Stoicism & the art of happiness
Hello everybody, good morning. It's week six day two and tomorrow is the first book club on stoicism and the art of happiness. Now some of you might be like, I haven't read it. Scott, I don't have the book. Let me share some bits from this book so you can all be up to date and you can maybe all join the conversation tomorrow because it's going be a philosophical conversation.
Speaker 1:You don't have to know about stoicism but we want to chat about it, we want to inquire about this and see the truth of it. Let me share a few snippets from the book and, see what you think, we go from there. So the stoics refer to physical health, physical and fit sorry, I can't speak guys, I know what's going on. I couldn't speak before, it get worse. Stobics refer to physical health fitness as something preferred but ultimately irrelevant or indifferent in relation to true happiness and fulfillment.
Speaker 1:Cultivating a healthy character is infinitely more important to them than cultivating a healthy body. Nevertheless, we develop self discipline precisely by trying to do healthy and appropriate things in the world whether or not they turn out as we would have preferred. In his lecture on food, Moussonius Rufus argued that mastering one's appetite is the very foundation of training and self control. He says stoic should drink only water and avoid gourmet meals preferring vegetarian food that is nourishing but cheap, convenient to obtain and easy to prepare. For example, milk, cheese, honey and certain fruits and veg.
Speaker 1:He says stoic should eat slowly and with mindfulness exercise in moderation and self control. For some modern readers just having still water for a week instead of other drinks might be a good initial challenge. This is two thousand years ago and it's kind of bang on, know, like moderation, eat slow, mindfulness, like the Romans are just as problematic as us when it comes to eating. We preferred more enjoyment and self indulgence particularly with regards to the most common sources of food. So by contrast, Socrates said that anything that impels us to eat when not hungry or drink when not thirsty, ruin stomachs and heads and characters.
Speaker 1:Hopefully this seems more like common sense than self modification although it flies in the face of modern attitudes towards food and drink. We're constantly bombarded with advertising for it and we just keep eating. Guys feeling hungry, moderate to light hunger is absolutely normal and should be, you know, you should accept it and you should live with it because there's no way in hell as humans we've developed to live this long. Before the nineteen hundred's for most people food was scarce. There's no way that they felt a bit hungry and have to eat all the time to make themselves feel better.
Speaker 1:At one inch, one inch, one second of hunger today, I go, oh my god, gotta eat, I'm hungry. Think about it for a second. Why not let the body just give you a light signal saying, hey, you know what, just finishing up on a digestion. Feel good, though. There's a lot of energy going on body.
Speaker 1:Fine. It's light stomach. You're not full. We're not bloated. We're feeling good.
Speaker 1:Just let you know in a few hours time, we might need some food. We don't need it right now, mate, but we need it in a few hours maybe. And how we take that is we need it right now, but it's not the truth. Okay? Socrates also taught his students that we should keep the body fit through appropriate physical exercise because it employed in all human activity, even the act of thinking as everyone knows that people can't think straight when they have certain illnesses.
Speaker 1:He apparently favored dancing alone at daybreak as a form of physical exercise because it involved the whole body. Overall though, we're told that he believed that everyone should take care of their health by learning everything they can about it from experts, but also by studying their own constitution every day and observing what food, drink, or exercise actually do them good. Two thousand five hundred years ago, Socrates, the man was saying these things. How we have strayed so far away from these basic principles is absolutely mind blowing. Right?
Speaker 1:You know, we learn from experts, right? The right expert, we have to also, like he says, study in our own constitution. Really, what do we enjoy doing? You know, what foods, you know, resonate with us? What are our macros and calories and stuff like that?
Speaker 1:Like what is it we're putting in? Look into ourselves. Because everyone's different. He thought that ideally we should become our own physicians learning from experience what's healthy in our own case. Xenophon likewise believed that just as people who fail to exercise their bodies become physically weak, people who do not train their character become weak as well.
Speaker 1:So again, bang on. He's basically that saying become your own scientist. What do we say? Mad. Stoic wisdom consists primarily in knowing good from bad and that means knowing what is under our control and what is not.
Speaker 1:Self knowledge also mean it means distinguishing what is under our control from what is not. To contemplate and understand that our own existence is an ongoing effort according to the Stoics requiring a form of mindfulness. Mindfulness is a concept often associated with Buddhist meditation but which has clear precedence in ancient Greek or Roman philosophy. For the Stoics however, wisdom consists in realizing that the only thing we completely control by definition are our own volitions, particularly our voluntary judgments and actions. One's internal nature.
Speaker 1:Nobody can prevent you from living according to your own internal nature as a rational being, I. E. Wisely and virtuously. Number two, nature of the world. Nothing can befall you externally that is contrary to the universal law of nature which the wise man accepts piously as determined by fate or in theological language as the will of Zeus or nature itself.
