Seneca, On the Happy Life 21: Pleasure without Honor

"You purposely misunderstand what I say," he says, "for I too say that no one can live pleasantly unless he lives honorably also, and this cannot be the case with dumb animals who measure the extent of their happiness by that of their food. I loudly and publicly proclaim that what I call a pleasant life cannot exist without the addition of virtue."

Yet who does not know that the greatest fools drink the deepest of those pleasures of yours? Or that vice is full of enjoyments, and that the mind itself suggests to itself many perverted, vicious forms of pleasure?

In the first place arrogance, excessive self-esteem, swaggering precedence over other men, a shortsighted, no, a blind devotion to his own interests, dissolute luxury, excessive delight springing from the most trifling and childish causes.

Also talkativeness, pride that takes a pleasure in insulting others, sloth, and the decay of a dull mind which goes to sleep over itself. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 10 (tr Stewart)

The sensualist may hope that he can have it both ways, and that he can live for pleasure while at the same time being decent. He may even insist, as does Seneca’s adversary, that the only pleasant life would of necessity also have to be a virtuous one.

I can understand such a temptation immediately, because it removes so many of the apparent troubles I face in being happy, especially the perception of conflicting standards. If I am to pursue pleasure, I will also find myself being a good person at the same time.

Centuries later, John Stuart Mill offered a similar argument. Pleasures, he said, should be judged by their quality, and not merely by their quantity. Hence the greatest pleasures will be those that fulfill the higher functions of man, and we will find that true satisfaction proceeds from being thoughtful, refined, and considerate. This is the context of his famous quote, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

At the level of theory, this would hardly make pleasure the highest good anymore, because pleasure is in turn measured and determined by the greater standard of wisdom and virtue. Seneca will return to this aspect of his argument shortly.

For the moment, and at the level of practice, it is surely sufficient to point out that a life of satisfaction will hardly have to be a decent one. Look out into the world, observe your neighbor, read the news, and you will promptly see that pleasure seekers are usually not honorable and decent people at all. Even when the sensualist is intelligent in his pursuit of satisfaction, he simply discovers more clever ways to gratify himself.

I see all the inhumanity around me, and I realize that what most of it has in common is the pursuit of what feels good at the expense of doing good. Arrogance, greed, lust, gluttony, laziness, anger, jealousy, or violence will proceed when I put my pleasure first, and consider other people simply as a means for my pleasure. If I am to estimate everything through my passions, I choose to close myself off to everything except those passions. If I make my reason subservient to my feelings, my mind will not see things are they truly are, but as I wish them to be.

I think of all the times someone has done me wrong, and all the times I have done someone else wrong, and it is a rejection of the good of the person for the fulfillment of my own desire that usually binds them together.

I may put lipstick on a pig. I may add all the appearances of culture, refinement, good manners, and sophisticated tastes, but there is no way to elevate selfish lust. It is vain, arrogant, and thoughtless by its very nature, because it makes the world revolve around my feelings. 

Written in 11/2004

Seneca, On the Happy Life 20: Virtue Always as an End 2

. . . You are mistaken, therefore, when you ask me what it is on account of which I seek after virtue, for you are seeking for something above the highest. Do you ask what I seek from virtue? I answer, herself, for she has nothing better. She is her own reward.

Does this not appear great enough, when I tell you that the highest good is an unyielding strength of mind, wisdom, magnanimity, sound judgment, freedom, harmony, beauty? Do you still ask me for something greater, of which these may be regarded as the attributes?

Why do you talk of pleasures to me? I am seeking to find what is good for man, not for his belly; why, cattle and whales have larger bellies than he.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 9 (tr Stewart)

A wise woman I once knew liked to say, “we speak as if we were angels, but we live as if we were cattle.” We are sadly quite ready to make sweeping and noble claims of virtue in public, while at the same time pursuing base pleasures in private. We can only embrace what Seneca means here if we overcome that hypocritical temptation. Loving virtue for its own sake can’t just be expressed as a grand theory, but it must be lived as a daily practice.

This may seem inconceivable to many of us, but we can fully understand this from both ends, so to speak, from the cause, and from the consequence.

From the cause, consider simply what it means to be human. That same wise woman also told me there was a reason my head was at the top, and my guts were on the bottom. My nature isn’t merely to consume what is pleasant, but to live with an understanding of what is right and good. A human being only acts like a human being, and therefore is only fully himself, when everything he does is ordered by the knowledge of the truth and the love of the good.

From the consequence, consider the profound benefits of living this way. Nothing can be more stable, more serene, or more free than relying entirely upon the merits of my own thoughts, decisions, and actions. If I rely upon my virtue, which is completely within my own power, and no other conditions beyond it, I am truly my own master. Everything I desire is already mine, and nothing else can add or take from such harmony.

