Massimo Pigliucci on How to Live a Happy Life

self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Massimo Pilucci.

He's currently the Katie Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. Massimo's research interests include the philosophy of science, the relationship between science and philosophy, the nature of pseudoscience, and the practical philosophy of Stoicism. He's the author and editor of many books, including the one discussed here, A Field Guide to Happy Life fifty three brief Lessons for Living. Him Massimo, Welcome to the show. Thanks, it's a pleasure to be here. I am happy to

have you on. We are going to be discussing your book called The Field Guide to a Happy Life fifty three brief Lessons for Living. But before we start with that, let's start the way we normally do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which

represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents as well. Which one wins, and the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah,

it's an interesting parable. I mean, I suppose the basic idea is that there are different aspects to human nature in this particular case too, and that it is up to us to some extent to feed, so to speak, the aspect that we want to nurture. And I mean there is quite some truth in that. A lot of philosophical traditions seem to focus on one or the other,

you know. Some philosophers like Thomas Hobbs, for instance, famously thought that human beings are nasty Brewish, you know, and our life would be very short if you were not under the authority of of an absolute ruler. So that would be one side that we feed on your business. Other philosophers like Jean Jacques Rousseau fought exactly the opposite, that human beings are naturally good and that it's society

actually that ruins us right. As a biologist especially, I think that much better and more realistic understanding is that we really have a combination of both natures and that interact in complex ways. And I think, however, that something can be said, you had. A lot can be said for the fact that we do have choices of which side do we feed and how, and so ultimately we are responsible for what comes out of our nature even

though we have this kind of mixed heritage. Yeah, yeah, you are a I think you would use this description of yourself a modern stoic um, and you're you're sort of working to reinterpret Stoic philosophy for modern times. Could you, for listeners, share to you what that term stoicism means well. Stoicism is a framework, is a way of looking at life that is supposed to be helping you, just like any other philosophy of life, or in fact, for that matter,

any religion. Buddhism is another such framework. Christianity is one such For network, so, stoicism is one way of looking at life, setting priorities, figuring out what is important one is not, and and generally try to navigate your life in the best way possible. In fact, every such framework also provides you with some kind of idea what best means? You know, what is a good life. Depending on which philosophy or religion you subscribe to, that means different things.

If you are an Epicurean, for instance, a good life is one in which you reduce pain to a minimum, especially mental pain. If you're a Stoic, a good life is one in which you use reason to solve problems and in particular to improve society. And the reason for that is because the Stoics think that the two fundamental mental aspects of human nature that distinguished human nature from any other animal on earth is the fact that we are highly social and the fact that we are capable

of sophisticated reasoning. So once you put the two things together, then a satisfying you know, good human life or human life worth living is one in which you actually use your brain to improve society at large. You talk about eight years ago or so that you said, my life changed instantly and for the better when you first read a particular philosopher who was that that fonswer was Epictitis, who was a late first century early second century Roman Stoic.

In fact, that wasn't actually even his name. We don't know his name. A pictis just means acquired because he was a slave and he started out his life in Hierapolis, which is in modern day Pamlically in western Turkey. Highly recommended place to go and visit. It's a UNESCO International Heritage Site, just gorgeous. And then it was acquired by the personal secretary of the Emperor Nero and so he was brought to Rome and he lived part of his life in Rome. Eventually was freed, as it was not

unusual for particularly promising slaves. He studied philosophy with a major Stoic philosopher of the time on his Rufus and the eventually he started teaching his own brand of Stoicism. Now, one of the interesting things that happened was that the Stoics in general, and he Pictetius in particular, had his pensiont too. As we would say today, speak truth to power, and as we know, power usually doesn't like to be

spoken truth through. And so in that particular case, the emperor in charge at the moment was the mission, and the mission didn't really appreciate these, uh, these Stoics going around telling him that he was unvirtuous and then he wasn't doing the right thing. So at some point he actually probably getting an edict according to which every philosopher, especially the Stoics, were kicked out of Italy, and that

included of course the Pictitius. And the Pictitius moved to Nico Police, which is a town that still exists today on the northwestern coast of Greece. Once the he re established his school, and the joke was on the mission because epictitius school became one of the most sought after the Romaniti stocolacy who sent their kids to study with Epictetus,

and later empertors like Adrian became regular visitors. So so this is a guy that went from literally the lowest possible rank of society, you know, being a slave, to being one of the most renowned and respected teachers of antiquity. And the reason he spoke to me particularly is because he's very clear when he speaks, is very no nonsense.

There is no ambiguity in what he says. He tells you exactly what what he thinks, and you don't need any background in philosophy to understand what is telling you. And also he has a weaked sense of humor, bordering on sarcasm, and I appreciate that. You know, he didn't write any books, just like Socrates. He didn't write anything. But we have two books sort of buy him. One is called The Discourses, which is a long booking four volumes, and the other one is a very short thing called

the eNCA Rideon or the Manual for Life. And actually these books were put together by one of the Pictis students area of Nicomedia. Now, I had to tell you, as a teacher myself, I would be really worried if I knew that the only thing that survived in terms of my writings were notes taken by one of my students. It's like, oh, my gosh, do I do I trust this thing? But it turns out that that area of Nicomedia was actually a pretty interesting guy in and of himself.

