This week, I read Jean-Paul Sartre’s lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism”. I was struck by one line in particular. It reminded me of the Kantian Categorical Imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” But Sartre’s version is framed existentially. He says (quoting from Macomber’s translation, p. 24), “…in creating the man each of us wills ourselves to be, there is not a single one of our actions that does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be.”
If I understand existentialism, it doesn’t offer forth a strict, structured ethical system by which all must abide. But there is an ethic based in our freedom as humans and our responsibility for our actions. Sartre says that once we’re “cast into this world” against our choice—because we have no choice when it comes to our being born—we are “responsible for everything” we do (p. 29). We can’t blame our actions on others. We do them. Presumably, we do them with a sense of justification. We do them thinking they’re right to do. Sartre is convinced that no one acts thinking that their action is evil. “We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for any of us unless it is good for all.” This isn’t quite Kantian. We’re not making a choice with the Categorical Imperative in mind, explicitly. But we may be abiding by it implicitly. Because we think that if we can do it, humans should be able to do it. And if humans should be able to do it, then in essence, our actions tell everyone around us, whether or not we place them within a concrete ethical framework, that this is what we think is good and right. And whether we would want others to do what we’ve done is secondary to the fact that once we’ve done it, we suggest that humans can and should be able to do it, and if humans can and should be able to do as we’ve done, then this is what we deem acceptable for humans, as a whole. Even if we’re narcissistic enough to say that we alone should be able to act in a certain way, the reality is that we’re a human among humans, so the louder claim of our actions is “this is how humans should act”. We wouldn’t act as we do if we didn’t believe this.
I mentioned the philosopher Simone Weil a few posts ago (see “Simone Weil’s rootedness”), and her book, The Need for Roots. In that post, I mentioned my desire to meditate on her “vital needs of the human soul”. This post will be the first in a series where I’ll summarize what she says about each one and then share my own meditation on it. For Weil, these vital needs can be understood this way: (1) they are an attempt to answer this question: “what needs related to the life of the soul corresponds to the body’s need for food, sleep, and warmth”; (2) and they “must never be confused with desires, whims, fantasies or vices” (p. 8, Schwartz translation). While this may sound theological in nature, and for Weil it seems like there’s no line between theological and philosophical thinking, let me say that if the word “soul” is distracting, try to think of psychological well-being. Also, I don’t think one needs to assume the a soul/body or mind/body dualism to find value in this list. It’s common to speak of physical and psychological needs as distinct even if we believe that the mind/soul/psyche is material.
The list of vital needs First, let me share the list that Weil created. It’s fifteen items long, so this series may take some time:
Order
Freedom
Obedience
Initiative & Responsibility
Equality
Hierarchy
Honor
Punishment
Freedom of Opinion/Association
Security
Risk
Private Property
Shared Property (“participation in collective goods”)
Rootedness
The Need for Truth
The reason that I want to (1) summarize and then (2) reflect/meditate upon each is that I’m not sure if I agree with this list as a whole. As I re-read each one, it’ll give me a chance to critically evaluate what Weil wrote. If there’s space, I want to end my class “Philosophy for Human Flourishing” with a lesson on this list, so this gives me a chance to really evaluate it. Let’s begin with “Order”.
Summarizing Weil’s comments on “Order” Weil calls the need for “Order” “the main need of the soul” that is “the one closest to its eternal destiny” (p. 8). What does she mean by “Order”? Her definition is as follows: “a web of social relations such that no one is forced to violate strict obligations in order to fulfill other obligations” (pp. 8-9). For context, Weil begins the book (p. 1), “The concept of obligations takes precedence over that of rights, which are subordinate and relative to it. A right is not effective on its own, but solely in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.” In other words, I can demand people recognize my rights all day, but if they feel no obligation to me then there’s nothing to the language of rights; and if I don’t feel obligated to others, then I won’t recognize their rights. As she said, “…a right that is not recognized by anyone amounts to very little.” Also (p. 1), “He in turn has rights when he is considered from the point of view of others who recognize obligations towards him”.
With a shift in our attention from rights to obligations, “Obligations are only binding on human beings” and “Identical obligations bind all human beings” (p. 2). Our identical obligations to other human beings means, “There is an obligation towards every human being through the mere fact that they are a human being” (p. 2). Her foundation for these claims is definitely theological in nature. She says that the obligations are not based on “de facto situations, or on legal precedent, or on customs, social structure or relations of force, or on the legacy of the past, or the supposed direction of history…This obligation is not based on any convention” (pp. 4-5). Instead, “This obligation is eternal.” Why? “It echoes the eternal destiny of all human beings.” Since, theologically speaking, the human is eternal, so our obligation to these other eternal being with which we surround ourselves. “This obligation is unconditional.”
When Weil describes our obligations to every other human, they include “not to let them suffer from hunger”; “shelter, clothing, warmth, hygiene and care for the sick”; and those things that are “not physical” but part of the “moral life” (p. 6). With this in mind, we see that “Order” means that making sure that people can fulfill their varying obligations to others. Weil mourns, writing “Nowadays, there is a very high degree or disorder and incompatibility between obligations.” But she’s not confident that this order is possible. She writes (p. 9), “Unfortunately, there is no method for reducing the incompatibility. It is not even certain that the idea of an order in which all obligations are compatibility is not a fantasy.”
She takes hope is the widely diverse universe working in a synchronized way, and “truly beautiful works of art” doing the same. But it seems to me that this is the best she can offer: a hope. She writes (p. 9):
Lastly, our awareness of our various obligations always stems from a desire for good that is unique, fixed and identical to itself for each man, from the cradle to the grave. This desire perpetually stirring inside us prevents us from ever resigning ourselves to situations where the obligations are incompatible. Either we resort to lying in order to forget they exist, or we struggle blindly to extricate ourselves from them.