We may be baffled by such a practice, even as we mouth the words, because we are topsy-turvy, with our minds enslaved to our guts, and to the want of everything outside of us. It is only our flawed estimation, and the years of poor examples and bad habits, that keep us from genuine happiness.

I have always had a great love of all animals, as my family will confirm with exasperation, but as much as I admire a cow, or a whale, I will hardly respect a man for the size of his stomach. 

Written in 11/2004

Image: Anton Mauve (1838-1888), Landscape with Cattle

 

Seneca, On the Happy Life 19: Virtue Always as an End 1

"But," says our adversary, "you yourself only practice virtue because you hope to obtain some pleasure from it." In the first place, even though virtue may afford us pleasure, still we do not seek after her on that account: for she does not bestow this, but bestows this to boot, nor is this the end for which she labors, but her labor wins this also, although it be directed to another end.

 As in a tilled field, when ploughed for corn, some flowers are found amongst it, and yet, though these posies may charm the eye, all this labor was not spent in order to produce them—the man who sowed the field had another object in view, he gained this over and above it—so pleasure is not the reward or the cause of virtue, but comes in addition to it. Nor do we choose virtue because she gives us pleasure, but she gives us pleasure also if we choose her.

The highest good lies in the act of choosing her, and in the attitude of the noblest minds, which when once it has fulfilled its function and established itself within its own limits has attained to the highest good, and needs nothing more. For there is nothing outside of the whole, any more than there is anything beyond the end. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 9 (tr Stewart)

The ancient Epicureans, or the modern Utilitarians, or the sensualists of any time or place, might still insist that we desire virtue because we understand that it leads to what is pleasurable. We can simply employ our reason, they claim, to see that being a bad man is actually not very satisfying at all, and that being a good man will give us the satisfaction we crave. By all means, the argument goes, practice virtue, but in the knowledge of why we should practice it.

Seneca will still not budge in this matter, because I suspect he recognizes the gravity of what is at stake. There can be no confusion as to whether good actions or good feelings are the complete goal, and there can be no circularity in stating that not all pleasures are desirable, while at the same time saying actions are desirable precisely because they are pleasurable. The fundamental issue is whether the highest good of human nature, toward which all other goods are ordered, is defined by how we live, or by how we feel.

Remember that the Stoic does not deny us pleasure, or ask that it be removed from our lives. The Stoic will gladly embrace the reality that a good man can fell pleasure through his virtue, and that such pleasure can be of the most wonderful and the most beautiful sort. What matters is not only what we do and what we feel, but why we do what we do, and how our actions and passions are rightly related.

I often think not only of whether I should help my neighbor, but also of why I should help my neighbor, and toward what end my deeds are ordered. Perhaps I want my neighbor’s gratitude, or a favor in return down the line, or the respect of the community, or maybe just that warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from having made a difference. I may or may not receive such benefits, but as soon as I have any of them in mind as my purpose, I haven’t really helped my neighbor at all, but done something for the sake of my own passions. The giving became a means to the receiving, and in this sense the giving became entirely accidental.

Virtue is only virtuous when it is for its own sake, just as love is only love for the sake of the beloved. Once I have passed the good on, so to speak, to something beyond itself, I have compromised and relativized both virtue and love.

Is the farmer right to enjoy the beauty of wild flowers in his cultivated field? Yes, but that is not why he should have cultivated the field. Is the worker right to enjoy praise and promotion for his efforts? Yes, but that is not why he should have worked hard. Is any man right to feel pleasure for having done the right thing? Yes, but that is not why he should have done the right thing. The pleasure is not the end itself, but something that can accompany the end. My own variation of Seneca’s lesson is that I should gladly enjoy a good life, but it hardly became good because I enjoyed it.

My own experience has taught me that I will sometimes initially feel a certain pain when I have followed my conscience, but that such pain will usually be replaced by rather unexpected pleasures when I can think through why anything I did really mattered. A worry about the things outside of my power gives way to an appreciation for the things within my power.

Yet as soon as I treat feeling itself as a cause of what is good in life, or as the end of what is good in life, I have thrown away any and all of the benefits. By deliberately seeking only an incomplete good, I have lost all of what is good. 

Written in 11/2004

Image: Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field (1888) 

Seneca, On the Happy Life 18: Agreement, Unity, and Virtue

. . . Let our mind do the same thing: when, following its bodily senses it has by means of them sent itself forth into the things of the outward world, let it remain still their master and its own.

By this means we shall obtain a strength and an ability which are united and allied together, and shall derive from it that reason which never halts between two opinions, nor is dull in forming its perceptions, beliefs, or convictions.

Such a mind, when it has ranged itself in order, made its various parts agree together, and, if I may so express myself, harmonized them, has attained to the highest good, for it has nothing evil or hazardous remaining, nothing to shake it or make it stumble.