He wrote a biography of Alexander the Great. It was the governor of the Roman province of Cappadocia in modern Turkey. It was a serious guy, and so we we hope that what he wrote down is close enough to what Epictetus actually taught. But the interesting things about those books, especially the discourses, is that you really hear epic Tito's talking because Arian didn't write down the lecture part. So

the in antiquity what a typical teacher would do. We do lecture during the day, and then in the evening or late afternoon you would have sort of these open discussion sections with sessions with his students. And when Arian did well it was he transcribed some of these. So we have a series of conversations between Epictetus and the students, where the students ask questions and a Pictetus answers, and so you get a really interesting sense of sort of

the lively exchange between teachers and students. And I was just I got hooked as soon as I started reading the discourses. Now it is not the Discourses, it's the other book of which I'm not gonna thank you. I'm staying away from that pronunciation listeners and know I I struggle with pronunciation, so I'm staying away from that one. But it was that book that you sort of adapted, as I understand it, to create this field Guide to a Happy Life. It's your sort of modern version of

that book. Correct. So the Acadian, which is typically translated as just as handbook, it's a very short book. It's like fifty three paragraphs. But sically I mean that the call three sections, but each section is only a paragraph for some time two or three, but but not more than that. And it's meant to be a summary of

Epithitiss teachings. So one common mistake actually that people do is that when they approach Stoicism is oh, they see that the Incredian is very short so it's like, oh, let me start with that one bad idea because it's short, Yes, but it's very condensed. It's a very dense little booklet. If you don't actually have background in Stoic philosophy, you're likely either not to understand what you're reading, or even worse,

to misunderstand what you're reading. Nevertheless, once you have the basics, it's really a very handy thing to do. In fact, it was meant to be brought with you and and then consulted on a regular basis. The reason I focused on the Kredean is because it was highly influential, not just in ancient Stoicism, but really throughout medieval and early

modern history. Is So, to give you a couple of examples, the Incredian was used by Christian monks throughout the Middle Age is as a manual for spiritual exercises, with the only change that every time that the Epitius mentioned Socrates they replaced it with Jesus. But other than that, it's the same thing and uh. In fact, even in modern times, the Enkaredean has been influential on people that you might

not necessarily associate with the Stoics. For instance, most of the American funding fathers, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin, all of them had their personal copies of The End Kredian unnotated. Washington even brought The End Canadian in battle and read it as an inspiration before getting into into action. So it has been a very

influential book essentially for almost two millennia. And then what happened was that at the beginning of the twentieth century, both stories in general and Epictetus in particular kind of got forgotten. Philosophy became more of a technical profession, you know, with the rise of the modern academy. You know, this

is what I'm doing now. I mean, I'm in my office now, and I normally don't do ancient philosophy when I when I'm here at City College, I do philosophy of science, which is a very specific, very technical field. And so in the twenty essentially kind of Epithitis and Stoicism went into a little bit of an eclipse, and I think that's unfortunate. Fortunately, Stoicism has been revived, Tension has been revived over the last twenty years or so, and my intention with writing the field Guide or Happy

Life was twofold. On the one hand, to bring back Epictitius to the attention of the general public, because I think he deserves it. It has been one of the most influential philosophers literally the last two millennia, and it is a very practical philosopher. There is quite a bit. Even if you disagree, which I do, with some of the things that he writes, there's certainly inspirational and there's certainly worth thinking about. The other goal was to update Stoicism.

You know, that may sound a little weird, but if you think about it, Stoicism started out near the end of the fourth century BC in Athens, so it's more than you know, it's almost two and a half millennial. And you know, every other tradition that you can think of, let's say Christianity or Buddhism, agains as examples, they have changed over the last two or two and a half millionaire, right, I mean, nobody is a Christian today in the way

in which people were Christian two million ago. Even if you could see yourself a so called fundamentalist Christian, you're still nowhere near what Christianity was two tho years ago. Saying goes for Buddhism. I mean, modern Buddhists are of a variety of types. For one thing, Buddhism has evolved so much as a set of traditions that we really should be talking about Buddhisms in the plural, because they're

they're very different subsets of it. Now, the problem with stoice is, on the other hand, is that it kind of got interrupted. It studied out, as I said you, at the end of the fourth century BC, and then it flourished throughout the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, but then it kind of stopped with the second or third century. I mean, the last big Stoic we know of is Marcus Aurelius, who died in the year one eight. We know of a few other Stoic teacher years after that,

but not much. Why well, probably for a variety of reasons. But you know, the same happened to all the other Hellenistic and Greek schools. The last one to close down was the Plato's Academy in the fifth century. Basically, the major reason, probably probably arguably is the rise of Christianity. You know, once that Christianity, no non Christianity, became very popular and kind of replaced or at least competed directly

with these other philosophies. But once the Christians got hold of the Roman army that they became the official religion of the Roman Empire, then they started using that army to really shut down everybody everybody else. So then Stoicism got interrupted, let's say in the second or third century. It did still have an influence throughout these these intervening time.