If I’m reading her correctly, Weil is saying that we desire a world in which our obligations are not in conflict. This is a need of ours, even the central one. But it’s also one that may be “a fantasy”. We want a morally structured society. I presume that this implies that a morally dysfunctional society leaves us unable to experience this order that we crave
Reflecting on Weil’s comments on “Order” Every philosophical thought experiment from the trolly-problem on is a reminder that we live in a morally tense universe. As I wrote in my last post, “Effective Altruism and moral intuition”, there are moral systems that make a lot of sense but then when pressed, feel immoral at points. This is true of a lying deontologist and a hard-line utilitarian. But the desire that we have for such a framework is real, and if I’m understanding Weil, then maybe the constant striving for such “Order” is the best we can achieve.
Our pursuit of “Order” and our desire to create it for others is why every moral treatise and moral system has come into existence. We argue for our preferred morality in hopes of finding the morality that will work for all of us. This hasn’t happened yet but again, I think the goal is noble and what’s the alternative. Even if we concede some form of moral relativism, that’s a system, that’s a structure that we land upon in order to find “Order”.
Let me be brief (-ish) with this blog post. I’m preparing lessons for my new class, “Philosophy for Human Flourishing”. One of them will ask students to imagine themselves as a CEO of a pharmaceutical company that has the opportunity to make their company more efficient by implementing AI technology that promises to create more life-saving medicine quicker for cheaper. But this means laying off many of their employees. What should they do? I’ll break the class down into four groups, all responsible for making an argument from one of these four ethical paradigms: Aristotelean Virtue Ethics; Deontology; Utilitarianism; and Effective Altruism.
In preparation, I’ve been entertaining the arguments of the Effective Altruists and I find myself conflicted. (If Effective Altruism is new to you, here’s an introduction: Effective Altruism.org.) In short, Effective Altruism seems to universalize morality. It aims to be objective and rational, making moral decisions based on data. For example, many Effective Altruists, argue that while you could spend $1,000 on say a charity for researching glaucoma or for providing underprivileged students with sports equipment, you’re better off using that money for malaria nets, or vitamins, or vaccines, because charities that focus on these things save more lives. So, your charity is more effective. And following Peter Singer’s classical “Drowning Child Thought Experiment”, they argue that distance—geographic, in the original version, but even through time in some more recent versions—shouldn’t prevent you from saving a life. In other words, shared nationality doesn’t make someone more deserving. If you can save one American life with $1,000, but thirty in some country across the world, then you save the thirty. (This feels a little like the trolly problem.) There’s no denying that this is more “effective”. And it’s difficult to make the argument that something like shared nationality makes a life worth saving. This may be because I’m influenced by teachings like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, or because I fear the slippery slope of where such ideologies can lead, as various nationalist ideologies have shown us in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries!
On the other hand, something feels off about Effective Altruism. Morality that lacks relationally feels…immoral. It seems weird to say no to the homeless person standing right in front of you, looking them in the eye while denying them help, because that money will go further if sent to someone on the other side of the world. Ethnocentrism, nationalism, and such ideologies are dangerous, but does that mean that there’s no place for preferring “closeness”, for lack of a better word. I won’t lie: I’d save my son before saving hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of kids on the other side of the world. In fact, in some sense, by raising a young American, and knowing the cost it’ll take to do so, I’ve already chosen to spend money and resources on his one life that theoretically could’ve saved many, many lives elsewhere. And I feel like this is the right thing to do; I feel like my obligation to my son is greater, by far, than my obligation to people elsewhere. Am I hypocritical for this? It’s something that I’m pondering.
Yesterday, I filled a box halfway with books that I’ll be taking to Half Price Books this morning. Now, I’m a fan of Umberto Eco’s concept of the “antilibrary” where the unread books on our shelves remind us of all the knowledge that we don’t have and won’t acquire in this lifetime. If I could, I’d fill my house with books, read and unread. It would look like a library. It would elate and humble me. But I’m not the only person in my household who makes decisions about home decor, so there are limits to where books can be stored. This means that I needed to clear some space for the many new books that I’ve bought that have been stacking up on my desk—mostly philosophy books in preparation for a new class that I’m teaching next school year. Hence, the half-filled box that I’ll be taking to Half Price Books.
I chose mostly biblical studies and theology books. I didn’t touch my philosophy section. I didn’t touch my religious studies or American religion sections. I decided that only so many books on the Bible were needed, so that’s what I’m selling today. This decision reflects a change in my interest and even personhood over the past few years. I’ve struggled to teach students about the Bible in a way that confounds me. When I’ve taught courses on comparative religion, American religion, or even local religion (ala my summer offering “Religion in San Antonio”), it’s been easy to retain student interest and investment. And honestly, when I teach the Hebrew Bible, other than a lot of whining about “all the reading” (you signed up for a course on the Bible, kids!), it goes well. But every spring, the combination of the year drawing nearer and nearer to the end, along with self-understood “familiarity” (which is hardly any familiarity at all) that breeds contempt, and the fear of using critical thinking skills to evaluate something so sacrosanct as the Christian New Testament, I find myself struggling constantly with resistance to learning. Most of my educational training has been around the Bible, especially the New Testament. I’ve written ThM and doctoral theses on its content. I’ve presented papers at conferences about it. But nearly a decade of teaching it to adolescents has sucked the joy out of it. I enjoy teaching high school…just not the New Testament. And this has led me to lose interest in the very content matter that was at the heart of an undergraduate, two graduate, and one doctoral degree.
