did mirrors get like invented?
Speaker 2:The Romans had mirrors,
Speaker 4:but it
Speaker 1:was like polished metal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. Rubbish metal. How accurate was it? Like, was it good or you like, is your head like a massive fish or something?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or if you were like really ugly, you would
Speaker 4:just like, oh yeah, it looked
Speaker 1:pretty nice.
Speaker 3:Oh my God. Because I was thinking this the other day, when was the last time you didn't look in the mirror for a consistent time?
Speaker 2:Not for ages, the weird thing in this flat
Speaker 1:is Yes, it's not us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but in my bedroom there are no mirrors. If I want to do my makeup, I have to stand in the hall and just like, Hi Donald. I'm just like,
Speaker 4:there in my bra, like, Oh,
Speaker 1:I'm just doing my mascara.
Speaker 3:But the thing is, right, if you don't look at yourself in the mirror for like a week, and then you look at yourself again, you might see someone different.
Speaker 4:I'm going to try that.
Speaker 2:Speak quite hard though.
Speaker 1:There's a quote in Marcus, really reminds me of this thing in Marcus Aurelius where he says this body is not the same one to which your mother gave birth. Which is a weird thing to say.
Speaker 2:It's also like an obvious thing to say. You have like changed since you were a baby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, But it's like, it's strange that like, obviously, those are the thoughts of someone that has too much time on his hands. Definitely. Yeah, in a way.
Speaker 3:Oh my god, that is a weird thought to think about, isn't it? Why is he thinking about that? Like what's that mean to him?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I think it could be opium related.
Speaker 3:He's a bit of opium probably.
Speaker 1:Do you know what you would love? Do know what
Speaker 3:you might love, Don, you might hate it. BBC Radio four did a thing on Marcus Aurelius last week.
Speaker 1:I I heard about that, everyone tells me about these things.
Speaker 3:Honestly, it'll drive you mad.
Speaker 1:Is it rubbish?
Speaker 3:Well, one person sticking up for Marcus, the other people are saying they're against him, saying some stuff about him, it's not true. Was like, Dom wouldn't stand.
Speaker 2:No, I didn't hear it because my dad said that it was Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall and Angie Hobbs. Simon Goldhill taught me at Cambridge. Who was sticking up for Marcus?
Speaker 3:Don't know who she was.
Speaker 2:Probably Edith Hall.
Speaker 1:No, Edith Fulton.
Speaker 2:Maybe it was Angie Hobbs then because she's a philosopher.
Speaker 3:One of them said, if he didn't want to be that famous, why did he write the book to get published? Was like, he didn't write the book to get published.
Speaker 1:All the scholars agree that it looks like it was never intended for publication
Speaker 2:for
Speaker 1:a bunch of reasons. So one is he kind of implicitly insults famous people in it. Another one is he references personal stuff that other people wouldn't know about. And another thing is he kind of complains about his role as emperor and says controversial things. So there's a bunch of things in it that make it look like he couldn't have meant that to be public.
Speaker 2:Hang on, that sounds like a modern day political memoir, sorry. Insult people, check. Multiple personal revelations, check. Complain about being in power, check. Sounds like it was destined for publication.
Speaker 2:Who was his agent?
Speaker 1:He says things like, know that letter that such and such wrote to such and such, and it doesn't mean anything. Like, you know, would, it would mean anything to him. So like, yeah, I don't like nobody thinks it was meant for publication.
Speaker 3:Could be a marketing genius. Marketing Marcus Aurelius.
Speaker 1:He might have been. Yeah, like he may have been way ahead of his time.
Speaker 2:Maybe you went back in time and were his puppies. You stepped through a wormhole in the flat in Athens.
Speaker 1:Why me? I'd be rubbish at it. I'm not good at it.
Speaker 2:No, you'd be amazing. You'd be amazing publicist because like now Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Imagine Scott, this is a Scott thing. Imagine you went back in time, Scott, like and you could
Speaker 2:go anywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're like, no, you're like a peasant, right? But you know, from modern society. And you could just sort of like jostle up to Roman senators and say, Do you know that if you just do this and not like, do this is how lightning works and stuff like that. And everyone would think it's something that wizard or whatever, Because I have all this knowledge from the future. So what would you tell them?
Speaker 1:What would you go check this out?
Speaker 3:Would I tell them? I would try and do electricity, I would. Would
Speaker 1:you tell them where America is? Do you know there's a place called America?
Speaker 2:And you could make pizzas a thousand years early.
Speaker 1:They've got turkeys, they've got, you wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 3:Imagine if they did go over to America though, that would be wild, wouldn't it? That would have changed the world. Who would have they been fighting? The Indians.
Speaker 1:But the Vikings went to Canada or America. Did they?
Speaker 3:Yeah. If I played,
Speaker 1:they were on the sports, on the long boards. Yeah, but they didn't colonise or whatever.
Speaker 2:Just had a few little raids.
Speaker 1:They went raids that came back again.
Speaker 3:They loved a raid, didn't they? I think there was a DNA thing done in The UK and it showed that there wasn't as much Viking DNA as they thought for all the raids and stuff they did. They would obviously rape in a lot of people's albin'. I can't
Speaker 1:assume that's where all the redheads come from.
Speaker 2:But there aren't that many redheads so just not many rapes basically.
Speaker 3:Yeah, basically. They weren't as bad as people thought.
Speaker 1:I've got a lot of ginger, it's got white now, it used to be a lot ginger and then it went white. And I've got blue eyes, which is not normal for a kilt, you're a kilt, not that many kilts have got blue eyes. That right?
Speaker 3:Kelts usually have
Speaker 1:brown eyes or green.
Speaker 3:There's definitely difference. Think the English people are generally taller than the Cats as well. And then they got the Dutch are average height six foot two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Dutch are really tall.
Speaker 3:What's going on there? What happened there? Were they all just like, yeah we're tall and we just go one place? Why did that happen?
Speaker 2:I wonder why actually but it is true, very statuesque.
Speaker 3:The German, was Marcus Aurelius that reckon would have been, was he like six foot or something? Was he tall?
Speaker 1:I don't know how tall he was. I've got a theory that he might have been blonde because his son was blonde and Commodus, the statues look very, very similar to Marcus. So I don't know, but he looks a lot like his dad and he's blonde, maybe his dad was blonde as well.
Speaker 3:That would be interesting if he's blonde. Could have been like but why was there blonde people in the Southern Mediterranean? The blonde people originate, actually I don't know what I'm on about, but a lot of Swedish people are blonde. Then
Speaker 2:the thing about the Roman empire is that at the time of Marcus was that it encompassed like of Europe. You would have had Roman citizens who were married to mixing with people from France, Gaul, from Britain as well, actually, obviously, as well. So,
Speaker 1:yeah. There are quite a few Roman emperors that were blonde, allegedly, and had blue eyes. It seems kind of surprising, but we're told in a number of estuaries, had blonde hair, used to, Lucius Verus, his adopted brother was blonde and he said they say he sprinkled gold dust in his hair. That's how much of a rock star he was. Nice.
Speaker 1:Like glam rocker.
Speaker 3:I do wonder what the pre night out routine was in Rome. Like what were they doing? Like, do know, over the early pre drinks and stuff? What were they doing over there?
Speaker 2:How were they pre loading? They were definitely pre loading with water wine.
Speaker 1:Well, Lucius Ferris had this massive goblet made, which we're told defies the ability of any human to consume, which makes it sound like it was a competition. And it was like a yard of ale or something like that. So it's like he had this big thing. Was I bet you can't finish this. Yeah, he's looking a bit of a frat boy like, know, he likes to party.
Speaker 2:I told you about that amazing goblet, Greek goblet, which I should have put in the presentation last week, it's got like on the outside of the goblet, it's got like pictures of a party, pictures of symposium. So like guys drinking, like flute girls playing their flutes, you know, people just having a great time, and like, you know, like little bottles of wine and everything. And in the bottom of the cup, so basically the idea is like when you finished your wine, you look, there's another picture in the bottom of the cup, And the picture in the bottom of the cup is of a guy leaning over and being sick into a bucket, which is being held for him by a flute And it's just basically saying like, if you finish too much wine, this is what's gonna happen to you.
Speaker 1:All right, like it.
Speaker 2:Definitely got hammered. They got hammered.
Speaker 1:You see
Speaker 4:that one, there's a
Speaker 1:Lycurgus cup that's made of this glass that changes colour in different lights when you put wine in it, it changes between red and green. It's amazing. It's in the British Museum. Still don't know exactly how they managed to manufacture glass.
Speaker 3:They basically loved the sesh. They love going out drinking. They loved it.
Speaker 2:Loved the sesh. They loved the sesh. Anybody who says that they didn't, it's amazing they got any philosophy written or built any statues, temples, conquered anywhere because they were on the lash,
Speaker 1:20 one So people say Socrates was executed because he asked too many questions of people, can he kind of upset the people and political power and stuff like that. But there are lots of reasons he was executed. And one of them was that his lover or friend, Alcobides, allegedly got drunk one night. And there are these statues in Greece called herms, which are like a column with a bust on top, it's just the head on top, and also the genitals. So it's just like a column with a penis
Speaker 2:with a head and a willy.
Speaker 1:And apparently, Alcabides and his friends got drunk and got a chisel and went around and knocked all Willy's off. Right. And because these were religious things, and they took probably a long time to make them. Kids were really, really angry about this. It was like a big scandal.
Speaker 1:And that's like one of the reasons that they executed Socrates was because his, his boyfriend got drunk and chiseled off all the willies on the statues.
Speaker 3:Socrates, you cut all the cocks off, you're going to die. Well, that's a good way to die actually, not bad. I wish that was the official story.
Speaker 1:Scott, I thought you were going to say that's a good segue into tonight's presentation about impermanence.
Speaker 3:Ah, yeah, it is impermanence.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, it's definitely in there. What are we talking about today in Fulham, Don? Let the gang know you.
Speaker 3:What are we talking about tonight?
Speaker 1:We're going to talk about death, loss, joy, the transience of all material things. Scott, the river of time, the ancient mystery cult of the Eleusinian mysteries, like the myth of the goddess Demeter and Persephone and I'm going to show you a picture of myself at the gates of hell.
Speaker 3:God, what's going on here? Okay. We're going to hell. I'm in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're going to need your, you're going to definitely need your Coca Cola.
Speaker 3:I'm ready, man. I'm strapped in.
Speaker 1:I'll to see my side.
Speaker 3:Actually I need to share with you all. How's everyone doing by the way in the chat? How are you all doing? Good. Yeah, we're good.
Speaker 3:Okay, can you do now?
Speaker 2:How about challenges from last week? You were like challenging people to do some of those.
Speaker 3:Oh, someone did the Donald's, someone did your challenge about, it wasn't a banana, it was a tootle toy.
Speaker 1:Oh really? Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she's dragging the little tootle in the park.
Speaker 2:That is so cool. Oh my God, well done to her.
Speaker 3:I'll show you a video.
Speaker 1:You've got a video of it? Awesome. Nice
Speaker 3:one. Cool. Anyone else do anything? Let me know.
Speaker 1:Doctor. Well, I've got some more exercises for you today at the end. Okay, impermanence and the here and now we're going to talk about Scott, like so will we commence? You have to say go.
Speaker 3:We go, go, go,
Speaker 1:So Lauya, I don't know if we need to do
Speaker 2:You've all met me now.
Speaker 1:We've met Lauya. Right, so we're going to talk about impermanence and philosophy, impermanence in the classics. And then we're going to talk about some meditation techniques to do with stoicism, they also to do with modern psychotherapy. So I'll start by talking about a lot about philosophy. And I'm going to get into it by talking about ancient mythology.
Speaker 1:So we're going to talk about the legend of the goddess Demeter, who's the goddess really of agriculture, of corn, like barley, of the harvest. She's also called Seto, which means she of the grain, like the goddess of harvest. Zeus is her brother, but he's also the father of her daughter, Persephone, because the Greek gods are kind of incestuous like that. And her name possibly meant earth mother or grandmother, the meter or metter bit seems to mean mother. And she also, in addition to being responsible for agriculture, so she taught humans how to farm, but she also taught them religious ceremonies based around agriculture and the cycles of nature.
Speaker 1:And so her rites and her symbolism, which are very ancient, have to do with fertility and childbirth or with mourning and death. Check that I'm in trouble. That's me, it's scary, I should have done this on Halloween. That's me standing outside the gates of hell or like in Greece there's a bunch of caves that are traditionally thought to lead into the underworld. And this is one at Elephina or Eleusis, where the mysteries of Demeter were based, the goddess of agriculture.
Speaker 1:But her myth is also very closely associated with the underworld and with Hades. And so there's a temple of Hades there. And that's the ruins of it. And the reason for that is that her daughter was kidnapped by Hades. So Hades, who is the brother of Zeus and the Lord of the Underworld took a shine to Persephone, the beautiful daughter of Demeter.
Speaker 1:And he kidnaps her, he abducts her. And he makes her his queen, the queen of the underworld. He doesn't like it there because it's kind of horrible in the underworld. It's boring. They don't have Netflix.
Speaker 1:It's damp. No one really wants to be there. And so Demeter is very sorrowful because she's lost her daughter, she can't figure out where she is. So she spends a long time wandering all over the earth to and fro and grieving for the loss of her beloved daughter. The thing that she most loves in the world has been snatched away from her and so she experiences this terrible grief.
Speaker 1:And because of that, nature grinds to a halt, there's a terrible drought that ensues, the crops stop growing, nature stops producing, all of mankind, all of humanity's really in trouble because of this. And so they're complaining all the time to Zeus. And so Zeus thinks he needs to do something about this. So he strikes a deal with Hades and says, could you let her go back because this shouldn't really work out according to plan. Her mom is really upset and the nature's going to halt, all the people are upset.
Speaker 1:And so Hades kind of reluctantly agrees to let Persephone, his queen go back up to earth and return to her mother. But he tricks her. He says, do you want some of this tasty pomegranate? And she says, oh that looks quite tasty. And she eats six pomegranate seeds and the fates have decreed that anyone who eats anything in Hades is trapped there and they can't return.
Speaker 1:So she's fated to return to the underworld for six months every year for half of the year. So in cycles, Persephone, the thing that Demeter most loves is taken away from her, goes into the underground, becomes the queen of the underworld and then for six months she's allowed to go back above the earth and to be reunited with her mother. And so it's very symbolic, like you can see there Demeter and the god Hermes is guiding her daughter Persephone back from the underworld. Anyone that went back to life after being to the underworld in the ancient world, it's almost shamanistic, they'd seen the other side. And so this is the source of the mysteries that you would be initiated into these rituals, it was secret, you couldn't tell anyone about it.
Speaker 1:But you'd get a glimpse of what existed in the afterlife because Persephone had passed on this knowledge to humanity about what lay in the underworld. She kind of bridged the gap between the world of the living and the world of the dead. And so there's lots of symbolism embedded in this but part of it is this idea that for Demeter, the thing that she most loved was cyclically taken away from her and then given back to her. So it represents the transience of the things that we love, of our relationships, the impermanence of everything, also the transience of our feelings of pleasure and grief, the highs and lows of life in these six month cycles. So some of the symbolism, perhaps the most important symbolism of the mysteries of Demeter, the Eleusinian mysteries as they're called.
Speaker 1:So Christian author Hippolytus writes, the Athenians while initiating people into the Eleusinian rites, likewise display to those who are being admitted to the highest grade at these mysteries the mighty and marvellous and most perfect secret suitable for one initiated into the highest mystic truths, an ear of corn in silence reaped. And I don't know, you probably can't see in the background but there's a phrase they are showing Demeter holding these ears of corn, a part of the symbolism. Marcus Aurelius refers to the symbolism of reaping ears of corn. So this may be an allusion to the Elysinian mysteries or if not, it's probably a kind of universal symbolism that kind of overlaps. It comes from a lost play by Euripides And the lines say, our lives must be reaped like a ripe ear of corn and as one comes to be, another is no more.
Speaker 1:So again it's this kind of symbolism of the harvest that happens periodically like and then the earth flies fallow again and then the crops are abundant again. So there's good and bad, highs and lows, ups and downs, birth and death, the cycles of nature. And encouraging us to view as changeable and transient and to accept that. But also to accept that our own life is like the flourishing of plants and the growth of the harvest and that one day we are going to be reaped, we are transient as well. So just as we kind of feed on these plants that come and go, our own life is impermanent and transient as well.
Speaker 1:And then there's another passage in Marcus, reference to Euripides, which I feel might be related to Eleusinian mysteries, but who knows. So we're told the Eleusinian priests used to pour a libation as part of the ritual. It's very mysterious, we don't know that much about it. It was prohibited by law for anyone to say anything about what went on in these secret cults. But they would pour wine to the gods and say, and they would chant rain and conceive, rain and conceive.
Speaker 1:And Marcus quotes Euripides again from a lost play saying, the earth loves rain and divine heaven loves to fall and showers. The universe loves to create whatever is to be. So nature loves to create whatever is to be. Thus I will say to the universe, your love is my love too. And this is like what we call amar fati in stoicism, it's accepting fate, the love of fate, the love of whatever it is that nature gives us, like the ups and downs, the highs and lows.
Speaker 1:Epictetus says, the Stoic teacher Epictetus says, don't ask things to happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do and your life Scott will flow smoothly.
Speaker 3:I've actually got one of those Amalfarthy coins Donald from the Rhine Hall. It's
Speaker 1:a flame. It's got flame on it? Yeah. But
Speaker 3:I got a memento mori as well. So you know, I'm gonna die.
Speaker 1:That's called you shows up on before. Yeah. Right. Well, that's good. We're right into the symbolism then.
Speaker 1:Don't wish for things to be as you desire, but desire for them to be as they are and your life will go smoothly, Epictetus says. And this going smoothly, flowing smoothly, he says, like a river or a stream is a figure of speech that he's using, which seems to be an allusion to a recurring metaphor in the philosophical literature, one of the most common metaphors actually, which is the idea of a river flowing. And that goes back to a pre Socratic philosopher called Heraclitus. And he taught this doctrine that many people think sounds like the central doctrine of Buddhism. So Buddhism is called Anatavada.
Speaker 1:That means the doctrine of no self, and also Anicavada, which means the doctrine or the philosophy of impermanence, of transience. So many people think that one of the most distinctive things about Buddhism is this idea, the teaching that everything is transient, everything is impermanent. But the earliest Buddhist scriptures only date from the first century AD, it was oral before that. We don't know exactly what Buddhism looked like until it was written down. But in the sixth century BC, like way, way earlier, the Greeks were very familiar with this doctrine of pantare, as they call it, everything flows.
Speaker 1:And Heraclitus famously said, his example or illustration of this was you cannot step into the same river twice, he said, Scott, because new waters are constantly flowing through it. And he thought in the same way everything in nature was constantly changing. This is like Marcus Aurelius said, this is not the same body to which your mother gave birth, the molecules in changing. Things look like they're the same, but if you look closely, there's little changes happening, subtle changes constantly happening. We're geared to overlook the changes that are happening all the time before our eyes, and things are more fragile and more changeable than we typically acknowledge.
Speaker 1:You cannot step into the same river twice because new waters are constantly flowing through it. How many Heraclatians, Scott, how many followers of Heraclitus does it take to change a light bulb? Zero, one. Doctor. One, only one.
Speaker 3:No, unlimited. Doctor.
Speaker 1:Unlimited, infinite number. I was gonna say, I reckon it's only one, but he can't change the same light bulb twice.
Speaker 3:You've learned that.
Speaker 1:On
Speaker 3:that topic, I know this is a hot topic at the moment. When lockdown hit, first of all, people worried about all the change. Now they're worried about going back into the world, back into big change of social life. Why do people expect everything to stay the same? Obviously things change.
Speaker 3:So, you think a lot of the things are anxiety and stuff is due to the lack of control, I'm feeling like, oh my God, the world's opening up already.
Speaker 1:Uncertainty and lack of control tends to be associated with anxiety. And I think it's our human nature. We're thinking animals, we're reasoning animals and reason involves abstraction. Like we attach labels to things and we make generalisations. And so the very nature of thinking involves simplifying stuff, making generalisations about stuff, that's what thinking is, it's a process of abstraction.
