. . . why Marcus Aurelius comes back to the same thought, the same topic, the same idea. Again and again and again.
Because he needs to re-examine the thought in that moment. And so he writes it down.
Daily, hourly reminders. I need them, too. My head can go to hell in an instant. These reminders help me return to heaven.
Again with Freedom.to. The old saying is “God did for me what I could not do for myself.” The same is true for a simple piece of software. Freedom keeps me away from the hellseeds of the internet, because I am not yet strong enough to do so myself.
Daily, I set the blocklist. I could set up a repeating schedule but it’s better for me to do it daily. The simple action helps me remember myself.
At some point I will not need Freedom. I know this is true because I see websites on my list that used to consume my attention, and now they are meh. In time, I will be able to take other websites or leave them, indifferent. Training wheels, for now.
Admit weakness, take action. Not necessarily to become strong so you can resist evil, not so you can banish evil entirely, but strong so you can make the evil irrelevant to you.
I simply, for instance, drink black coffee. Through time and repetition I weaned myself from added sugar, then added cream. Now the presence of sugar and cream is as relevant to me as the presence of salt and pepper. Don’t want, choose against.
Admit it, though. Today you need help from software.
Yes I do, and I’m grateful for it and the people who brought it to my attention.
What follows coheres with what went before. Not like a random catalogue whose order is imposed upon it arbitrarily, but logically connected.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.45. (Gregory Hays translation).
And I am not the connector, the producer. I do not have this power.
At best I can be the sower who goes out to sow. I laid the seed. Perhaps applied water. Everything else happened without me.
Think of this in business and maybe you won’t think that you’re so damned important.
I remembered the Funkadelic song today. Gave it a listen again. It’s still great.
Who would have expected this message from George Clinton? I know someone who was a huge P-Funk fan in the early 70s. She flatly won’t take the man seriously. That he would have spiritual perception seems preposterous to her.
Preposterous or not, there it is. Right in front of you.
Good thoughts bring forth good fruit
Bullshit thoughts rot your meat
Funkadelic, Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts
Worth listening to. And the song reminds me of the age-old question: do you disregard the art because of the artist? I think the answer is no.
Ever since I started using Freedom.to aggressively, my phone has become a blessing rather than a curse.
The Kindle app (to read) and the WordPress app (to write) mean this thing I carry around feeds me. I am reaching into my pocket less. If I’m standing in line somewhere, I stand in line. I don’t pull out my phone to do things.
I can and do listen to good books on my phone. (Taleb’s Incerto got a complete triple play recently. Going through it three times without a break? That’s a lot of Taleb).
I can and do listen to good podcasts, and I am now avoiding bad podcasts. One in particular had many, many gems, but I had to dial it down because of the (ahem) associated externalities (Scott Adams). How to think, good. The other stuff, eh, a bit much for me. Better to read his books. Right now the good podcast I’m tracking is The Warrior Poet.
I didn’t think I would get to the point where my phone was my servant. But here I am. Accomplished by saying no. Via negativa.
I really should set up an affiliate link to make some money off my constant reference to Freedom.to. But I won’t. Money is not why I’m here, doing this. Adding money to this activity will change it.
Yesterday a decision was made.
Action has been taken. What was decided has become real.
Via negativa.
If you do less, you do the things you do better. You’re not hurried and distracted.
Marcus Aurelius wrote something new about this in Meditations. It wasn’t there last time I read the book:
But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.25 (Gregory Hays translation)
I make up stuff and take actions because of the made up ideas, not because reality requires me to act.
Strip away opinions that are luxury opinions. I don’t need theme, they don’t improve my life, they don’t directly bear on how I deal with the things that happen around me today.
In fact, I don’t even need to have opinions about a lot of things that happen round me. Yes, these things may be real. (Though I really do not know, because the difference between factual reporting and propaganda is negligible). But they are not relevant to me.
If I don’t have an opinion on something outside my control, I don’t take action on it. Better yet, I don’t get sucked into misery because of my attitude about things outside of my control.
Even having opinions about the things within my control might be superfluous.
Peace of mind is one thing. But being less busy? That would be an immediate blessing.
Watch yourself. If you’re disturbed, you know the reason is because of yourself. Something exists (in or out of your control) that came to your attention and now it bothers you.
Let’s deal with the easy stuff first. Recognize the “out of your control” stuff and allow yourself to not have an opinion. Be agnostic.
Then you can let the “I’m bothered” inflammation heal because you’re not continuing to irritate yourself. And you’re likely do do less dumb shit, like say things about stuff that you know nothing about and will never affect you anyway.
Like politics. The recent election made me toxic. That’s the main reason for the hard boundaries I have placed around the garden of my mind (blocking software like Freedom, for instance). All of politics is out of my control, so there is no reason to have strong opinions. Or weak ones, for that matter. It’s not my job. It might become my job, but it isn’t my job today.