Is there another context where I could find myself enjoying the teaching and discussion of the Gospels or the Epistles of Paul again? Sure. I imagine an adult education class at a church, if I had the time or will power. But my experience in my context has so zapped me of interest in that material that I lobbied to reduce our two semesters of biblical studies to a single semester offering titled “Introduction to the Bible” which seems far more manageable for my students and me. I mean, to be fair, if students are going to learn about religion in high school—a privilege that many high school students don’t have or have only in contexts of indoctrination—I find it strange that they would spend all their time on the holy book(s) of Judaism and Christianity without even learning about Judaism and Christianity let alone all of the other religious traditions that are out there. Most of them aren’t going to seminary someday. If they stay Christian, as many of them are, they’ll hear the Bible through the comforting filter of sermons, which seems to be their preferred method of engagement anyway. (Sorry if this sounds bitter!)
This has led me to rethink other aspects of my personality and how I’m using my time. For example, do I want to remain a member of the Society of Biblical Literature? My son’s birthday will be every November, just a few days before Thanksgiving Break when the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion meet. Do I want to spend my time at those conferences anymore? I’m not sure. I don’t want to hear papers on some micro-exegetical evaluation of a portion of the Gospel of Mark, that’s for sure. So, is membership and conference attendance a waste of precious time and money? It’s beginning to seem like it.
I’ve been through these transitions before. So far, they’ve always turned out well but they’ve left me with a pedigree that doesn’t match who I’ve become. Let me explain. In high school, no one considered me college material. At best, I would go to the local community college for some skills but I think that most presumed that I would enter the workforce when I graduated. The summer before my junior year, I became curious about the Pentecostal tradition that my mother was raising me in, and by default, I became curious about how to read the Bible “the right way”. The positive side to this is that I turned around as a student and graduated from high school, which was in doubt at times, and then went to a denominationally affiliated college because I thought I was going to become a minister in those Pentecostal circles. By my junior year, I knew this wasn’t going to be the case. I didn’t believe any of their core teachings anymore, so I bid my time until I graduated, looking for a new place to belong.
The negative side of this is that my undergraduate degree is from a truly terrible school. I will never step foot on that campus again. But my options weren’t Stanford or Cal Berkeley as I neared graduation. My options were workforce/community college or this denominational school and the denomination school did give me the skills needed to get into graduate school. So, I went to Western Seminary, which is loosely affiliated with Baptist churches but mostly brands itself as conservative, “big tent” Evangelical (compared with say the more “liberal” “big tent” of a Fuller Theological Seminary). I earned a MA and then a ThM (Master of Theology) from there. As I began my studies for my PhD, through the University of Bristol but facilitated by the Anglican school Trinity College Bristol, I began to experience a from of deja vu. Just as I had known that I wasn’t going to be able to stay in the Pentecostal circles that had raised and educated me, because I could no longer identify with them, so my time in Evangelicalism was drawing to an end.
The end of my doctoral studies were traumatic. As I neared the completion of my thesis (what they call a dissertation in the UK), a series of things went wrong and I began the job that I’m still working today, which was great because I had a teaching job, but made it extremely difficult to finish off my thesis. For this reason, my viva was a bloodbath. I had to spend the next several months making corrections to my thesis in order to graduate and in order to not fail my doctoral program. I pulled it off but something had changed forever. As much as I’ve tried over the years to regain some sense of myself as a biblical scholar, the confidence was gone. I hated my thesis, so I never could find the will to edit it further to try for publication. It sits as a PDF on my computer and as a lost book somewhere in the library of the University of Bristol. (By the way, the external evaluator who bludgeoned me to death during my viva: his books, which I’ve kept on my shelves all these years, are in the box that I’m taking to sell this morning!)
All of this has me thinking about one of my favorite concepts from Buddhism: anatman/anatta. It’s a complicated theory, but as Daniel Weltman summarizes it: “there is no persisting self—nothing about us that remains the same at all times.” (I recommend his explainer, “The Buddhist Theory of No-Self”, for those who want to know more.) While I don’t know that I’m on board fully with the idea of no-self or no consistent self, it makes a lot of sense experientially. Is the Brian LePort that thought he was going to be a Pentecostal minister the same as the Brian LePort who thought he was going to be an Evangelical biblical scholar who became a high school religious studies teacher in an Episcopal school? Yes but also in many ways, absolutely not. Those versions of me were necessary for the current version of me to exist, for sure. If I wasn’t under the delusion at age 18 that I was going to be a Pentecostal preacher, I wouldn’t have the job that I enjoy now at age 42. But also, the decision of the 18 year old to go to a school that trains ministers in a highly sectarian denomination forever limited to future options of the person that I’ve become and am becoming. It’s still on my CV and I’m sure that along with schooling from conservative Evangelicals, it’s caused people to write me off as a candidate for many jobs. I got extremely lucky that when I applied for my current job a decade ago, that chaplain who was heading the search has himself spent time in Pentecostal and Evangelical circles, so he was curious about me. I fear that a born-and-bred Episcopalian who’ve never given me a chance!
On the other hand, there seems to be hardly anything left of that kid that thought he was going to be a Pentecostal minister. If I could warp time and meet him, we’d likely agree that there’s no connection between the two of us. We’d have a hard time imagining that we’re the same person in any meaningful sense.
I’ve written mostly about the changes that came from transitions in and out of religious traditions and academic settings but there’s no doubt that other major events forever altered me into someone new, ranging from my marriage at age 27, to moving away from California and eventually living in Texas, to the birth of my son last November, to a major health scare that I experienced just this January. These types of events feel like when the butterfly comes out of the cocoon. There’s continuation but the discontinuation is what’s radical.
Am I a philosopher now? No. I’m self-trained. I’ll always have a more developed skill set for biblical studies than for philosophy but the biblical studies books are going to the store to make room for more philosophy because who I want to be now is someone who thinks philosophically. I’m not as invested in the project of creating human knowledge around/about the Bible as I used to be. It’s a noble endeavor, as all humanities work is, but it’s not my endeavor anymore. And while I’ll continue to teach a class on the Bible for the foreseeable future, it’s not my area of interest anymore, so I hope my philosophy class is a success! Who knows who I’ll be or how I’ll feel in a year from now. I’m sure there will be far more continuation than discontinuation. I’m a relatively stable and static person. But sometimes you need to make room for a new version of yourself by getting rid of that which is old. So, if anyone is looking for a good deal on some biblical studies books, go to Half Priced Books over off Bandera Road here in San Antonio. You’ll find some of my stuff there.
The philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943) is a fascinating character. (If you’re interested in hearing more, BBC Radio 4’s “In Our Time” did an episode on her: “Simone Weil”. So did Vox Media’s Sean Illing for his show “The Gray Area”: “Simone Weil’s radical philosophy”. I’m sure there are many more episodes out there not to mention articles!) Her book, The Need for Roots, is one that I’ve been reading through slowly. At some point, I want to write a few posts on what Weil considers to be the “vital needs of the human soul”. They’re sort of like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs but for our psycho-spiritual condition. But here I’m meditating on just one—the one that inspired the title of the book: our need for rootedness.
Simone Weil
I’ve been thinking about rootedness for about fifteen years without always having a word for it. This is because fifteen years ago, I left my home in Northern California. I planned to return as soon as I could. First, I went to Portland, Oregon, which was delightful in many ways. I think I could’ve settled there though the constant drizzle that helps make Portland so beautiful can also be quite depressing. When my wife and I had been there three years, we prepared to move back to California but the opportunity that I thought would take me back home disappeared, and we had mentally and emotionally committed to leaving Oregon, so we made the fateful decision to go to where my wife was born and raised: San Antonio, TX.
I felt out of place from day 1. I’ve been here twelve years now, and I’ll admit, I continue to feel out of place. I feel like a visitor. And while I don’t want to speak for my wife here, just so the rest of what I have to say doesn’t sound too whiney, I know she feels about Northern California just as I do. But I must say that hardly a day passes where my mind doesn’t flash an image of Napa, or Sonoma, or Marin, or somewhere along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, or San Francisco. I spent my first twenty-seven years there and while I know I had to venture out, sometimes I wonder if it was the right thing to do, especially as it seems more and more unlikely that I’ll have an opportunity to return.
For some readers, I know this sounds like it reeks of privilege, as I complain about not being in the hoity-toity Napa Valley of my youth. I’ll concede that. But it doesn’t make the feeling go away. When you see yourself as a plant who has been pulled from the soil in which you grew, only to be replanted where you feel like nothing is familiar, it doesn’t matter where the original soil is. And I think Weil gives me philosophical justification for this feeling.
This is what she wrote about rootedness (p. 33):
Rootedness is perhaps the most important and least known human spiritual need. It is one of the hardest to define. A human being is rooted through their real, active or natural participation in the life of a collectivity that keeps alive treasures of the past and has aspirations for the future. The participation is natural in that it stems automatically from place, birth, occupation and those around them. Every humans being needs to have multiple roots to derive all their moral, intellectual and spiritual life from the environment to which they naturally belong.”
For Weil, to belong to a people in a place is a good thing because you share with those people a commitment to that place, to keeping “alive treasures of the past and…aspirations for the future.” I admit, I’m more concerned with what happens in Northern California, whether it be politically, ecologically, etc., than I am South Texas. I’m invested in that place thriving whereas the place that I live feels distant. Yes, I work here. I vote here. But every time I see a billboard that says, “Don’t California My Texas!”, I know I don’t belong here. Whenever I see the legislative priorities of Texas politicians, I know that I have little place in keeping alive such treasures. I’m a long time visitor.
Weil says that this rootedness is “natural”. I feel this. When I get off the plane at San Francisco International Airport, the sun hits differently, the world feels and smells better. Again, it’s like a root returned to native soil: it feels right.
Now, in a sense, my workplace was become a place of rootedness. In fact, it’s the only reason I’m in Texas. I know that as much as work should not bear too much of our life’s meaningfulness, that if I worked a job that I did find meaningless, even in California, it would impact my emotional wellbeing. So, because I find value in my job, I haven’t been willing to risk that to go home. Whether or not this is reasonable, it’s why in twelve years from now I might be in Texas still, continuing to feel out of place but oddly fulfilled where it really matters.
Though, of course, I doubt myself when I think of what “really matters”. Now that I’m a father, I have this strong desire to offer my son what was offered to me. I’m not necessarily saying what my nuclear family had to offer me. That’s a complicated story. But what my rootedness had to offer me: drives through the vineyards of the Napa Valley, summer trips to Stinson Beach, the majesty of wandering through San Francisco, a game at Oracle Park, but also the culture and values of everything Northern California, save Silicon Valley which I despise. These things are me. I’m an extension of that environment. Will the day come when I say to myself, “Those realities matter more than my 9-5!” Maybe. The tug is always there.
When someone is unrooted, whether traumatically or not, it changes everything. Weil claims, “Every military conquest results in uprootedness.” This isn’t just because a people may be removed from their home but because their home is irreversibly altered into something different. For Weil, every “milieu” of rootedness “should receive external influences not as an addition, but as a stimulus that makes its own life more intense.” In other words, “external influences” can “nourish” a people but it shouldn’t alter what it is that they share. Because of this, it doesn’t take a military invasion. As she says, “…money and economic domination can be such a powerful foreign influence that it results in the disease of uprootedness.” My mind goes to what Silicon Valley did to San Francisco. In many ways, it’s financed San Francisco into becoming one of the most amazing cities in the world; in other ways, the San Francisco that I knew even in the 2000s, and all that it stood for, seems to have mostly disappeared. The Napa Valley where I was raised is almost completely unaffordable for the working class. I guess this is what makes gentrification so disheartening for those who experience it.