As I mentioned, you know, Christian monks were using the Caridean but all the major Christian writers, from Paulo Tarsus to Thomas Aquinas, all of them were familiar with the Stoics, and all of them actually engage with the Stoicism. It took something out of story is m and incorporated in their own version of Christianity. The early modern philosophers from Renee the Cards to Bhook Spinosa, we're all influenced by the Stoics. So it's not like Stoic thought went away,

but Stoicism as a school did. And so the question then is, well, here we are now at the beginning of the twenty well no longer the beginning the second decade of the twentieth century, and then what are we gonna do? Are we're gonna really be Stoics are interested in stories in the way in which Seneca or micro Celius where two dozen years ago. That doesn't seem reasonable. And then the question is, therefore, what would a modern stories is look like? What is it that we want

to change, what is it we want to keep? And and why? Yep, yep, We're not gonna Obviously, in the time we have talked about epictidious, we're not going to talk about the fifty three Lessons for Living and all of Stoicism. But let's hit a couple of Stoic principles, and I think that one of the underlying ones, cardinal virtues, share a little bit about those the cardinal virtues, which were actually not introduced originally by the Stoics. The Stoics to come on and then as an idea, and they

became a uh point of reference for its Stoics. But in fact, the first mention of the four cardinal virtues is found in Plato's Republic, so it actually predates the Stoics. The cardinal virtues are practical wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. Practical wisdom is a kind of an awful word. It

really doesn't roll off your tongue very well. The original term in Greek is pH a nieces uh, and it used to be translated from the Latin as prudence, but prudence in modern English means something different, so we're not going to use that word practical wisdom. So practical wisdom is the ability to navigate complex situations in the best

possible way. So if somebody is practically wise or prudent, as we used to say, uh, it means that that person has a good notion of how to balance different things, how to managed trade offs, and especially has, according to the Stoics, has a good understanding of priorities, what it's really important for that person and what is not important, what that person should go after, and what should be avoided and that sort of stuff. Ironically, our tagline on

our website is practical wisdom for a better life. And I didn't even know that that was one of the cardinal virtues. So I hope it rolls off the tongue. Okay, that's right. Yes, it's it's not as good as prudence, I think, but it's it will do all right, all right. Now. The second cardinal virtue is courage. We usually associate courage with physical acts, and especially you know, going into battle. You know, and I would call that bravery more than courage.

Courage here as a definitely mortal connotation. It's the courage to do the right thing because it may cost you something, and and so it does take courage to do it. Justice is the virtue that tells you what that right thing to do actually is. The Stoics took justice as a virtue that makes you behave in a way to other people. That includes respect, dignity. You behave to others in the way in which others want to behave towards you. So that's justice. And then temperance is doing things in

the right measure, neither too much nor too little. So I may give you an example. Suppose that tomorrow I come back to work and I see my boss harassing somebody which he would never do. Is an but let's say for the sake of discussion that it does so not. The question is what do I do? So I consult

the four cardinal virtues. Practical wisdom tells me that I have to intervene because one of my priorities in life is to become a better person cultivate my character, and intervening in situations where I can help others improves my character. Not intervening undermines my character. So practical wisdom says, yep, you gotta you gotta get in. Courage tells me that yes, this is a thing to do, and it will require courage because he's my boss. So there could be consequences.

It could be italiation, that could be unpleasant situations. Justice tells me that yes, again I should intervene. Why well, because if I were the one being harassed, I would like somebody to come in and try to diffuse the situation, trying to help things out. Now, what about temperance. Well, temperance tells me that yes I should intervene, but neither

too little nor too much. So I don't want to just mumble something under my breath so that my boss doesn't even hear me, and yet technically I've done something right, technically interviewed, that's not good enough. At the same time, I don't want to jump in and start punching around the nose, because this is not that kind of situation. If there is no physical danger, there is nothing like

that going on, so that would be an overreaction. So temperance tells me that the right way to intervene is firmly with you know, a calm tone of voice uh and and trying to diffuse the situation. And that's the way the Stoics use the four caldum virtuses. Think of them as you know, they're cold cardinal for a reason, not only because they're most important, but because the an energies with cardinal geography cardinal points, that is, they orient

to in life. You can use them as a compass to figure out what to do and want not to do. So that that's how the cardinal virtues work, and Stoicism in general is pointing at the highest good is to be and develop virtue. Correct. Although the qualification here is we need to understand exactly what the word virtue is because, especially in modern times, when you hear virtue, most people think of the Christian version of the term, right, so

things like chastity and purity and things like that. That has nothing to do with what the Greeks and the Romans were actually talking about. So the word virtue actually comes from the Greek and arete is often translated as excellence. So really what we're talking about. Is the point of stoice is to make you into the best human being you can possibly be, the most excellent human being that you can possibly be. And what does that mean. Well, that means a human being who is a good reasoner.

