The Socrates Express
- Автор: Вейнер Эрик
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
- Жанр: География, путевые заметки
Электронная книга - «The Socrates Express». Краткое содержание книги:
We contemplate for the same reasons we travel: to see the world from a different perspective, to unearth hidden beauty and find new ways of being. We want to learn how to embrace wonder. Face regrets. Sustain hope.
Eric Weiner, *New York Times* bestselling author of *The Geography of Bliss* , combines his twin passions for philosophy and global travel in a pilgrimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from philosophers around the world, from Marcus Aurelius to Arthur Schopenhauer, Confucius to Montaigne. Traveling by train (the most thoughtful mode of transport) he traversed thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi,...
We’re isolated out here. There are no distractions. No television. No Wi-Fi. A weak and irregular cell phone signal. Yet a quiet joy prevails. Partly it is the joy of kindred spirits, joining forces against the elements, but it is also the rare joy of humans grappling aloud with weighty, urgent questions. This, I imagine, is how Epictetus’s students must have felt, far from home, with only each other and their philosophy.
We Stoics bond. We roast marshmallows over a fire, braving the cold stoically. We make goofy Stoic jokes. A typical exchange goes like this:
“Hey, I’m going into town to buy a six-pack of preferred indifferents. Anyone want anything?”
“No thanks. I’m practicing Voluntary Deprivation.”
“Okay. I’ll be back soon. Fate permitting.”
That last phrase, “fate permitting,” expresses something called the “Stoic reserve clause.” When Rob first mentioned it, I worried it was some legal mumbo jumbo—a disclaimer to sign, perhaps—but my fears were misplaced. The reserve clause is not legal but therapeutic. Another Stoic technique for coping with life’s uncertainty.
At the heart of Stoicism lies a deep fatalism. The universe follows a script not written by you. And as much as you aspire to one day direct, forget about it. You are an actor. Embrace your role. “Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan,” says Epictetus.
Pining for a different role is futile and will only cause you to suffer needlessly, like the dog dragged by the cart. We must learn, say the Stoics, “to desire what we have.” That sounds odd, I realize. Isn’t desire, by definition, a yearning for something we lack? How can we desire what we already have? Nietzsche, I think, answers the question best. Don’t resign yourself to your fate. Don’t accept your fate. Love it. Desire it.
The “reserve clause” serves as a reminder that we are following a script we haven’t written. Events unfold, “fate permitting.” If a Stoic is about to board a train for Chicago, she says to herself, “I’ll be in Chicago tomorrow morning, fate permitting.” If she is up for a promotion, she tells herself she will get it, fate permitting. The reserve clause is similar to the Muslim inshallah (God willing) or the Jewish b’ezrat hashem, only stripped of theology.
Not everyone at camp is buying Stoic determinism. The grad students, rigorous logic-choppers, are particularly skeptical. If everything is fated, where does that leave human agency? Why bother doing anything? Why get out of bed in the morning? I share these concerns and notice Rob is busy stroking his goatee. I’m eager to hear his rebuttal.
It comes in the form of an analogy. (The Stoics love analogies.) People are like cylinders rolling down a hill, he says, eyes twinkling. All of the cylinders are going to reach the bottom of the hill. That is a given. Whether they have a rough or smooth journey, though, is up to them. Are they polished, perfectly shaped cylinders or rough and uneven ones? In other words, are they virtuous cylinders? We don’t control the hill or the force of gravity, but we do control the kind of cylinder we are, and that matters.
My bunk is shaking. Violently. In my half sleep, I think, Earthquake!—an adversity I had not premeditated and now wish I had. No, not an earthquake. The shaking is too methodical, possibly human induced.
“Time to live in accord with nature,” a voice says. I open my eyes and glance at my watch: 5:00 a.m. What is going on?