It will do everything under the guidance of its own will, and nothing unexpected will befall it, but whatever may be done by it will turn out well, and that, too, readily and easily, without the doer having recourse to any underhand devices. For slow and hesitating action are the signs of discord and want of settled purpose.

You may, then, boldly declare that the highest good is singleness of mind: for where agreement and unity are, there also must the virtues be. It is the vices that are at war one with another.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 8 (tr Stewart)

As a child, I was often frightened and confused by how hectic, aggressive, and confrontational the world was. I also began to see rather quickly how often people liked to deceive, and that I would need some way to make sense of all that smoke and mirrors.

In kindergarten, one fellow dealt with it all by simply never speaking. Another screamed and cried every day. A third learned to push first, and ask questions later. I attempted something a little different. When I felt alone, uncertain, or hurt by others, I would imagine my “home base”, those few dozen square feet of space where I always felt safe. I usually visualized it as my small bedroom, surrounded by my favorite toys and books, or the family parlor back in Austria, surrounded by the people who comforted me. I saw it as that which was reliable, what I could always return to after I struggled through everything out here that was so unreliable.

The home base grew from the image of a location to a state of mind, a way of thinking about whatever felt threatening. However much I felt surrounded and blocked in, I could still remember that there was that bit of me that couldn’t be hurt or conquered. I recognized this instinct as a something Stoic only many years later, by which time I had also learned that my own happiness or misery rose and fell with how much or how little I depended on my unassailable home.

The home base always had two constant features. First, I was in charge, and nothing could enter that was not invited. Second, there was no place for discord or conflict within its bounds. The whole moral physics, so to speak, of the place was grounded in a love of unity and balance. Now while many people in the world assured me there would have to be winners and losers in the war of achievement, I knew I need not apply this to myself.

Just as there can never be good relations between people who fight with one another, so no man can be virtuous if he fights with himself. The virtuous man certainly doesn’t need to isolate himself from the world, because as long as he has his principles and his unity of purpose to guide him, he can throw himself into the world unafraid. His impregnable fortress is never far, because he carries it within himself. 

Written in 11/2004

Image: Antonio Gai, Allegory of Harmony and Peace (mid 18th c.)

Seneca, On the Happy Life 17: Falling Back Upon Oneself

. . . A man should be unbiased and not to be conquered by external things: he ought to admire himself alone, to feel confidence in his own spirit, and so to order his life as to be ready alike for good or for bad fortune.

Let not his confidence be without knowledge, nor his knowledge without steadfastness. Let him always abide by what he has once determined, and let there be no erasure in his doctrines. It will be understood, even though I need not say it, that such a man will be tranquil and composed in his demeanor, high-minded and courteous in his actions.

Let reason be encouraged by the senses to seek for the truth, and draw its first principles from there. Indeed, it has no other base of operations or place from which to start in pursuit of truth: it must fall back upon itself.

Even the all-embracing universe, and God who is its guide, extends Himself forth into outward things, and yet altogether returns from all sides back to Himself. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 8 (tr Stewart)

There is a grave danger, especially in our age of egoism, of misunderstanding self-reliance, what it truly means to fall back upon oneself. The crucial distinction, I think, must come from whether we see ourselves as a source of good, or as the end of good. A decent man recognizing that he is responsible for himself, and depending upon his own character, acts for the sake of all of Nature. He shares his good with others. A wicked man, in contrast, believing that the world is responsible to him, and depending upon his own desires, acts as if Nature exists for his sake. He expects to receive all other goods.

It is tragic, of course, that the selfishness of the arrogant man is hardly strong or confident at all. Such selfishness is weak, because it expects and demands that the world provide for him. The arrogant man does not rely on himself, but relies on everything else. He is actually a slave to Fortune, and not its master.

True self-reliance means trusting only on one’s own merits, and only such a life can rise above the shifting circumstances of Fortune. It is an attitude of service, and not of being served. The beauty of this is that I will only become great within myself when I do not expect the world to treat me greatly, and I will immediately become weak within myself when I offer the world my list of conditions and demands.

I have learned to suspect someone may be self-serving, instead of self-reliant, when his words and actions reveal a desire for leverage over others. He defines his success by things he has conquered, or expects to conquer, rather than by conquering himself. He is quick to criticize and blame his neighbor, but he does not criticize or blame himself. His words often go sideways, and they are rarely direct. His strength is not in being content with his own thoughts and deeds, but in making the thoughts and deeds of others appear to be weak.

We may express this concept in whatever philosophical or religious manner we wish, but there is something Divine about true self-reliance. The Ancients often spoke of the degrees of perfection in terms of how much or how little something moved itself, by its level of sufficiency. By such a standard, God is pure perfection, because He depends upon nothing beyond himself, and by comparison a self-reliant and self-sufficient man, who always falls back upon himself, shares and participates in that which is Godlike. 