For instance, for the Stoics, reasoning well is a virtue. Somebody who pays attention to evidence. For the Stoics, paying attention to evidence, that is doing what we were today called science is a virtue. And of course the moral virtues, the four cardinal virtues that I just mentioned. So being an excellent human being for the Stoic means thinking well, paying attention to the evidence, and then trying to become

a morally better person. And that's a kind of a program behind which I can actually find myself, you know, comfortably. So epic Tetius is you'll correct me if I get this wrong, But is if not the creator one of the earliest sources of what later became one of the fundamental pieces of wisdom in my life, which is the

Serenity prayer. Tell me a little bit about epictetus version of that, and maybe we can, you know, dive deeper into it, because I think there's so much in there modern Storis referred to that as the economy or control, which I don't particularly like as a term because the word control is often misinterpreted in these context but probably there's no point in opposing the general trend, so we'll just call it the economy of control. It's not original

with Epictetus. It's found in earlier storics. We find that at least insisted of, for instance, from the first century before the current era, although Sister himself was not a Storic, but he was very sympathetic to the storics, and it does mentioned essentially the same concept epictatious are whatever, mixing into a centerpiece of his philosophy, and that's why he's very often associated with it. As you point out, however, the same idea pops up in different contexts and different cultures.

You find it in eighth century Buddhism, in the eleventh century Judaism, and in twenty century Christianity under the surrendy prayer. So the surreendy prayer asks God to give us the wisdom to tell the difference between what we can change and what we cannot change, the courage to change what we can, and the serenity to accept what we cannot right, and it's often used by twelve step organizations like alcohol Econymous. Now,

the epictatious version goes something like this. Epita says that some things are up to us and other things are not up to us, and that a wise person focuses on the things that are up to us and tries to accept the rest with equanimity. The real question there is, okay, but what are these things? What is to us and what is not up to us? Fine, I can get behind the general idea, But but what about when it

comes to the details. And here's where different cultures do different The Christians will have a different version in terms of details, The Buddhists what have a different version. For the Stoics, the situation is actually a fairly simple. It's pretty straightforward. There's only one thing, ultimately that is up to us, and that's our judgments. That's it. Now. Our judgments include our priorities, the values that we endorse or reject, every decision we make to act or not to act,

all of those are the results of our judgments. Right, And in fact, the pigtitious actually mentions each one of these categories separately, but ultimately it all comes down to judgment. So that's the only thing, according to ITS that is in fed up to us, meaning that the box stops

with me if I arrive at certain judgment. It is true that my judgments may be influenced by others or by external factors of course, right, But ultimately, if I decide to do or not to do something like, for instance, if I decided to come on your podcast, well that's my decision. I can say, well, but I was influenced by so and so who told me that this is a really cool guy and it's a great idea. Sure, but ultimately the buck stops with me. Americans say, are

strong arm podcast guest tactics. We we made you an offer you couldn't refuse, right, But in fact Pia says you could always refuse offers. Right. He actually says, if the tyrant threatens you with your life, well you still have a choice. You can decide to die. Uh you know, so now that's a hard choice. He's not saying, you know, it's not minimizing. The issue is that it's a hard choice. But when we say, you know, it's funny that nowadays, uh you know, in modern days, we say things like, oh,

you know, I couldn't. I didn't have a choice. He pointed a gun to my head and I Pictetis says, So what, you still had a choice. You could have said no and he would have shot you. So what what that means is that you valued your life more than that particular choice, right, but not that you did not have a choice. And it may very well be reasonable to value your life more than, you know, whatever it is that you are asked to choose. But nevertheless,

it is in fed your choice. Everything else, Epictitius says, is not ultimately up to you. It kind of works in the reverse. You can influence a lot of other things, but ultimately you don't control them. What are these other things, Well pretty much everything, he mentions, health career, reputation, wealth, you know, everything that, relationships, everything matters to us. It's not really up to us. What does that mean. Well, let's say, for instance, let's talk about health. As you

pointed out before we started this conversation. You know, last week I happened to pay a visit to the e R and I was in the hospital for three days. Well that wasn't certainly not my choice. Uh, you know, it's like, Okay, something happened and I have to have doctors looking at it. Now. The question there is what is up to me and what is not up to me?

According to Epic titius up to me was the judgment that there was something wrong, that was experiencing something sufficiently serious in terms of physical symptoms, that I better go to the e R because I was risking otherwise my life. That's choice is up to me. Nobody else can make it for me unless I'm unconscious. But I was conscious, so I made the choice. I can also make the choice of following what the doctors and the nurses are

telling me to do or not. Right, I could I could refuse if somebody says, okay, well here's this medication or here's this exam that we want you to do, I could say no. So that's up to my judgment, and then I can since I was there for three days, it's up to me how to behave to other people, not only nurses and doctors but also fellow patients. Right, do I want to be cranky and irritable and start yelling at people, or do I want to try to be,

you know, a good citizen at the hospital. And then also up to me is how do I want to spend my time when I'm there and not undergoing either procedures or exams. So so I asked my wife to bring in my iPad, and I read and wrote a little bit as much as I could. Those things are up to me, because they're all results of my judgments. What is not up to me, well, pretty much everything else. Right first and foremost, the outcome of all of these procedures and and all that. I mean, I could regain

my health or not. That is certainly not up to me. The specific consequences of each one of those particular actions is not up to me. The behavior of the doctors and the nurses is not up to me. The behavior of my fellow patients is not up to me. Uh, the functioning of the instrumentation, the medical instrumentation, that's not up to me either. So in other words, all of those other things, all that stoics call externals, anything that