The important change is the deeper meaning of what is happening to me. By that I am referring to strengthening the inside man, the moral character, and by doing so being of value to the community.
In that arena I have moved from lethargic indifference to quiet participant. I have stripped away the luxury opinions of political outrage. Those opinions do me no good and make me a cranky bastard, or no help to others. I’m reminded of Bob’s joking reminder of how not to be helpful: “He was wrong and I told him so.”
That is an example of via negativa in my life today. I am peaceful and, God willing, I can be helpful to those around me so they can see reality, find peace, and help those around them, too.
You would think that this course of action makes me softer, wishy-washy. I am discovering that quite the contrary is happening. There is an inner core of belief that has become clearer, easier to act on. I know why these beliefs are beneficial to me and those around me.
Despite being strongly held, these principles make me more broadly tolerant than before. But without question I am becoming harder in other ways. (I use harder in the sense of describing a hardened warrior. Tough, unafraid, has seen things, realistic, decisive. Anabasis, by Xenophon. Think of those men.)
If I am typical (probably not!), what is the overall impact on national politics? What would be the impact of many people like me, turning inward toward old virtues, from the Stoics and Christianity? Not my problem. That is something I am sure of.
My job: live an honorable life, care for and help my family to the best of my ability, care for friends and neighbors, support actions that are the best for my immediate community as a whole.
Anything beyond that and my impact is diffuse and unlikely to make a difference. My actions (“Save the whales!”) will make so little difference to the perceived problem that they will only serve to increase my dissatisfaction.
I, alone, cannot save the whales. And when I try and fail, I will be unhappy because I failed. So I do things within my control only, for local impact only, and let the impact of those actions ripple outward as they will.
Who know? Maybe this is the cumulative effect of half a lifetime of work on the inner man. All I know is that the path feels right. Do less, do it locally, do it at a foundational level.
And do it slyly, like the fox. 😉
To take action.
Today.
I have been faltering because I wanted to know what I was going to do before I began. What am I going to write about before I write? Figure out what I think before I start. Am I really committed to this? What if it fails? What is the opportunity cost of this activity instead of all of the other possibilities arrayed before me?
I know the goal. I know the people who will (God willing) find my offering useful. I know that people who follow the path I will lay out will be stronger, happier people, and their communities and families will be better off because people followed that path.
I know that these actions will help me, whether ultimately successful, unsuccessful, or (the worst outcome) somewhere in the middle. I will learn something and make myself more resilient, win, lose, or draw.
No. I start today.
Learn what to speak about by saying the wrong thing, or being inarticulate.
Learn what to do by doing the wrong things.
It has been decided.
It’s hard, in the moment, to know why you’re pissed off. The more important thing is to stop being pissed off, because that state of mind is of no value.
But it’s easier said than done to go from mental uproar to tranquility just because you want to. I haven’t accomplished that skill yet, and I doubt I will ever get there.
The “why” question is usually fruitless, but here it can be useful. If you have convinced yourself of the Stoic perspective (within your control, outside of your control), build on that foundation to allow yourself to let go of the inner uproar.
Ask yourself why you’re angry, annoyed, etc.
If you identify an event outside of your control, then you have persuaded yourself and it’s easier to let go and return to equilibrium. You have already accepted the truth of the control/no control principle.
Epictetus, as usual:
Practise, then, from the very beginning to say to every disagreeable impression, ‘You’re an impression and not at all what you appear to be.’ Then examine it and test it by these rules that you possess, and first and foremost by this one, whether the impression relates to those things that are within our power, or those that aren’t within our power; and if it relates to anything that isn’t within our power, be ready to reply, ‘That’s nothing to me.’
Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1.5
I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s not. I’m not saying it’s instantaneous in effect. It’s not. My mind wants to chew on thoughts like a puppy gnaws on a bone.
Do it anyway. Use the realization that this is an “outside of your control” matter (the answer to “Why?”) as the trigger. Pull away from the disagreeable impressions, even if you have to pull away again, again, again, and again, for days or weeks on end.
Actually, I should revise my judgment of “not easy”.
It is easy to do. Listen to DJ Boring’s Winona. The track samples from an interview.
Winona Ryder is interviewed and says “It is difficult to be judged.” (Sample at 4:15). (Judgment by others is outside our control). She gives a brief vignette to illustrate how she was judged, erroneously as it turned out.
She also says “I can’t answer the real question. All I can tell you is it’s easy.” (Sample at 3:17). And that is truth. I can’t answer the real question, even though it’s my own question. I will be uncovering new questions until I die. All of the questions are as real as the previous one and the next.
All I can say, based on experience, is that it’s easy.
I can do. That’s easy. Let go as if you’re a maple tree releasing a single autumn leaf, and draw deeply from your roots for sustenance.
The hard part is to keep doing.
The hard boundary at work is “no chips”. I have extended it to home. Twice this afternoon I have approached the bag of tortilla chips beside the fridge and reversed course when my mind said “hard boundaries”.
I wrote this to remember two victories today.