Speaker 1:And that means glossing over differences and that means glossing over changes. So it encourages us to think about things in abstract generalised ways, that doesn't want to really acknowledge differences and changes. Like it's an effort for us often, have to, when we recognise change, when we recognise difference, usually means we have to revise our thinking and that's something it's uncomfortable for us to do. We prefer to stick with the generalisations that we've already made. So these philosophers want to push against that and to say, is all BS, we need to use reason but reason simplifies nature.
Speaker 1:And in reality, nature is much more complex and diverse and subtle and varied than we would like to admit to ourselves. So hercoitus had this idea also called holism, which is the idea that the reality is the totality of things. And that we're always just looking at bits or fragments of the reality and taking things out of context. And in order to really understand anything in life, we have to try and put it within the bigger context. We have to look at the bigger picture.
Speaker 1:So pantheism is the doctrine that the universe as a whole is sacred, so that the entire universe considered in its totality is Zeus actually. They would say, the Stoics say that's their idea of God and they're always trying to kind of imagine the bigger picture. So seeing the whole though, the Stoics liked to try and meditate on the totality of the universe. So it's inconceivable but they like to try and make an effort to visualise it or conceive of it. And when we do that, it encourages us to think of the transience of things.
Speaker 1:So like any object, I've got my little glass of water in front of me just now. But if I try and imagine the whole of time and space, like in this little glasses position within it, then of course I have to acknowledge there was a time when this didn't exist, and there's going be a time when it ceases to exist. So it forces me to recognise the impermanence of things and to see the fragility and smallness within the bigger picture. So the sense of impermanence is amplified by expanding the scope of our perception and that's what pantheism encourages. But part of that, not just, you know, it's one thing saying that this glass is just like a fleeting split second in the story of the universe but Scott, buddy, so are you.
Speaker 3:No, I'm living forever Don, I'm not playing.
Speaker 1:We're all transient, we're impermanent. And so that you'll recognise there is Yorick, like, who is a memento mori, just like your coin. And actually, Hamlet was a philosophy student, he just returned from his studies to Denmark. And so this idea of him holding a skull would have been kind of a cliche to Elizabethan audiences, they're doing, it's just a philosophers have skulls and stuff like they like to contemplate their own mortality. This is a kind of cliche for a scholar, a philosopher, a theologian to meditate on skulls and things.
Speaker 1:Marcus Aurelius also quotes a passage from Homer that says leaves some of the wind scatters on the ground, so is the race of men. So again thinking it's a metaphor, a natural metaphor about leaves falling from the tree, metaphor for nature and he's using it again comparing it like reaping corn being compared to our own fleeting mortality. Here he's comparing leaves falling from a tree and using it as a way of reminding himself of his own transience, his own mortality. And again, Epictetus spells it out more literally. He says, I am not eternal, contrary to what Scott has said, but a human being, a mortal, a part of the whole, again, like this idea of holism, I'm just a bit of a bigger picture.
Speaker 1:Like Heraclitus has said, as an hour is of the day. That's a really cool way of putting it actually. Like an hour, I must come and like an hour pass away. That's almost quite a poetic turn of phrase for Epictetus to use there. He was
Speaker 3:a bit hardcore, but this subject, some people get freaked out about it. I noticed sometimes I'm just thinking about, oh my God, I'm not going to be here one day. Before I was born, that's going happen again. And then you start getting freaked out for a half a second. You're like, what is going on?
Speaker 3:And then you think, well, some people will go, what's the point? What am I doing here? And then you go, some people are like, we're all going to die, we might as well get on with it. How would you help people to understand and not get overloaded by it? Because it's quite intense, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Well, the Stoics think there's two types of value and we mix them up if we're not careful. And they think there's a value that we attribute to external stuff, like other people's opinions of us and our status in society and our wealth and property. And then there's a value that we derive from our own character and actions. And they think that when you meditate on the vastness of the universe and our smallness within it, then external things seem unimportant and trivial. When you're confronted with your own mortality, then external things seem relatively unimportant and trivial.
Speaker 1:But they think that what retains its value, even from that perspective, are our own virtues, own character traits, like integrity, wisdom and justice. So the Stoics think look, even if our life is only a tiny blip in the history of the universe, nevertheless, it makes sense try and do the best that we can with it and to live with integrity, with wisdom, with justice, with self discipline and courage. But acquiring lots of wealth or trying to become famous kind of starts to seem less important. Like Marcus throughout the meditations goes on and on about this idea, even as Roman Emperor, he thinks that one day people won't even be able to remember my name, ironically, because we do remember his name today. But he thought in the grand scheme of things, like when I imagine the whole history of the universe, I'm nothing.
Speaker 1:I'm fighting these huge wars and commanding the largest army ever massed on a Roman frontier. But it's a tiny, he says, like the turn of a screw in terms of the history of the universe, it's nothing. So what am I to do? He says, well, what I'm to do is to act with integrity, because of the value that I derive from knowing that I'm doing the right thing, the satisfaction that I get from believing consistently in accord with my own values. So he thinks that character values become more important potentially, whereas the value of external things is seen to be less important.
Speaker 1:Actually, what you said there about people thinking what's the point? That leads on to what we're about to discuss in a moment which is non attachment. So Stoics think that picturing whole empantheism and then the view from above And meditating on our own mortality helps us to let go of our attachments to external things. In other words, they think it could be therapeutic, like this kind of compartmentalised nihilism, if you like, a kind of learning to see through the smoke and mirrors of society, and question the value of external things, can help release us from slavery to them, the Stoics think, at least our emotional and psychological liberation. But we have to fill that void with some other value.
Speaker 1:And they think that comes from acting in accord with our own fundamental values in life. And some people are left at sea at Fartlight, they need to search for a substitute value. And that's what Socrates and the Stoics thought philosophy could do. It's the love of wisdom, like learning to value wisdom and the other values that potentially we can derive from that. So if we exercise wisdom, for instance, in our relationship with other people, the Stoics would say we're acting with social virtue, with justice, fairness and compassion towards others.
Speaker 1:So we must learn to pursue wisdom and then to apply wisdom to other people and to life in general. And they thought that becomes the new meaning of life for us rather than just kind of acquiring external goods and reputation and stuff like that. They thought that's all a big con, it's a Swiss, like and looking at the bigger picture, or coming to terms with normal mortality helps to see through the kind of illusion of society. They called it two force, smoke or a mist, like smoking mirrors, we would say today. So we are transient.
Speaker 1:And Socrates says that philosophy itself is a preparation for death. Seneca said that every evening when he went to bed, he would tell himself, I might not wake up tomorrow morning, which is pretty hardcore. He goes to bed, his head in the pillow and think tomorrow I might wake up dead. This might be it, buddy. He would say as he was going to say, how would you feel about that?
Speaker 1:And that's like, I know that freaks people out at first. But once you get used to asking questions like that, you know, it becomes less scary, and it becomes quite empowering. And you start to think, did I really do a good job today? Did I make the best of the time that I had? Am I grateful for the opportunity that life has given me?
Speaker 1:And it encourages you to become more grounded in the here and now. And to think if this is it, like Marcus goes further, he says imagine you're already dead, but you've been kind of you're in penalty time, you've been given like another day, extended on loan from nature. That's a pretty
Speaker 2:cool way of thinking about that actually.
Speaker 1:You should make the most of
Speaker 4:it.
Speaker 2:Like it's a win. That's like almost every day is a win then.
Speaker 1:It's bonus.
Speaker 3:It's like, during a dream, when you die in a dream, and then you wake up and you're like, oh, like in a dream, you do something bad, and you go to jail for life. But then you wake up, you're like, oh my God, thank God.
Speaker 1:You've got another chance to set things right. And do you know what that sounds like, Scott? Do you know who had a dream where like he was dead was Ebenezer Scrooge. That's who you are right now. I am.
Speaker 1:Ebenezer Scrooge. So that's you see in the graphic there, it's the tombstone because the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come takes Scrooge and shows him his own funeral. And it's a wake up call. Like he says, Scrooge, you better rethink things, because nobody's going to come to your funeral, is that really what you want your life to stand for? And that can be we use that technique sometimes in resilience building and psychotherapy.
Speaker 1:It's a radical, challenging technique, but it can also be incredibly powerful. It's strong medicine, Scott. You know, it's maybe not for everybody, it might be too much for someone that's suffering from depression. But it's also existential, it's profound, and it's liberating to imagine, suppose this is it. And I'm saying this because during the pandemic, I think a lot of people, especially at the beginning of it, did begin to question their own mortality, like to go to terms with the prospect that you know, maybe everything was changing, and maybe their life might be at risk.
Speaker 1:And I think a lot of people thought, maybe I should change my values, maybe I should do something different with my life, And it's good if that kind of wake up call can shake people up and encourage them to reappraise their values. Because the values that we inherit from society are all BS. Like we're surrounded by narcissism, consumerism, materialism, hedonism, all the isms, right? And everybody knows it's BS. But it's been the same way throughout the centuries.
Speaker 1:Socrates, Marcus really said the same thing. We're brought up surrounded by people in a society that are indoctrinating us into these superficial values. And if we're lucky, we get some sort of shock or wake up call or we're introduced to a philosophy that makes us think more deeply about it and question whether there's maybe something else deeper that could give our life value. So I was going to read you a wee poem, it's normally Laoja that does the poetry and I know she's going to do some later. But I can't talk about impermanence and amor fati and memento mori without quoting Ozymandias.
Speaker 1:There's a character in the movie Watchmen named after Ozymandias. I met a traveller from an antique land who said two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them on the sand half sunk a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that it sculptor well those passions read which yet survived stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mopped them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear, my name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, look upon my works ye mighty in despair, nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away on the beach in Wales.
Speaker 1:So the idea is this guy, this king, whoever he was, had built this colossus in his honor saying gaze upon my works you mighty in despair and now it's dust, like it's shattered and no one even remembers who the guy was. So it was a big deal back in the day but nobody cares about him now, like it's all over. And this theme in philosophy and literature is sometimes called ubai sunt, which means where are they? Like where are they now? As we would say, and it's a theme in Latin poetry and actually in poetry in general and in the arts in general.
Speaker 1:But Marcus Aurelius refers to it a lot in many passages. For example, he talks about Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire. So Marcus is kind of in this lineage descending from Augustus. Augustus is the first emperor and Marcus thinks about him a lot. So this would have been, Augustus would have died like over a century and a half before Marcus Aurelius.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of ancient history to him. He says Augustus' advisors, his wife, his daughter, his descendants, the whole of his court, they're all toast, Contemplate the inscription on tombs, the last of his race, apparently that was engraved on some tombs, the last of his race has died here, the Quisimandias. Consider how much trouble their ancestors took over leaving a successor, Marcus was worrying about leaving a successor. Yet of necessity somebody, Scott, has to be the last in the family line. Someone one day is going to be the last descendant of Scott Fleer.
Speaker 1:Finally consider the extent, it's tragic, finally consider the extinction of an entire race. Like there's a story, everyone knows the story of Scipio Africanus who conquered Carthage, finally defeated Rome's great power, the great opponent, the other rival superpower in the Mediterranean in North Africa. And Scipio Africanus defeated Carthage, He had the whole city torn apart stone by stone. According to legend, the Romans salted the earth so the crops couldn't grow. They said these guys aren't coming back from this, we're wiping off the face of the earth.
Speaker 1:And the Romans were jubilant. And Scipio was crying. And his officer said, why are you crying? And he said, 'tis glorious, but I can see that one day the same thing will happen to Rome. And so he was looking at the bigger picture and he was saying we finally defeated our great opponent but it just makes me think memento more, it reminds me of the fact that you know even Rome itself one day like will collapse and be destroyed in the same way.
Speaker 1:So he was kind of, and he'd studied stoicism actually, so he's trained to kind of look at things in terms of the bigger picture. So Marcus Aurelius says this, imagine the extinction of your entire race, imagine like one day there's someone who's going to be the last in your line. Think of all the other Roman emperors, he often thinks of the Roman emperors that have come before him and how they're, he says this odd thing, he says their names sound archaic to me now. He says the sound of their name sounds like something from the history books. And one day that's what your name is going to sound like.
Speaker 1:Imagine thinking one day my name is going to sound like something from history, one day people will know me, Marcus told himself by looking at statues. And you know, like I'm going to be like Ozymandias, just like a bunch of ruined sculpture. He says with everything which happens, keep before your mind's eye men to whom the same things happened, and how they became annoyed, and how they treated such events as though they were strange. They went, I can't believe this is happening. They got all worked up and all flustered and they complained about it, Scott.
Speaker 1:And then Marcus says, and yet where are they now? Ubai sunt. Like, where are they now? Like, they're all gone. They're all toast.
Speaker 1:Augustus, Hadrian, all those guys, like they fought huge battles. They got all worked up about things. It's all ancient history now. And one day you're going to go away, buddy. It's what he said to himself.
Speaker 1:So confronting his own mortality, he was constantly forcing himself to do this existential check and reappraise his values. In fact, what really matters here is your attitude towards life, that you're acting morally, you're acting with wisdom and integrity, not the reputation and the fame and the glory, that doesn't really last forever. It's like they say about Alexander the Great that he asked as he was dying, he said, you know when I die, I want you to make two holes in the casket and let my hands be dangling out either side. And so when a king or an emperor died, would carry their coffin, like having them lie in state, they would carry them around. And so the people, crowds could gather in the cities and the towns and see their body.
Speaker 1:And Alexander said, I want my hands to dangle out the other side of the casket so that people can see I'm leaving empty handed. Can't take him with his thought. All the stuff he achieved, like what does it really matter once he's gone? Maybe he would have been better dedicating his life to the pursuit of wisdom, enlightenment, rather than conquest and glory. So it leads us on to this idea of non attachment in Buddhism.
Speaker 1:Is very similar to the idea of non attachment and stoic philosophy. We have it in the West, everything that you know, we find in Buddhist philosophy, much of it, we find similar ideas in Greek philosophy, and classical Greek philosophy, and particularly in Hellenistic philosophy that followed on after it, following the time of Alexander the Great. So Marcus Aurelius has a really neat saying about this, maybe I mentioned it before, he talks about imagining absent things as if they were already present. And he says that's what people do all the time. So they think to themselves, wish I had a Ferrari, Ferrari is absent, I'm imagining what it would be like if I had it.
Speaker 1:He says that causes craving and attachment and suffering. Imagining things you don't have, like as a way of fuelling craving, like and it creates a sense of deprivation. And we do that naturally. But Marcus says what happens if you make an effort to do the complete opposite? And you imagine present things as if they were already absent.
Speaker 1:So what if we didn't have electricity, Scott? What if we didn't have Zoom? We wouldn't be able to have this amazing conversation right now. What if we didn't have Laoja? Like I'd be bereft.
Speaker 1:Like I wouldn't have anybody to talk to about classics all day long. That encourages when we imagine present things like Laoja as if they were absent, like that encourages us to experience gratitude, and also to reconcile ourselves to the changeable nature of things and people. So to imagine present things as if they were absent means accepting their impermanence as well. To think of something as transient, what does it really mean to think of something as transient or impermanent? It means thinking of it as potentially absent, it means thinking of it as present and also imagining its absence at the same time and this is this kind of trick like either by looking at the bigger picture, we think there's a time when this exists, but there also was a time before it existed and there'll be a time after it existed.
Speaker 1:So when I look at the picture, the bigger picture, I'm imagining its presence and also simultaneously thinking about its absence. Or when I simply tell myself it's fragile and impermanent, I'm also premeditating, I'm thinking in advance about its potential for being gone. And it's us incorporating the sense of potential absence that seems to lead to free up our attachment towards things. Epictetus takes a cheap cup made of clay, which would have been like a disposable thing to the ancient Greeks, it would have been a cliche, an example of something that was very fragile, a fragile piece of ceramic. And he says think of everything as being as fragile and disposable and impermanent as this cup, so that you don't become attached to anything.
Speaker 1:Think of everything, he says, as if it was merely on loan from nature in order to encourage yourself to experience gratitude for it and to be prepared for the fact that it could potentially be taken away from you. So the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius, when he died, we're told that his eulogies, there's this weird little hint in the histories, we don't get told much about his philosophy in the Roman histories. But sometimes there's weird little hints. So we're told that when he died, during the eulogies for him, which I'm guessing might have included references to his philosophy because he was known for that, you'd think. They knew that he had beliefs about mortality and so on.
Speaker 1:So and some of the people giving those eulogies would also have been stoics. So they said during the eulogies that they shouldn't mourn for him, they should think of him not as being lost, but as being returned to nature. And having thought of him as having been temporarily on loan from nature. And this is a stoic maxim that we should think of people and things as merely being temporarily loaned to us by nature and when they're gone we shouldn't think, oh, I've lost my favourite cup, we should think I've merely returned what was on loan to me from nature. And they feel that that's a way of helping us to cope better with it.
Speaker 3:That's similar to like did Christianity take that and say well just think of heaven instead?
Speaker 1:The idea of the afterlife is actually supposedly a big part of the Eleusinian mysteries. So maybe in some ways that influenced early Christianity. But the Stoics themselves didn't actually believe in the afterlife, they had an even crazier theory Scott, I'm going to tell you about because I know that you like these sort of things. There's a little nugget of philosophy I'll tell you one minute and it will blow your mind Scott, will give you nightmares. And get them ready.
Speaker 1:One day you'll tell it to your kids, right? So Friedrich Nietzsche was a classical philologist, he studied ancient languages. And he ripped off a lot of ideas from the classics, particularly the Stoics and the Pythagoreans, doesn't always mention it. And one of his ideas is called the eternal recurrence. That idea comes from the Stoics and probably from earlier philosophers.
Speaker 1:And their idea was that the whole of the universe was causally determined like clockwork, like everything happened, it was predetermined to happen the way that it did because of the things that preceded it. It was like a big causal chain reaction that unfolded. And they said, one day the universe will end and everything will be gone and all return to zero, absolute nothing. But they said but nothing is the same as nothing, like two absolute nothings would be identical with one another. And yet the universe sprang from nothing.
Speaker 1:So they said, Well, hang on a minute, if the universe sprang from nothing and one day it's going to return to absolute nothing, then shouldn't the whole thing happen again in exactly the same form like clockwork? And so they believe the whole of time happens in cycles that are absolutely identical. And so this conversation that I'm having here with you, me and Lalya, we've already had a zillion times before in the past and we'll repeatedly have the same conversation a zillion times again in the future. Now that's weird because it allows the Stoics to say that this conversation is fleeting and transient and in a moment it's going to be gone forever. But in a sense it's also eternal because it's going to recur over and over again.
Speaker 1:So it's both transient and eternal because it's fleeting, but it's going to keep recurring. So they get to have their cake and eat it in a weird way.
Speaker 3:I like it. That reminds me of someone I read in the forums like ten years ago. I think someone's theory was we're all basically the same person, we're all the same consciousness, all living different lives to experience different experiences but we're basically all the same, just having different lives collecting experience and stuff. I was like what the fuck? The
Speaker 1:Stoics have this idea, actually say that, Marx Aurelius even says that, they have this crazy idea that the universe as a whole is like the body of one vast being, like the body of Zeus. Although Heraclitus says something really cool about it. He says that nature is both willing and unwilling to be known by the name of Zeus. So he loves his paradoxes. If you said to Heraclitus, the universe as a whole is that Zeus?
Speaker 1:He would say yes and no. I love that guy. Like he won't give a definitive answer. Kind of like yes, you know, it's both willing and unwilling. But he thinks the universe has this consciousness that's fragmented, and we all get a little bit of this vast consciousness.
Speaker 1:But there's also parts of a bigger whole, well it cells within the body of a single organism. And he thinks if we can view things that way, like view ourselves as being part of something much bigger, he thinks it's very liberating.
Speaker 3:It must be true, must be because if you look at quantum physics, all these little things acting differently, then you've got us, we're tiny, then you've got planets and suns and galaxies and billions of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like we were like, it must be true. There's a sense of me just stating the obvious to say that we're part of a bigger system. But we don't normally think of it that way, we tend to think of ourselves as being fragmented, like this is me and that's you and working out completely separate things. And it requires a kind of effort to join it all together and think of ourselves as being part of something together, like players on a single team. Marcus Aurelia says when you're dealing with someone who's your enemy, you should think of it as if like you're two, a pair of hands that are designed to work together, or two rows of teeth are designed to grind together.