is outside of my judgment I don't control. I can influence it, because of course I can talk to my doctor, let's say, and what the doctor is gonna say or going to do is going to be influenced by what I say and by how I interact with him, but ultimately it is his decision, that's his judgment of what to do vere to do, And that I find that notion of keeping in mind very clearly as clearly as possible, where my agency, another way to put all these things,

where my agency lies and where it doesn't lie, right to what I can actually affect and what I cannot. I found that very calming and very useful. In fact, already in the ambulance, when I was going to the hospital, I started making up two mental lists. What is going to be up to me under these circumstances, is what is not going to be up to me under these circumstances,

and what you do. Then after you have that list, not only you go over the list over and over to remind yourself you know afresh that Okay, this is up to me, this is not up to me, but also then you're supposed to be focusing on the first list what is up to you, and trying to develop this attitude of equanimity and acceptance towards the second list,

toward the things that are not up to you. That is difficult, obviously, because we have a tendency to want to control the outcomes, right, we want certain things to go in a certain way, and we are really low to say no, I don't. I don't control. It's not up to me. I mean, in the case of going through the year, one of the outcomes might be they're gonna die. If it is a life threatening situation, you might die, and we recoil from the whole idea is like, oh, well,

if I die, I die. But that actually is, according to the story, is the only rational and useful attitude you could possibly have. You said, well, in fact, one of the first things you asked me earlier on why I was so interested in Epictitius. One of the very first things that I read by Epictetus is right at the beginning of the first volume of the Discourses, where it says, well, do I have to die? Apparently not today? And if it's not today, then let me not think

about dying. On the other hand, it is the time for lunch, so let's think about lunch time and what we're gonna need for lunch. I mean, I remember I laughed out loud when I read this thing, like, but then I stopped and I said, you know, this guy really on to something. Yes, we all have to die, and at some point that moment will come and you have to deal with it. But the only thing you can do about it is acceptance. There's nothing you know,

it's it's an inevitable thing. Meanwhile, however, if it is not today, then I can do other things. Then I have other priorities, and I can redirect my mind and my attention to something that is more productive than dwelling on the fact that one of these days I'm going to die. Seneca, who was a little older about a contemporary with pig Titious a little older, and he writes, you know, we die every day, meaning that every day

we get closer and closer obviously to that moment. But he says, you know, when I get up in the morning and I realized that I probably have yet another day ahead of me, I say, yeah, that's something to celebrate. So let me see what I can do with this day. And then if tomorrow there isn't gonna be another one, then fine, one of these days will have to happen anyway.

So this dichotomy of control, this grouping things and the things I can change and can't change, or can do something about there's another stoic philosopher, Bill Irvine, who we actually talked to not that long ago, but he talked about breaking this into what he calls a trichotomy of control, meaning things we can control, things we can influence, and

things that we have no control over. You felt like that weakens the core piece of this talk a little bit about why you don't think that model is as useful. I know Bill very well, we're friends and we've all due respect, and I think he's just wrong on that one.

What it does comes pretty natural. One of the reasons I said earlier on that I don't like to label the concept that we're talking about economy or control is because people immediately start thinking, and on similar lines to what Bill suggested, is well, wait a minute, there are things that control, there are things that I don't control, and then there's a bunch of stuff in between, right, And yes, you can think that why, but then you're kind of missing the point. The point is that in

a sense, almost everything is in between, right. There are very few things that you live do not control. Like I don't control the weather, that's for sure. What I do control is, of course, checking the weather forecast, and decided whether to bring an umbrella or not to bring an umbrella. Right, And if I do bring an umbrella, then it might seem like I'm now into one of those intermediate situations where I have some control over things.

I may not control the weather, but I controlled the umbrella, so I don't get wet as a result of it. Right. It seems like a perfect example of something that is in between. But the point of epictitus is yes, but think about that particular situation very carefully. Everything that you can influence itself turns out to be dividable into these two categories, the bit that you do control completely and

the bit that you don't control at all. When the two come together, you have something into me as something that you're influencing. Right, So in the example that I just gave, again, if you think about it for a minute, the only bits that I really control are my judgments. Do I need to check the weather forecast before I leave? That's a judgment call. And do I need to bring my umbrella or not, that's a judgment call. Once I made those decisions, then the rest is actually not up

to me. Even if I bring my umbrella, I might still get wet, because you know it may pour down really heavy or with a lot of wind and whatever it is. And so my umbrella is entirely useless, right, Or my umbrella would be very effective. But whether the umbrella is effective or not, it's really not up to me. It's a question for the weather. The only part that I control was the judgment call do I bring the umbrella or do I not? Right, So I think that

there is a danger. In fact, Bill has been warned about that by other modern stoic authors like Don Robertson, that if you start talking in terms of intermediate situations, then you kind of lose the force of the metaphor and and and all of a sudden, now you you don't have a guidance for action, because if almost everything turns out to be intermediate, then the answer to anything is, well,

it depends right, begins to depend on the details. Instead, if you go with the actual dichotomy of control, then it's very clear you have to remember only one thing, the only thing that is up to you and your judgments. That's it. Your decisions to act or not to act, that's it. Obviously, these things get more subtle when we start talking about real world situations. So if we were to talk about health, for example, I don't mean your

trip to the hospital, but let's say health in general. Right, there are certainly lots of actions I can take that make it more potentially likely that I will have good health. But as you say, at the end of the day, whether or not I do have good health, I don't have control over, right, you know, I can do the action that gives me, you know, based on what we know today's best guess of what causes good health. But it's a roll of the dice, you know, to some degree.

