Can Stoicism Be Harmful? What One Study Really Found

Can Stoicism help you handle emotion, or can a shallow version make things worse? This talk examines one study on naive Stoic ideology and wellbeing, then separates emotional suppression from the harder Stoic practice of judging impressions carefully and responding well. The evidence does not justify a blanket defence or dismissal of Stoicism. Listen if you are unsure whether the philosophy asks you to feel less, then revisit the distinction between studying a practice and borrowing its slogans.

Transcript

Now what I wanted to discuss with you today is a study that I stumbled across recently. This was a study published April 2020 and the study set out to find if a stoic ideology would impact well-being negatively or positively. In this study they tested a bunch of people to look at their stoic ideology level and then measured them on a bunch of well-being tests to see if the stoic ideology was linked to increased well-being or decreased well-being. The conclusion of the study stated, Quote, Overall our study shows that a naive endorsement of stoic ideology might have negative well-being consequence. Now this study is being spread on Twitter by people who don't like stoicism or don't find stoicism valuable and it's kind of like a, Look I told you so kind of thing. Stoicism is not healthy, Look the science proves it. In fact Tucker Max actually shared this study on his Twitter and said, Quote, I've been trying to tell this to my friends for years. There is a reason it's a dead philosophy. Now we're going to look at the study or one aspect of the study in a moment. But let's just go back to Tucker Max's claim, I've been trying to tell this to my friends for years, He says. There is a reason it's a dead philosophy. Is stoicism a dead philosophy? I mean it's clearly not a dead philosophy. If you look at the number of books that are being published, It's increasing rapidly. More people are becoming interested in stoicism every year. Twenty years ago, Barely any books were published on stoicism. Now stoicism is very popular again, So it's certainly not dead. But on a deeper level, Did stoicism ever die? The way that it was practiced, Perhaps, With the specific types of training that people would go through. But again, The works of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, They didn't go out of print, They remained in existence. So again, Something kept these works alive. Beyond that, Christianity and self-improvement has been massively influenced by Stoic ideology. You can't get around this. If you read your average self-improvement book, You don't realize it, But you're digesting diluted versions of Stoic thinking. In therapeutic settings, CBT, The creators of cognitive behavioral therapy, Were directly influenced by Stoicism. So if you go and have therapy on depression or anxiety, And the type of therapy you have is thought-based or cognitive therapy, You again are being influenced by this so-called dead philosophy. So Stoicism is not dead and has never died. One of the points I wanted to bring up is that we don't realize how much we've been influenced by Stoicism. Even if you've never read a book on Stoicism before, It's part of our culture. It's almost impossible to have escaped the influence. So going back to Tucker Max's tweet, I found something interesting as I scanned through his tweet. Tucker Max on his Twitter has these lesson learned posts. This is one of his posts. When faced with a difficult choice, I've learned the best action is always the one that increases my self-respect. That's almost always the hardest action to take as well. Hard actions now tend to make for a better life later. This is a person who said that there's a reason Stoicism is dead. But now I'm going to read you an excerpt from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect. The ideas here are very similar. Or how about this quote from Tucker Max? Lesson learned. Everyone says they want change. Very few people are willing to change themselves. I used to be this way as well. Every problem I saw was in others. I eventually realized that all my problems were in me. Compare this to the Marcus Aurelius classic quote. Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. Again, Exactly the same idea. Another quote from Tucker Max. Lesson learned. I remember when I got everything I wanted and realized I still wasn't happy. People had told me money, Fame, Success won't make me happy, But I didn't get it. My is-this-what-I-worked-so-hard-for moment had to be felt to be learned. Then the work began. And compare that to Marcus Aurelius' quote. Consider the lives led once by others long ago, The lives to be led by others after you, The lives led even now in foreign lands. How many people don't even know your name? How many will soon have forgotten it? How many offer you praise now, And tomorrow perhaps contempt? That to be remembered is worthless like fame, Like everything. Marcus here is hinting at the real value of things in life, Not being external and subject to fortune, Things and things outside of our control. So I show you these quotes just to highlight that there's an inherent contradiction in people who reject Stoicism and yet still use Stoicism, Use aspects of that philosophy in their life. I know that Tucker Max is doing great work, Great intelligent work in psychedelics and trauma healing and other avenues of self-healing and becoming whole in that way. That style, That approach is different from the Stoic approach. There are definitely amazing things to be found in psychedelic therapy, Trauma healing. We know a lot more about the psyche, About human beings now than we did 2, 000 years ago. Jules Evans has written about this in The Art of Losing Control, His book after his Stoicism book, Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations. There's definitely an ecstatic area of human flourishing that Stoicism doesn't directly address. But at the same time, You can't help but feel that Tucker Max misunderstands Stoicism. And one tweet in particular showed this, Quote, Lesson I've learned. I used to think I could control my emotions. Whole schools of philosophy are built on this premise. I'll save you the time. It doesn't work. To master my emotions, I must