Speaker 1:Think of yourself as being part of the same system, players on the same team, like sparring partners in a single bout, like in a sense they form a unity. It's just a matter of perception, really a matter of perspective.
Speaker 3:Do you want know crazy fact? Yeah. Okay, got to read a few. So, the life is only possible on the universe for specific conditions, right? So life is only possible in this universe for this amount of time.
Speaker 3:One thousandth of a billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billionth of a percent.
Speaker 1:And if you were to think
Speaker 3:of that visually, life is only possible for one centimetre, that's life. All of life ever, forever, one centimetre. The distance is so long, the universe isn't big enough. So, the universe is 99.999 no life. So, well alive at the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest, tiniest percentages possible to have life.
Speaker 3:Think of them as that is. Donald and you were born in Scotland and Donald Robinson. It's nuts.
Speaker 1:We should be very lucky. The other thing you could think is when you were conceived, there were billions of sperm. And out of them all, there was one that made it to impregnate the egg. That happened, it could have been any of the other ones. All of these ideas make it potentially more grateful for the opportunity I think that we have in life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well it has to, if it doesn't, you're nuts. If you think that's not crazy, four hundred trillion to one it is, the chance of you being alive apparently. I
Speaker 1:think in a way what the Stoics and these other Greek philosophers, in part they're saying something very, very simple, which is that we fall into the habit of taking life for granted. I think from 101 different perspectives, like the truth is that we should be incredibly grateful for the opportunity. And there are many different ways of reminding ourselves of that. I think, you know, like much of their philosophy kind of converges on this kind of wake up call that says, you know, do you realise like how incredibly lucky you are, how fleeting existence is and you know that you have this obligation to snap out of the trance that you're in and really make the most like of each and every day. So I wanted to say a lot about this is a quote from Seneca that I'm going to read because it's about stress and about worry.
Speaker 1:And what he says here, when I read this as a young guy, it blew me away. Remember putting the book down and thinking when was this written? Because this looks to me like it could have been written yesterday, like in a book on the psychology of stress management or something like that. I thought was this really written in the first century AD? Like it looks just like the contemporary stuff that psychologists talk about today and read today.
Speaker 1:So without further ado, I'll tell you exactly what he says. He says fear keeps pace with hope, nor does the soul moving together surprise me. Both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present, to the here and now. Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse.
Speaker 1:Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see and once they've escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is yet to come. A number of our blessings do us harm for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present, says Seneca. That's brilliant, that last So we're talking about impermanence, we're talking about non attachment but we're also talking about being grounded in the present moment in the here and now.
Speaker 1:So being able to look at the bigger picture, being centred in the present moment and Seneca quite rightly said that anxiety tends to be future focused. There's reams of modern research on the cognitive psychology of anxiety that show that yeah, it's typically concerned with uncertainty about the future. And so, you know, it's a simplistic way of treating anxiety, but you can and I'll come back to this later with some technical technical techniques later towards the end today to show you how to actually do this. But you can very directly treat worry and anxiety just by training your attention to become more grounded in the present moment. Because anxiety by its very nature tends to be projected, as Seneca said, absolutely spot on into the future.
Speaker 1:And so Marcus Aurelius says, if you shall strive to live only what is really your life, that is the present, the here and now, then you will be able to pass that portion of life which remains for you up to the time of your death free from worry. And this is a guy who's living through a plague where five million people died. He's facing the risk of assassination every day, he faced a civil war, he's stationed himself on the frontier facing hundreds of 1000s of barbarian tribal warriors. Like he could have died. I think Marx Aurelius woke up every morning and pinched himself and thought I might actually still have made it through another night.
Speaker 1:But he says, as long as you can focus on the here and now, and people instinctively do that in really stressful situations, go just put one foot after another. Like if you can just get through this, you can't, he talks in the meditations about don't let yourself become too preoccupied with all of the details. Just focus on doing what's right in front of you right now with integrity. So there's this kind of weird again paradox that he sometimes contemplates the bigger picture, but then he always wants to centre himself back in the present moment. And in terms of his action, he wants to focus on taking action with integrity and wisdom here and now centred in the present, but with a sense of it being part of a much bigger whole.
Speaker 1:And that leads me on to this idea of what the Stoics called Prasoci, which is a technical term in Stoic philosophy and also in early Christianity. And it's used basically to mean something very similar to what the Buddhist mean by mindfulness. So prosoke means attention. And specifically in the Stoics and in early Christian authors, it means paying attention to your conscious mind, to your value judgments, to your hegemonicon they say to the part of the ruling faculty, what we call the central executive function of consciousness. So the part of your mind that's responsible for decision making, and arriving at judgments about things.
Speaker 1:As far as the Stoics are concerned, it's a part of your mind that assigns value to things. And they say you should constantly be monitoring that and paying attention to it. But in Greece today, the same word is used just to mean beware or be mindful, it's on danger signs like this sign says beware of the dog, Prasaki ski los, mind the dog, mind the gap, like the signs on the underground say, it's the same word that's used on trains and stuff for mind the gap, but it means be mindful to the stoics, not of the gap, not of the ski loss of the dog, of your own thinking, like be mindful of your own judgment. Epictetus says to his students, if you are walking about with no shoes on, you'd be really careful where you tread. In the same way though, you should be mindful of where you put your judgments.
Speaker 1:Like in the same way that if you're walking about barefoot, you'd be careful not to hurt your feet, you should be careful not to hurt your character by constantly paying close attention to the way that you use your value judgements. And that's an interesting metaphor philosophers were known for walking barefoot. There's a lovely TV play with Pisar Eustonov about Socrates called Barefoot in Athens. Socrates was best friends with a shoemaker called Simon.
Speaker 3:Simon? Yeah,
Speaker 1:he was hanging out in the sky. It's just philosophy. Simon was like, Socrates, when you actually buy a pair of sandals from me, you're like the worst customer ever, you don't even hire in a shoe shop all day. About Socrates was paradoxical, even his shoes. You should pay attention to your own mind, ruling faculty, your fears, your desires, how your thoughts, actions and feelings interact with one another, like kind of in Buddhist mindfulness.
Speaker 1:But this occurs in the here and now, to be mindful of your own mental activity means becoming centred in the present moment, your actions occur in the present moment, your locus of control is in the present moment. So mindfulness has to be centred in the present moment. And that leads me on, like I want to say just before, I'll finish actually with a little quote from, I became interested in philosophy, because when I was a wee boy growing up in Scotland, in Eyre, which is the home of Robbie Burns, our National Bard, like we all had to learn Burns poetry. His most famous poem is this epic that's influenced by Greek classics, it's influenced by the Bacchae and it's called Tamashantor, it's about witches and it burns, incorporates some of these philosophical themes from Greek and Latin poetry. And so at one point in Tamashantor he says pleasures are like poppies spread, you seize the flower, it's bloomish shade, or like the snow falls in the river, a moment white then melts forever.
Speaker 1:So even Robbie Burns is doing this classic poetic trope of reflecting on the impermanence of pleasure and all material things, which I think leads nicely
Speaker 2:through nature of course, which we're going to come on to.
Speaker 1:Analogies with nature.
Speaker 2:Okay, so.
Speaker 3:Onto Eton next. Eton's catalog.
Speaker 2:No, they never had anything as exciting as this at Eton. You're very lucky. So yeah, so my presentation is kind of loosely termed Carpe diem, which means, well, we kind of know it sees the day in English. And I'm gonna start with a little film clip, which some of you may have seen this film. It's really great.
Speaker 2:It's got Robin, the late great Robin Williams playing an English teacher at a college. And he's really inspirational. The boys love him, but tragedy ensues in the course of the film. And it's really superb anyway. Here is him introducing the boys to poetry and also to some of these concepts that we've been thinking about.
Speaker 4:Now, Mr. Pitts, it's from an unfortunate name, Gather you rose what file ye make. The Latin term for that sentiment is carpe diem. Who knows what that means? Carpe diem, that deceased the day.
Speaker 4:Very good, mister Thief. Meeks. No unusual name. Seize the day. Gather you rose, let's file ye may.
Speaker 4:Why is the writing with these lines? Because he's in a hurry. No. Ding. I couldn't find any way.
Speaker 4:Because we are food for worms, lads. Because believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die. I'd like you to step forward over here. You bruise some of the faces from the past. You've walked past them many times.
Speaker 4:I don't think you really looked at them.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm just gonna pause that there. So yeah, he then shows the boys the pictures of departed students and invites them to remember that we're not going to be here forever. And he gets them to read an English poem and then he reminds them of this famous Latin phrase, seize the day. What we are going to look at now is, that happened last time as well. I don't
Speaker 4:know how to move it on.
Speaker 3:You're gonna click twice, I think.
Speaker 4:Thank you.
Speaker 2:We're gonna have a look at the poem that the line actually comes from. So this is by the Roman poet Horace, who lived in the first century BC. So about fifty years before Christ. And I'll just read it out in English and then we've got the Latin as well. Don't ask me.
Speaker 2:It should be a crime to know what lifespan the gods allow to you and me. Don't bother with horoscopes. Far better to bear the future, my darling, like the past. Whether Jupiter has many winters yet to give, all this our last. For now another winter wears out the sea on the brittle rocks.
Speaker 2:Strain your wine, be wise, and prune back your hopes within a narrow plot. While we were talking envious time has fled. Seize the day, trust in tomorrow as little as possible. This is so that's Horace on the right. And this is the poem in Latin.
Speaker 2:Tune quaiseris, skiroi nefas, quemihi, quemtibi, fiendem de deederent, leuconoi, nek babilonios temptaris numeros, Ut melius, quid quidirit, party. Siu pluris iemes, si tribuit, upita ultimam, quinunc oppositis, dei billetat, pumicibus mare tereum. And that is the poem in Latin. So I just thought we would have a look through the lines in English and just have a little think about how this reflects some stoic ideas and some universal ideas of impermanence living in the here and now. So he says, don't ask me, it should be a crime.
Speaker 2:He uses this really strong word. He actually says it should be a crime for us to find out how long we have to live. And he also uses a strange phrase, Babylonia, 'Babylonios Numeros' which literally means like Babylonian tables, but it's basically the Roman equivalent of horoscopes. They had horoscopes back in the day. You could like go and ask the horoscope how long am I going to live?
Speaker 2:Get some sort of, you know, like know, presentment on this. But Horace is saying to us, he's like saying, it's a really bad idea. Like, don't go and find out how much longer we have to live. And I really think that this is linked to the stoic value of moderation, in terms of knowing your limits. So like, don't want to the idea of like knowing how long you're going to live is like something which is kind of, if anybody should know it, it's in the preserve of like the gods, the immortals, fate, something bigger than you.
Speaker 2:If you're trying to know that, to me it's like you're going beyond your realm as a human. So it's about just like being happy within your own skin, saying I don't need to find that out, you know. So that's what I, you know, I kind of think that that's, that's a really nice sentiment in the poem. And then he says, that it's better to bear the future in the same way as we bear the past. And he uses this word 'patty', which means to literally can mean to suffer as well.
Speaker 2:He says we should suffer the future in the same way that we suffer or that we bear the past, which basically means treat what might happen in the future with the same degree of calm as what's already happened. Because we all know that we're way more resigned about the past. We worry about it much less than we worry about the future. Donald's already talked about this in his presentation, talking about Seneca and worry that worries or anxiety are very connected with future possibilities. And Horace is inviting us in poetic language.
Speaker 2:He's saying, and this is a love poem, he's talking to girlfriend. He's saying, you know, let's not worry about what's to come. If you think about the future, that does lead to worry. Imagine the future is the same as the past. And I also think that this, it takes great courage.
Speaker 2:This is the other thing to remember, you know, when people are saying, how do I do this? It's so difficult to treat the future as I treat the past with the same degree of resignation. Well, what I would say to you is, yeah, it takes courage to do that. Courage is a stoic virtue, and you have to steal yourself to that. You have to say, yeah, you know what, I'm going to get myself in a mindset now, and I'm going to treat the future.
Speaker 2:I'm going to treat tomorrow. I'm going to treat next year, that business meeting, going out, you know, the first day I step outside of my door after quarantine. I'm going to just, I'm going to treat that worry as is in the same way that I would treat things that have happened in the past. And you should keep reminding yourself that it does take courage to do it. It doesn't just happen like that.
Speaker 2:So you've got to like steal yourself to it. But, you know, course, one way that we can build up courage is by a shared sense of everybody being in that same boat. So not only talking to your friends and being part of a community like this, but also looking to the past, reading Seneca, reading the poets and thinking, yeah, this is a universal theme. People have always felt this way. And I think you feel less alone, you know, and maybe that can give you courage.
Speaker 3:That's true.
Speaker 2:So the other thing he says is, he says like, oh, don't worry, let's not worry about how many winters or how many years we have yet to come. You know, maybe we have many winters ahead of us, maybe this is going to be our last one, but for now, all we have in front of us is winter wearing out the sea on the rocks. It's a really nice image. And I think that this is kind of nature's really important in these poems. So he's saying like, you know what, we may have many winters, we may have one winter, but actually nature is going to go on regardless.
Speaker 2:So we're part of this bigger thing, you know, the sea is still going to continue pummeling into the, you know, well he's in Italy, so he's imagining it pummeling into the Italian coast. And that it's just going to keep going on and on and on till the end of time for as many years as we have.
Speaker 1:Actually this metaphor is in Virgil, it's also in Marcus Aurelius as well. He said, but he uses the rocks, he says the rocky headland, beats his be like the rocky land, like the waves crashing around you. So learning to be kind of resilient.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's a really nice point as well, that like the rocks are kind of resilient exactly as well. And it's, yeah, I mean, it's interesting because in this metaphor, the rocks are actually wearing down the sea. So the rocks are the thing that is strong, and it's like the sea is getting kind of worn out by that. It's like the sea's almost getting tired, know, it's like our breath in a way. And then he says to his girlfriend, he says, 'Strain your wine'.
Speaker 2:He says, 'Be wise, sap yas'. He uses this phrase, this verb. It's an order. He says, 'Be wise, strain your wine.' And then he uses this lovely metaphor from nature. He says, 'Prune back your hopes within a narrow plot'.
Speaker 2:So he says 'almost imagine that you're gardening, yeah you're in your garden, and your hope is like a plant that's spreading, and instead of allowing your hope to grow of your, you know lots of people right now in lockdown they've got their allotments, right? Loads of people I know have got like getting happiness in their allotments. But he's saying you're in your allotment and it's locked down. Instead of allowing your hopes to grow in this big gnarly thing out of the plot and growing too big and getting unruly, he says like prune them. He literally uses a word from gardening and he says prune down your hopes so that they fit within your plot, meaning fit within what's right for you.
Speaker 2:You are your plot, you are your allotment, and the Romans were obsessed with gardening, so it's just like a really nice
Speaker 1:It's metaphor for moderation. Scott, don't let your leaks grow too big buddy.
Speaker 3:This is very relevant, mine, because Boris has promised people June and people are putting their hopes up that they're going to be free from twenty first onwards. And what might happen is that's not going to be true and then that's going to crush people because they're fearful. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:The lesson to take from this would be prune back your hopes. Okay, it's nice we all need a little bit of hope, a little bit, right? So think to yourself, wouldn't that be nice? But don't, what he's saying is, what Horace would say is, don't go book a holiday. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Don't go arrange to have a massive gathering with some people on the June 22. Don't plan that you're gonna go on a road trip. Don't plan things.
Speaker 1:What kind of check ins?
Speaker 2:Which are gonna be difficult to accomplish, should that not come to pass.
Speaker 1:It's Horace versus Boris.
Speaker 2:Horace versus Boris, exactly. You heard it here first. And the other thing he says here is he says, Sappi ass. He says, Be wise. So in the context of pruning back your hopes and not hoping for too much, he says that what you should do is be that is a sign of wisdom.
Speaker 2:That is wisdom. Wisdom, of course, another one of the cardinal stoic virtues. So again, these are very much tied in with what Donald's been talking about, but in the form of poetry. Stuff that people would have read, they would have listened to, they would have learnt it, they would have gone to dinner parties, people would have been quoting this. It would have been very much part of the cultural currency in the same way that we have pop songs and lines from films, that everybody knows it, you know, it's like part of language.
Speaker 3:That's a good question, Caminha. So, would you put ambition and goals in the same thing as this?
Speaker 2:Well, is interesting because the Romans actually had a word 'ambitu' for ambition, right? And the Romans word for ambition was negative. It was about, kind of actually, it came from the word which means going around and like bribing people. It meant actually a little walk that you did. If you were kind of campaigning for office, you would go on an Ambatu, which was where you'd like kind of go and give some money to your followers, you'd promise them some stuff.
Speaker 2:So for the Romans, ambition is kind of, it's a difficult problematic term because it's a little problematic term, because it's a little bit negative. The idea that you want to like reach the top, you know. I think that obviously if we're just talking about goals, I think maybe we leave aside ambition for a sec, because maybe it's a little bit more problematic, but if we think hopes and goals, I still think that Horace would say, have realistic goals, and this is true for anybody, I'm never going to be like a catwalk model, right? It would just make me really depressed if that was my goal and my ambition, right? I'd make myself really miserable.
Speaker 2:I'd like have to not eat, I'd be like cranky all the time, and I'd be comparing myself to other women all the time, and it would just be really horrible. But if I have a goal of like, oh, I'd really like to maybe publish a book in the next ten years about classics, then maybe that's a bit more of a reasonable goal. So I think the idea is like, keep your goals reasonable. And again, this is what we were talking about last week, and in terms of knowing yourself, knowing your limits, like who am I as a person? Am I a person who could be a top model?
Speaker 2:Or am I more a kind of person who might just write a book about classics? So keeping your goals and your ambitions within the scope of who you are, and so you need some self knowledge
Speaker 1:of Know thyself.
Speaker 2:You need know thyself, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I like it. This is how wrong Wales is. In Wales, if you go to Swansea Train Station, as you walk out massive text on the floor, it says ambition is critical. We've got it completely wrong down there.
Speaker 1:There's a quote about Marcus Aurelius, he says ambition is tying your happiness to the opinions of other people. So by that he's meaning external success right? And he said greed is attaching your happiness to the external events that befall you like material objects and stuff but sanity is deriving your happiness from your own character and actions within your sphere of control. And so I guess to be more cautious, you could say, we might say, maybe there's two different types of goals and maybe there's two different types of ambitions. And the stoics would say, well, your ambition is based on external outcomes or other people's opinions that aren't entirely under your control, then that could be problematic.
Speaker 1:You're a slave to fortune in a sense. If by ambition you somehow meant being the type of person that you want to be, like living with integrity, know being a good friend, know being a loving compassionate person, something that's within your sphere of control. If you said the love of wisdom is your ambition, for instance, they would say no, that makes sense. Like, know, that's something that's in the present moment and within your sphere of control. That he would equate that with sanity, but not investing too much importance on external goals.
Speaker 1:Although it's supposed to say you can pursue external goals likely, you shouldn't treat them as all or nothing.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, exactly. They shouldn't be your encompassing thing.
Speaker 3:Do you know James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits? He's been a really good saying in his book, he says, you should create systems, not goals. Like instead of thinking goals, create a system that will make you the person that is likely to then probably reach the goal. Because he's got a good phrase, you don't rise to the ambition of your goals, you stoop to the quality of your systems basically. Everybody can say, I want this goal, habitus, is it habitus?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes. Yeah, habitus.
Speaker 3:System is basically life, isn't it? Your system is you. So, you create a better system.
Speaker 1:Well, it's funny, there's a very interesting phrase that's used in the Greek classics. Lot of modern Scots, it's just interesting we don't use this phrase anymore. So Socrates talks about the art of living. And so this is typical Socrates, he says people think about the art of making shoes, they think about the art of building houses but no one's talking about the art of living your life and approaching it as if it's something that you need a system and need skills and need wisdom in order to do it properly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is what this is all about of course, the self knowledge and the self awareness which can lead you to, yeah, less stress and anxiety about the future and knowing yourself better, being a better person. So yeah, at the end of the poem, the last line is, means seize the day. It's actually means like pluck or enjoy. It's actually used for like flowers and grass. It's often used for like animals if they eat the grass.
