The Stoics and the Fix-Its

An addendum to the essay on Marcus Aurelius

Dear T,

No matter where or when you live, the idea of manhood pulls you in two opposite directions, and Stoicism puts one of them perfectly. The first theory is that manhood is asceticism — aka, how much you can endure. This means if it hurts, you can bear it. But the other philosophy is exactly the opposite: that if life really hurts, you should fix it.

Which side any man picks is up to him, but all of us are a mix, most of us lean one way or the other, and if we get too far to either side, we each have our guns on the other too. The fix-its call ascetics silly because the Stoics will just bear with everything, and the Stoics call the fix-its pansies because the fix-its won’t put up with anything. Seneca says "it is what it is” — I can freeze myself, starve myself, keep myself up all night and live in a cardboard box. Ayn Rand says “it is what it shouldn't be,” and tries to remake the world to her tastes. I think we need a dash of each for every moment; and that if we had too much of either it would be either implosion or explosion. Thus the ideal to me (and the other ex-drunks) is the Serenity Prayer:

Dear God,

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

But this is too much for the radicals, and many find safety in either prosperity or penury.

The ascetic has one advantage over the fix-it, though. In order to fix anything above a common-grade mechanical problem you have to have some charisma and intelligence; and the fix-it without a healthy dose of either becomes either a whiner or a menace: an awareness of an issue without a solution, a solution without persuasion, or the kind of man who dreams bogus solutions to unsolvable problems. In the worst-case scenario, he can’t accept that life is a series of trade-offs, and believes the grass is always greener on the other side — which ruins whatever situation he’s in, in search of a situation that can’t ever exist. As Antisthenes put it, when asked what kind of woman to marry, If she’s beautiful you’ll have to share her. If she’s ugly you’ll have to bear her.

Stoicism on the other hand is for every man of low-to-mid-range intelligence and charisma — i.e., the majority. He can't come up with a theory of government like Alexander Hamilton. He can’t sweet-talk the French into funding it like Benjamin Franklin. He can’t battle the biggest power in the world into accepting it like George Washington. He sticks with what little he can fix — say, his car and his lawn and his house — and he endures the rest, which is the world. He also admits when life kicks his ass and he can’t do anything about it: a place everyone has to be at some point or another.

The Stoics have a second advantage. I would add here that the fix-its rarely agree on the bigger issues — and that as the range of ideas and solutions becomes more complex, they not only turn their guns on the Stoics: they turn them on each other.

Yours,

-J

P.S. My dad reminded me that there’s a third option between Stoics and fix-its, and that's the true Christian. The Christian shares each mentality because he believes in two realms at the same time — that there's a perfect world and a broken world, and, by the power of God, we’re supposed to bring perfection into the disaster.

This isn’t too different from the rest of us, who live in both the physical world and our imaginations, and allow each to bleed into the other; but the key wording here is by the power of God. This means you’re not alone bearing the weight of the universe or responsible for fixing it. It all ends well, which gives Christianity an extreme Stoic quality; and you don't have to accept anything wrong in the world — an attitude that reeks of a fix-it. Thus Paul, knowing that all things work together for those who love God and are called according to His purpose, can say (NIV),

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Yet so far from just sitting back and letting the world burn, which is the corollary of being “content in all things,” he lets loose a war-cry and charges it head-first.

I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?

Was he insincere about one of these takes? There’s no way to tell other than seeing him in real life. We know he was unhappy with the world, and that’s why he wrote all the letters. But to see whether he was content, you would have to see his face — and whether he was smiling through the whole thing.

Either way we can be glad nobody takes their philosophy seriously all the time. When Antisthenes was getting initiated into the cult of Orpheus, the priest told him about all the good things initiates would get in Hades. Antisthenes turned to him and asked, why don’t you die then? The wet-blanket Moravians would have been one step ahead of Antisthenes. Hearing that heaven is great and life here is full of evil, they used to pray on their sick-beds not for health, but for death — a logical take on the usual Christian ideas, to be sure; and for that reason totally ugly.

P.P.S. A dear reader of mine objected to my handling of Marcus Aurelius in the last essay. Effectively she said, what’s the harm of giving a philosophy novice something wise and easy? And she’s right. Philosophy should know when to bend, I think; and instead of standing far off like an old wizard in an ivory tower, untouchable and inscrutable, a philosopher should be single and ready to mingle — to diffuse himself, like a good cologne, over everyone he gets near; leaving traces of himself behind, and a faint memory of something sweet, and wholesome, and rich. (The fool has his own smell too, of course; and being in it for so long makes him nose-blind to foolishness in others).

No, Michael Malice, not that Dear Reader

To do this you have to know your audience and be willing to meet them eye-to-eye: not from a lectern, but from across a pool table. Marcus Aurelius and Plato and Seneca are thus ideal introductions to philosophy*; even if Montaigne is richer and more interesting; and Ben Franklin’s sayings are just better. Plato and Marcus Aurelius have a better PR team than they deserve — so what? Use what you can as a diving board, not as the pool. You’re an evangelist, not a hipster.

And as far as my statement last time about the TikTok attention span? Only half true, of course: wisdom can be a book or a sentence; and in many cases a book takes hours to say what a trite saying can — not necessarily a sign of intelligence or patience or even good taste, but of time spent. And most philosophers don’t have a whole book in them anyway. They talk beyond their means and they eventually get silly.

Kipling’s The Gods of the Copybook Headings is a fine thing to leave here — not just a defense of folk wisdom and the one-liner, but an assault on the big books and their heavy, crazy, trendy theories:

As I pass through my incarnations, in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

*Speaking of Philosophy 101, If a tree falls in a forest is one of the most annoying questions in philosophy. Or is it one of the greatest? Maybe it has layers like an onion and the first one is the worst one, and because it was the first one almost nobody got to the other layers.

If you rephrase it only slightly it becomes a great question. For instance, if you say a wise thing to a baby, is it still wise? Or, if you tell a great joke to a bore, are you still funny? Like so many metaphors and proverbs, maybe the author meant the wise thing and we just took it as the dumb thing. Or maybe he really meant the dumb thing and completely missed giving us the proverb. Maybe it was just an angels on pinheads question meant to drive nerds into fistfights. Or maybe it’s the question behind so many of our fears. Am I making a good difference, or am I going into the void? Is what I do good in itself, or am I judged by my peers? What if my audience is really small? What if nobody sees my good deeds? What if nobody appreciates how hard they were to do? What if I’m misunderstood? What if nobody cares?

This is all for better and for worse, of course. The likelihood of having your best intentions obscured is the likelihood of having your worst intentions obscured. For every good deed that can’t shine you have a bad deed they can’t smell. For every good intention that gets buried you have an ulterior motive that sneaks by. We worry that nobody understands us and then wince whenever people bring up The Last Judgment.

*Being a Stoic or a Fix-it appears at first glance to be about material things; but in the end they encompass even spiritual things too. Ayn Rand believed deeply in a sense of pride — that you have to earn it by what you can do; and if you can’t earn it, you don’t deserve it. Diogenes, the most extreme ascetic I’m aware of, said to hell with others’ opinions — and to inoculate himself against them, he used to jerk off at the marketplace.