allow them to be and experience them as they are. Only then can I let them go. So if Tucker Max is referring to Stoic schools of philosophy when he says entire schools of philosophy are built on the premise of controlling your emotions, Well, There's a lot we can say about that. The first thing is, Should you never control your emotions directly? Is there never a place to do that? Is it always wrong to try and force yourself to behave a certain way? Because I don't think it is. I actually don't think it is. If you're feeling murderous rage, Or you're on the edge of doing something very harmful to another person, Does it really matter how you stop yourself doing that? Is it really wrong to literally tie yourself to a post for 10 minutes to stop yourself from acting that out? Is it wrong to force yourself to just wait for a minute for the anger to subside? Or do you always, Always have to allow them to be and experience them as they are? Because the Stoics were really intelligent and they would have definitely done that with a lot of emotions. Accept them, See them, Recognize that they're out of your control, And then use wise judgment to get to the truth of the situation. So straight off the bat, The Stoics didn't ever try to control their emotions. That doesn't make any sense. The only thing Stoics realized they could control is judgment, Not emotion. And judgment's a very different thing from emotion. But they also saw that certain emotions, In particular anger, Had a momentum of its own. And that if someone is truly angry, Then they are not able to be reasonable. They are not able to allow the anger to be and experience it fully. When you're angry, It's an entire psychological state designed to be chaotic and disruptive. A Stoic approach might be for most disturbing emotions, Like grief, Absolutely allow it to be, Accept it, Examine your judgments. But for something like anger, In particular raging anger, When it loses its control, It might be that not allowing yourself to feel that, Not allowing that to get out of control by any means necessary, Might actually be a good thing. At least let's not put that off the table as an option. But just in general life, It's actually healthy to have some self-restraint. I think you can get too caught up in, I must always process emotions optimally and healthily and not ever suppress them. I think you can easily strawman the opposing side, Where you make basic self-restraint and self-control, Which we all have and all use on a daily basis, Look like it's a toxic form of living, When it's actually not. It's actually completely reasonable to say, Feel an urge to do something and just shut down that urge. We do it all the time. If you're working on that emotion or that craving or that pattern as a longer term project as part of your healing, Then you can give it more attention. The other thing about allowing your emotions to be, There's a shadow side to that where you could be allowing them to be as a form of controlling them. You can make almost anything into a technique. How do you deal with anxiety? Be aware of the anxiety, Be mindful of the anxiety and the anxiety will subside. It's like, Okay, I feel anxiety. I'm aware of the anxiety. It's not going. I'm aware of the anxiety. It's not going. Why is the anxiety not going? As soon as you stop thinking from that perspective, You're no longer aware of the anxiety. If you're thinking thoughts like, Why is the anxiety still here? I'm aware of it. Then you're not mindful of the anxiety anymore. So it's a really tricky thing actually. It's not as simple as just be aware or just accept it and let it go. Sometimes even letting things go can be a form of pushing away as well. Have you ever met someone who doesn't ever want to deal with stuff? They choose to just let everything go. That can also look a bit spineless as well from a certain perspective. But going back to this study, This study is relevant because they found that a naive endorsement of Stoic ideology might have a negative well-being consequence. So you might ask, Well, How did they determine from a large sample size who had a Stoic ideology? Well they had, Of course, A Stoic ideology scale. This scale measured four constructs. These are the four constructs that this Stoic ideology scale measured. Number one, Endurance. An example of that might be, I expect myself to hide my aches and pains for others. The second was taciturnity. An example of that would be, I don't believe in talking about my personal problems. The third was serenity. An example of that would be, I would prefer to be unemotional. And number four, Death acceptance. An example of that would be, I would not allow myself to be bothered by the fear of death. Let me ask you, Listener, Are those sentences examples of Stoicism? Are those sentences examples of excellence of character, Wisdom, Virtue? Does someone who has excellence of character prefer to be unemotional? Does someone who has excellence of character hide their aches and pains from others? Do people who have excellent characters believe in not talking about personal problems? Is that what an excellent character does? No. Endurance. I expect myself to hide my aches and pains from others. That's not endurance. How is that in any way endurance? That's not endurance in the slightest. That's hiding. That's pretending. Endurance is, Go watch a marathon runner. They might be screaming, Crying, Telling you how they feel the whole race. Why would they need to hide their aches and pains to be able to complete the race? It doesn't work like that. Expecting yourself to hide your aches and pains from others is not endurance. That's a social desire to hide something. And yeah, I mean, Why wouldn't that be linked to depression? If you believe that you should hide your aches and pains from others, You're shutting off connection with other people. So how would a stoic express their aches and pains? Well, They would tell people the truth, But they probably wouldn't make a huge story about being a victim. An example of that might be, I have stomach pain. It's really uncomfortable and I'm finding it hard to do things. That's expressing the issue. That's so different from poor me. Why does everything always go wrong for me? I'm in pain and I can't do anything. This