Speaker 2:So it's like a really nice, it's almost like a foodie word. He's like saying, taste the day, pluck the day. It's a really like a nice word from nature. And then he says, trust in tomorrow as little as possible. So basically he's saying,
Speaker 3:well,
Speaker 2:live for now, enjoy what is now, because carpe is like, it's a word for, it's a word of enjoyment. It's not like a word of like grabbing. It's actually a word of enjoying and savoring. The same way that like an animal will savor its grass. You will savor the day.
Speaker 2:And you will not think too much about tomorrow. He says qua minimum, which means as little as possible. He's not saying don't actually, he's not being too prescriptive. He's saying, do what you can. Do what you can to not think about the future, because he knows that we're all human.
Speaker 2:And of course we will from time to time worry about the future. And this is the other thing about anxiety is that, we make anxiety worse when we are self critical, and we say, oh, I shouldn't have been thinking about that. Well, it's normal. It's normal to sometimes just have a bit of a low day and be like, oh, I really wish I could do that, or I really wish I could do this. Like allowing yourself to have those worries is part of actually, I think, getting over the worries in the long term as well.
Speaker 2:It's just allowing yourself to know that they will happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's an important point about that as well, where people will say, I should be grateful for what I've got because I realise there's people in the world die and I feel guilty now that my life is actually quite good, I feel shit. So they actually get guilt themselves and into not moving the most of the day. And it's like, it's a tough one.
Speaker 2:Just allow yourself to know that you'll slip up because we're only human. But yeah, I really love the metaphor. I mean, it's so famous Carpe Diem, but it's a great metaphor from nature. And again, it's just like reminds us that we're part of this great cosmic cycle. You know, like when Donald talked about the leaves on the trees and reminding us of how, you know, they grow, they die, they grow, they die.
Speaker 2:You know, we're part of nature as well. I mean, nature kind of carries on, but we are also part of it. And then I'm going to, yeah, so just to kind of a little like summing up. So Horus's date '65 to August, Carpe diem means pluck the day. We kind of think of it as seize day, means enjoy the day while you're able.
Speaker 2:And then there's one line which I didn't look at, which is he talks about invida itas, which means envious time. And I just wanted to leave everybody with a kind of little question, which is like, why might he be using the word 'envy' or 'envious' to describe time, which is, I mean, not even an inanimate object. I mean, we can't even pin down what time is, right? We can't hold it. It's not a glass.
Speaker 2:So he's using this word envy, envious to describe time. So I just want to leave people thinking about that. And then I'm just going to whiz through another, oh yeah, in a second. It's a really common trope on sundials from like the nineteenth century on, well, and actually before, to put a Roman motto to remind us about time. So on this picture we've got, there's a sun god from Florida, top left.
Speaker 2:There's one from a mosque on Brick Lane, which is the one in the middle. The blue one is from Norfolk and the one at the bottom is in Cornwall. I think the one, the Cornwall One is the church where the poet John Betchman is buried there, I think. But don't quote me on that. And so of the really nice ones, I mean, of them are a bit wordy, but 'umbra sumus' means we are a shade', we are a means like we are already a ghost, we are already gone'.
Speaker 2:'vita' in motu means 'life in motion' as well. So just some really nice little reminders there using these, and they're all lines from Latin poetry as well by the way, so they're not just made up lines.
Speaker 1:And some of these lines in Latin that are on sundials are also used to be, particularly in the Victorian era, on clocks and watches are some of the most popular ones come from Horace actually, Tempest Fugitive, it's a very common one that means time flies. Horace had studied stoicism, he was kind of into different philosophies and he actually writes a satire, he writes a comedy about stoicism.
Speaker 3:While taking a piss so they would have no emotion or something. What was he doing? That's what I imagine.
Speaker 1:Something along those lines.
Speaker 2:This one I'm going to whiz through quite quickly. This is another one of my favourite Latin poems by a poet called Catullus who was a little bit before Horace. He came a little bit before Horace, he didn't live very long. He died when he was about 30. So he's a real child prodigy.
Speaker 2:He was an incredible poet. And I will try to read this one in Latin. It's really fun. We warm us me a lesbian, qua memos. Rumors qua singum, sewareiorum, omnis unimus, ice And you'll have noticed there was quite a lot of repetition there in the middle of the poem.
Speaker 2:I will tell you what this means. 'Vasya are kisses'. Okay, so this is a love poem, and he, what he's telling his girlfriend here, she's called Lesbia. His, I think fictional, well, I think she's a real woman, but he gives her this nickname, Lesbia. He says, 'Let us live my Lesbian love, and let the rumors or the gossip of stern old men value at just 1p.
Speaker 2:Suns may set and rise again. For us, when once the brief light has set, an eternal night must be slept. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred, then when we have performed many thousands, we'll shake them all into confusion to lose the count. We won't let any evil person envy us, as no one will be aware of how many kisses have there been.' So he's, again you'll notice that there are, there are similar tropes here to the Horace poem. He says, there's this metaphor from nature.
Speaker 2:So he says that 'suns may rise and set'. So nature goes on regardless, but for us, when our brief light has set, we will be asleep forever. So, as in for us, he kind of likens a human life to like one day, the rising of the sun, the setting of the sun, and when the sun sets, we're dead. And we will never wake again. But he uses this to kind of remind his girlfriend that it's time to live and love.
Speaker 2:It means let's live. Amemus, let's love. So he says, let's do all of this. And let's also not, this is, I quite like this as well. He's like, don't listen to what other people say.
Speaker 2:Don't listen to the gossip of other people. Like, let's just have our love affair and enjoy our life and not listen to others. And then he does his wonderful, like, yes, just give me all the kisses, give me all the kisses right now. And then he imagines like stirring them up, so that no one can envy them. It's kind of a strange idea that like, somebody kind of knows how much you've got, it's almost like if somebody knows how much money you've got, they can envy you.
Speaker 2:So with him it's like, well if they don't know how many kisses we have, then they can't really envy us our love. But I'd like you to think about the word envy here as well, because Horace talks talks about envious time, as being this enemy of life and love. And I think Catullus as well uses this idea of like an evil person envying the lovers, almost like a, as a kind of metaphor for time. Maybe this evil person is time.
Speaker 3:Does it also mean making the most of every day that you lose count by the time you get to the end, you've lived so many awesome days that you're like fucking class. Some people look back and go, I've had one holiday when I was 32 and it was awesome. I
Speaker 2:that's a really nice idea. I think that it applies whatever he's applying to kisses in terms of just, let's have as many as possible, we should also apply to days, to seconds in our life, to minutes in our life, absolutely. It's a very, I love this poem so much because it's, he was so young when he wrote it, and it's such a fun poem, and it's so generous, and it's kind of sexy, and it's just about like, yeah, life and love, you know, they're in the first line today together, it's 'Vivamos' and 'Amamos', 'Let's live and let's love'. They're in the first line, they're next to each other. He's saying like, basically those are the most important things to him, living and loving.
Speaker 2:And these are things that we can most enjoy, I think, when we're just enjoying them in the moment as well.
Speaker 3:I can't remember where I read it, maybe it's Interstellar where it talks about the only thing that can transcend all of time and everything is love. You can get angry, you'll die, you all are. Donald loves Marcus Aurelius, he's connected to Marcus who love, I love Marcus Aurelius. Is that the only thing?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah. So yeah, he died really young, Catullus, but again his themes are about living and loving in the moment. And again, have this idea of the natural world enduring and regenerating and his image of the sun rising and setting. But he reminds us of course that we only have one life, which he likens to the rising and setting of sun on one day. And he also says, ignore the gossip of old men who want to crush our love.
Speaker 2:And yeah, again, he says, no one evil should envy us. And I'm wondering if this is another metaphor for time. And I think I've just got the last, yeah, just a few little time metaphors just at the end And Horace, who we wrote before, who we read before, he writes this poem which is basically about his poetic legacy. And he says, 'Exegi monumentum aeroperenius quadposit du weare in numeralis anorum seris et fuga temporum' should remind us of tempus fugit. 'I've built a monument more lasting than bronze, which the countless chain of years and the flight of time cannot destroy.
Speaker 2:So yeah, here in Virgil and Horace we've got some metaphors for time as something that flees, that flies, that's winged disappears. You can't hold on to it, basically. Yeah, so I think that's me. So thank you.
Speaker 3:That was brilliant, loved the
Speaker 1:Love the
Speaker 2:Latin. And I think I'm gonna leave you lovely people, but thank you for having me.
Speaker 3:Thank you again. Yes, thank you, Thank you. Brilliant.
Speaker 1:Lalia is impermanent. So let's look at some exercises. So first of all, maybe I've mentioned this one like a little bit, but it's a quick one. So I'll just bring it up again. So time projection, there are many different forms of time projection and modern cognitive therapy.
Speaker 1:This is like my favourite one. So somebody is worried about something or feeling stressful about something. It could be they're worried they're going to lose their job or worried that their partner is going to leave them or something like that. And in therapy, we can often just say, well, we talk first of all about turning what if into so what if. So somebody might say, what if the shit hits the fan?
Speaker 1:So what we want to get them to is the point where they can say, well, so what if the shit hits the fan? So what if it does? Right? And we do that by asking what will probably happen next. So you could view this as a form of de catastrophising, right?
Speaker 1:So when people worry about things, they make them seem more catastrophic than they are. And that's because they make them seem more permanent than they are in part, that's part of how we blow things out of proportion. And if we look at the bigger picture, and we think of the catastrophe but we also think of the fact that things will move on and what will happen next, then we're imagining absence and presence at the same time. We're imagining, yes, the shit is going to hit the fan, but then it'll get cleaned up and it'll work back to normal or whatever. So what if the shit does hit the fan, what will probably happen next?
Speaker 1:It's going be all over place, but then what will probably happen next? Well, I guess we'll have to start cleaning up and that's going to take ages. And then what will probably happen next? Well, I guess eventually it will all be cleaned up. And then we're going to have to have a shower or whatever.
Speaker 1:And then what will probably happen next? Well, I guess what will probably happen next is we all go to the pub and have a couple of drinks to unwind afterwards. And then what will probably happen next? Well, guest swings will return to normal and then we'll move on. So imagine the problem, but then we move forward to the time when the problem is gone.
Speaker 1:And it's just a logical way of thinking through. Also encourages people to think of ways of coping with a problem, how they might deal with it and respond to it. But normally when people are anxious, they kind of freeze, they get stuck on the catastrophe, and they don't move on by kind of nudging or prodding your brain so that you move forward and think about what happens next. You're picturing the presence of the catastrophe but also picturing its absence. You're viewing it as transient or impermanent, not tend to moderate your feelings of anxiety about it, and also encourages you to plan ways of coping.
Speaker 1:So it's really easy to, it's like easy. Get paid money to do this. I have my girlfriend with me, just go, well, so what if she does? What will probably happen next? I could train a monkey to do this.
Speaker 1:I get a little therapy monkey or a parrot or something and sit in the consulting room and go when someone comes in and they say, what if this happens? Right? What I want you to do is go, Mark, so what happens? What will happen next? And that's, it's as simple as that.
Speaker 1:So the things we do in therapy, luckily, for me to earn my living, like a little bit more complex and nuanced than that. But some of the things we do are really simple. And people could do them for themselves.
Speaker 3:Doctor Well, I saw your technique on TikTok the other day, someone was saying, next time you worry about something, it in a really funny voice.
Speaker 2:Really?
Speaker 3:Doctor and it had loads of likes.
Speaker 1:Meant I'm missing out on all those likes.
Speaker 3:Get on TikTok.
Speaker 1:I should get on TikTok. I'm doing well the kids on TikTok. Think of it, you could help Gen Z. Be popular with the young people, like sneakers. Sneakers are popular with young people.
Speaker 1:So this is like a more complex technique that people really like and it's used a lot in a modern type of therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT, which is a state of the art evidence based form of behaviour therapy. And it's a meditation technique. And it's funny because it kind of resembles a lot of the stuff that we talked about earlier. You're meditating on a river or a stream. We talked about Heraclitus and Pantare, the idea that everything flows like a river or stream that's impermanent.
Speaker 1:So this is almost like Heraclitus was here today, and his followers, they should all be doing this meditation technique because it's it's right on message for them. So what we normally do, I'll talk you through this, I'll spend a little bit of time on it because it's a very important technique. It's quite easy to teach and it's very powerful. It's good for developing resilience. So what you would do is visualise a stream.
Speaker 1:And so you pick one that's flowing moderately fast. And you imagine that you're at a kind of moderate distance from it, high up in the bank looking down on it or maybe on a bridge looking down like playing poo sticks or whatever, Winnie the Pooh. And actually the image of the river is completely arbitrary, you could pick anything, it could be clouds floating across the sky, it could be a parade marching along with signs or whatever, you know, but generally we pick the stream just because everyone seems to understand it. And it's pretty simple. But it's arbitrary, right?
Speaker 1:It's just what we call a centering device. It's something that you're voluntarily focusing on that you can keep bringing your attention back to. So you pick this river and so that's a voluntary mental activity. And you know, one of the most fundamental things in modern therapy, I particularly feel very strongly about this with all my clients, I really emphasise that many problems are due to people failing to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary psychological activities, like thoughts. So we don't distinguish clearly between thoughts that happen automatically or involuntary, and ones that we're doing voluntarily.
Speaker 1:So if you voluntarily choose to think about a river, you'll probably find that you then notice lots of automatic thoughts. So you'll be trying to think about a river Scott. And then you'll be and then you'll suddenly for no apparent reason think what was that Latin thing that Lalia said earlier, you know, tempest, I can't remember now. And you think I'm supposed to be thinking about a river, Latin keeps popping in my head. Or you'll think what am I going to have for dinner tonight?
Speaker 1:Why am I thinking that I'm trying to be thinking about a river. So you have these automatic spontaneous thoughts that just pop into your mind. And they might be completely random, or they might be about the river or something like that. But you didn't choose to think them, they just popped into your mind spontaneously, they're automatic thoughts. And this exercise helps us to notice the difference between the voluntary and the automatic.
Speaker 1:So number, there are three cognitive skills that this teaches you. So I'm going to tell you exactly what they are. Number one is spotting automatic thoughts, recognising them. So number one, you're going to notice these automatic thoughts. Then number two, you're going to gain cognitive distance.
Speaker 1:So the way we do that is by, you suddenly think nobody likes me pops in your mind, you imagine that's written on a piece of paper. So you've now turned that into an object that you can look at from a distance. Right, so rather than looking through the lens that I put on my glasses rather than looking at the world through the nobody likes me glasses, this is my nobody likes me, everybody hates me glasses. Could take those off and I could look at them. So by writing it on a piece of paper, I'm looking at the thought rather than looking at the world through that lens, right?
Speaker 1:So I've got my nobody likes me, we're writing a piece of paper. Right? So that's number two, I've now objectified the thought gained cognitive distance from it. By cognitive distance, mean, in part means I can put the thought over there and go there as over there on a piece of paper. Right?
Speaker 1:And I put that thought in the river. And so now cognitive skill number three is letting go of it. And allowing it to decay naturally, as we say, or allowing it to float slowly down the river. So one caveat is we have to be careful that we're not flushing it down the toilet, that we're not scared of the thought that we're trying to get rid of it. But we're watching it just naturally fade into the distance as it goes down the river.
Speaker 1:So we're not trying to push it away, we're just allowing it to naturally decay. Because automatic thoughts, if you don't argue with them, you don't fight against them, will only last a few seconds normally, the automatic thoughts naturally decay. And then they come back again, and then they naturally decay and then they come back in and then naturally decay. The problem is if we start arguing with our thoughts, or thinking about them or elaborating on them, then they get bigger and bigger and turn into worrying and stress. But the automatic thought itself doesn't really do that much, as long as we don't engage with it.
Speaker 1:So particularly if we can gain distance from it and view it in a detached way. So I'm thinking about this river. And then I suddenly think, what was that tempest view? And I go write that in a bit of paper, what was this template? Put the bit of paper in the stream.
Speaker 1:And I just lean back and I watch it as it drifts down the river and I let go of it. And then I suddenly think what if nobody likes me, I'll go write that on a paper, put in the stream, let go of that, just watch foots in the river. And then I think I'm thinking what if nobody likes us come back? But like Captain America, I think I could do this all day long. So even if the thought keeps coming back, let's write on a piece of paper again, I'll show you a neat trick, write on a piece of paper again, and put it in the river.
Speaker 1:Because back a third time in school, I'll write on a piece of paper again and put it in the river. They did this all day
Speaker 3:long. What if we did this on a real river, with a real piece of paper? Does that have the same impact?
Speaker 1:No, I've never tried that. Could do.
Speaker 3:I'll be there all
Speaker 1:day tomorrow now. As long as you don't fall in. Also if you have a memory or an image that pops into your mind, you can go and turn it into a Polaroid photograph, just the same and then you put it on the river and let go of it and just let it float slowly down the river. And I should say that kind of what you've just demonstrated in a way, when you're doing it, a lot of the automatic thoughts might be about the exercise. So you might be picturing your river, you might think what if I was to do this in a real river?
Speaker 1:And then you could write that down on a piece of paper, put that and let go. Or typically when you do this in a consulting room, the client will think I wonder how long this stupid exercise is going to go on for or something like that. Then write it down, they'll wonder how long this stupid exercise is going go for and put it in a leaf, put it in the river and let it float down the stream like it's a leaf or put it on a leaf and let it float down the river. So any automatic thoughts at all, you're going to spot them or recognise them, whether it's a thought or a sentence or an image. You're going to turn it into an object, like a photograph or writing on a piece of paper that you can view over there and you're going to let go of it and allow it to just decay naturally or float away slowly down the river.
Speaker 1:And then by doing this for like five or ten minutes a day, you're developing a bunch of cognitive skills that you can then use to be more detached from potentially distressing thoughts. So like worries, so something pops in your mind, you think I don't really need to be worrying about this, can just do I don't have to visualise a river once I've been doing this for a while. The river is like gym equipment, right? So you're training in the gym equipment to build up your muscles that you're using this image of the river as a way of developing these cognitive skills. But I can use those cognitive skills in the same way I can use those muscles without having to have a bunch of weights or a machine or whatever.
Speaker 1:Once I've got those cognitive skills, if a thought pops into my mind, I can just adopt that attitude of viewing it from a distance and letting go of it. I don't have to get all the apparatus of visualising a stream. I just know what it feels like. I know how to adopt that perspective on it. And so it's really the river is just an elaborate gimmick for helping you to learn the moves.
Speaker 3:So what you're saying is, it's a way to do cognitive distancing. Doctor It's way to
Speaker 1:do cognitive distancing, basically. And then, so the other technique I was going to talk about, and so in a way Leaves on the Stream happens to be similar to the metaphor of the river of time, which is very common in Greek and Roman philosophy. But you're also learning to view your automatic thoughts as transient. And a big mistake that a lot of people make is they take their automatic thoughts too seriously. And they become too engaged with them, like rather than learning to be non attached and to let go, not only of external things, but even of your thoughts, of your thoughts about anything, like to view those as transient, superficial, like temporary, something that you can let go of, you don't have to become entangled with.
Speaker 1:So I mentioned also the here and now, and how research on worrying shows that it's very future focused. Tom Borkovec, who's the leading researcher on the psychology of worry, as an American psychologist, he was particularly interested in this idea that you could potentially disrupt worry just by getting people to focus more on the present moment, tune into the here and now. And there's an old way of doing that, which was popularised in the 1950s by Fritz Perles, the founder of Gestalt Psychotherapy. Perles was a pretty wacky maverick therapist, he had a lot of cool slogans though. He used to say lose your mind and come to your senses, And by that he meant like let go of rumination and worrying, like let go of your overthinking and get grounded in your sensory experience of the present moment, lose your mind and come to your senses.