Speaker 1:Man, okay, let's have a look and skip a bit. He's gone on about the ethics and all that. One of the famous slogans of Epictetus was endure and renounce. You've seen how renouncing unhealthy or unnecessary food and drink can be used as a way to practice developing the virtue self discipline or moderation in our diet. Endurance is linked to the virtue of courage and can be developed to some extent simply by learning to tolerate ordinary discomfort or fatigue of the kind experienced during physical exercise.
Speaker 1:Busonius Rufus says that as we have minds and bodies we should exercise both. Although always paying most attention to our mind, we will train both mind and body when we accustom ourselves to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, scarcity of food, hardness of bed, abstaining from pleasures, and enduring pains. For example, Zeno, the founder of stoicism was renowned for his physical endurance. Rather than sit down idly to lecture, as he talked, he would pace vigorously up and down the porch where school gathered. Clianfi is the second head of the store, was originally a boxer.
Speaker 1:The third head was a long distance runner. The founders of the store, in other words, were quite keen on physical exercise. Their real reason for certain foods or enduring tough physical exercise would be to strengthen the virtues of self discipline and courage or endurance. And this is important guys, and this is maybe the key point I want you to go away with today is can you today sit with discomfort? Any sort of discomfort?
Speaker 1:Can you I don't like cold showers. Right? But can I have a cold shower this morning? See what happens. Don't like it.
Speaker 1:Discomfort. We'll give it a go. Can you go? You feel a bit hungry. Can you go a few hours being staying in the hunger state for a bit?
Speaker 1:Yeah? Can you maybe abstain from some of those easy pleasures you would have turned to? That cup of tea maybe. Natalie Chambers, I'm talking to you, 16 cups of tea a day. Can you say, you know what?
Speaker 1:I really want a cup of tea right now. It's gonna give me a little boost, but can I abstain? Can I do it a bit more? You know, can we do that today and see what we can do and give us a little bit because you do it with macros in general, but it's interesting to see, like, are we really pushing ourselves, you know, in many ways, are we like, you know, David Gorgonz is using, I love the guy but you know, crazy guy, he pushes it to the limits and it's good in a sense because he shows the human body and mind is capable of and there's a lot more in us than we think but we have to unleash it through training, this winter's training, we actually put ourselves through these discomfort so we can come out the other side stronger and better people. So that's another thing just think about today, don't turn to comfort so much, know, Do the uncomfortable things.
Speaker 1:Sit with uncomfort sit in uncomfort for a bit. Mhmm. And let me see if there's one more for you guys from this book before we crack on with our day. Let's have a look. Of thing okay.
Speaker 1:Of things that are some that are, some are good and some are bad and some are indifferent. The good then are virtues and the things which participate in virtues. The evil things the opposite and the indifferent things are wealth, health, reputation. So the Stoics believed that we should focus only on the good and the good is actually just being virtuous itself, know. Who was I speaking to?
Speaker 1:My mate saying he got his present for his, sister's partner to go watch the football, right? And he's gonna go with him, but he got ill so he can go with him. So he told his sister she could go with him. But turns out he was ill as well and he couldn't sell the tickets. He's gutted about it and I was like, mate, don't stress too much about it.
Speaker 1:The the nature of you actually getting him a gift is the good in itself. If it didn't follow through, it didn't follow through outside of your control. Yeah? Doing the good is the good. There's nothing more to it.
Speaker 1:If you want to give money to charity, don't expect praise back. You're doing it for the goodness of it. You're tracking not necessarily to lose weight tomorrow. You're tracking for the goodness of actually looking at your own body and what you're putting into it. Yeah?
Speaker 1:You're doing these things for the virtue themselves, not the praise, not the reputation, right, not the not the wealth you're gonna get. Not really something not that this thing not even health, know, you go for a run for the fact that that moment that time you're a human being, you've gone and exerted yourself physically and you've done the goodness of improving the strength of your body and you might not still be able to run a five ks next week. That's fine, you've done the good thing. So and I think that's a real, you know, that's a real radical way of thinking because we always think in what we do when we get back. How's it what we just did good?
Speaker 1:Just did good today. Didn't want praise. Didn't want anything back. Message your mates in thinking to you, your family. Don't want anything back.
Speaker 1:Never want anything back. You do a good thing. That's it. The world would be a better place, wouldn't it? So that's your little, quick run through the book, and that's just the start of the book, guys.
Speaker 1:Honestly, this book is gonna be class, and I hope a lot of you join in. But hopefully that was I hope you had a bit of things to think about that. I hope you're enjoying it and I will speak to you guys on book club tomorrow. So enjoy yourself Turtle Radio with Ryan. Enjoy.
