Month: October 2020

This is from the Sam Torode translation (which he titles The Manual) of Enchiridion by Epictetus:

People who are ignorant of philosophy blame others for their own misfortunes. Those who are beginning to learn philosophy blame themselves. Those who have mastered philosophy blame no one.

The Manual, Chapter 5

This is a barometer, not a static measurement like my height. It’s not a destination to be arrived at.

At any given time I can flicker between the three states.

I notice that when I stay away from social media and politics I don’t fall to the “blame others” level. I’m using a blocker software (freedom.to) and apparently that is necessary for my well-being. I’m not strong enough to stay away from hell by myself.

Mostly I’m in the middle, blaming myself for everything. That’s my default mode, I guess from a lifetime of rugged individualism and taking extreme responsibility for self.

I’m in the middle a lot of times for reasons that Epictetus would say are outside of my control. Other times it’s my standard attitude toward life which, of course, is optional.

At my best, I float unperturbed.

I’ve just experienced a one-hour event in my life where I started low (blaming someone else for an event that may or may not be financially painful—I don’t know yet), to blaming myself (I didn’t give adequate instructions), to equanimity (let’s see what happens and deal with it).

And this is with a close family member. Only once in the beginning was I a bit short and snarly. Thereafter I was helpful and supportive, I hope.

In fairness, I was up from 2 am to 5 am (living firmly in the “blame others” zone which is why I couldn’t sleep), only to be awakened after finally falling asleep by a phone call. 😀

I watched the progression through the stages and here I am, writing about it and I’m OK right now, even if it costs me money. (Car problems. What are you going to do?)

This, then, is my primary focusing tool for now: examine everything with Epictetus eyes. If it’s under my control, do the best I can to be honorable and take the indicated action. If it’s outside of my control, choose a neutral attitude, then choose actions as appropriate.

I do not expect to master philosophy, by the way. I would be satisfied with occasional, sustained moments of inner peace. I do not want to inflict pain on others (by being in the “blame others” mode) or on myself (by reflexively blaming myself).

Postscript: See how I threw an excuse in there? This immediately triggered the old saying in my head: “There are no explanations, only excuses.” I just gave myself an excuse for why it was ok for me to be in hell, mentally. And the excuse extends to being less than kind to my family member.

It’s not ok, whatever the cause, to be in hell. It’s not where I want to be. It’s not ok to use an external event (my excuse of lack of sleep) as a justification for why I can be an asshole.

I am leaving the excuse (lack of sleep) here in this entry to remind me that there are no excuses. Either I’m on the beam or I’m not. Either my oxen have fallen into the ditch or they have not.

If the oxen are in the ditch, who cares how they got there. My first job is to get them out of the ditch. Meaning that if my mentality is wrong, my first job is to get my mentality right.

That (getting my mental oxen out of the ditch) is something within my control. The fact that I slept poorly? Not within my current control, though presumably I might have been able to change my middle-of-the-night the-world-is-going-to-hell thinking then and gained a few hours of rest.

At least, after a day or so of Twitter, I am back on the full-time blocking of my favorite toxic websites with freedom.to.

Stop writing shit for page views. Stop it.

You’re wasting everyone’s time, especially your own.

https://twitter.com/Delicious_Tacos/status/1319295826347257857?s=20

Edit (later, when viewing this again): This is so much deeper than it appears. This is a Guiding Principle and deserves those initial caps.

Meaning? Don’t do anything for external applause, external effect. The life you harm most is your own.

Funny how this date has two wildly different meanings to me.

Plenty of people have lived entirely normal and contented lives without knowing about this date in history. Almost everyone I know, in fact, is blissfully ignorant.

Takeaway? The event and its follow-on consequences, which distantly touched me, are not #Lindy.

The other meaning? Trivial and associated in my mind with everything good about life.

This is a good contrast to keep in mind: a random sequence of numbers (or anything, really) can convey any meaning that you choose.

So choose your meaning wisely, and remember that you’re injecting the meaning by your own thoughts. The meaning is not native to the thing, memory, event, etc. that you are contemplating.

Or maybe just choose to inject no meaning. You’ve had that experience: feeling terrible about something and then coming to see it as inert, just a feature of the (mental) landscape. Acceptance.

My actions. My thoughts.

Nothing else.

Let’s make today just a day. Not frantic when looking at the back-to-back schedule. The schedule is just a series of expected events.

I can feel any emotion I want. How about calm? Like those moving walkways at the airport, I will just stand and let the day carry me. Anxious? Stressed? Optional, and I decline to exercise the option.

The thing, though, is to remember this point in the heat of the action. Remember that ascribing a feeling to “what’s happening” is entirely optional. And the feeling selected is also optional.

And if I metaphorically fall in the ditch, my only job will be to get out of the ditch.

There is an enormous amount of truth suppression “these days” in public discourse. The social media companies censor ideas and people. Cancel culture runs rampant.

They’re afraid. They know they are wrong, in a subconscious way at least. And maybe some of the more alert of them know it consciously but it is expedient to suppress one’s enemies for some imagined reason or another.

The pendulum swings. J. Edgar Hoover ran rampant over those who now run rampant over their enemies. Soon enough, the tide will turn again.

That’s politics. It important but take the long view. A thousand skirmishes followed by 10,000 more. But no winners or losers. Only turmoil.

Why is there this expediency and reliance on falsehood and persecution? I think it is because those who follow this path have no deep roots, no deep principles by which they can judge their own actions.

For yourself take these lessons to heart:

• Sometimes you accept a loss and keep fighting.
• Go deep and build your character. Then help your family build theirs. Then your friends. Be steadfast and hold deep principles.

Reading a bit about the NXIVM cult.

A marker of a cult is the withholding of contrary evidence from its members.

For their own good, of course.

Watch for those who withhold information. For that matter, just look for a one-sided stream of uncontradicted information.

First remember that you are not qualified to mediate a conflict of experts. You’re not that smart.

So look at the expected outcomes for yourself if an expert is right or wrong.

Make your decision based on payoffs, not the bet that one expert is right and another wrong.

This I was told: I had to become a new man entirely, from the ground up. I couldn’t just embark on an improvement project to sharpen up the best parts of my character.

Clean house. Or, to use the words I was told, I had to be born again. These words were used deliberately by a non-churchgoer to tell me, a man reflexively hostile to Christianity, that I should pull my head out of my ass and rebuild from nothing. All new information.

I may be a Christian, but not in ways you understand. I am certainly now open-minded and find actionable truth in the Gospels.

That’s an aside. My point here is that you can’t hold onto the old. Let it all go, or to be more precise, be willing to let it all go.

That’s the first thing that is needed. Willingness.

The second thing I needed was direction. A goal. A vision to build toward, the man I would become. This was supplied by men who had done what they asked me to do: start from absolute willingness, and rebuild according to pragmatic lessons they taught me. Accept nothing, test everything.

Later I found that these things they asked me to do had their foundations in ancient teachings. Some explicitly pointed at the Gospels. S

ome teachings came (I now know) from the Stoics, though this was never acknowledged. I think this is because the pragmatic lessons they taught me were almost entirely proven from their own experience. “Your opinion of me is your business.” This taught me to begin to care less of what others thought of me. (I’m not free of it by any means but I’m usually in pretty good shape.) That’s an example of “things outside my control” in Stoic terms.

I’m writing here to clarify what I think and build that future man that I wish to become.

Or, as another one of these men told me, to remember.