Speaker 1:And the way that we do that, he called this the ABC of gestalt therapy, is by a trick called sentence stemming or sentence completion. And the trick is that when you verbalise something, and it could just be in your head, that forces you to pay more attention to it for longer. Sneaky, like so you're tricking your brain into paying attention for longer to your sensory experience by describing it simple as that. And so you would just say here and now, I'm aware of the red light shining on top of my microphone.
Speaker 3:Woah,
Speaker 1:Here and now, I'm aware of the white of my slide on the screen in front of me. Here and now, I'm aware of the light glinting off my glass of vinegar and water. And so you just describe the things you can see or that you sense. And normally, you might say right now or here and now just as a trick to kind of channel your attention, focus on the present moment to make sure it's grounded. And the fact that you're putting it into words just takes a few seconds longer.
Speaker 1:So it kind of pegs your attention for longer than normal to your sensory experience and then you're going to keep doing that. Might start off the easy way when I teach this to people, say just start off by describing the colours you can see. So right now, I'm aware of the blue light on my camera, my webcam in front of me. Right now I'm aware of the blue of my shirt and the video stream. And then you could talk about the shape of things, like right now I'm aware of the wood of the door behind me on the video and the square angles, like the corners of it.
Speaker 1:And then you could describe physical sensations like right now I'm aware of an itch on my nose, right now I'm aware of the sensation of my shirt on my arms, my clothing right now, aware of tension in my neck or shoulders or whatever. So it could be physical sensations, sense of your breathing, your clothing, your posture, often like little movements or tensions in your body, or it could be sounds you hear right now, I'm aware of the sound of the lights humming and I guess it's like a fluorescent light humming in the background. And so the trick is to try and avoid too much interpretation or speculation or analysis or comment and just stick to the bare facts, like try and keep it to the absolute minimum of what you're actually seeing, hearing or feeling in the present moment. If you do that for five or ten minutes, it's actually quite strange. It's quite a kind of psychedelic experience, like you can feel that your attention broadens and becomes much more grounded in the present moment.
Speaker 1:And the important thing to realise is that that's inherently antagonistic to worrying. In order to really worry about the future, you have to kind of forget about the present moment. And I could be grounded in the present moment, I could be noticing the colour of the I don't know what to call that like burgundy of the wall in front of me and the silver of the lamp stand. And I could potentially, if I tried also think about something bad that might happen in the future. But I'm going to be dividing, at the very least I'll be dividing my attention.
Speaker 1:So I've got one foot in the present moment and one foot thinking about the future. And that waters down my anxiety dilutes the anxiety. In order to really freak out, I'd have to forget about the present and just get tunnel vision and just like, think about the shit hitting the fan in the future. As long as I've got at least one foot anchored in the present, my experience is diluted. So my anxiety is not going to be as intense.
Speaker 1:And actually, if I'm completely grounded in the present, I can barely be thinking or worrying about the future at all. So you may think, well, sometimes I have to think about the future as well because maybe the shit is actually going to hit the fan tomorrow. Yeah, but if I can remain at least partly grounded in the present, while I'm thinking about it, I can think about it in a more rational and detached way. I can think about it without becoming mesmerised by it and freaked out by it. Can retain some degree of objectivity and perspective.
Speaker 1:Do think of
Speaker 3:Dale Carnegie in his book, How to Stop Worrying and Star Living says about prescribing busy to someone, just get busy and then you get in the present, you get into flow of being busy and then you forget maybe
Speaker 1:What self help advice? See, this is where I'm going to put my get into proper therapy mode, right? You can tell that I'm getting into my proper evidence based CBT therapy mode, slagging off self help. So self help literature is hit and miss. Because a lot of the techniques are things that people tried, they kind of worked out.
Speaker 1:But they don't really understand exactly why they work. And so sometimes they also backfire. So if you particularly they backfire for people who have severe mental health problems. So if you've got someone who's got generalised anxiety disorder, for example, or obsessive compulsive disorder, like a pathological anxiety disorder, and they read Del Kamege, and maybe they interpreted that as just working a lot, and keeping themselves occupied, that potentially just becomes a form of avoidance behaviour. And avoidance is already everyone's favourite coping strategy.
Speaker 1:And the top 10 coping strategies number one for like the zillionth week in a row is avoid. It's their number one again, like not everyone's number one favorite coping strategy is always going to be avoidance, right? And keeping yourself busy is a form of avoidance. And the problem with avoidance is it doesn't change your response to the thing that's actually freaking you out. It doesn't change your beliefs or attitudes about the thing that's freaking you out.
Speaker 1:So it's a band aid potentially, like it glosses over or distracts you from something without really changing the underlying problem. So we don't want to use being grounded in the here and now as a form of avoidance and that's why I would say that sometimes you might want to divide your attention so that you're aware of the present moment, but you're also thinking about the problem. You find that you some because I'll see clients all the time who go, I'll go swimming. And when I'm doing that, I'm completely at peace. I'm not worrying about the future.
Speaker 1:And then I go home, start freaking out again.
Speaker 3:So
Speaker 1:life is a kind of pendulum swing between moments of respite, and then moments when they're kind of freaking out, right? Because during the moments of respite they're distracting themselves. And so they're not really addressing the problem or changing anything about the way that they think about it. So I believe that we should confront our problems, but do it with cognitive distance and do it with emotional acceptance. So do it in a particular kind of way.
Speaker 1:So on the leaves in the stream exercise, we're not, if I have distressing thought, I'm not thinking I'm going go into something else and completely ignore that. I'm acknowledging it, I'm looking at the thought on a piece of paper, I'm letting go of it and I'm waiting while it's slowly just down the stream. That's not avoidance. In fact you should approach it and I think it matters what your attitude is. Some people might try and misuse the leaves on the stream exercise as a form of avoidance, like flushing their thoughts away, But I think your fundamental strategy should be that you're using the whole thing as a form of acceptance.
Speaker 1:So a way of think of it not as a way of avoiding automatic thoughts, but it's a way of learning to accept them in a more manageable way. So I think shit, maybe everybody hates my guts. So I have that maybe I have an automatic thought, maybe Scott doesn't like my beard. And I have this, I said, Scott looks my beard funny, maybe he doesn't like it. Right?
Speaker 1:So I have this automatic thought, have this anxiety sometimes, right? I write it on a piece of paper, or he doesn't like my shirt. And I write it on a piece of paper. And I can look at that piece of paper from a distance. That's a way of accepting the thought without being overwhelmed by it rather than avoiding it.
Speaker 1:And I put it in the river and I wait for it to slowly drift down the river. Again, should approach that as a form of acceptance rather than a form of avoidance. It's a way of allowing me to entertain the thought in a detached manner for like a few seconds or whatever, and then accept it if it comes back again and do the same thing again. If I go and watch Netflix, I'm not going say I'm just going get drunk and watch Netflix. That's avoidance.
Speaker 3:I think you should write a blog post on this. Think it's an important point.
Speaker 1:A man can write many blog posts in life. Self
Speaker 3:help is people get addicted to self help, don't they?
Speaker 1:I mean, I'll be I kind of like doing this because it kind of provokes people a little bit. But actually, people don't normally I think people are ready to have self help slagged off a little bit. Usually they go, yeah, you're right. But where it's really obvious is probably in particular, if you're dealing with people who have obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD. And in fact, there are a cluster of mental health problems that are kind of cousins of OCD that are kind of related to it a little bit, like health anxiety or generalised anxiety disorder are also a little bit like OCD.
Speaker 1:And people with OCD often use self help techniques and those become the C, the compulsions of OCD. They'll compulsively and then back in the day, like people with OCD might compulsively pray, or they might compulsively count rosary beads, or they might compulsively wash their hands, or they might compulsively repeat a little rhyme in their head or perform a little ritual because they feel as if these compulsions protect them from their anxiety or from a perceived threat. So they kind of get hooked on, like doing them over and over again sometimes. Self help techniques can become compulsions easily for people with OCD. So they'll compulsively try and control their breathing, or they'll compulsively repeat a mantra, or do some kind of visualisation exercise or something like that.
Speaker 1:So sometimes it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it, that determines whether it's healthy or unhealthy psychologically. And we can become overly dependent on some of these strategies, especially if we're using them as a way of kind of fending off anxiety. Sometimes we have to confront our anxiety and allow it to wash over us in order. The best way of understanding it is that really ultimately what will help you, what we know from research and therapy, like the most robust finding in the entire field of psychotherapy research, is that your brain is actually quite capable of digesting unpleasant emotions and processing them and coming out the other side. Right?
Speaker 1:So your brain has a natural capacity for what we call emotional habituation. So if you're anxious about something and you confront your fears, like if you are patient and you wait it out, your anxiety should naturally abate over time. If you do it repeatedly and for long enough, and some other variables are in play that are conducive under appropriate conditions we might say. Anxiety will abate naturally. If you have a horse and it's freaked out by loud noises but you gradually expose it to loud noises patiently over time, it'll get used to them eventually, it'll habituate Animals, even primitive animals like shellfish and stuff habituate to unpleasant stimuli.
Speaker 1:They get used to things over time And so it's very, very deep seated in our nature. And this is why avoidances and distraction techniques and things like that are problematic, because they prevent normal healthy emotional processing from being able to take place. You have to face your fears, usually in order to get beyond them. And a lot of self help techniques are actually strategies for people to avoid facing their fears.
Speaker 3:You're right.
Speaker 1:Which feels good, it's like a band aid, oh, know, maybe if I do this, I can avoid my anxiety. But it's a quick fix, it doesn't really cure the problem. And the irony is the cure for the problem is something that's already built into your operating system. Already have this kind of self correcting mechanism that nature gave you, But we've got all these ways of preventing it from working unfortunately. So what I should mention also the last technique is something I've maybe mentioned a little bit before is the view from above.
Speaker 1:So this refers back to Heraclitus and the idea of pantheism, the holism, thinking about the whole of the universe and thinking of ourselves as being, rather than just isolated individuals, as being part of something bigger, cells within the body of a larger organism. So many ancient philosophers would practise this technique of trying to picture events seen from high above or just trying to imagine the whole of space and time. So Marcus Aurelius says imagine the present moment as if it's a grain of sand within the vast ness of universal space, or as if it's merely the turn of a screw within the vastness of universal time. But you mentioned earlier that the whole history of the human race, if you wrote an encyclopedia that described the history of the planet Earth up until this point, the history of the human race would be like one sentence, if it was an encyclopedia like 100 volumes long. And so thinking of the present as being this both in space and time, this tiny corner of the universe allows us actually to confront stuff that's happening.
Speaker 1:I can continue thinking, it's not avoidance, because I might continue to think about something stressing me out, like I've just lost my job. But I'm also thinking about other stuff. Like, so it's like being grounded in the present moment, but maybe also thinking about the future. I'm spreading my attention out, dividing my attention. So I'm thinking about the fact that my girlfriend's dumped me or whatever, but I'm picturing that within a bigger context.
Speaker 1:So I'm thinking about that's just one small corner of a bigger picture. And that will tend to water down or dilute my emotional response. And the stories say that that's a reality though, because it is just one corner of a bigger picture. And so if you feel more equanimity, like when you picture the whole space and time, that's what you should be feeling. That's the truth.
Speaker 1:Reality is the totality and when you ignore that and you think of the catastrophe and isolation, the weird thing is people think that's the truth, my girlfriend did dump me. It's not though, like in court you swear an oath put your hand in the Bible. Scott like. And you swear an oath to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth the whole truth not just part of it. Because telling a partial truth is a lie, it's called a lie of omission.
Speaker 1:We call that when you leave information out. So my girlfriend dumped me is a lie of omission, Like it's not the whole truth. So my girlfriend dumped me. But also I've just met someone else. It's a different story.
Speaker 1:Like, my girlfriend dumped me because I was having an affair. It's a different story. Like with somebody else. My girlfriend dumped me because I wasn't very nice to her, bigger picture is a different story, right? It's not the whole truth.
Speaker 1:There's always a bigger story. And bigger story is also to be like what happens next, what happens next, what happens next, like how am I going to move on? And so the stories would say that really the only whole truth is the whole story of the history of the universe and your place within it. But from that perspective, setbacks don't really matter that much. They seem trivial and the stoics will say but that's reality.
Speaker 1:And so when we say my girlfriend dumped me and I take it out of context, and there isn't any context, there isn't any bigger story. I'm deceiving myself. Like it's selective thinking. It's taking something out of context, it's a lie of omission. And we all know even the legal system understands that taking truths out of context is a form of deceit, it's a type of lie.
Speaker 1:We're lying to ourselves all the time because it's the very nature, like we talked earlier about how thinking is abstraction, in order to think we have to be selective but sometimes you know that exaggerates our distress, anxiety, our fear and our sadness are amplified by the way that we abstract information. And the Stoics said we need to make this effort to broaden our perspective. So one way of doing that is like Zooey is looking down from Olympus, they would say just imagine events as if you've seen them from high above. Now I'm in Athens at the moment and Marcus Aurelius, when he describes us, I don't know if I told you Scott, there's a famous passage where Marcus says the mind free from violent passions is like a mighty citadel. And I thought that's a cool quote, like people often quote that.
Speaker 1:Thought, one day I thought, probably I've been talking to Lalya, I thought, what's the Greek word for citadel? And I thought, I'm kind of curious, what word did they use? So like, my Greek is pretty rusty. So I've read the Greek of the meditations, I hadn't looked up that passage, looked up it's Acropolis. Right, of course.
Speaker 1:Acropolis in Greek literally means high up part of the city. So Acro like acrobat, and polis like metropolis, Acropolis high up part of the city. So it's a hill like in the picture in front of you. Many ancient towns were based around hill forts. So there'd be a hill and people would farm the land at the bottom.
Speaker 1:And then when the barbarians came to rape and pillage and get them all, they'd all run up the hill, behind a wooden palisade and they'd defend themselves up there. So many towns grew around hills and Athens is like that, there was a fort at the top and then eventually it became a temple, it's a temple to Athena, the patron goddess of wisdom and over Athens. And so Marcus says it's the view from the Acropolis and the Acropolis looks down on the Agora. In fact in another passage he says, imagine as though from some high watchtower you're looking down on all the events of human life, the arguments in the law courts, marriages and divorces, people buying and selling things. And he says looking down on agoras, marketplaces, city centres.
Speaker 1:Well, the famous Agora is the Athenian Agora, which actually is what you can see in the picture, you're seeing the ruins of the Agora, and the Acropolis looks down upon it. So he's described, he's literally describing the view from the Acropolis looking down on the Agora, but all the crazy stuff happens, like all the drama Scott, like happens in the shopping mall, like in the city centre, and the high street. And in fact, when you're looking down from the Temple Of Athena, like in the Agora, 1 of the things you'd be looking down on is the place where Socrates was put on trial and executed. From the perspective of the gods, it seems very far below, like just unfolding like people like ants below. And so this, the view from above trains us to acknowledge the drama of something even like the trial and execution of Socrates, but to see it as part of a bigger story.
Speaker 1:But it's when we zoom in too much on things that we feel overwhelmed by them.
Speaker 3:It's important, I like it. You mentioned earlier, self deceit. I've read there was this book with loads of epigrams and you'd like this one. The first step to self defeat is the practice of self deceit. How's it going for a little cool miniature poem?
Speaker 3:It's true though.
Speaker 1:Think self deceit's everyone's favourite form of deceit. It's the number one most popular. We don't
Speaker 3:think we're doing it. We've lied to ourselves so long that they become truths to our mind. It's like, that's the problem, isn't it? And Socrates would say, there's a
Speaker 1:lot of weird things hidden in ancient philosophy that are kind of almost assumptions or implicit in them, that are quite fundamental. So one of the things that's most fundamental about really everything that Socrates says is that Socrates says, look, we can think, we're capable of using language and reason and other animals can't, or rather they do, but nowhere like to the extent that humans do. Monkeys can use tools, they can fish out termites by using a twig and stuff like that. But monkeys don't write novels. They don't plan their future in the way that we do because we use language in order to conceptualise things.
Speaker 1:And we achieve a whole different, a whole another level by writing poetry, like the Latin poetry that Laoja was reading earlier. And Socrates' basic point is that thinking is like a process that we engage in, the goal of which is to arrive at the truth. Like we use reason in order to figure things out and get to the truth. And deceiving ourselves would be like using the tool badly. Like we're already committed to doing this, we already have this job, we can't avoid it.
Speaker 1:You know, we already pop into the world running this race of trying to think, you know we're there already, we're stuck in it, like we're thinking, trying to get to the truth. And so he says well like obviously the way he puts it is no one thinks in order to be wrong. He said the very process of thinking itself is implicitly committed to the achievement of truth and so he says when we deceive ourselves we're doing it badly and we have a kind of obligation, we have a sort of duty to ourselves to use reason properly. Like if the job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. What if
Speaker 3:the truth is something we don't want to be true, we're too scared, we're pained by it that we just don't want to go down there?
Speaker 4:Well,
Speaker 1:often it's by confronting our pain that we process it. Kind of like I was saying earlier, the irony is that in order to overcome anxiety, we normally have to face it and accept it and allow our brain to process the emotion naturally for emotional habituation to occur. Like I said earlier, that's how all animals are designed, by exposing themselves to things that make them feel anxious, the anxiety abates naturally if nothing dangerous happens. So we need to understand threats in order to deal with them appropriately. We need to, even if we were to decide whether we want to avoid something or not, we need to know the truth about it in order to make that decision.
Speaker 1:Everything always comes back to our ability to grasp the truth. And Socrates thought, people kind of do everything in their power to avoid this responsibility, but it's the one fundamental responsibility that we all share, like to be honest with ourselves and to think rationally and to try and actually figure out the truth. And Socrates thought if we use, the way the Greeks would phrase that is to say that we should use reason well, and if we use reason well, that would be the virtue of wisdom. It would be the love of wisdom as Socrates calls it our philosophy. So to use reason well, it's like we've got this toolbox and it's our duty to use the tools properly.
Speaker 1:Like we have the toolbox of reason, it's our duty to use that toolbox properly. And if we were doing that, that's what we call wisdom. It's the art of living wisely. That's what Socrates calls philosophy, it's the art of living or the art of applying wisdom to daily life. And you know, he thinks the key to it, for him, the number one thing, maybe I mentioned this before, is getting rid of contradictions.
Speaker 1:So he says look, if you're contradicting yourself, then that can't be true. It's impossible for a contradiction to be true really, you have to resolve the contradiction somehow or other. So he says, this is your safest way, like the easiest way to become more rational, like it's just a spot where you're being a hypocrite or contradicting yourself.
Speaker 3:What if someone's life is that?
Speaker 1:Is riddled with contradictions?
Speaker 3:Yeah, is that someone who's confused, someone who's lost, like what's going on there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Socrates would say then that's vice, that's folly, whatever you want to say about it. That's not where we want to be. It's not healthy. In fact, the ancient Greeks and Romans call it, they refer to it as, they just refer to it as a kind of insanity. So they say foolishness as a sort of insanity, like that's actually what they say.
Speaker 1:And Socrates says, know everyone wants to be sane and rational but none of us are really put much effort into trying to achieve that except for him that's what philosophy was about.
Speaker 3:Is hard though.
Speaker 1:Marcus really has quotes Socrates, let me try, let me get this right from memory. There's There's a dialogue, I don't know if this is one that actually survives, feel like it might be, it seems to be a fragment of a lost dialogue that Marcus Reilly is quoting. And he says Socrates said to people, would you rather have rational souls or irrational souls? And they said, well rational souls obviously and Socrates said, well why are you not trying harder to achieve reason then? And they said because we already have it and Socrates said well if you already have it then why do you keep quarrelling with one another?
Speaker 1:Which is a really weird little dialogue, but it's kind of cool. And it reminds me of something that Epictetus says, he said that to his students you should emulate Socrates, he should be your role model. And many people today would think, oh does that mean what he said about Plato's theory of forms or you know, the words that Plato put in his mouth or something quite theoretical or what he says about virtue or you know, what he says about justice and things like that. But Epictetus says something really quite surprising to his students. He says no, the number one thing you should learn from Socrates is how to avoid quarrels.