Written in 11/2004

Stoic Film: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

We have become far too negative about politics, and about films of this sort, because we have all become accustomed to greed and graft running anything and everything. This country, or any country, needs a few more men like Jefferson Smith. They do indeed exist, though they are usually ignored and ridiculed. They aren't politicians of the usual sort, because they care about you, and not just about themselves.

The greatest compliment I ever received was someone who told me I reminded her of James Stewart. I fear it was mainly my 1930's style fedora hat that led to the statement, but I'll take it. Stewart wasn't just an actor, but he was a good man, and the character he plays should be an inspiration, not someone to be mocked.

How I would jump for joy if a U.S. Senator honestly admitted on the floor that he is unworthy of office. Note how it hardly matters if the mass of Americans, who had been been deceived by their masters, wrote Smith all those letters telling him to yield. He stood his ground on principle, and Senator Paine did indeed listen. There is something wonderfully Stoic about that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6UbYHCkoZs

Written in 1/2004

Seneca, On the Happy Life 16: The Guide and the Companion

What answer are we to make to the reflection that pleasure belongs to good and bad men alike, and that bad men take as much delight in their shame as good men in noble things?

This was why the ancients bade us lead the highest, not the most pleasant life, in order that pleasure might not be the guide but the companion of a right-thinking and honorable mind; for it is Nature whom we ought to make our guide: let our reason watch her, and be advised by her.

To live happily, then, is the same thing as to live according to Nature: what this may be, I will explain. If we guard the endowments of the body and the advantages of Nature with care and fearlessness, as things soon to depart and given to us only for a day; if we do not fall under their dominion, nor allow ourselves to become the slaves of what is no part of our own being; if we assign to all bodily pleasures and external delights the same position which is held by auxiliaries and light-armed troops in a camp; if we make them our servants, not our masters—then and then only are they of value to our minds. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 8 (tr Stewart)

Again, happiness isn’t measured by pleasure or pain, because both the good man and the wicked man will each feel different sorts of pleasures, for different sorts of reasons. Seneca understands that the very exercise of philosophy will collapse if there is no higher way to determine whether feelings are good or bad.

There are many things in life that will always be there with us, but some of them will accompany us as companions, while others will lead us a guides. Some will walk next to us, and others will go out ahead. A life lived in harmony with Nature will be one where these different roles are rightly distinguished, where I allow my reason to be my guide, and where my pleasures are my companions. It will be the judgment of the former that will determine the benefit of the latter.

So it must be in all things, such that all of the conditions of my life are directed by the guidance of the mind. I may receive a pleasure of the body, or some wealth, or the esteem of others, but I will know what to make of these changing situations if I know where I should be going, and how I should be living. Fortune is fickle, and as soon as I depend upon her, I am enslaved to her. Nature offers a deeper permanence of meaning to all of these things that are passing, and the apprehension of Nature provides a constancy of purpose.

For many years, I enjoyed the pleasures of cigarettes, because I craved the numbing relaxation that came along with the consumption of nicotine. It didn’t take me long to perceive how this was harmful to both my body and to my mind. The constant shortness of breath that soon became a ritual of morning hacking, and the mental obsession with getting to that next smoke caused me hurt, but I could only think of being consumed by that brief feeling where the world cut into me just a little but less. It was killing my body, and enslaving my thinking, because I was making pleasure my master, and not my companion.

No amount of brute willpower or clever cures ever really worked for me, until I had the sense to apply Stoic practice to my daily addiction. After many years of wallowing, I stopped smoking cigarettes from one day to another, and the only thing that worked for me was a form of making my reason lead the way, and letting my feelings walk alongside.

After a prudent pause, I did something that flew in the face of contemporary fashion, and I took an interest in the art of smoking a pipe. Now our unbridled hatred of tobacco tells us that the evil weed must be removed entirely from society, but the untrendy Stoic in me thought of it a bit differently.

I found that I could actually enjoy the occasional pipe of fine tobacco, not greedily drawing the smoke into my lungs, but sipping at it in contemplation. For me, this was no different than the man who can find enjoyment in a single tumbler of fine whiskey, and who does not need to guzzle a whole bottle of rotgut.

Nothing given by Nature is evil, but only our abuse of things is evil. What makes moderation so distinct from excess or denial is the understanding of whether my mind rules a pleasure, or whether the pleasure rules me. It is no different with, food, drink, sex, money, fame, or power.

I would never suggest simply replacing cigarettes with a pipe as a remedy, because fixing ourselves has nothing to do with how much of something we enjoy, or of what certain kind, or in what specific manner. It has everything to do with discerning the greater and the lesser. 