Oh yeah, good old Marcus. He had waxed poetic about waking at dawn to watch the stars and greet the sun. “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, see yourself running with them.” Marcus, I’m fairly certain, never woke at dawn, never ran with a single star, yet Rob has taken the philosopher-emperor at his word and decided that waking before sunrise is just the bracing tonic we aspiring Stoics need.
I stumble to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, then join my fellow campers. I scramble up a hill, nearly tripping several times, all the while shivering. I had packed for spring in Maryland, not Wyoming.
Our predawn maneuver does have some rational basis. There was a physicality to Stoic philosophy. The school’s founder, Zeno, was famously fit, no doubt a result of all that vigorous pacing in the colonnade. His successor, Cleanthes, was an ex-boxer and his successor, Chrysippus, a long-distance runner. The goal of all this athleticism wasn’t to win medals or even gain fitness. It was, like everything else with the Stoics, a way to practice virtue—specifically the virtues of self-discipline, courage, and endurance.
The wind cuts through me. I am whining. Externally. There are only three of us climbing the hill. Where are the others? I wonder.
Then I spot them, already positioned on the ridge. “Hey,” I say to Rob, “what happened to ‘No Stoic Left Behind’?”
“There’s nothing in the Handbook about that,” he deadpans.
I switch tack and ask him what Marcus would say about this biting cold.
“He’d say, ‘Man up,’ ” Rob replies.
Stoicism is demanding. It’s not easy and they don’t pretend it is. It contains little of that Greek moderation. It is an all-or-nothing philosophy. One is either virtuous or one is not. One either lives in accord with nature or one does not.
Like the Epicureans, Stoics saw philosophy as medicine for the soul. Tough medicine. At one point, Epictetus compares the philosopher’s school to the physician’s office, adding that “you shouldn’t leave it in pleasure but in pain.” The goal, he adds, is not dependency on the physician but to heal yourself, to become your own physician.
This emphasis on self-reliance helps explain why Stoicism appealed to America’s Founding Fathers, and to soldiers everywhere today. It locates responsibility for your happiness squarely on your own shoulders. When a young student complains of a runny nose, Epictetus replies: “Have you no hands? Wipe your own nose, then, and don’t blame God.”
We each possess a bit of the logos, a divine intelligence that infuses the universe, the Stoics say. Reason is our greatest blessing, the only true source of happiness. The cosmos is infused with a divine but wholly rational intelligence. Every time we act rationally, we shake hands with this intelligence. For the Stoics, acting “rationally” doesn’t mean acting like a cold fish. To act rationally is to act in harmony with the cosmos, and there is nothing cold about that. “We are agents of divine providence,” says Rob, and I can tell he means it.
So, to live in accord with nature is to align yourself with the kingdom of reason, and you can do that anywhere. “You can just as easily be in accord with nature in Manhattan,” says Rob, making me wonder what I’m doing in the wilds of Wyoming, underdressed, in pitch-darkness.
Then the sky lightens, as the sun peeks above the horizon, and it is beautiful and I forget about the cold and the rough lodging and no longer wonder why I am here. As I gaze at the brightening sky, something Rob had said earlier comes to mind: “The world’s a pretty big place and I’m not.”
He was articulating the Stoic notion of “the View from Above.” Imagine yourself hovering high above the earth, looking down at your puny world: the inconsequential traffic and dirty dishes and petty arguments and lost notebooks. Indifferents, all of them. You are nothing. You are everything.
Another word for adversity is loss, and here the Stoics have much to say. I’m glad. I could use some help in that department. Epictetus suggests coping with small losses and moving to bigger ones. Have you lost your coat? Well, yes, that’s because you had a coat.
Only, in the Stoic worldview you haven’t actually lost the coat. You’ve returned it. You should no more be traumatized than when you return a library book or check out of a hotel. My beloved notebook I took to England? Not lost. Returned. As Epictetus says, “And when something is removed, to give it up easily and immediately, grateful for the times you had the use of it—unless you would rather cry for your nurse and your mummy!” Man up.