Speaker 1:And he said Socrates was really good at debating really profound subjects like justice, politics, beauty, controversial things, religion without it turning into an argument. He was adept at questioning people very deeply and talking about sensitive subjects in a really polite, amiable way without upsetting him until he got executed. But generally he was good at having these conversations.
Speaker 3:Hard to do, very hard to do.
Speaker 1:That's what's missing in modern society, right? So now look at America, in particular, and also Britain, and how people talk about politics on the internet. And the way that everything just turns into an argument, like really quickly. Right? That is the opposite of everything that Socrates stood for.
Speaker 1:Like this idea that people would just start name calling, he refused to do that. And when people try to insult him, he would just make it into a joke, like and drive the conversation back to doing philosophy.
Speaker 3:Well, it's even worse now, Donald, people aren't even speaking to the other side because they think they label them immediately as the right as racist, which there's truths in everything, obviously, but you can't just label someone's right wing racist and you can't label the left, whatever they label the left and they don't even chat, they won't even hear the other side.
Speaker 1:There's exaggeration on it as well. So especially I noticed in America, someone's left wing, they'll just call them a communist. If someone's right wing, they're a Nazi. So it's like you immediately get labeled as the most extreme form. And then that makes it possible, you can't negotiate with Nazi, you can't negotiate with the communist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's not who they are. Most of these people have more moderate views than that. And you could negotiate with them. In fact, you probably share some views with them fundamentally.
Speaker 3:100%.
Speaker 1:Nocrates was also good at saying, look, even if you disagree with people, like he believed that deep down, there are things that you agree on, there's common ground. And like, it goes without saying, maybe that in a debate, you have to try and find the common ground in order to be able to have a conversation with the other person. But in politics, for some reason, because of the tribalism, people kind of are motivated to deny that there's any common ground at all. And that just cuts off, like any line of communication. And trying to identify similarities, so that we can open up channels of communication.
Speaker 1:That's the only way you educate or change people or educate or change yourself.
Speaker 4:There's
Speaker 1:something else I want to leave you with, Scott, and it's a paradox and it doesn't come from Socrates, right? It comes from Epicurus. And, but you know, I wrote an article about how you'll find the same thing in the Stoics as well. I told this to my little girl and she like, I like to talk to her about philosophy. But sometimes she agrees with me and sometimes she doesn't.
Speaker 1:And she was, I'm not sure about this one, daddy. I said, you know, a long time ago, was a philosopher called Epicurus. And most people think that when you're getting an argument with someone, you should try and win the argument, right? It's good to win an argument, and it's bad to lose an argument. But Epicurus said that the person who loses an argument is actually the one who gains the most paradoxically, ironically, because they learn something potentially, at least they have the opportunity to learn something.
Speaker 1:Whereas the person who wins the argument doesn't really gain anything. Like Epicure said, ironically, you guys are desperately trying to avoid but it's by losing arguments that you actually learn stuff.
Speaker 3:People are scared to lose arguments, aren't they?
Speaker 1:They're frightened to be proven wrong. But that means that you know, again, it's a form of avoidance because they're anxious. But by allowing ourselves to be wrong sometimes, make mistakes sometimes and experience anxiety, that you actually grow and learn and develop as a human being. Then you know, we wouldn't be in the pickle that we're in maybe. True.
Speaker 1:But then if everyone was wise and enlightened, life would be boring. Kind of need folly and vice and corruption in the world. The stoics say this as well, it's one of the great ironies of life. Sometimes people go awfully annoying, it wouldn't be better if everybody was rational and well enlightened and we could just live in this perfect world. That would be rubbish, really boring.
Speaker 1:In fact, we need some things to be wrong in the world because life is all about trying to overcome obstacles. It would be like the labours of Hercules, the choice of Hercules, wouldn't it be great if everything was just easy? No, it'd be rubbish. Because you need challenges in life. Well, you don't want too many challenges so that you're overwhelmed by them, but you don't want zero challenges either because that'd be deadly boring.
Speaker 1:We don't die of boredom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's a good
Speaker 1:way to look at it as well.
Speaker 3:I think as well, there's a story of this kid who puts jet fuel into this really rich guy's engine or something, and it's like the wrong fuel. And if the guy went in the plane, he would have died. And the guy instead of going after this student kid and be like, you're an idiot, get out. He said, you're filling my plane up tomorrow because I know you won't make that mistake again. And he let them have the mistake and own it and then actually be able to spring back immediately after the mistake.
Speaker 3:Most people will be, they get scared that they get told down the knee then they don't get a chance to learn or rebound from it. That's the main thing, problem I think. Is that's a good story. If I played to him, I'd have lost my head. I would have gone, mate you could have killed me.
Speaker 3:Do you know what I was going to say earlier? Do know what you're find common ground? Watch Bruno by Sacha Barron Cohen when he has the two organizations that hate each other and he starts talking about hummus And they're like, fucking hell, is hummus as a food? And he's like, oh, so you like hummus? And he's like, yeah.
Speaker 3:And he's like, oh, you like hummus? And he's like, yeah. He's like, all right, hold hands. You both like hummus. This is the start.
Speaker 3:And he got him to agree on hummus being healthy.
Speaker 1:That was a start. That is something that everyone can agree on.
Speaker 3:Then he could have grown from it.
Speaker 1:What do you call a baby peacock? Who? A baby peacock. Baby peacock.
Speaker 3:Don't know.
Speaker 1:Shouldn't it be called a chickpea? Chickpea or a peachick?
Speaker 3:A peachick. Yes, peachick. When was the last time you saw a peacock?
Speaker 1:Recently. I took a photograph of one, a weird looking one actually, when I'm in Greece, so sometimes things look a bit weird. So it's a kind of weird looking peacock. I'm good to see it, a few weeks ago, I went somewhere and there was some weird peacocks. Yeah and they're really loud, they make a really weird noise as well, they're loud.
Speaker 3:They are mesmerising though, there's one in Holland Park in London, it's like a wild one and it goes in the street sometimes but it's there and when it opens it's
Speaker 1:Do you know why there are peacocks everywhere? This will blow your mind buddy, because the Romans took peacocks and gave them to tribal chieftains as gifts. You're lying. Like when they were negotiating and stuff they went and we've brought you a peacock. You'd be like some German guy or whatever, it'd be like what is that thing?
Speaker 1:I've never seen anything like that before. I'm having that in my garden. There's more where that came from. You need to stay on our side and the upcoming war and all that. That's not a problem.
Speaker 1:I've got a bunch of guys that will fight for you, then there will be more peacocks where that came from. And then he'd be like, people around his house, where did you get that thing? He was like, wouldn't you like to know? Like a moving flower, like a moving garden. Are they from?
Speaker 1:Where did the Romans get them from? They came from originally, Middle East somewhere,
Speaker 3:I don't know. Where
Speaker 1:are they indigenous to peacocks? Maybe somebody can tell us in
Speaker 3:the comments. Peacocks in the queue because they are strange. There's nothing like them really. Is there an animal that has such a huge, it's like a show, they literally put a show on. It's amazing.
Speaker 3:It's actually, and that's where you'd get lost in the moment, Donald. If you want to live in the here now, go and watch a peacock.
Speaker 1:You've got peacock.
Speaker 3:Because you'd be waiting for it and it happens, you're like, then you get on your phone. They come from India. Oh my god, the Romans.
Speaker 1:Did they come from India or maybe they did come from India? But they must have been here for a long time because they were a symbol in ancient mythology, were used as a symbol of the goddess Hera. And so they kind of symbolised, here is the queen of the gods, she's quite a few So she's kind of associated with queens and empresses. And so the peacock was kind of like a regal animal.
Speaker 3:That's mad.
Speaker 1:I think it maybe did come from India, but then it must have Sri
Speaker 3:Lanka, India Sri Lanka. Makes sense though, they're big. But you know, the Romans were they capturing tigers and stuff as well or
Speaker 1:what? Yeah. Oh, brought a lot of them back. I'll tell you a crazy story, the emperor Commodus, they didn't put this in Gladiator, they should, well, maybe it's too much, but this is a crazy, there's some kind of gory, there's a lot of gory stuff in ancient history, right? Crazy stuff that you wouldn't even believe.
Speaker 1:But one of the weird things, so the Romans used to like to hunt animal like and the more exotic the better sometimes. So in the Colosseum they would bring in giraffes and hippopotamuses and tigers and bears and all sorts of creatures. Commodus got special arrows made with like a crescent moon shaped head, allegedly. And they released lots of ostriches into the Colosseum, and he used these arrows to shoot all their heads off. And then they ran around like headless chickens, or headless ostriches in the Colosseum.
Speaker 1:So even though they could affect, wow, you couldn't make that up. Like, that's, that's pretty, that's pretty strange. Like, if they put that in the movie Gladiator, like, apart from, you know, animal rights, people being upset about it, probably, like, just freaking some people out.
Speaker 3:You think
Speaker 1:that can't be true. In the Roman histories, they tell us that that's what he did.
Speaker 3:I was speaking to someone earlier in the gladiators. Imagine that was football. It's nuts. You think that you go into this game and then you see people get literally beheaded. There must have been a hell of a buzz in a weird way.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you something really weird. Gladiators were the rock stars of their day. And this is true, there are ancient authors, Galen in particular, if I remember rightly, is the one who talks about how Roman women were perceived to be totally infatuated with gladiators. And he talks about how some of these guys have only got one ear and they've got their eyes all gouged out and it's always dripping with pus and stuff. But it's always surrounded by a big crowd of women.
Speaker 1:Galen talks about these guys are all gnarly from all the fighting and stuff, but they are like sex symbols in ancient Rome.
Speaker 3:Well, we haven't changed, do we? The humans haven't changed at all. Look at sports people, exactly same.
Speaker 1:Some of things maybe. It's similar to this, there's weird parallels like the poets were like the musicians of the day. So orators and poets were like big rock stars in the ancient world, they could become fabulously wealthy. And I
Speaker 3:can imagine orators, yeah, because they would have got a crowd like, oh, at him, a bell, look at
Speaker 1:him beaming. Well, Lawyer was reading Catullus and Horace, those guys would have been also like kind of like rock star symbols in the day.
Speaker 3:The Queen. Freddie Mercury back on stage reciting the poem.
Speaker 1:Freddie Mercury or something. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Same with the captains that were, same with the captain. Airline captains, they get all the attention. Why are pilots, obviously it's a tough job and it's quite safe, isn't it? But yeah, they're like rock stars pilots. If you went back to the 70s even more so, weren't they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was like
Speaker 3:You're a pilot.
Speaker 1:Things like that change over time. Back in the day it was more cool.
Speaker 3:Now it's authors, Donald.
Speaker 1:You're in It's authors like me that are really rock and roll. The rock and roll, I like it in movies and in TV series where they have a successful author and they live these kind of exciting, glamorous lives and stuff, right? But what they don't say is 99% of it is spent hunched over a tight right or in a little dark room and your own going like, so it's like we were saying earlier, you know, be careful what you wish for. Oh, great. I've got another book to write it.
Speaker 1:Didn't know I'd actually have to write a book. It's kind of gets a bit boring after a while sometimes. Complain, not working down a coal mine or something like that, you know?
Speaker 3:True. I mean, I've heard Robert Green talk about his writing. He says he nearly dies and stuff.
Speaker 1:He's like, I nearly died writing this book. Really? Well, I mean, you know, like people are like, you know, if you're into something, I've written about what I do when I'm writing books. I wrote a thing, there was a thing on Twitter about harsh advice for writers or something. And I mean, because sometimes people ask me, I just kind of rattled off while I do this and I do that and I do that.
Speaker 1:And some guy kind of replied and said, well, you know, like it sounds too much like hard work, or if that's what it involves, then count me out kind of thing. Whatever. And I was like, don't think it just seems like normal to me, you know, like you have your little routine that you get into and stuff like if you're serious about doing something you don't really you get used to it and you don't think it's like that big a deal. But writing can take over. Lallia is like that as well actually like we both work all day like every day like and this will shock you Scott like it was my birthday and December 27 and or Christmas Day and Boxing Day and my birthday.
Speaker 1:I just worked all day as normal. So I don't take public holidays. I work, I get up in the morning, I'll do my exercises or whatever. And I'll kind of like, you know, go to the shops and things like that. Basically just work, like I don't watch TV or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Take a lot of breaks and things like that. But like that, I'm happy with that routine. Because I like what I do. And I'm very lucky to be able to do it.
Speaker 3:It's not work for you, is it? Think about it.
Speaker 1:It's a hobby, I'm just doing my hobby, basically. But then, I think sometimes people, when people say, sometimes if you want to succeed at something, you have to be prepared to make certain sacrifices. Right. And when I talk to a lot of people that are starting off in business, or they're trying to start as a therapist, or they're trying start as an author, like, sometimes I think what's holding them back is they're not willing, they're not actually willing to put in the number of hours, or the effort or make the sacrifices that other people might make in order to become successful.
Speaker 3:They only see the tip of the iceberg, they see your books bestseller, they see you doing podcasts with this community. They're like, oh my god, I need that but they don't see your everyday work and hours on end research and write them.
Speaker 1:That's like the musicians, kind of think, they might be a rock star or whatever, but they don't think of the endless hours of practising and stuff like people have gone through in order to kind of I think also you know a lot of people today, they kind of want instant success don't they? And social media holds out like that.
Speaker 3:Social media is like the lottery these days because something you do could go viral. I like that dog faced guy where he did that sip the cranberry juice and then he got, it's like with the lottery, there's not even a point thinking you will go viral because you'll just put your hopes in it, it's going to crush you. No point. Otherwise, you're just going to keep holding, can't do this all viral bullshit.
Speaker 1:I think the best but if you want to succeed, like first of all, you have to accept that you can't guarantee it. It's not entirely under your control. Over the years, I've worked with many successful people, authors and businessmen and things. And I've noticed most of them if I ask them about their lives, when they look back on it, they'll say there was a lot of hard work, like there was a lot of studying, there was lot of research, whatever, was long hours and stuff that they put in. But they'll also tend to say there was also quite a lot of lucky breaks, or opportunities.
Speaker 1:If I look back over my life, know, the things that really stand out for me, I was working, working, working. But then there were things that happened that seemed like opportunities that came along or luck. And I guess the thing is that some people won't seize those opportunities. Like I also see a lot of people opportunities just go straight past them. And then, but if you grab, there's certain type of people that will grab on to an opportunity when it comes up.
Speaker 1:But still there's an element of luck in it. Now you're in the right place at the right time or whatever, and things work out for you. But you know, it's a combination, it was a combination of perseverance, I think combined, you know, determination to succeed, and all that kind of stuff, but combined with a certain amount of luck or opportunity. And I think you really have to just focus on doing what you're passionate about. What you've, to put it another way, what you value, what's consistent with your core values.
Speaker 1:Because for a start, if you're really doing that, I think you're more likely to succeed, but it takes time. Like when I started writing books and things like that, it took me a while really.
Speaker 3:Were you always a good writer? Or did you suck balls back in the day?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I still don't really think of myself as a writer in a weird way. Was, to be honest, when I was a kid at school, I was quite good at creative writing. And then I didn't really bother with it. Kind of want, I remember I wanted to be a writer, when I was like a wee boy. And then at some point, kind of lost interest in it.
Speaker 1:And then I just kind of like stumbled into it again later in life. By the time I actually became a writer, thought, I'm not really that bothered about this anymore. But I thought it's kind of cool. I get to talk about stuff that I'm interested in. Like, I don't have this kind of burning desire anymore to be like a best selling author.
Speaker 1:Like I just think of it as like, you know, a bonus that I get to discuss my hobby.
Speaker 3:Did you do any training on writing? Or did you just you were just a good writer and you just did it? I
Speaker 1:think the main thing that helped me was I read a lot of books. And the main thing that helped me is that I can meet a lot of people that want to become writers. When you write a book, when you pitch a book, when you do a book proposal to a publisher, you usually have to do a proposal document and you'll talk about the book you're going to write. You also have to talk about yourself. Like as a publisher will say, why should you write this book?
Speaker 1:And I think one of the biggest obstacles for authors, especially young people, by the very fact that they're young, is that if they're asked to kind of explain why, why would you be the best person to write this book, they often don't have an answer to that question. And what gives you an answer to that question is often life experience or a career behind you or whatever. So the thing that was a big advantage to me was I had a career as a psych therapist. And so the publishers would say, why should you write a book about stoicism and CBT? And I go, because I've been a CBT practitioner for a long time and have a degree in philosophy.
Speaker 1:And they go, okay, that makes sense. Then other people come along to me
Speaker 2:and go, want to write a
Speaker 1:book about CBT and stoicism and pitch it to a publisher. I go, well, you done degrees in philosophy? And have you been practising? No, I haven't, like I just decided I'm interested in it. And that's good to do that, but it's going to be hard, it's harder to sell to a publisher.
Speaker 1:And so I think again, people want instant success when they haven't kind of like done all of the work in order to get there.
Speaker 3:I can tell when someone's writing if they got that fire or in a about it, you read your writing and you know you're on about it. Some people will read your book and then retype it, reword it and put that out there. And then it says the right same things, but it doesn't have that, it's hard to explain it. It doesn't have an essence in the book coming from the author.
Speaker 1:I used to worry, some people worry about plagiarism. Like when you start writing, copy my stuff on the internet now. A lot of the things that I've written, not so much I don't think my books, but articles that I've written, I'll often see other people have like copied them. Even some well known authors and stuff, I've read a new article, I think that seems very familiar to me. I'm pretty sure I wrote that.
Speaker 1:But you can only have to not, I think it's bound to happen. And you have to kind of think Yeah, but differences. I actually understand that. Yeah, why, you know, I was made to all those plays, right? And I could, I could write another one, like, again, because I understood that, because I researched it, like, that just copies it from somebody else doesn't really understand where it
Speaker 3:came from. Yeah, and get
Speaker 1:it slightly wrong and stuff.
Speaker 3:Do you know they call you? Basically, I did this content thing before, they call people like you coal mines, which are similar to a gold mine where they know they can just go to where you post stuff and it is a treasure trove of information they can just use and repurpose. So, these single people like you out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I'm quite happy because I don't need to achieve
Speaker 4:any I
Speaker 1:find myself saying that a lot to people, like in business terms and stuff like, oh, I don't really need to achieve anymore. So I'm quite happy with where I'm at the moment. I just like to carry on talking about my hobby, and writing books about it and stuff like that. I would do it for free.
Speaker 3:Would your opinion change if you weren't successful when people were stealing your work?
Speaker 1:Would I feel differently about it? It's hard to say, I don't know. I think the difference is if you're able do it, so if I was earning enough money that I could kind of survive and pay my rent and stuff like that, but if I was struggling to get by and people stole my work and that maybe I lost out, might think that might stop me from being able carry on doing it. But I feel like there's a level that you reach where you go, okay, my rent's paid now. Right?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm not really that bothered about anything beyond that. Do like the idea of reaching lots of people. So how to find like a Roman Emperor, I think 100,000 copies have been sold and it's been translated into about 15 languages. I like the idea that loads of people find out about that and it introduces them to stoicism and stuff.
Speaker 3:And Marcus Aurelius, that's the best book on Marcus Aurelius that I've read that made me understand him properly, made me really understand who he was as opposed to just read the meditations. I
Speaker 1:think Pierre Hodo was in A Citadel, I think is a really good book about Marcus Aurelius, that one as well. There aren't that many books about Marcus Aurelius, there are probably going to be more appear in
Speaker 3:the future I think. But people speak, like Ryan Haldin, but they say Marcus Aurelius and it's like okay, said that. But then it's like, that's it. It's good to quote him but when you actually explain his upbringing and how we came here and did that. So, it's the same with anything, if you understand something from the core, you understand it more.
Speaker 1:Oh, do you know another reason that helps you to understand something I think and this is probably true of anything like so you might get someone who's say a fitness instructor and maybe they've just kind of like done some courses or read some books or articles or whatever and they're kind of like you know, get on social media and they're talking about it. And then you might get someone who's actually coached like 1000s of people over years and years and years and they've got loads of experience and stuff. And you know, so their understanding of it will come from the feedback that they get from the clients. And they go not only do I know like what the article say, but also how people respond to it, and the obstacles they encounter, and how they get past those, and the kind of fears and the doubts and stuff they have. So I think the thing that's helped me a lot in writing is years and years and years and years, like twenty five years of giving talks and debating with people and doing therapy with clients.