And I think to your point, when you look at anything closely enough, we do see that we have the thing we can do, and then there's the point where that ends, and then what happens after is up to us. But we can make our best guess about how our actions will impact the world. Yes, that's right. So I mentioned a few minutes ago that actually an earlier version of the economic control is found in Sister and Sister uses an interesting metaphor, which is known as the metaphor

of the archer. He says, consider you are an archer trying to hit an enemy soldier with your errors. Right, what is up to you and what is not up to you? And it goes through a list of things, and it turns out, however, that the only thing they're up to the archer. Again, our decisions judgments, right, So he can decide how much to practice archery before the battle. That's always a good idea. You can choose which arrows and bow to to actually take with him in battle.

He can decide how to take care of those arrows and bow. He can decide where to aim, went to aim, and when to let the arrow go. All of those are decisions. They're all judgment calls. But once the arrow leaves the boat, that's it. Nothing else is on this

good all right. The enemy soldier might turn in the last moment and see the arrow coming, and that's Eddie Ducks, and the best shot is ruined or augusta wind might interfere with the shot, or all sorts of things could happen, and you don't have any more decision making on on those things. Your will stops the moment in which you actually let go of the arrow. The saying goes with health in general, you know, without the e er trips kind of stuff. Sure, I can make a lot of

judgment called. I have to make a lot of judgment calls based on what I think is the best information. Right, So I can say, hey, I need to get to the gym at least, you know, three times a week or for for a certain number of hours. I can decide to eat in a in a certain way, you know, decent portions, healthy foods, and all of those are my decisions, and they will certainly influence the outcome, there's no question about it. But in terms of the outcome itself, I

can do all of those things and still get sick. Absolutely, yeah, And I think it is helpful to keep that line pretty clear. Now. I think where it gets difficult, And this is something I thought maybe we could talk about next,

which is one of the disciplines of Stoicism. Can talk about three disciplines, and maybe we'll get to all of them, but one of them is called the discipline of desire, and I'd love to talk about that in how it also relates to the dicotomy of control, because what people will say is okay, great, I may not be able to control that thing, but I still really care deeply about it, and I really want it, you know, I feel very attached to it. So talk about how the

discipline of desire and aversion plays into that. First of all, you're absolutely right that the discipline of desire and a version, as it's called, it's directly connected to the economic control.

That the two are very deeply connected. So the three disciplines that you mentioned are actually, as far as we know, there are Epictetus inventions, so they are actually one of EPs original contributions to Stoicism, which incidentally, let me open a small parenthesis here, makes a point that Stoicism has been changing from the beginning. Epithetis was living five centuries after the origin of Stoicism and he was still making,

you know, changes into the philosophy. So when people say, oh, we should stick with the original, there's no sting as the original, because philosophies and religions in general change over time. As soon as somebody has the initial idea that somebody else is going to challenge that idea and make changes. So the three disciplin links are one of epicitious original contributions to Stoicism, and there are three of them as as you mentioned, desire and a version, action and assent.

Maybe we'll get to the other two, but desire and a version. The first thing that we need to understand here is that there is an issue with the English translation of these terms, especially as far as desire and a version or concerned. First of all, versions are the opposite of desires. So desire is something I want. A version is something that I don't want. Right, I have a desire for chocolate, and I have an aversion to

vanilla or something like that. However, the English words in this case are misleading because you know, very often it has happened to me that people say, but wait a minute, I don't control my desires. If I have a desire for something, it just comes to me. It's an emotion. Yes, that is true as far as the modern English word desire is concerned. But that is not at all what epic titius meant. If you go to the original Greek, desire is not exactly a great translation of that terminology.

What epictitious means is it's translated better as endorsed values, or in the case of aversions, endorsed these values so you make conscious decisions about what you value and what you do not value, or what you should value. Let's put it that way. Or should not value. For instance, let's go back to one of your earlier examples. You said, you know I can do all sorts of things in order to improve my health. Well, that reflects a desire in the sense of epic Titus. That is, the judgment

that health is valuable and sickness is not valuable. Right, is that this value? Now it may not come natural to you to have certain values or these values. For instance, I do realize that going to the gym is something that improves or at least maintain my health. But it's certainly I have never never had in my life a desire to go to the gym. When I get to the gym and you know, the nice lady behind the counter says, you know, enjoy your workout. What do you mean.