Written in 2/2007

Seneca, On the Happy Life 15: Pleasure and Virtue 2

. . . Virtue is a lofty quality, sublime, royal, unconquerable, untiring. Pleasure is low, slavish, weakly, perishable; its haunts and homes are the brothel and the tavern. You will meet virtue in the temple, the marketplace, the senate house, manning the walls, covered with dust, sunburnt, horny-handed. You will find pleasure skulking out of sight, seeking for shady nooks at the public baths, hot chambers, and places which dread the visits of the magistrates, soft, effeminate, reeking of wine and perfumes, pale or perhaps painted and made up with cosmetics.

The highest good is immortal: it knows no ending, and does not admit of either satiety or regret. For a right-thinking mind never alters or becomes hateful to itself, nor do the best things ever undergo any change, but pleasure dies at the very moment when it charms us most. It has no great scope, and therefore it soon cloys and wearies us, and fades away as soon as its first impulse is over.

Indeed, we cannot depend upon anything whose nature is to change. Consequently it is not even possible that there should be any solid substance in that which comes and goes so swiftly, and which perishes by the very exercise of its own functions, for it arrives at a point at which it ceases to be, and even while it is beginning always keeps its end in view.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 7 (tr Stewart)

I have never been an uptight or prudish person, a moral curmudgeon or an ideological stick in the mud. I do not believe that passions must be denied in order to live my life well, and I am saddened whenever I see people who hate their own appetites, thinking they can only be good if they are cold, joyless, and heartless. I have never agreed with the morality of Immanuel Kant.

I hardly knew what to say when a very proper man once told me that he had many children because it was his duty to God and to society. “What about all the wonderful pleasure there is in making them,” I asked with a grin, “and all the wonderful pleasure there is in sharing your life with them?” He was aghast. Marriage, he told me, was about making more babies, even it was deeply dirty and distasteful to do so.

At the same time, I have little patience for the lecher, the glutton, or the money-grubber. I recently somehow struggled my way through a conversation with a man who offered me a list of all the attractive celebrities he wanted to have sex with. It hardly occurred to him that they might not wish to sleep with him, of course, but I did mange to ask him why this was so desirable. “Hey, I’ll have my fun, even if I have to put a bag over her head, and maybe I’ll get some alimony out of it!” He found it funny, and I found it disgusting.

The good life is never about denying pleasure for its own sake, or seeking pleasure for its own sake. Pleasure is, in itself, indifferent. Some feelings are good, because they follow from good actions, and some feelings are bad, because they follow from bad actions. I am not just a beast, and I am not just a mind in a vat. I am a human being because I can think about what is good, and also understand why some things are indeed worth enjoying.

Seneca may appear a bit uptight here, but hard experience has taught me that he is right on the mark. I distinctly recall my senior year in college, and all of the things I did because they just seemed fun. The shame was not in the fun, but in what I did to get there.

A few weeks before I graduated, I was sitting in the sleaziest bar you can imagine, with all of my supposed friends completely drunk, and the lost love of my life giving an erotic backrub to a complete stranger. I felt sick, not just because I had too much to drink, or because my girl was a tramp, but because I suddenly saw who I was becoming.

I told myself that I would, of course, return to a life of propriety the next day, but that was an illusion. I would simply continue to use and abuse others, not in the crudeness of a watering hole, but in the fancy environment of a professional life. The trappings were different, but the lifestyle was the same.

I always remind myself that there is a difference between love and lust. The former gives, and the latter only takes. The different places and different situations Seneca describes are defined by the presence or absence of love and lust.

The pathetic irony has always been that I may seek to possess, consume, or enjoy, but as soon as I have done so, I immediately want more. Pleasure itself will never satisfy, because it is itself never complete. Lust craves, but Love rests. 

Written in 6/1994

Image: Hieronymus Francken, An Allegory of Love and Lust (late 16th c.)

Seneca, On the Happy Life 14: Pleasure and Virtue 1

Even those very people who declare the highest good to be in the belly, see what a dishonorable position they have assigned to it: and therefore they say that pleasure cannot be parted from virtue, and that no one can either live honorably without living cheerfully, nor yet live cheerfully without living honorably.

I do not see how these very different matters can have any connection with one another. What is there, I pray you, to prevent virtue existing apart from pleasure? Of course the reason is that all good things derive their origin from virtue, and therefore even those things, which you cherish and seek for, come originally from its roots.

Yet, if they were entirely inseparable, we should not see some things to be pleasant, but not honorable, and others most honorable indeed, but hard and only to be attained by suffering.

Add to this, that pleasure visits the basest lives, but virtue cannot co-exist with an evil life. Yet some unhappy people are not without pleasure, no, it is owing to pleasure itself that they are unhappy; and this could not take place if pleasure had any connection with virtue, whereas virtue is often without pleasure, and never stands in need of it. Why do you put together two things which are unlike and even incompatible one with another?. . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 7 (tr Stewart)

Let us please not assume that pleasure and virtue are in a necessary conflict with one another, but let us also please not assume that they are one and the same thing. Seneca, like any good Stoic, does not wish to deny us any pleasure in life, and he certainly does not wish us any pain. He just wants us to never confuse pleasure and virtue. They are certainly related to one another, but they are not interchangeable.