The changes that Mammon has wrought on Northern California create a tension when I think of what I want to offer my son. In Texas, I can afford a home for him to grow up in. I can model for him fulfillment in a meaningful vocation. But Texas is, well, Texas. A man like Greg Abbott is Governor. Men like Ted Cruz and John Cornyn are our Senators. Our politicians demonize immigrants. They make the lives of women more and more restrictive to the point where we’re one of the “top 5 worst states” for women. It’s not a safe state for the LGBTQIA+ community. I have no pride in Texas. There are good people here. There are good Texans. I hope they reshape the state into their image but it’s hard to feel committed to this cause because I don’t feel like I’m part of it nor can I ever really be. I’m just one of those dangerous people who might “California” their Texas.
Again, as I said, I might be here in twelve years, working the same job, feeling the same feelings. But Weil is right that having a sense of rootedness is a serious spiritual (however we may use that word) matter. I hope if I stay, it offers my son more opportunities so that I can justify the decision. I hope that I’m not being selfish in needing to work a job that I find meaningful. We humans are complex. Adulthood is just a series is decisions where we can’t know if we’re making the right one. This weighs on me. Will I regret sidelining the spiritual nourishment of rootedness, if I don’t prioritize it?
On a somewhat recent visit to the local Phuoc Hue Buddhist Temple with some of my students, I heard Venerable Thích Quang Trí say something during his lesson that has stuck with me: in essence, if someone says something poorly about you, and it’s false, then it’s just that: it’s their falseopinion of you. You are not responsible to change them. You can’t control them. So, you must let it go lest it controls you. (But if they say something negative that is true, then we need to learn from what is said and adjust.)
As I read Epictetus’ Encheiridion, I came across a similar comment that I want to share. It comes from Section 28 (Long, p. 43). He writes, “If somebody in the street were entrusted with your body, you would be furious, Yet you entrust your mind to anyone around who happens to insult you, and allow it to be troubled and confused. Aren’t you ashamed of that?”
There isn’t much commentary that I want to make; I only want to highlight the important connection. In both the sermon and this ancient text, we are reminded that words have control us. The words of other people, especially. If we let them dictate our thinking, especially when untrue, we’ve abandoned our independence. We’ve submitted ourselves to someone undeserving. We would fight if someone tried to do this to our bodies, so why do we give up the real estate of our minds so easily?
Epictetus has a way of assessing what is valuable about our lives as humans that I find refreshing. In our society (I speak as an American), most people determine your greatness based on wealth and power. (Interestingly, many Americans also think of our society as a “Christian” one…but that’s another discussion altogether.) Rarely do we admire people for their virtues. Maybe we admire wealthy and powerful people who seem to have retain some virtue but our admiration of their virtue is secondary. We’re surprised that they have money, power, and character. But for Epictetus, as I wrote in the last post, there’s nothing about being wealthy that makes someone inherently great. If someone is wealthy, that’s just it: they have a lot of wealth. It tells us little about them as a human. The same is true of power.
Epictetus and Wealth Now Epictetus doesn’t seem to be one who would say that we should “eat the rich”. He wasn’t anti-wealth. Nor is he anti-power. It’s just that he didn’t see these things as the be-all, end-all of human value like we are taught in capitalist societies. Epictetus saw wealth and power as things that someone might have, mostly by means that are beyond their control (e.g. born into a certain family; right place, right time opportunities). He didn’t deny that people who want wealth must pursue it, so there’s definitely some minimal contribution of human agency. But it is very minimal. Every wealthy and powerful person arrives where they do not because of the power of their will but because many things beyond their control went their way.
Here is what Epictetus appears to think of the decision to pursue wealth and power with our limited agency: it’s just an exchange. We’re making the decision to trade certain things for others. The trades aren’t necessarily “good” or “bad” but merely preferential. Let me share some excerpts that will explain what I mean (and remember, I’m using Long’s translation).
Judgments, Motivations, Desires, and Aversions First, Epictetus warns us “if you desire any of the things that are not up to us, you are bound to be unfortunate” (Section 2; Long, p. 9). Epictetus has stated already that the things that are up to us are judgments, motivations, desires, and aversions. In other words, our perspective on the world is our own; how we exist in the world is mostly outside of our control. Wealth and power aren’t judgments, motivations, desires, and aversions but we can judge that we want wealth and power, be motivated to attain it, desire it, and be averse to experiences like poverty and powerlessness. But the only real choice that we’re making that’s in our control is the choice to value what we value. We could choose to value other things, like peace, tranquility, happiness, etc., which are more easily accessible as states of mind.
What We Value Second, we must take responsibility for what we decide to value, knowing it could let us down if we fail to earn the wealth and power of which we dream. Epictetus says (Section 5; pp. 11, 13), “It is not things themselves that trouble people, but their opinion about things.” And “whenever we are frustrated, or troubled, or pained, let us never hold anyone responsible except for ourselves, meaning our own opinions.” With regard to what I’m saying here, if we pursue wealth and power and we fail, we have no one to blame for the fact that we invested so much of our emotion into those externals.
Entitled to Nothing Third, we should see nothing of this sort as owed to us. We are not entitled to wealth or power, no matter who we are. Epictetus reminds us (Section 11, p. 19), “Never say about anything, “I have lost it’; but say, ‘I have returned it’.” If we have wealth and power at one moment, and then we lose it at the next, it was never “ours”. We had it on loan. (More intensely, Epictetus says this about the death of a loved one like a spouse or a child, for even with regard to people that precious to us, he stands by his assertion that we must remember that we can’t control whether they are with us or not. This has been a harder teaching for me to accept but I’m still processing why I’m open to Epictetus’ posture toward wealth and power while much more resistant to his posture toward lost loved ones. That being said, in his era, life-spans were shorter and one was more accustom to experiencing the death of a spouse or a child than we are, so it was something with which a first century CE Roman had to learn to cope.)