This is not a nice meal or a glass of wine. I'm not going to enjoy it the workout. But I do it because I decided. I made the conscious decision that this is a positive value for me, That exercise is a positive value, right, even though I don't desire it. In fact, I kind of a verse in the English sense of the term. I actually have an aversion toward exercise, but in the Epictitian sense of the term, I have a desire, meaning that I decided consciously that physical fitness

and exercise is actually a positive value. So the discipline of desire and a version. Therefore, it's not about reshaping our desires in the normal English sense of the term, it's about prioritizing, or more likely re prioritizing things. So I picked us to all these students that you probably have the wrong priorities in life, and therefore you should change them now. In fact, he went on and said, you probably think that health and wealth and fame and

reputation and career. You think that those are good things, don't you? And he says, fool your fools us was pretty direct with the direct part. You like, Yeah, he called them fools or slaves, which you know, coming from a slave, it's kind of interesting slaves because there were slaves to common opinion, right, they were not thinking with

their brains. There were slaves to come opinion. Oh, your parents and your friends tell you that being rich and famous is a good thing, so you just automatically agrees, like what are your fool or or your slave or other people's opinions? So if he did says, no, those things have value. I mean, it's he's not crazy, he's not saying you know that those things are without any value. But those are not the really important things in life.

There is, in fact, only one really important thing in life, and that's your character, which, for the Pictitis, is synonymous with your ability to judgment, of judgment, your your ability to arrive at good judgment. Now they may sound strange, but think about it for a second and you realize that Epititiuity is right. Why is it that the only thing that is truly valuable in life is judgment? Because

from your judgments depends how you use everything else. Wealth, for instance, Let's take money, and you know wealth in general, Well, wealth is a good thing if you use it. Well. If you don't use it, well it's a bad thing. You know, if you're wealthy and then start corrupting politicians or buying your way out of you know, criminal record or something, and then it is a bad thing. It's

not it's not a good thing in fact. Anther, one of the things that Epitius tells us right at the beginning of the discourses is, you know, so you want some money, good for you? Now, how are you going to spend your money, How are you going to use that money? Who is it going to tell you how to use your money? The money isn't going to tell you your faculty of judgment is, And the same goes for everything else. We tend to think that health is

a good thing, like wow, who would argue that? Well, I don't know if I were thinking of a dictator, for instance, in this this moment, I hope he's going to get sick. Health is not necessarily a good thing. It depends on how you use it. If you use your health to oppress other people, then it's not a good thing. The people would be better off if you were sick and dying rather than than being healthy. The

saying goes with wealth reputation, Well, the same idea. If you have a good reputation and you use it well, that is in fact indeed a good thing. But if you use your reputation in order to corrupt other people, to swindle other people, etcetera, etcetera, then it's not a good thing. So it turns out therefore, that there are no good or bad things per se. The things become good or bad only because you use them in a

certain way. Right, And I use that analogy also for things that are more controversial these days, such as certain technologies. Like you know, it's pretty common these days to rail against social media. It's like, oh, you know, the disasters of humanity are this is it comes that they're all originate from the social media. But social media are a tool. It's up to you how to use it. In other words, it's up to your judgment how to use it. Right, So are there bad uses of you know, things like

Facebook and Twitter? Hell? Yes, are there good uses? Yes? I am regularly on social media and I use them only and exclusively, either to keep in touch with my relatives from overseas, and that is a good thing, or to promote my work and the work of people that I think is worth reading, and that is also a good thing. There's nothing bad about that now. Of course, if, on the other hand, you use social media to harass people or to promote fake news and stuff like that,

then it's bad. But it's not the technology that it's good or bad. The technology is neutral, Like for the stoics, every external is neutral. What makes it a good external or a band external is only our judgment. That's why e Pictitis says to his students, you really need to reprioritize things. The only thing that you should be ziing in the sense of prioritize is good judgments, and the only things that you should be averse too is bad judgments.

And then everything else follows from that. What's the process of going from the desires that arise somewhat naturally? Maybe I'll stay away from the word naturally because I think Stoics use that word in a certain way. I'm going to walk away from that word. Desires that arise as a result of either our biology or our conditioning, right, and that conditioning could come from lots of different places.

But desires that arise through our our biology are conditioning, which are to seek pleasure and avoid pain, the sort of desires you were talking about. What's the process of going from those things that arise? Two? Cultivating wanting a good character because that can seem like a pretty big gap and a lot of retraining that needs to go to get to that point. There is a gap there, and it's an important one which the Stoics do address. And yes, it is difficult. That's why Stoicism is like Buddhism,

or again like Christianity. It's a lifelong commitment, you know, it's training for the entire life. It's not like you're gonna just do it today and then it's okay, I'm done. Right in a sense. In fact, it's like going to the gym. Right. Imagine if I went to the gym again to use the same metaphor, and then I asked my trainer, you know, explanations about how to use properly the different machines and the weights, and then I walk out and never come back in. Oh, I've done nothing.