Whether we recognize it or not, we live in a very Epicurean age. Ask most anyone what it means to be happy, and he will likely tell you that it’s all about a pleasant feeling. I have long since learned not to bicker about this, but to quietly practice my life in a very different way.

I am a bit troubled when someone tells me that he is happy with his wife because she always makes him feel good. I wonder if he is being honest with himself, because love is most certainly not always fun. I also wonder if he has defined love by what is done to him, and not by what he does.

I remain convinced that a good man will ultimately find a certain pleasure, in my estimation the deepest pleasure there can ever be, in the knowledge that he has lived well. Yet he requires no rewards, and no recognition. He does not do what is right because it makes him feel good, but only because it is right. The satisfaction is a consequence, and not the end itself. He may well feel pain in so many other ways, and he may suffer terribly, but he does not confuse the awareness of his own character with the gratification of his desires.

The value of any feeling is only as good as the awareness and action from which it proceeds. I have known many people, myself included, who have felt pleasure without being good at all, or have been good without feeling any pleasure at all. Some of the most disgusting people seem to enjoy their depravity, at least for the moment, and some of the best people will gladly suffer the greatest pain.

I have never thought of myself as a brave man, or even really as a good man; I have long been in that greyness where I somehow know enough what I should do, but I usually don’t know enough to actually do it.

I was once waiting for a taxi, in a part of town I probably shouldn’t have been in to begin with. Down the street, I saw a bunch of fellows pushing someone around, and grabbing at the pockets of his jacket. I desperately wanted to look the other way, but something clicked in me. I walked over, and played the best Boston Irishman I could. There was much cussing and bravado on my part, though I am a pale, weak, and sickly creature.

What happened next was what I suspected would happen, but not what I wanted to happen. The original victim scuttled off, but now I was the victim. They wanted blood, and they got it. I was pushed down before I could even think, my head hit the pavement, and I felt foot after foot kicking me all over. I curled into a ball, and it hurt like hell.

They grew tired of their kicking, and wandered off after some choice words, and the placing of a big glob of warm spit on my face.

How did I feel? Did any of it give me pleasure? Not at all. My body hurt in a way I had never felt before, and my ego was ground into the dirt beyond recognition.

I would still like to think that I did something good, and that I wasn’t just being prideful. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that this was the case. Nothing about it felt good at all, in any way whatsoever. It still doesn’t feel good, and it’s one of about a dozen experiences I’ve had that still give me nightmares many years later.

There are many times in life where we are called to live well, while still knowing full well that we’re not going to enjoy it. A wise man, my old priest and confessor, once put this in the simplest of terms: “Don’t expect the world to make your life pleasant. Expect yourself to try and make the world right.”

Written in 8/2010

Image: Peter Paul Rubens, The Flagellation of Christ (early 17th c.)

Seneca, On the Happy Life 13: Pleasures of the Mind

"But," says our adversary, "the mind also will have pleasures of its own." Let it have them, then, and let it sit in judgment over luxury and pleasures; let it indulge itself to the full in all those matters which give sensual delights.

Then let it look back upon what it enjoyed before, and with all those faded sensualities fresh in its memory let it rejoice and look eagerly forward to those other pleasures which it experienced long ago, and intends to experience again, and while the body lies in helpless repletion in the present, let it send its thoughts onward towards the future, and take stock of its hopes.

All this will make it appear, in my opinion, yet more wretched, because it is insanity to choose evil instead of good. Now no insane person can be happy, and no one can be sane if he regards what is injurious as the highest good and strives to obtain it.

The happy man, therefore, is he who can make a right judgment in all things. He is happy who in his present circumstances, whatever they may be, is satisfied and on friendly terms with the conditions of his life. That man is happy, when his reason recommends to him the whole posture of his affairs.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 6 (tr Stewart)

The “adversary” here is the Epicurean. You need not worry about the history of it all right here, but you already know him, as the one who tells you to maximize your pleasure, and to minimize your pain.

Back then, it was Epicurus and his followers who defined you as a creature of desire. Hume, Bentham, and Mill kept that standard going. We now no longer need fancy philosophers to tell us that whatever feels good, is good. We now have corporate advertising to do that thinking for us, and which convinces us that the more of their products we consume, the happier we will be.

It would be a mistake to misrepresent the Epicurean as a mindless glutton, just as it would a mistake to misrepresent the Stoic as an emotionless mind. While the Epicurean doesn’t denigrate thinking, and the Stoic doesn’t denigrate feeling, the important difference between them is one of priority.

