Nothing can replace the right inner discourse. Genius will not; the world is full of tortured geniuses encased in hells of their own making. Wealth will not; those who don’t squander their wealth often live in terror of losing it. Luck will not; luck turns on us all eventually.
The wrong inner discourse transforms blessings to ash and problems into catastrophe. We’ll always be slaves to externals if we can’t talk to ourselves about it the right way.
At its best, philosophy improves inner discourse by dragging it into closer alignment with truth and our ethics. Tranquility and joy are often the result.
I’ve spent several years at Socratic State of Mind talking around this insight, while never successfully conveying the monumentality I feel it has. At least the many ways I’ve said it have yet to trigger much interest. Perhaps it feels ho-hum.
No matter. I will keep droning on about it because I’m only half writing for you lovely people; the rest is for me, and I need reminders.
Here is one more probably ineffectual attempt to convey how game-changing minor shifts in our inner discourse can be.
Meditation vs Western Philosophy
In a recent (paywalled) interview between Doug Bates and Steven Gambardella, Doug discusss initially finding great benefit in meditation, but later finding that Western philosophy (first Stoicism, then Pyrrhonism) were more effective for him.
“Unlike meditation, which puts a lot of effort into helping you let go of thoughts, Pyrrhonism actively disputes them. And you have a toolkit of ways to actively dispute them. Think of the Chinese farmer story—the one where the farmer loses his horse and every twist of fate is neither good nor bad. For me, I need arguments to get to that mindset. I actively suspend judgment, which helps me reach the same place where the Chinese farmer is.”
I had a similar experience. I started meditating in my late teens, and in my mid twenties, spent several years in Southeast Asia. I visited monasteries and various gurus, experimenting with different styles.
I still meditate, and still find it useful. It’s an important tool for me. But I meditate much less often because actively disputing the nonsense my mind spews simply works better. It’s the difference between getting a thought/idea/feeling to shut up because it doesn’t have a leg to stand on (philosophy) and temporarily taking attention away from the nonsense or redirecting attention toward benevolent thoughts, mantras, or visualizations (meditation).
If I don’t undermine a troublesome thought with a rejoinder, but merely take my mind off it, it’s liable to come roaring back as soon as I’m emotionally jarred or it’s been too long since my last meditation. When it comes to freedom from unhelpful judgements and unreasonable emotions, meditations seems like a vastly more effective version of counting to 100 before you speak when angry, or “go sleep on it,” before sending that angry email. Very useful, certainly, but ultimately not the most effective approach.
I’m not so far down the skeptical path as Doug, preferring a more modest Socratic version, but most of the ancient Western philosophical schools are full of arguments and spiritual exercises that undermine the unhelpful judgments we make about reality. Many have some element of skepticism baked in. If you get good at deploying them, you don’t explode in anger or send the furious email because you realize those actions are based on delusions and aberrations of our values.
I also find the Taoist story of the old farmer to be an incredible way of finding tranquility when we judge an event as negative.
This is also why I’m a huge fan of something considered old-fashioned — aphorisms, maxims, sententiae, and paradoxes. They’re compressed nuggets of wisdom we’ve previously investigated and challenged and found truthful; they’re tools kept handy and sharpened so they can be deployed against circumstances. They bring peace and let us act as the people we want to be. Seneca produced them by the score. Marcus Aurelius was a masterful creator of them, often splicing two ideas together.
If you master the philosophical rejoinder, if you stock your toolbox with responses and keep it handy, then you can deploy them on the fly whenever life gets tough.
There’s no better way to return to tranquility.
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