I understood the theory right now. Now I know how to use the machine. But if I actually don't commit and don't come back every day and use the machines, my muscles and my aerobic capacity aren't gonna go anywhere other than down right. So it's the same thing with your character. The commitment is on a daily basis. Now, what about that gap that you were just talking about. That's why the Stoics have put so much emphasis on reason or Epitius uses the Greek word pro high rasis,

which is translated as judgment. Again, a faculty, your faculty of judgment, which is right here the frontal prietal lobes of your brain are the ones that are in charge of your rational decision making, And basically you can think of stoicism as a lifelong program to improve your rational decision making. That's really what it comes down to. Now you're saying, well, what about the gap between our shall

we call it naturally epicurean attitude? You know, I want pleasure and I don't want pain, right, that's basically a pecuring philosophy. How do I go from there too things that actually do require pain, and maybe even even to forego some pleasures, right, Well, in the same way in which you do other things. We use the metaphor of either exercise or health several times in this conversation, and for a reason the Stoics themselves do. The Stoics are

often go back to either health. They say that a philosopher, meaning a teacher of philosophy, is like a doctor, and fat Epitas at one point says philosophy should feel like going to the doctor. If you're not in pain when you come out of it, you've done nothing right. Or they use the metaphor of the gym. The English ward gym comes from gymnasium, which is the Roman translation of the original Greek word. And that's because the stoics themselves.

Often we're spending a lot of time in the gymnasium taking care of their of their body, not just their mind. So it's the same idea. Another example which has also to do with with health. But I think that addresses that gap that you're talking about. I think I'm not the only person in the world who would rather eat and drink to his own pleasure and contentment than not, right,

So I have that little problem. There is a gap between what my reason tells me I should eat and drink and what my body wants and craves, right, And that is in fact the result in part certainly of biology, any part even of social pressures and things like that. You know, when you go out with friends, Oh, I have a second drink, right, you know, or have a

third drink or something like that. That's social pressure. But there is also a result of biology, I mean evolutionary biologists and made the argument that one of the reasons we have so much trouble controlling our eating habits is because we evolved in a situation hundreds of thousands years ago where food was not available all the time. And cheap right as it is today. I mean today, if I feel like eating something, I literally have food available

twenty four hours a day for cheap right. If we were back in the place to see I would have to get up, get my tools and start hunting, right. So that's that's a whole different thing. Yeah, So we have these cravings for eating and drinking there are disproportionate either for because of biological reasons or because of social reason, they're disproportionate with what is reasonable. But if we are responsible adults and we're trying to do the right thing

for ourselves in this case, what do we do. I look at you know, like just last night, I went out with friends and we had drinks, and then of course the winner comes around and says, would you like another one? And everybody is looking at me, and I look at the weather, and I said I would, but I'm not going to have it right. So that's where your prohigresis kicks in. That's where your faculty of judgment kicks in and says, look, of course you're craving another drink.

That would be nice. It will be even more relaxed than you're than you're now, and you're with friends, you know why not? And your reason said, well, the reason why not is because you're gonna be feel sick later, or this is not a good thing. In general. That is exactly the same gap that you're talking about between behaviors that we crave naturally and behaviors that reason tells us we should engage in. And you can again think of the entire point of Stoic training as bridging that gap.

That is the reason why. For instance, Seneca says at some point in one of his letters to his friend Lucilius that are kind of an informal curriculum in story philosophy, he says, virtue is nothing but right reason. So when the storys talk about what the virtuous thing to do, well, the virgin thing to do is the reasonable thing to do,

And essentially the rest is just practice. Once you understand that, Once you understand that there is that gap and that your goal in life is to fill the gap so that you align your actual behavior with what is in your best interests as well as the Storice would say, in the interest of humanity in general, then that's it. You understood theory. Now it's a question of practice. So It's very similar to once your trainer has told you how to use the basic machinery in the gym, then

you're done. The theory is not difficult, This is not rocket science. The practice, however, takes commitment, and of course inevitably you will slide back. Right. There will be situations where to keep using the same example. I will go up with my friends and this time I'm gonna say yes to the waiter for the second drink, and then let I'm going to regret it. I'm gonna say, oh, the emlition, don't done that? Well. The storics have an answer for that as well. Don't indulge in regret. Regret

this as waste of time. Regret means that you are emotionally distraught by something you did. But the past, by definition, is not under your control. So what the hell are you doing spending your time? You know, beating yourself up. What you should do is to learn from the past and try not to repeat that in the future, and say, look, let me analyze that situation. What made me say yes when I should have said no? Right? What kind of circumstances and what can I do better? How can I

preempt that? The next time that something like this happens. That's what story training is about. It's about reflecting. That's why one of the major tools in the Stoic toolbox is something that is referred to as philosophical journaling, where every night you analyze that your more important actions and you ask yourself, what did I do wrong? What did I do right? And what could I do better the

next time around? And again, the point is not too indulge in regret, but to learn from your experiences and then warn yourself prepare yourself for the next time around. It's like, Okay, here's the plan, here's what I'm gonna do next. But never never beat yourself up. If you made a mistake, fine fight it under the mistake category. We all human beings after all, and then next time trying to remember, wait a minute, under similar circumstances, I made a mistake, so let me try to do different

this time around. Well, Massimo, thank you so much for coming on the show. It has been such a pleasure talking with you. There's so many different things we could follow up on, and maybe we will do it another time, but thank you for being here. And I hope that whatever was going on health wise with you is resolved, even though it's not in either your eyes control. Thank you, Eric, it was a pleasure being here. M If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a

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