Distrust Yourself Fourth, as I’ve discussed in another post (see “‘If people think you amount to something, distrust yourself'”), even if we pursue wealth and power, we should never allow ourselves to buy into our own hype. Epictetus writes in Section 13 (p. 21), “Even if some people think you are somebody, distrust yourself.” Oh that many of the world’s most wealthy, influential, and powerful people had an ounce of this self-awareness. Maybe to be a major player on the world stage like a Putin, or a Jinping, or a Trump, you have to have a level of narcissism that drives you to bulldoze forward no matter what but I don’t know that our world is better with such men in power. What if such men paused to have a moment of doubt as to whether they should be where they are, acting toward others as they do. Imagine.
Appearances Can Be Deceptive Fifth, Epictetus reminds us that people who have wealth and power may not be as satisfied as they appear. He writes in Section 19 (p. 29):
“When you see someone honored ahead of you or holding great power or being highly esteemed in another way, be careful never to be carried away by the impression and judge the person to be happy. For if the essence of goodness consists in things that are up to us, there is room for neither envy nor jealousy, and you yourself will not want to be a praetor or a senator of a consul, but to be free. The only way to achieve this is by despising the things that are not up to us.”
A modern example that stands out to me is Elon Musk. The man spends hours on “X/Twitter”. There are days he tweets over a hundred times.He’s reported to have a burner account to fight online with his enemies. His cult of personality leads some to worship him thinking that “he’s playing chess while everyone else is player checkers” but what’s his goal. He’s the wealthiest man in the world and clearly, that doesn’t satisfy. He has to ear of powerful politicians, but that doesn’t satisfy. I’m skeptical that he’s a man who can be satisfied and by this I mean that he’s a man who could embrace happiness, peace, and tranquility. He needs drama. He needs a fight. Clearly, he needs to be constantly distracted. The billions aren’t enough. Epictetus would remind us that we should be very careful when we become jealous of such people. Do we want their lives, really? If your happy, at all, then you may want a piece of his financial security but I guarantee that if a genie offered you the chance to swap places with him, you’d turn down the offer.
Satisfaction Starts Inside Sixth, this is because Epictetus believes that if you aren’t satisfied with yourself, there’s nothing wealth and power can provide you. In Section 23 (p. 33), he writes, “If you ever find yourself looking for outside approval in order to curry favor, you can be sure that you have lost your way.” And in Section 24, he says that we should not worry about living a life “without honor” in fear that we’ll be “a nobody everywhere”. Instead, we should embrace the reality that we “need to be somebody only in the things that are up to you, and in them you can be a top person” (p. 35). Personally, this means trying to be a good husband, father, and teacher. I don’t need to be somebody to many; I need to be much to a few.
Pursue Wealth, If You Can Preserve Honor, Integrity, and Moral Principles Seventh, Epictetus addressed whether we should seek wealth (and we can add power) so that we can support others, like our friends. His response (in Section 24; pp. 35, 37)?
“If I can get it and preserve my honor and integrity and moral principles, show me the way, and I will get it. But if you are asking me to lose the good things that are mine just for your to acquire things that are not good, you can see how unfair you are and how ungenerous. Would you rather have money or a trustworthy and honorable friend?”
Similarly, Epictetus sees this commitment to honor, integrity, and moral principles as a patriotic act that benefits one’s nation: “And if you were to supply your country with another trustworthy and honorable citizen, would you not being doing it a benefit?” If we sacrifice our values, Epictetus warns (p. 39), “…if you lose this character in wanting to benefit your country, and you end up dishonorable and untrustworthy, what benefit would you be?”
Weigh the Costs Finally, back to the most important point: all pursuits are exchanges. Epictetus advises (Section 29; p. 45):
“In every undertaking, examine its antecedents and their consequences, and only then proceed to the act itself. If you don’t do that, you will start enthusiastically, because you have not thought about any of the next stages; then, when difficulties appear, you will give up and be put to shame.”
He uses the example of somehow who wants to glory of being an Olympian. He doesn’t tell them that they can’t pursue this goal, but that they must count the cost of the exchange (p. 45):
“You must train, keep a strict diet, stay off pastries, submit to a regular regimen each day, summer or winter, drink no cold water and no wine except at appropriate times; in other words, you have to surrender yourself to the trainer just as you would the doctor. Then in the actual contest you have to dig in alongside the other contestants, and perhaps dislocate your hand or twist your ankle, swallow a lot sand, get flogged, and with all of this lose the fight”
Even if one is to commit to be a philosopher in the Stoic way, they must be prepared to lose some things in order to gain others; they must be prepared for certain hardships the lead to certain rewards. Life is about making decisions; it’s about exchanging this for that. “Think about all this then see whether you want to exchange it for calm, freedom, and tranquility” (p. 49).
In my next post, I’ll share some of Epictetus’ words about reputation and worrying about how others view us.
Last week I read A.A. Long’s translation of Epictetus’ Encheiridion and excerpts from his Discourses, titled How to be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life. I know Stoicism is en vogue right now but there’s much of the philosophy that I find attractive, whether trendy or not. A while ago, I read a bunch of Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic. The principles were agreeable to me. Likewise with Epictetus’ philosophy.
Epictetus (55-135 CE) was a Roman philosopher who had been a slave. His context is important because it’s different from those of us who have some way to participate in a democracy (though maybe not so different from people living in more authoritarian countries around the world, which could include the United States some day). As Long notes about Epictetus (p. xv), “The Roman world of his lifetime was an absolute autocracy, headed by the emperor or Caesar.” Epictetus didn’t have much hope for changing his world through campaigning, voting, or activism. As hard as it is to bring change about in our world, it was even harder in his. For this reason, the next best move was to turn inward to find freedom. According to Long (p. x), Stoics like Epictetus understood freedom to be “neither legal status nor opportunity to move around at liberty. It is a mental orientation of persons who are impervious to frustration or disappointment because their wants and decisions depend on themselves and involve nothing that they cannot deliver to themselves.” While many of us may have a more expansive experience of freedom (we can campaign, vote, participate in activism, start a business, etc.), the truth of the matter is that as individuals most of us are quite limited in our impact and our influence on the world, so the “inward turn” remains valuable because this is where our “locus of control” lies.