always happens to me. That's victim mentality. So you can be a stoic, You can have an excellent character and express yourself. Taciturnity. I don't believe in talking about my personal problems. Well, That's an interesting belief. Why not? Do you think that when Seneca lost his son or Marcus Aurelius lost multiple children that he just had this belief that he shouldn't talk to anyone about it? No. He would have had a funeral, Had a ceremony, Grieved. What benefit could come from just not talking about it to people? How is that belief going to lead to excellence of character, To connection with other people, To inspiring other people to withstand difficulty? Serenity. I would prefer to be unemotional. Now this is an interesting one because the Stoics were not against emotions. The Stoics were against suffering. Just like the Buddhists. How can we reduce negative emotion? And they figured out that a lot of our negative emotion comes from faulty thinking about the world. Seneca talked about a boundless joy. His letters were so loving and humorous and full of passion. He was a playwright. Epictetus' dialogues, He's playfully mocking his students, Rubbing them up the wrong way, Getting them to think. He's having fun being a Stoicism teacher. If you read the discourses of Epictetus, He's the complete opposite of unemotional. In fact, He can be a bit rude actually in a way that cuts people down to size. Unemotional people don't do that. I think when people say that they would like to be unemotional, That might be. . . I'm trying to imagine the type of person that would want to be unemotional. And it would probably be someone who isn't emotional, So someone who is high in volatility. And if you are high in volatility, It would make sense for you to want to come back into tranquility a bit more. There are some people that have big swings, Mood swings. Extreme happiness, Extreme sadness, Extreme laughter, Extreme depression, And their life is kind of like a roller coaster. For such people, I can understand the desire to be more unemotional. But there is nothing Stoic about being unemotional. The goal of Stoicism is to have an accurate representation of reality. And then death acceptance. I would not allow myself to be bothered by the fear of death. So the Stoics had various trainings to overcome the inevitable end-of-life death. Because they saw that death is in and of itself a neutral thing. And that the mind creates its own stories that puts a negative spin on the event. And that they want to see the world more reasonably and accurately. And so they want to see death as a neutral event. That's the thinking behind it. But the example, I would not allow myself to be bothered by the fear of death, Is completely different from not fearing death. Let me say that again. The desire to not allow yourself to be bothered by the fear of death is very different from simply not fearing death. If you would not allow yourself to feel something, The goal in Stoicism is not to stop yourself from acting like you fear something, But to see the world in such a way that there is no fear to begin with. So you read the average modern Stoicism book. They always have this section, Stoicism with a capital S versus Stoicism in the dictionary. Stoicism in the dictionary means unemotional, Having a stiff upper lip. And Stoicism with a capital S is an intricate, Well-developed, Detailed, Systematic philosophy of life that covers pretty much everything. And whenever I read this, I'm like, Do people really confuse those two? And it sounds like they are continuing to confuse those two. So the study says that a naive endorsement of Stoic ideology might have a negative well-being consequence. And really the lesson that I've taken away from the study is that a naive endorsement of anything can lead to negative well-being. A naive endorsement of psychedelics can lead to someone having a terrible traumatic incident. A naive endorsement of meditation can lead people to practice it wrong, With wrong expectations, And to do more harm than good. A naive endorsement of anything is a naive endorsement. So the message is this. If we are going to spend our time and effort on something, On an avenue in our life, If we're going to let something in that will influence us, Let's not do it in a naive way. And if our goal is to study Stoicism, Let's study Stoicism. Let's become knowledgeable on Stoicism. Let's read books on Stoicism, On articles, And talk about it, And teach about it, And look for the potential traps and mistakes, And recognize that it's still fairly misunderstood. People aren't doing the research. People might read a few articles online and think they understand Stoicism. There's an interesting thing you see. With Tucker Max, He's very much a proponent of MDMA-assisted therapy, And psychedelics, And healing, And spirituality. And I love all of those things too. But he must realize that those things have been and are very misunderstood by people. He must have experienced people not getting psychedelics, Thinking of them as just drugs, Or seeing meditation as just a thing for hippies. He must have experienced that. Because, Of course, People don't do their research. They make snap judgments on things. But he's done exactly the same thing with Stoicism, And it's not helpful to anyone. It's not helpful to him or the people that are reading his opinion on it. So let's make sure that if we're going to give opinions to people, We have done some fact-checking on ourselves. I think that might be a sign of an excellent character. I'll leave you with that today. Speak with you soon, Fate permitting.

Reviews

Thank you for this talk. I don't know who this Twitter person is as I can't stand Twitter and I always try to find who has subsidized a study. I'm just learning about stoicism and considering it is 2000 years old it's pretty obvious to me they came to their knowledge through intuition, insight, self awareness and a willingness to confront their humanness. Yes science is helpful but that study sounds a complete sham. Alot of people today are not willing to truly observe themselves with honesty. Yeah I want a quick fix too. Who doesn't. The challenge is to keep considering the words of those who had the focus and grit to take the long road. I love your channel.