For the Epicurean, man’s highest good is about pleasure, about good feeling, and all other things must be ordered to that end. For the Stoic, man’s highest good is about virtue, about right action, and all other things must be ordered to that end. In the simplest sense, it’s about the difference between feeling good and being good.

There are times when Seneca can find common ground with the Epicureans, but in this most basic matter his opposition is very clear. Man is indeed a creature that feels pleasure and pain, but without the mind to judge soundly between what is true or false, what is right or wrong, no life can be considered good, or happy.

But surely, the Epicurean might say, the reason we pursue thinking is because it provides us with pleasure, and the mind therefore becomes the means by which we acquire those feelings of satisfaction?

I always suspect that Seneca takes something very seriously when his style becomes sarcastic, and this passage is no exception. By all means, he tells us, treat your intellect simply as a tool to pursue pleasure. What will your judgment tell you? You will look back at the faded pleasures you have lost, and you will entertain ridiculous hopes of somehow getting them again. In the meantime, you are stuck in the middle, between memory and expectation. All this time, your mind will be reminding you how shallow those feelings really are, and how they were never really satisfying at all, because they always left you wanting more and more.

The mind, Seneca tells us, would hardly ever recommend the life of pleasure as worthwhile, because the mind would clearly discern how empty and foolish such a life truly is. Only an insane man, a mindless man, would ever want to acquire what does him harm, and the most basic common sense teaches us that the pursuit of passion divorced from knowledge will never do us any good.

I need to think only of the most damaging choices I have ever made, and what they all shared in common was that they were all about feeling right, not doing right. If I had used my mind rightly, I would have spotted the difference right away. I would have been at peace with myself and with my world, not tossed around by my circumstances.

I once met a fellow who insisted he knew me better than I knew myself, and told me that the only reason I was so interested in philosophy was because it made me feel good. “Hey, I think it’s fun to get drunk and have sex, you think it’s fun to read a book. You and I aren’t really that different.” I smiled and bought him a drink, wondering within myself how long he could keep this up until he hit rock bottom.

No, he and I were quite different, not because we liked to do different things, but because we were starting from two opposing premises about what made life worth living. We had our heads and our guts stacked differently. 

Written in 8/2010

Stoic Film: The Green Mile

God never gave me the gift of being a living miracle, and he never made me a profound blessing to the world. Providence made me just another piss-poor bungling fellow, trying to find his own way.

Yet I imagine what might have happened if He had made me special. I could have used those gifts for my gain, made a name for myself, and manipulated others to make myself look important. I could have been rich. I could have founded a Megachurch, become influential, and married a smiling trophy wife.

Or I could have been like John Coffey.

This film matters in so many ways. The best people aren't the ones who draw attention to themselves, but the ones who somehow manage to love through all of the hurt.

"You tell God the Father it was a kindness you done. I know you hurtin' and worryin', I can feel it on you, but you oughta quit on it now. Because I want it over and done. I do.

"I'm tired, boss. Tired of bein' on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. Tired of not ever having me a buddy to be with, or tell me where we's coming from or going to, or why.

"Mostly I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world everyday. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head all the time. Can you understand? "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDIe0YqFuzI

If you do not feel those pieces of glass in your head, I'm sorry, but you are not my friend. If you do not deeply feel the suffering in this world, we are working from a very different moral compass.

If you do feel it, do something about it. Shallow political or religious ideology means nothing. Help your neighbor, the man who struggles right next door. Pious or politically correct words don't cut it. Ideas are cheap, but actions are priceless. 

Written in 4/2001

Seneca, On the Happy Life 12: Tickled Day and Night

. . . For no one can be styled happy who is beyond the influence of truth, and consequently a happy life is unchangeable, and is founded upon a true and trustworthy discernment; for the mind is uncontaminated and freed from all evils only when it is able to escape not merely from wounds but also from scratches, when it will always be able to maintain the position which it has taken up, and defend it even against the angry assaults of Fortune.

For with regard to sensual pleasures, though they were to surround one on every side, and use every means of assault, trying to win over the mind by caresses and making trial of every conceivable stratagem to attract either our entire selves or our separate parts, yet what mortal that retains any traces of human origin would wish to be tickled day and night, and, neglecting his mind, to devote himself to bodily enjoyments?

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 5 (tr Stewart)

I have learned to see the conditions of my life as always being subject to change, sometimes slow and subtle, sometimes sudden and drastic, but almost always in ways I could never have expected. If someone had told me thirty years ago what I would end up seeing, what I would be asked to live through, or where I would be now, I would surely have laughed it off.

Hindsight now allows me to view such things more openly and broadly, but I must still admit to feeling very uncertain about what can still come. Nothing about the world around me should be taken as a given, and anything can be completely different in the briefest moment.