For Epictetus, there are aspects of our world that are “up to us” like our motivations, desires, and aversions: “in short, everything that is our own doing” (p. 3). Most things are “not up to us” like our “body and property, our reputation, and our official positions—in short, everything that is not our doing.” This can be a liberating insight, even now. We can’t control the body that we were born into, or the wealth with which we started, or how people think of us, or whether we get the job we want. Biology, and societies, and economies, and other systems control much of who we are and what we have. Even those who become billionaires need things to break a certain way and they need to do business in a certain system that is rewarding certain innovations at the right time. Jeff Bezos, for example, doesn’t happen in just any context, so the idea that he’s self-made ignores pretty much everything about reality. This is a freeing insight. Those of us raised with the myth of “the American Dream” were told that anybody can become anything if they work hard enough for long enough. It’s a cute myth but merely a myth. Like all myths, it inspires certain people who “make it” but they’re the exception that proves the rule: the American Dream is a lottery. There are plenty of people who worked hard enough for long enough for very little reward.
I’m going to write a handful of posts sharing nuggets of wisdom from the Encheiridion. For this post, let me end with this one, since I’ve been talking about being a “have” or a “have not”. In Section 44 (p. 79 in Long), Epictetus shares two “inferences” that are “invalid”:
“I am richer than you, therefore I am better than you.”
“I am more eloquent that you, therefore I am better than you.”
Epictetus reminds us that as humans, we are “neither property nor diction”. We have property/wealth. We have rhetorical skill. But those things aren’t what we are. Instead, if someone is richer than others, rather than seeing themselves as better because of this accident (I used this in both the philosophical and colloquial sense of the word), they should accept what it means: to be wealthier than someone else doesn’t mean that I am better than them; it means that my wealth is greater. That’s it. I have more wealth than they do and for most of us, someone has more wealth than we do.
We judge ourselves by accidents of reality. We determine our worth by things that we don’t determine, no matter how much we’d like to believe that our hard work and ingenuity is the sole cause of our wealth, success, health, etc. This isn’t to say that we don’t contribute anything. I mean, Bezos did have a great idea at the perfect time…but he easily could’ve made a mistake here or a mistake there and there’s no Amazon as we know it. Nothing about the lives of people that we deem “successful” is inherit and inevitable; the same is true of those who are deemed failures or even just middle of the road.
A while back I was listening to The Herd featuring “American sports media personality” Colin Cowherd. Usually, he sticks to sports, providing his hot takes. But there was one day when he said something about American culture that struck me. I can’t remember the precise wording, or the context, but he praised the United States for being a place where if one “makes it” (in a capitalist sense), then one really makes it. We’re a high-risk, high-reward society. That means for the many who don’t make it, it’s natural to feel like a loser because our society exists as a competition that we welcome. America is held together in the same way that many professional sports organizations are: not so that all will succeed but so that the game itself can exist. Many poorer Americans perceive themselves as losers but rightfully so, admiring those who “succeed” (think of the adoration of Trump and Musk that we’ve seen from some circles), and sometimes hoping that they’ll get another shot to redeem themselves like we see in so many “rags-to-riches” Hollywood flicks. As many have said about Americans: we tend to think of ourselves as one big break from being millionaires when in reality most of us are one bad break from bankruptcy, especially if your health fails you. Most of us are far closer to being the person begging on the street corner than we are to being the next Jeff Bezos but our myths sustain us, so we ignore reality.
I think when many Americans despair the word “socialism” it’s because they agree with Cowherd: America’s greatness is—in the words of the Alicia Keys and Jay-Z song “Empire State of Mind”—the place where “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere“. Americans see themselves as playing on the biggest stage. Sure, the “World Happiness Report” ranked us 15th overall with nations like Finland, Denmark, and Iceland ranking at the top but I imagine it’s a small portion of Americans who would trade for the secure happiness provided by those countries’ social safety nets and the other perks that come with being a more collectivist society.
No Pleasure without Pain In Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Joyous Science, Book 1, Section 12 (Hill translation), the philosopher provides a perspective that aligns with Cowherd’s and that of many Americans who see our country as “the greatest in the world” in spite of where we rank in measures like happiness, health, safety, etc. Nietzsche writes, “…suppose that pleasure and pain are so intertwined that whoever wants as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other (p. 45). In other words, to experience the highest highs, one must risk experiencing the lowest lows. When we think of celebrities in our country, they have fame like no humans before them but often their lives are very complicated: addictions, failed marriages, or in the case of our athletes, the physical toll.
Nietzsche understood Stoicism, which is having a revival in our time, as a philosophy that encouraged seeking “little pleasure” because this would lead to less pain. Likewise, he understood “socialists and party politicians” as opting for a life where risks are minimized in exchange for offering a lower ceiling of pleasure. He writes, “…should you want to mitigate and assuage human suffering…you must also moderate and diminish the human capacity for joy.”
Nietzsche v. Epictetus This stands contrary to some of the Buddhist, Christian, and Stoic ideas that I’ve come to value, which emphasize human joy being found in minimizing suffering and being content with what one has. For example, this week I read Epictetus’ Encheiridion, and the emphasis from that ancient Roman philosopher (55-135 CE), who has once been a slave, is that true freedom is found in accepting what we might now call your “locus of control”. In Section 29, Epictetus tells his students that if they want to pursue the type of greatness that comes with say being an Olympian, then they should be aware of the cost. He doesn’t say that one shouldn’t pursue such goals; neither does he lionize doing so. Instead, one must be prepared to “exchange it for calm, freedom, and tranquility” (the “it” being the potential glories of achieving lofty goals). There’s something perplexing about human nature, especially as filtered through “the American Dream”: we know the path to peace but it bores us. Meaningfulness matters more than happiness. The philosophy of many Americans seems to be that they’d rather live somewhere where they can dream of greatness than somewhere they can be secure and at peace.