Speaker 1:One of the good things about doing therapy with clients, I'll sit with a client and we'll end up talking about CBT or maybe we'll talk about stoicism. And then they'll go, I don't understand this bit, Donald, or that bit reminds me of this thing in Buddhism or, and I've had those conversations thousands of times. So then when I go to write a book, I go, I kind of know what the audience are going to say because I've spoken to like 1000s of them. And we've kind of chatted about it and stuff like that. So you kind of have a different level of understanding of the subject.
Speaker 1:And maybe I guess you have a certain understanding of the audience in a way, because you've had loads of personal conversations with the type of people buying the books and things. You've said, this is what the stoics say, and they go, well, that sounds like bullshit to me, Donald. Or, I don't really understand how it would apply. Then you go, okay. And then you kind of have to elaborate on things and give some examples.
Speaker 1:And then that allows you to understand how you would need to put it across if you were going to present it in a book so that people would actually understand it and be able to relate to it, hopefully.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's definitely true. I think it's true in regards to this business as well, knowing about counting macros and stuff like that for years and years and helping people, doing it at scale, literally tens of thousands of people doing macros and me doing check ins, listening to what they say in back, the results. And then you just go down the female rabbit hole in terms of the menstrual cycle, how that impacts emotion and emotion impacts eating. You understand so much more and you see the bros on Instagram like calorie deficit and you're like, yeah, mate, obviously, fuck now. Calorie deficit lose weight.
Speaker 3:Now let's talk about the individual person and their lifestyle and everything that goes into calories in versus calories out. There's a lot of stuff that happens and the questions come in. It's like someone saying cognitive distancing. It's like you did with the river example, makes a lot more sense. So, there's a lot of those online.
Speaker 3:It's a shame really, they make it hard for other people to understand. They just tell people they're like robots and you just got to do this and that calorie deficit and that's it. It's always
Speaker 1:a way throughout history, because people will simplify things. You understand things more deeply by actually talking to people about them a lot over years and years. But then, know, other people would just come and take that and then they teach it, but they'll make generalisations based on it. Because it's in every subject throughout history.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1:So someone will go, but this works. If you do this, apparently that You go, yeah, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you've got to adjust it a little bit. You only learn that from actually doing it in practise.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. It's the thing, it's actually hard for people on the other end or like to know the classic one is like eat chicken and broccoli, wherever you lose weight. Someone's, I'm not losing weight. And it's like, well, you're done, you're stupid, you're worth less. And then, that's just not good for us.
Speaker 3:It's not good psychologically, is it Donald? Those are the people that need help then.
Speaker 1:Makes you feel like you're a failure of people go, well, you're just not doing it properly, Scott. Doing this thing that doesn't work, we're not doing it properly.'
Speaker 3:Yeah, then they're like, what's that quote? Is it like, Stuart isn't as good as his teacher? Or some of they are. If you don't understand all the possibilities, maybe to help them, you're not going to get anywhere. It's a good story but you've got 100,000, fair play.
Speaker 3:I think coming up to 10 now in UK time so it's good. People are saying it's
Speaker 1:a school of life, Donald. The Donald School of Life. So I like it. We're doing lesson forward of six, so we've got more to come. I've got more philosophy to come and philosophy always was, like you said, the art of living.
Speaker 1:It's about learning to deal with the problems that we all face in life and overcoming our problems with our emotions. And it's, in a sense, it's fundamental to everything else that we do in life. Because our emotions are fear, anger, sadness, potentially become barriers to everything else that we're trying to do in life. And you know, in this case, we're talking about fitness and health and exercise. But anger, fear and sadness can get in the way of that.
Speaker 1:So it's something that we know, like we often need to look at addressing in any aspect of life. It's general purpose stuff, fundamental stuff.
Speaker 3:And we'll get to more of, I think next two weeks is like the world opening up so we can get into strategies for that and maybe
Speaker 1:getting back out into the light. Scott, be proud of me. Do know what I did the other day? Maybe I should have took a little video of this. I wish I could show you buddy.
Speaker 1:Like I went, no, I told you sometimes I jump rope. I could do a my lap skipping rope with me. Or as we manly types call it jumping rope, not skipping. Skipping is what my little girl does. I like to call it jumping rope.
Speaker 1:So it sounds better. But basically skipping, like so I do a lot of skipping. And I do it in my bedroom Scott, I think that's part of the appeal of it, as I can just do it wherever I go, I just do it in my bedroom or whatever, do it in a hotel room and stuff. And the other day I thought, do know, it's really sunny in Athens, I'm going to go to the park and do it because the young guys are out there with bulk pads, practicing their boxing and stuff and doing martial arts. They're going to jump a rope in the park for a wee while.
Speaker 1:And man, I must have done it about three times longer than normal, I think. And it was the view was amazing. I thought I've never thought about this before. But you get a bit bored when you're staring at the wall. And I thought I'm looking at Mount Lukavatos, and all these kind of cypress trees and stuff and the sun's blazing, I can feel the sun in my skin.
Speaker 1:And then this is like a million times better than doing it in my bedroom. And I cannot, I don't want to go home, want to just kind of like hang out here for a while and do it that longer. So like, I thought this is like the best gym in the world. Like just doing it out in the in the park where people are walking their dogs and stuff. And yeah, so I found that really kind of motivating.
Speaker 1:And I know it was interesting, it interested me that I found that I exercised for a lot longer than I would normally.
Speaker 3:And also as well, there's like people watch that sensation that like people are watching you maybe like, I keep going, that could be coming into it, the view obviously is good. But time must have gone by, you were probably less focused on time, more focused on the view and then time just goes by.
Speaker 1:Thank you and kind of enjoying the sunshine and stuff. And I was watching the guys were boxing in front of me. So I was kind of like, just stare at the wall, like watch my top watch, like it's boring. Was watching these guys boxing. And I'm like, okay, that's kind of entertaining.
Speaker 1:Why? And I'm also there's probably a lot of gluttony thinking I don't want to look rubbish at this, I need to kind of keep going a little bit longer.
Speaker 3:People should definitely access that. That's why people love running. Once you get past running, like, you're nearly dying and you can see the view when you go running, you will run places you won't usually go and you discover new paths and views and stuff.
Speaker 1:What I'd like to do next time when I go jumping, there's a place we go in this hill called Turcavonia and there's like a little plot, just a little plateau like they've kind of paved it, a little bench on it. It's got this epic view like on the edge of the hill, looks out across Athens. If I got there, I'll climb up the hill and skipping to stand there with a massive like scenic view across all I say, like, that'd be pretty amazing. So you've got I've got I've got this idea now like about actually, you know, going outdoors and doing my exercise. Never really thought about that before.
Speaker 1:Because I always thought of it as something I could do in hotel rooms. And that was the appeal to me. I thought from traveling, I don't need to go to the gym and stuff like skipping rope out, I can do it in my room. And I think it's also because I lived in Canada for a long time. And I'd be like, even if it's snowing outside, I kept my room open and I'm like, no, it's better to be outside.
Speaker 1:Now I'm in the summer.
Speaker 3:And you're in Greece, like, come on.
Speaker 1:Know, because I'm in Greece. But I thought, I do, you know, I get much a lot more enjoyment out of doing exercise when it's out in the open year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%. It's a problem with home workouts at the moment. Might think some people got nice homes and some people are like, Oh, really no space to do home workouts. Sometimes it's miserable, it's hard, it's really hard. Like going to the gym in the sun, it's amazing.
Speaker 3:You walk to the gym, it's sunny, the gym's got light coming in. There's definitely a lot of psychological things going on, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's good to be out in the open air as well. The sunshine, especially even while there's still some virus around and all that, as an alternative to go into a gym and stuff, like it's nice if you can do things outdoors. There's a lot you can do outdoors like calisthenics and what I do is any equipment, can run, you can jump.
Speaker 3:Well, there's people mentioning- I've
Speaker 1:got calves like two bricks, Scott.
Speaker 3:You've got calves like two bricks.
Speaker 1:Calves like two bricks. That's the only part of my entire body that's actually taught me, my two calf muscles are rock solid jealous,
Speaker 3:I got no calf.
Speaker 1:Well, wouldn't be, mean, it's not really that if I was wearing a skirt and high heels or something like that, I be able to show off, but maybe, you know, when I will next time I wear my coat. Show everybody like my well toned calves, they're pretty impressive for an old guy.
Speaker 3:Well, people are asking you to change your Instagram to live like Donald. And I think you should.
Speaker 1:That should be no, because that's not alliterative. It should be dialect Donald would be more like.
Speaker 3:You're going to have to get your skipping robot now, Neil, on the Instagram, on the old get the calves out.
Speaker 1:Jumping, I should jump it up. Well, don't really like do you do videos yourself? Guess it's your job. So that's okay. But sometimes you know, what's your opinion about this, Scott?
Speaker 1:I'm interested.
Speaker 3:Well, skipping rope.
Speaker 1:About people kind of vanity posting videos of themselves doing yoga or exercise or whatever because I guess it's motivational. But you know, like other people complain about it, don't they? Sometimes they're kind of like, I'm sick of watching my friends doing a really their CrossFit or their yoga or whatever on their Facebook all the time.
Speaker 3:I personally don't post anything of me working out, but the people that do it with no business angle, I don't know. Do you know what this is? I'm so interested in, I think it was a study on this. The girls who post just their body, they see themselves more of an as a human. They see themselves as something to put on someone to like us.
Speaker 3:They're detaching themselves from the humanity. Can't remember the study, but it was interesting to see that point of view.
Speaker 1:I feel like maybe it's all things in moderation. Can see how it could really benefit somebody to do that. I guess me going and skipping in the park if I'm around other people, maybe it does motivate me and stuff. If you post
Speaker 3:you post a video skipping, it would definitely motivate people because you've got like more to your life, like you'll download this and you skip and do some healthy things.
Speaker 1:Even though I books and stuff like that, can also find
Speaker 3:time to skip. Exactly. You
Speaker 1:too could be
Speaker 3:It's important, like a lot of our members will post videos of them doing their workouts and it's good to see, I think the important thing is real life people posting themselves, So, working out with their family, think all that stuff's beneficial. If you're posting your abs every day, like your ab book every day.
Speaker 1:You know the reason? Do know why I've got a skipping rope, Scott? It's got to do with the fact that I'm Scottish. Yeah, why? Because I'm bit of a cheapskate really.
Speaker 1:Was gonna, I was living in Canada, it was snowing all the time, I thought I can't be bothered going to the gym in the blizzard. Right? So I thought, I'll buy a treadmill, I'll buy a running machine. And then I start looking for the best one. And I'm like, Jesus, I could buy a car for the amount of money that it costs to buy a top of the range treadmill.
Speaker 1:Right? Thousands and thousands of dollars. So I started Googling it, I was like, how does the amount of calories that you burn on a treadmill compared to the calories that you burn jumping a rope? Similar or more, like jumping rope. And I thought by a treadmill, I was looking at was $5 or something.
Speaker 1:And skipping rope was $10. And I thought also, when I go on holiday, I can't take the treadmill with me to my hotel room. I just take skipping rope with me. And I thought I love things like that. I love simple cheap things that you you can just take with you.
Speaker 1:So skipping it takes a little while to get into it fast. I've got a lot of injuries actually at the beginning. I kept tearing my calf muscle or whatever, I learned to kind of like stretch a bit and stuff like that. I got more resilient because I was doing it more. And now I love the portability of it.
Speaker 1:So I just got like a little rope, I stick it in my jacket pocket or whatever, go somewhere I can just jump rope or whatever.
Speaker 3:You're going to be known in Athens as soon as that crazy jump rope guys. That's the skipping philosopher. You're in, that's your new Instagram handle. Boxing, boxers, martial artists, all skipping, being light on their feet. I think it's important to skip just because being able to bounce if you feel more alive.
Speaker 3:A lot of people can't even walk a mile, they're like, oh, dying, which is fine, build it up. To be able to bounce, you can probably bounce about, you just feel good in yourself because you're just nimble. It's weird, it's hard to explain to people but when you feel nimble and fit like running fit, skipping fit, it's good. It's better than being able to bench 200 ks. Better feeling because it's your body, you're in tune with your body.
Speaker 1:Being in tune with your body, I think you also get that from yoga and things like that. I like doing calluses. Used to when I was a young guy, I used to lift weights. And a lot like, you know, a long, long time ago, but I stopped doing it because I got a bit bored, like with a repetition of it after like three or four years or whatever. Yeah, I used to go to the gym every night, I was in the night, the gym like, you know, four or five nights a week.
Speaker 1:And after a while, after a few years, was a little bit bored with us now. But the thing, the only thing that makes a repetitive exercise I think tolerable over the long term is the social aspect. So I was training with a bunch of my friends and I thought as long as they're around, then I don't really mind just like doing the same bench by over and over again, because then I can chat to them and stuff like that. And it seems like it about camaraderie and stuff. But it's harder to do monotonous exercise over the long term on your own.
Speaker 3:It's a battle. And that's why I think lot of people give up weightlifting, but as a study mind, there's studies on weightlifting and health and stuff that would definitely make you maybe change your mind to add back in.
Speaker 1:I know from looking at the research a little bit, it's one of the most reliable forms of exercise. It's been shown to slow down
Speaker 3:Alzheimer's and dementia and after six months of doing it, the study was on people much older and the results were held on for two years later. I think what it makes people do is it makes you, if you're lifting weights, you have to connect your mind to the muscle, you have to have those pathways fire up because you're using the muscle and you might go through your life, some people go through their life not even using the muscles, they're just walking about eating, there's nothing going on. So, it's not good. But if you can get your body to start using the muscles and strengthen them, I think it goes and then bone health as well, massive. Skipping is tough, tough to keep going.
Speaker 1:It takes a wee while to get into it.
Speaker 3:That's the issue of skipping, you need to get competent in not tripping up all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the first time you do it, you're like, and then you go, maybe pull the muscle up. So, it's hard, like at first to kind of get into it. But once you've got into the habit of it, then it seems really convenient to do. Do
Speaker 3:you feel like it's like a meditative thing for you now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. It becomes like a little meditation.
Speaker 3:That's a common thing to happen.
Speaker 1:It's very rhythmical. It's overwhelming. You kind of need to pay attention to the rhythm like as if you really play it, it's not do you know what I feel like? Feel like it's a lot like playing a musical instrument. Like it would be, I feel like being a drummer.
Speaker 1:So you're skipping, you have to keep time, because if you get out of rhythm, you trip on the rope, that's when you kind of stumble or whatever, when you stop paying attention to the, when the rope hits the floor and you're like jumping in time to like, if you'd kind of mind wanders for a minute and then you're like, like trip. So you have to be really focused on the ba ba ba, keeping the rhythm. Be present. Like being a drummer or a bass player.
Speaker 3:Freddie Mercury's in the front and you're there just skipping away on drums. It's good for loads of stuff like coordination and stuff as well. I think a lot of people are very uncoordinated. You're saying it's like meditation to you. How long did it take you to get
Speaker 1:skipping fluidity and skipping? Doctor Oh man, it took me a really long time.
Speaker 3:How long is that?
Speaker 1:Doctor I don't know, maybe even just to be able to do it. I probably put something like maybe sit like practicing every day for like a few two, like two or three weeks or more before I wasn't just completely rubbish at it. And in months before I stopped pulling muscles, kept kind of pulling my calf muscle, which I don't ever get injuries now for some reason, like I don't even stretch as much anymore. But like, I guess my body's just more used to it. So it took me to really kind of get more into it.
Speaker 1:It took me I'll tell you what I did, you wouldn't believe this. Because I wouldn't pretend that I'm in particularly good shape and stuff. When I came to Athens A Couple Of Years ago, I was here for a couple of months and I went okay, I've got some time in my hands, I'm going to do some crazy intensive thing. So I thought for an experiment, I'm going to do about twenty minutes of exercise twice a day. And I went and I just got in my patio.
Speaker 1:So I jumped rope for like two or three minutes, then I'd like to press ups or sit ups or whatever. And then I jumped rope for another two or three minutes and then depress ups or whatever. I did that twice a day, and I'd fast every second day. So I'd only eat every two days for about six weeks or something like that, just to see if I could do it. But after a while, I was like, kind of in the routine of doing this now.
Speaker 1:I wanted to see if I could, because I find fasting quite easy. In fact, I'm fasting today. We usually fast every Monday. And now I do this one meal a day thing as well, where I just eat lunch and that's
Speaker 3:The thing with that is as well as like, same with people who were really into sugar and chocolates is like, once you stop eating chocolate and stuff like a week or two, you start realising don't actually want it, just like cutting that cord, don't eat it and you can start.
Speaker 1:I've never really been interested in snacks and things like that. So again, everyone's kind of like different, guess I've got a slow metabolism or something like that. Really get hungry for quite a long time. And like, if I ate more than one meal a day, I'd feel like really over full. Now I think I'm kind of like, you know, I'm just
Speaker 3:I guarantee you have, you probably feel, you're probably like, so most people will feel slight hunger and take that as like a ding, like I have to eat them feeling hungry. You have to get used to that slight hunger, you can't just live always eating as soon as that comes.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what Socrates says is that you need to get used to the feeling and not like that's what he means in part by moderation. You don't always have to act on it. You should eat what's healthy, not just eat, like whenever you feel hungry. And particularly, as we talked about before, like he says, also some foods are designed to tantalise you when you're not even hungry. So you think I'm kind of full up, but that pudding looks really good.
Speaker 1:Like, or you walk past a shop and you see kind of like something that looks tasty, you're not really that hungry, but you have it anyway because it looks like it would taste nice. And so he says, you've got to be watchful about foods that tempt you or drink that tempts you when you're not thirsty or food that tempts you when you're not actually hungry. It's a really easy way to fall into overeating. Even in Greece they thought that there's something strange about this, like food that people want to eat when they're not hungry because it looks nice.
Speaker 3:It's just, it's a craving, isn't it? Craving and hunger, different things. Craving is definitely not the same thing. They can overlap, but they're not the same thing. And that's the confusion people have.
Speaker 3:I'm craving that yet. You're hungry? No, craving it. I'm
Speaker 1:not a good role model for these things but like I do have all these weird little stoic habits like I take a cold shower every morning and I like to do sort of calisthenic type stuff because I like the minimalism of it. So like the freedom and stuff of not having any equipment really apart from a rope, and that like the gym and all that. So I kind of think I rather just be able to do stuff all on my own, like wherever I go, like, and I drink water with like a just a couple of drops of vinegar in it. Like because I realised It's
Speaker 3:disgusting, isn't it? Is it?
Speaker 1:No, it's nice. Do you
Speaker 3:mean it's nice?
Speaker 1:It's lovely. That's what the Roman legionaries drank. They carry vinegar with them and they put it well and they're smart. The reason is that if you drink water on its own, it doesn't taste of anything. So you have a couple of sips.
Speaker 1:And then you kind of forget to drink it almost like you've got to go keep reminding yourself I'll drink this thing, it doesn't taste of anything, right. But if it's got like a couple of drops of water, it's kind of because it's got a flavour, like you're kind of more likely to keep going back to it. Find my
Speaker 3:friends talk to about squash now.
Speaker 1:Squash, yeah, by the way, drinks like, I don't need the
Speaker 3:we've evolved
Speaker 1:too many calories and acid and stuff. Like I'll just drink water. Like, a little drop of vinegar and honestly, but the trick is you've got to use the right type of vinegar. Not actually, like not Welsh vinegar, right?
Speaker 3:What is it? What is the malt thing you go? What is it?
Speaker 1:From the fish and chip shop. Just put like a little drop of balsamic vinegar. And like just like two or three drops of balsamic vinegar. And it doesn't taste vinegary, it just kind of like gives it a lot. You could put like just to like a couple of drops of fruit juice you could put in your water.
Speaker 1:But I guess people put like cucumber in and a slice of orange and all to flavour the water a little bit.
Speaker 3:I hate vinegar, see.
Speaker 1:You don't like it? But you not have it in your fish and chips?
