Stoicism
Please write a response to the following,
1.) Seneca defines wisdom as practicing what you preach. It is not enough to have a virtuous set of theories you believe in. Your actions must reflect your beliefs. Many people have problems doing this because of external distractions such as luxury or fame. They get distracted from their personal belief system by the externals and end up wanting to attain more of those externals. What they believe becomes invalid. What Seneca suggests is to try to live a life that separates you from those externals. Specifically, poverty. Not only will this help you focus on practicing what your beliefs and virtues, but it also rids you of artificial people. He says, Poverty will keep for you your true and tried friends; you will be rid of the men who were not seeking you for yourself, but for something which you have (Seneca, Moral Letter 20). Your true friends will stick around whether you have or have lost everything. The people who were only friends with you because of what you have will leave and all you will have left are the true friends you like you for your character.
2.) Irvine explains that Musonius suggests that instead of working to become wealthy, we should train to be satisfied with what we have. Instead of seeking fame, we must stop caring what others think. Instead of planning to harm someone out of jealousy, we must get over that jealousy. Instead of trying to become popular, we must keep and value the friends we already have (Irvine 202). Instead of spending time trying to attain the things that are of no help to achieving a virtuous character, we must spend time doing the things that will develop and improve our character to become more virtuous. Planning your life trying to attain external things such as wealth, fame, or revenge can be reasons for procrastinating on adopting a philosophy of life. The dangers of failing to adopt a philosophy of life is, if we lack one, there is a danger that we will mislive- that we will spend out life pursuing goals that arent worth attaining or will pursue worthwhile goals in a foolish manner and will therefore fail to attain them (Irvine, 203). We will feel as if we have wasted our life going after meaningless things. Even choosing to pursue a worthwhile goal in a foolish manner, we still fail to attain it because the way in which we did it had no value.
3.) After being brutally beaten, Vice-Admiral Stockdale wound up with a broken leg. He then remembers a quote from Epictetus that lameness is an impediment of the leg but not the will (11). After that, he became a commanding officer of fifty people. Despite being on crutches and having to drag his leg around, he was still determined to play well the given part (12). The Stoic practice he used was choosing to focus on the things he can control instead of the things he could not. He could not control that he had a broken leg. Despite that, he was still determined to play the part of a good leader. His leg was affected, not his will power. I had a similar situation when I was still attending my previous university. Before taking online classes at ASU, I was attending the University of Nevada, Reno. The last semester I was there, I was two to three months pregnant. Despite being sick and dizzy all the time, I was still able to turn in my assignments on time. It did not affect my ability to listen and understand the lectures. Growing a human did not affect my ability to listen and think logically.
4.) The most difficult desire for me to overcome is wanting to control how certain things will turn out, even if I have little or no control over it. I have had a choice in many things in life, but every time I come to a situation in which I have no control over, I get frustrated or panic. This is part of myself that I am currently working on and hope to overcome some day. The desire I think a lot of people have trouble overcoming wanting to stay in constant comfort. Dr. Rosen says, We think life is only about creating safety and security and pursuing contentment (Dr. Rosen). We often think the ideal life is all about safety and security. Because of wanting constant comfort, many people develop a fear of change, or they feel that as soon as things go bad, they end up constantly changing things up to get back to being comfortable. People will either refuse to change or compromise a situation because it might affect their comfort, or they will completely avoid a situation by leaving and starting fresh.
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