Are Ashramas the Answer? I find that as I’ve aged, I’m attracted to Buddhist and Stoic ideas but I recognize that when I was younger, I would’ve aligned more with Nietzsche’s perspective. (I’ve found Christianity to be easily molded to fit both perspectives, depending on the emphasis place on different parts of that tradition.) There was a stage in my life where I was obsessed with completing a Ph.D. Once that stage was over, I lost my taste for living in a state of constant ambition. I think I was burned out. I wanted to take life much slower, catch my breath. It seemed like one stage of life required certain things to be satisfied while the next stage has required other things.
In Indian philosophy, there’s the concept of “ashramas” or life-stages. One begins with a preparatory stage where they develop discipline and become educated (“Brahmacharya”); then move to the family and wealth building stage (“Grihastha”); then they transition more toward voluntary service and spirituality (“Vanaprashta”); finally one ends with a preparation for death and hopefully deliverance from the cycle of rebirth (moksha from samsara) during the last stage of life (“Sannyasa”). Maybe this is a middle way? Maybe we need our days seeking glory and our days seeking respite and calm?
Now Cowherd, Trump, Musk, Keys, and Jay-Z aren’t examples of this path. They seem to be pursuing Grihastha to the day they die. But ashramas might serve as a way to reconcile some of the truths that seem to resonate in the contradictory words of Nietzsche and Epictetus, acknowledging, of course, that this presentation is structured upon a metaphysics that many outside of India don’t embrace. Maybe Nietzsche is right for young people: take those risks; pursue great pleasure. Maybe Epictetus, the Buddha, Jesus, and others are better voices for when one comes to realize that all that glitters is not gold, and that once one achieves, the satisfaction fades quickly. In the later, wiser years—for those who find it—peace, calm, freedom, tranquility, etc., should be the goal. It could be argued that one can’t really value the reward of a peaceful, calm, free, tranquil life without having first tried to find satisfaction in the pursuit of greatness. Personally, I needed to see if I had the ability to earn a doctorate. Others have an itch to start a business, earn a million dollars, travel around the world, etc. Sometimes we achieve what we want and it’s a Pyrrhic victory. We’re left wondering if all the effort was worth it. But the fact of the matter is that for many people, they’d be left with the same cloud hanging over them if they never tried to “reach their full potential”. I don’t know what this says about people in the late stages of life who need more money, more property, more power, more, more, more. My suggestion here doesn’t reflect well on them but hey, maybe Nietzsche’s right and our one short life is best lived with our foot on the pedal and the pedal to the metal until the day we close our eyes for the last time.
Now that the holidays are upon us, and for the first time I’m a parent, I’ve been thinking about a dilemma. How do I approach the topic of Santa Claus with my son? I can think of three possibilities with pros and cons.
Option #1: embrace the Santa Claus mythology until he’s older and then inform him that it’s just a story that we have to outgrow
Pros: He gets to experience the joy of modern Christmas mythology. This will make the season a lot of fun. It’ll prevent him from being the strange kid who “doesn’t believe in Santa”. Hence, it has a function for social bonding. Like all mythologies, it’s one he’ll outgrow and this process helps young minds realize that there’s a difference between the stories we tell and facts about the world. There’s a time for this but childhood doesn’t seem to be it. For example, it seems like a parent would be a killjoy if they made a point to tell their kid that every Disney character they see in the movies “isn’t real”. It seems like bad parenting to say, “Now, I know you’re enjoying Frozen but I need you to understand that Anna and Elsa aren’t real!”
Cons: It feels like you’re lying to your kid when you tell them that Santa is real. And eventually, you have to break it to them that you’ve been misleading them. I’ve heard that when I was a child I was quite upset by this revelation at first until my mother told me that it wouldn’t change the number of gifts I received. Apparently, Santa became irrelevant, quickly!
AI generated image via Canva using the prompt “Santa confused about whether he exists”
Option #2: embrace the Santa Claus mythology until he’s older and then invite him to join us in “being Santa” for others
Pros: Some friends of mine had a slightly different approach. When their kids grew older, they told them that “Santa” is basically a collective. (Kind of like my theory of “Banksy”.) And that their parents and grandparents were part of this collective. And now that the kid is old enough, they are welcomed into this secret society of doing good for others around the holiday and giving gifts as “Santa”. Currently, I’m leaning this direction.
Cons: It has the same cons as the previous option. I think it makes a softer break between mythology and fact though. In some sense, it shows mythology can be true if we live it.
Option #3: reject the Santa Claus mythology because it could be understood as lying to my kid
Pros: We don’t lie to our kid. We don’t have to have that conversation some day about how Santa isn’t real. We emphasize logical and scientific thinking instead of the mythological and superstitious thinking that some people take with them even into adulthood (e.g. immature expressions of religion).
Cons: Our son becomes “that kid” who tells other kids that Santa isn’t real. It will change the meaning of the season for our kid. It will prevent them from enjoying a shared mythology. It introduces them very early to the sad reality that many of us experience when we grow up: the world isn’t as enchanting as it seemed. It pushes them toward “scientism” which rarely is emotionally or socially satisfying unless you’re reactionary or Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
My son isn’t old enough for this to matter for a couple of years. But that doesn’t mean that my wife and I shouldn’t be thinking ahead. What did readers of this blog who were parents do? Would you do anything different in retrospect? Is there an option that I’m not considering.
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