Speaker 3:No, just salt, loads of salt. Really? Just salt. I love salt. I think salt is one of the best things.
Speaker 3:I think salt is like a bad rep. Obviously, moderation is good, but loads of people will not eat salt. It's like you need salt for muscle contraction and stuff. You feel terrible with not enough salt, especially when you exercise. We'll finish in this a second because I think you'll have some words of wisdom maybe from a fitness angle it's different.
Speaker 3:So, people are saying in the week, I'm good with my nutrition, I'm good. The weekend comes, I'm just eating desserts, got a habit, get a one off plan. As soon as that Friday night hits, everything changes. My typical advice is see every day as a day, like we've made up Saturday and Sunday, we've made it up, shouldn't this just a day? But I think people are boxing themselves into like, I have to do this in the weekend because
Speaker 1:it's a weekend? Well, what I'm going to say is maybe, all right, let's start with strategy, high level philosophy of life stuff. So when you're trying to change habits or behaviour in psychotherapy, behaviour therapy, it doesn't matter what you're doing. That could be anything, any type of behaviour change. So the paradox, there's a deep paradox about it, which is that often when people are trying to change a behaviour, they lack sufficient motivation to do it in the face of high levels of temptation, trigger situations and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:So I've got them all
Speaker 1:right until this situation happens And then I don't kind of have the discipline or the motivation or whatever to kind of persevere with it. And often it's because they're trying to change the habit for the wrong reasons. It's a reason, a different reason, a bigger reason. So when I was working with clients, I used to do smoking cessation. And for instance, when people are quitting smoking, one of the things I'd always say to them is that, we'll talk about cigarettes and techniques and all the other stuff, like many different tactics and strategies.
Speaker 1:But then towards the end of the session, I'd say I'll let you in a secret and be like, what's that dog? I'd say, it's not really about cigarettes. Bigger than that. Quitting smoking, it's not really about cigarettes, it's about something much deeper, like it's about the type of person that you are, It's about whether you want to be the type of person that continues smoking, or whether you want to be the type of person that used to smoke and then managed to quit and has now moved on. And what the difference is between those two versions of yourself, it's about your character.
Speaker 1:It's not about the thing, it's not even about your physical health. Those are factors, they matter, but more fundamentally it's about character, it's about the type of person that you want to be in life. And so like there are two reasons for that. One is that basing things on your character is in a number of ways we know more powerful in terms of motivating behaviour, it's more robust. It has other advantages, like if you're trying to motivate yourself because of the future, the future is always uncertain.
Speaker 1:So you could say I'm doing exercise in order to kind of to fit, to lose weight or whatever, then it's easy to go we'll just slack him one day, it won't really matter because it's kind of a distant long term goal or whatever. But if it's more about self discipline, go I want to be the type of person that's got that self discipline, I want to be a driven motivated person that cares about their health and looks after themselves, you you need to stick with that every day. You're failing to be that person one day if you quit or backslide, you give in to it. Focusing too much on external goals, it's easy to kind of cheat, like take days off, find excuses. If you focus more on your character, you'll tend to be more consistent.
Speaker 1:It's more in the here and now, it's more immediate, right? But it also has wider implications. So somebody that quits smoking is potentially going to be more skilled and self confident about managing their behaviour in general. Like somebody who manages to eat in moderation or to sacrifice unhealthy foods from their diet is going to be more skilled and more confident about exercising self discipline at work in the role as a parent and in other areas of their life. So you're developing high level cognitive skills that are generalizable, to put it in more technical terms, right?
Speaker 1:So it's not just about the cheesy Watsits, right? It's not just about the cream cakes, right? It's bigger than that. It's about you, it's about your personality, but the type of person that you are in life, and the skills that would apply across the board. So number one, those skills will generalise and apply to life in general, right.
Speaker 1:And number two, if you have kids, like or someone else in your life that you care about, it's also about modelling the character traits that you want someone else to perceive in you. You know if you kind of think I wish my kids didn't eat cheesy watsuits all the time, you know what you should do, Stop eating cheesy warts yourself. You need to become the change that you want to see in the world, lead by example. So that's number one and number two. Number one is it will apply to other situations.
Speaker 1:Number two it's going to have an impact on your relationships, like the way that other people perceive you. The focus, know your motivation will be more consistent if it's more character based. Like it gets to Friday, it doesn't matter if it's Friday, what difference does it make what day of the week it is? Like, if you lack self discipline on Friday night, you're going to be lacking, you know, every time you give in, you think I know this is unhealthy, but I'm going to do it anyway, you're strengthening a bad habit. And Saturday morning, you're going to be a little bit more vulnerable to backsliding Sunday morning as well.
Speaker 1:And that's also, you know, when you think about it that way, you think by doing this, by eating this cheesy Watsa, right, am I strengthening the good habit or am I strengthening the bad habit? You go, just one doesn't matter. Well, but it strengthens a bad habit. So tomorrow it's going to be even harder for me not to eat cheesy Watsuits. Why?
Speaker 1:Because I had this one. It's not just about this one, it's about my character in the long term and in general, about the type of person And maybe it wouldn't matter if I just had one cheesy watsuit, but because I really want it and yet I'm able to flush it down the toilet or feed it to the dog, that means that tomorrow when I need to exercise self discipline, I'm going to find it easier. Because I set a precedent and I've strengthened those muscles in my character and my mind. I'm better at being self disciplined in general now. Whereas every time you make an excuse, you weaken your ability to exercise self control.
Speaker 1:So you need to think about it more in terms of the effect it's having on your character traits.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%. I think a personal example is like opting for Deliveroo on the weekends and not going like, do I really want to be this person that goes straight to Deliveroo spends three times the amount of money because I'm lazy because I don't want to go to the shop to get food to prepare for me. And that's like something about, that go work as well, do want to just do the short
Speaker 1:thing about making food and all that, it takes me far less time to make a salad. And you should see my salads, Scott, they're elaborate. Would describe them
Speaker 3:on Instagram after you're skipping video.
Speaker 1:I'll send you some recipes and stuff. We've got stoic Do you know I did a live stoic soup session once, Facebook live where we made stoic soup, people around the world were making it. Recipe for soup, we'll send you.
Speaker 3:Does it have any leaks?
Speaker 1:I think maybe it does have leaks,
Speaker 3:The Romans had leaks. Yeah, stole it from the Welsh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably stole it from the Welsh. I'll show you my stoic soup recipe, But it takes me far less time. Because also, you do something a lot, I made salad the other day and Lao is like, Jesus, how did you manage to make that so quickly? Because I make it every day. Doing like two things at once.
Speaker 1:So once you make something a lot, you can like, oh, I'm really good at doing this. It takes me a fraction of the time to make that it would take me to go and order takeaway and wait for it. And it costs me nothing, it's peanuts, to chop up a lettuce, chop up, put some olives and whatnot in it, it's easy. And time flies by and while I'm doing it, do you know, I'm on my audio book, I'm a big fan of audio books, Scott, you should be too. You're using your arms and legs when you're listening to your audio book, you've been moving your skipping.
Speaker 1:Like, while I'm making my salad, I'm listening to Julius Caesar's Conquest of Gaul. That's my audio book at the moment. Get the Barbarians.
Speaker 3:I listened to you, I was listening to your audio book actually, I was, I remember the thing with audio, you remember where you are when you listen. I was listening to yours sunbathing in Nice in France. So, when I think of your book, think, oh that's unloaned your Nice. But you're thinking crushing veg. I'm thinking of jumping up.
Speaker 3:Julia Caesar and you're crushing veg. That's a good thing. That's what you call habit stacking as well, isn't it? Where you just do something and add someone else to it as beneficial, happy days. Like listening to other chat, a long one but if you do it whilst cooking Donald's stoic soup.
Speaker 1:I'll send you the stoic soup recipe. Yes. Healthy and nutritious, Like you'll be surprised how well Stoics eat. Like it's just a vegetable soup. How you make it in a crock pot?
Speaker 1:Have you got a crock pot, Scott? Like a slow cooker?
Speaker 3:Don, you're speaking to the wrong, but I'm going to improve my cooking skills. I don't have one. I'll get one.
Speaker 1:It's impossible to burn anything, because it cooks on a low temperature for a long time. You just do it and then you bugger off and leave it. I come back like eight hours later or whatever.
Speaker 3:It's all like, it's just like, this every day?
Speaker 1:Not every day. I make salad every day, every single day. Used to make Greek salad, cretin dakos, like a Greek thing I used to make every day and then I stopped eating carbs or I stopped eating as many carbs. So it's made from a Cretan rusk, you chop the tomatoes really fine and like some olive oil, crumble some feta on top and some olives, some sun dried tomatoes on this twice pax madia, like twice baked bread, like a hard bread. I can make that and this is controversial Scott, but my dacos is better than any other DACOS I've ever had in Greece.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure. Any trouble for saying that?
Speaker 3:I'm seeing the Donald, the stoic cook influencer shining through at the moment. I think your true calling isn't writing books, it's doing recipes.
Speaker 1:She's doing recipes. Lalia made lentil soup the other day as well. Does a lot of cooking. Yeah, I mean during lockdown you've got opportunities. It's amazing how cheap it is, especially in a, I used to live in Toronto, it's an expensive city.
Speaker 1:You go out for a meal and it's like $100 for two people. You can make a meal for like $5, especially if it's winter vegetables or something like stoic soup is dark, stoic soup is ridiculously cheap. Leek, lentils, I bet even in Britain you can make it for less than £5 And it would last for like a whole week or whatever, you just make a huge pot over. You've got me in my soup bowl. I used to make the dog food, like I'd go and get liver and heart and all that chop it up and I'd make it in the crock pot for the dog.
Speaker 3:You are a chef. Yeah,
Speaker 1:cook food for the dog. I can all the awful and stuff. And it's much healthier than the rubbish that you get in tins and all that. Doctor.
Speaker 3:It's I think this is great. Is I need you to send me all the stuff. I'm going get Louise to do a video of her doing it. And we're going to say this is Donald Stoics.
Speaker 1:It's nice. You've to put vinegar in it though, Scott.
Speaker 3:No, fucking hell.
Speaker 2:You do it once it's cooked, just put a
Speaker 1:little bit. Honestly, like a little bit of red wine vinegar. Red wine vinegar. Honestly, not your Welsh vinegar. Just like little bit of expensive vinegar on the end to give it a lot more flavor.
Speaker 1:You don't have to, but And a bit of nice olive oil.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You like Olive oil,
Speaker 3:Olive oil, yeah, olive oil.
Speaker 1:Lentils, leeks, carrot. That's about it, really. Maybe
Speaker 3:a couple of And I need to get a crock pot, yeah?
Speaker 1:Can just cook it in a normal pot, just put it on a low heat and leave it for longer, all the flavours will blend. Crock pots are dark cheap, like you can probably buy them for like 20 or $30 or whatever cheap one. And then you know, the thing about crock pot is that you can't burn the food. So you make a big thing of whatever and then you kind of set it up in the morning, or you could do it overnight, and then you just leave it. And then you come back next time you go, it cooked really slowly, it's already now.
Speaker 1:And you can make a big quantity of food for your whole family, or you make a load of it and you put it in little Tupperware things and freezer or whatever, then actually meals for the week or whatever. And it costs, you know, potentially, it's really cheap as well, man. I think people waste so much money on prepared foods. Like some of the most unhealthy foods you can buy, like are the most expensive. Like and you can buy, you know, the certain if you know how to shop around and stuff, like certain types of foods, you can get ridiculously cheap, especially where I am at the moment, I'm lucky in Greece, there's a wee guy that will sit in the end of the street and sell you a whole bag of red onions, like a carrier bag full of red onions for €1 or like they'll sell you a bag of potatoes €1 or whatever in the markets and stuff here.
Speaker 3:There's a guy in Cardiff on the stalls, he sells one pound fish and he does a song on it, one pound fish.
Speaker 1:Saw that on the internet, one pound fish. One pound soup, very, very good, donald soup, stoic soup. Would be famous. We'll see who can make the cheapest version of stoic soup. Could you make it for like under £2 or something like that?
Speaker 1:Maybe I guess if you grow your own, or when I was a kid, when I was at university, I knew this guy that was a Buddhist And I think I stayed in his house, might for a few days once. And he had loads of tomato plants growing in his house. And he worked for the forestry commission. And he'd go, he'd pick mushrooms like edible mushrooms, and bring them home. And he'd fry the mushrooms with tomatoes that he grew in his living room, just put a lot of soy sauce on it, like this is what I eat pretty much every day, like mushrooms and tomatoes, this is like my main thing, it's gonna cost him a penny.
Speaker 1:Nothing, $0.00 monies.
Speaker 3:Is he still alive? He dead?
Speaker 1:Bright on skin. I think he's still, I haven't seen him for a long time. This guy literally spends zero money on food.
Speaker 3:Most of the people are saying no, they spend most of their money on food. Think it's true, like ridiculous.
Speaker 1:Stupid amount of money that you can spend on food and you know, but you figure out what things are cheap. Like I think in Britain winter, like potatoes, carrots and onions and things and leeks are really expensive, they're really cheap aren't they normally. And so if you can make you know meals with like things that happen to be cheap at the time, it's like crazy, how much money you can potentially save. Oh, I go to Sainsbury's route every day and there's a bag, go
Speaker 3:to Sainsbury's every day, the small one in London, it's always expensive. Always like £20, 20 5 quid and I get literally a small bag of stuff, some fruit that's overpriced and some like Coke Zero and stuff and you leave with nothing for £20. It's mental, you just put the effort in to go and buy him back from a good place.
Speaker 1:Tell anybody, vinegar water. Honestly, your kidneys will explode.
Speaker 3:Other starved to death.
Speaker 1:I've got Coke Zero as well.
Speaker 3:Sweeteners, artificial sweeteners got bad rep.
Speaker 1:There's two types. If you've got the Coke Zero, Britain, do you have the green cola?
Speaker 3:Don't give
Speaker 1:a half
Speaker 3:bullshit drink. Half sugar, half sweetener.
Speaker 1:Like what are doing, Coke? What are up to? Is it about sugar? I thought it was just heavier that was in it or whatever.
Speaker 3:I think it's half sweetener, half sugar.
Speaker 1:Do you know Coke Zero is called Bloke Coke? Well, yeah,
Speaker 3:that is aimed for men. It's Black Brand and the other Coke Diet Coke.
Speaker 1:The same as Diet Coke, but similar to Diet Coke, but it's aimed at men because they said men don't like buying things that are labeled as diet.
Speaker 3:True, it's true. And actually it tastes different.
Speaker 1:Can I ask you a question, Scott, about food and nutrition? You know how you get these energy drinks? Yeah. And they say like high energy, look at aids on energy drink. What's the difference between high energy and high calorie?
Speaker 3:High energy, well, it's carbohydrates is where you get energy from. So those look at High calorie could be from fat, protein, carbs, higher energy is usually caffeine plus sugars. Glucose is glucose, It's literally just glucose.
Speaker 1:It's just calories. It's got loads of calories in it. Yeah, it's got
Speaker 3:loads of calories, but it's all from glucose. So it's good.
Speaker 1:It makes all your teeth fall out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, you know the original Leukozade, the one people who starve after a night out or like Hanover, the original Leukozade.
Speaker 1:Do you remember people when someone was sick in the hospital for a year, then at some point they stopped doing this, right? Whenever anyone was in the hospital, they used to give you a bottle of Lacazade and some grapes.
Speaker 3:Doctor Oh my God. What's the science behind that? Obviously giving someone some energy, AKA carbs in sugar form is going to give them a bit of a jolt. But grapes as well, grapes, honestly, if you eat too many grapes, my stomach's in bits.
Speaker 4:I don't
Speaker 1:know if you need an energy drink, you're just lying in bed all day.
Speaker 3:No, don't.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3:Most energy drinks are caffeine strong. You look at Monster Energy and stuff, some of them have got zero calories, so they've got two hundred milligrams of caffeine, taurine, some other bits and bobs and obviously it's just caffeine. Caffeine is a miracle drug mind. Did the stoics come across caffeine at any point? Do they have any coffee?
Speaker 3:They would have loved it, it would change Rome. Think about the world, Donald, it is run on caffeine. Every single person wakes up coffee, they have to have coffee, they got to
Speaker 1:go start. People that work on ITs drink alcohol.
Speaker 3:Cocaine, when it was the plant, I don't know if this story is true, but someone went to visit these farmers eating the coca leaves where cocaine comes from. The kaifa workers working so hard all day, they eat this leaf or whatever it was, plant. And then after a few months, were like, yeah, they're getting ill. All of them are getting massive headaches and stuff. They were literally just fucking eating the plant that cocaine comes from and he's given them obviously energy, but the cocaine on the streets is like that times 100.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Used to inject it. Who? Freud. Well, inject cocaine. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was originally used in medicine as a local anaesthetic. Like they used it for eye operations. It's local anaesthetic, So they used it in surgery. And Freud started injecting it. And he thought this stuff's amazing.
Speaker 1:And there's letters by him, I'll show you Scott, I'll show you there's a letter by Freud where he writes a letter to his wife. And he says, I'm going to ravage you like a wild man, because I've been drinking this cocaine stuff. Like, and it's amazing. And he goes, I'm prescribing it to all of my patients. He's really right raving about it.
Speaker 1:And then a couple of years later, he kind of realised that it was a bad idea. Like his patients were all addicts now and stuff, he backtracked on it. Well, do you know what's funny and I'll send
Speaker 3:you it, someone's started doing a study on analysing philosophers and stuff, how they write and analysing into the drug they were usually on. So, a lot of people, they're linking people's writing to cocaine. It's like this guy's writing is similar to other people's writing on cocaine. This guy was on another drug and they're actually starting to connect them. Because you think some people come up with like, how does this guy come up with this really cool concept?
Speaker 3:Well, he might have been high and he just came out. I
Speaker 1:spoke to you earlier about the Abyssinian Mysteries and so people were initiated into this mystery religion And like, know now I mean Demeter, one of our symbols is a poppy. And like the Romans and the Greeks had opium, right? And they also had other weird drugs. Like so there's this fungus called ergot that causes hallucinations and stuff. And they found traces of that in the Grenzellesenian Temple.
Speaker 1:So they believe that they were taking these hallucinogens when they were going through the initiation ceremonies, and kind of like seeing spirits and crazy stuff. You know, and then they were coming out of it thinking, yeah, maybe, I did see God. Well,
Speaker 3:they weren't lying, they were seeing that crazy shit, but they just didn't know it was like a drug doing it, they actually thought they were going to another world. So, that's the thing, I think a lot of religion is out of mind. There's a book on it called Stealing Fire by a guy called Steven Cutler talks about going into a flow state and he talks about all these drugs like LSD, stuff like that. And he talks about back in the day, the religious people would have this elixir, they would drink and they would forbid anyone else from drinking it because it would make them high and they would go on these fucking trips, come back and be like, you'll never believe I just spoke to God mate. And they'd like, hell, class.
Speaker 3:But then apparently, know the bush where Moses was speaking to a bush, apparently there's a plant there that's hallucinating plants, so maybe he was just, the bush was on fire, fame was going into his nose, he thought the bush was talking to him, which it was, but it was just he was high.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of evidence for that in different aspects of the ancient world. We talked before about the Delphic Oracle, which gave those pronouncements like in Delphi, there are cracks in the ground through which these fumes rise up vapours that supposedly like toxic fumes are probably killing her, they're also making her hallucinate and stuff. It's believed.
Speaker 3:Doctor Well, most is just high air. I think a lot of it comes down to it. It's just like, fucking just now we know what it's doing to us. Maybe next episode, Donald gets high on LSD, cocaine and back.
Speaker 1:Doctor Next time we'll make soup and we'll take LSD and we'll talk about Plato's theory of forms or something.
Speaker 3:Doctor. We'll get a cocaine lace straight into your eyeball. I'll get some magic mushrooms on the go and then everybody else do we want? Let's do it. Well, Donald, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3:Thank you everyone for the philosophical lessons we're getting off, Donal, which is great. We'll be back in session next week. Don, high and honest team making soup. Bye everybody. Get on it.
Speaker 3:See you guys.