Because the world will never be the same from day to day does not, however, mean that there cannot be something unchanging and constant about my own thinking and living. What can remain stable about myself, if I only so choose, is standing firm in my sense of what is right and wrong, and the way in which I go about estimating anything and everything in my circumstances.

The happy man is not himself literally unmoving, since he himself always acts, but rather he does not allow those actions to be determined by the whims of good or bad Fortune. He rules himself, and he navigates his own way through both calm and stormy seas. He knows what he is about, and he knows that, whether he will live for a long or a short time, no one can take that from him.

The details hardly matter anymore, but what I once saw as the happiest moment of my life was not really happy, because it was just about a deeply pleasant convergence of events. What I later saw as the most miserable moment of my life was not really miserable, because it was just about a deeply unpleasant convergence of events. I felt loved in one, and abandoned in another. I now see that I would have been much better served to be the same man at both times, instead of becoming two totally different men.

Whenever I pursued a path of life where I longed for pleasure and ran from pain, I was always so sure that I was firmly in control of what I did. It seemed easy to pick one and reject the other, but I had already unwittingly abandoned any possibility of self-mastery. This had occurred because I estimated my value by what happened, not by what I did with what happened.

I love how Seneca compares constant pleasure seeking to being constantly tickled. A pleasant sensation quickly gives way to the recognition that we are powerless in the face of it, that we  no longer control ourselves, but that we are letting ourselves be controlled. The constancy of character surrenders to the flux of feelings.

As a child, my father tried to teach me how to not feel ticklish. “It’s simple,” he said. “Don’t think of someone else tickling you, but imagine you’re tickling yourself.” I never could quite get the hang of that particular ability, which seemed like some profound Zen wisdom or Jedi mind trick, but I do understand the principle in so many aspects of life. Rule what is unchanging within yourself, or let yourself be ruled by everything that changes. 

Written in 6/2009

Image: Johannes Moreelse, Heraclitus  (c. 1630) 

Seneca, On the Happy Life 11: A Man, Not a Rock

Since I have begun to make my definitions without a too strict adherence to the letter, a man may be called "happy" who, thanks to reason, has ceased either to hope or to fear. But rocks also feel neither fear nor sadness, nor do cattle, yet no one would call those things happy which cannot comprehend what happiness is.

With them you may class men whose dull nature and want of self-knowledge reduces them to the level of cattle, mere animals. There is no difference between the one and the other, because the latter have no reason, while the former have only a corrupted form of it, crooked and cunning to their own hurt. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 5 (tr Stewart)

A rock has a body, like a man, but the body of a rock has no life, no feeling, and no thought. An animal has a body with life and with feeling, like a man, but the life and feeling of an animal is not ordered and guided by understanding.

Now the rock or the beast are hardly flawed in their lack of feeling or understanding, because the presence of awareness or mind is not a part of their natures. We should consider something deficient not when any characteristic is absent, but when a characteristic is absent that rightly ought to be present. A rock and an animal are not made to think, and we do not blame them when they fail to do so. A human being, on the other hand, chooses to cast away his very identity when he chooses not to think.

I must remember, therefore, that the happy life, where I am no longer troubled by hope or by fear, does not proceed from not thinking about hopes and fears, but comes rather from understanding them rightly, and no longer allowing myself to be ruled by them. Once I know what is good for me, I will no longer be burdened by hope for the things beyond my power, and once I know what is bad for me, I will no longer be burdened by fear of the things beyond my power. I have become impervious to both, because I care for neither.

While the rock or the animal simply cannot think at all, a thoughtless man is still able to think, but neglects or perverts that power. I see all the injustice and hurt around me, each and every day, that follows from failing to reflect upon the meaning and purpose of our actions. I am myself delinquent, however, if my judgment is itself condescending or dismissive, because I can be well aware of how and why I have been thoughtless myself. It is indeed wrong for us to be thoughtless, but it is also right for us to then correct this by perceiving the causes.

I have been thoughtless when I have cared for myself at the expense of others. I partly recognize my own worth, but I have divorced it from the good of the whole, and I have removed my nature from all of Nature.

I have been thoughtless when I have defined myself by all the circumstances around me, and not by my own choices and actions. I have placed good and evil in everything on the outside, and I have conversely neglected to respect myself.

I have been thoughtless when I have grown tired of effort, disappointment, or loss, and I choose to simply shut myself down. When feeling and thinking seem to hurt, it may appear that it is best not to feel or think at all.

In whatever way my decision has been disordered, by dismissing others, by dismissing myself, or by dismissing both myself and others, I have abandoned a necessary reflection on who I am, and why I am here. This is the greatest of all human losses, because it is the loss of humanity itself.

When I am no longer thinking about how I am living, there is no longer any worth in living. It is only the recovery of consciousness that will restore life. 

Written in 6/2009

Image: Didacus Valades, "The Great Chain of Being", from Rhetorica Christiana (1579)