How To Survive In A World Of Assholes | Melinda Wenner Moyer

One suspects Marcus Aurelius was referring to a particularly frustrating person, some opponent who just would not, or could not, get the message, when he wrote:“You can hold your breath until you’re blue in the face and they’ll just go on doing it.” There’s an American expression along those same lines: “Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it.”Both these pieces of advice are worth remembering for the inevitable moments that we find ourselves in conflict or at cross purposes with one of those nutty, obnoxious, stubborn jerks that make up a certain percentage of the population. Although it’s tempting to fight and argue with them, it rarely ends well, because you can’t beat someone with nothing to lose, and it’s impossible to reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into in the first place. It takes great skill to identify irrationality and emotional reactions in other people. It takes a lot of confidence to avoid battling with someone acting out of ego. It requires patience to endure their onslaughts and put up with them in your midst. But if you can, you’ll preserve your happiness and live a much less stressful life. It’s not your job to change other people—and even it were, crazy doesn’t want to be changed. Learn how to walk away. Learn how to de-escalate. Learn how to let other people be themselves and you just do you. It’s a much easier life, you can count on that. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

16 Jan 20192min

There’s no question that depressing things happen in this world. They always have and always will. People lie, cheat, steal. Envy, avarice, selfishness—it’s all out there. And it’s hard to miss. It’s easy to despair about this. What do we do? Must it be this way? What’s the point of being good when everyone else is so bad?This is the wrong way to think about it. It’s not up to us to change this unchangeable part of the human species, but instead to think about how to adapt to it, how to integrate it into our understanding of the world and not let it make us miserable. That’s a big part of why the Stoics talk about ignoring what other people do—their lying, cheating and stealing—and focusing on what we do. On making sure that we hold ourselves to a higher standard and put our energy towards evaluating ourselves according to those standards rather than projecting it onto others. Marcus’s best advice on this is worth remembering today: instead of talking about other people’s selfishness and stupidity, our job is “to run straight for the finish line, unswerving.”To not be distracted by the darkness of others, to head towards the light. To be good without hesitation, even when other people are not. That’s our job. Today and for our whole lives. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

15 Jan 20192min

Martin Luther King Jr. was fond of using the American Civil War as a metaphor, not just to explain the divisive political landscape, but the divide within each person. Just as there was a North and South in America (Anti-slavery and Pro-Slavery), there was a divide between good and bad within each of us. There was the part pulled towards higher principles and the part that was willing to compromise with baser instincts.Certainly, in his own life, King was pulled this way. He was a man of enormous principle and selflessness, but he also had a number of affairs. This was a violation not only of his marriage, but the Christian teachings he preached at the pulpit. He knew better...but found himself doing it anyway. This tension must have been incredibly painful and shameful for him. So when King said that “there is something of a civil war going on within all our lives,” he wasn’t just speaking theoretically. He knew it firsthand. The point of looking at examples like this isn’t to dismiss someone as a hypocrite—we’ve had quite enough of that zero-sum thinking in recent years and, quite frankly, there’s nothing Stoic about it. Nor are we trying to rationalize or excuse bad behavior. The point is to remember, just like with the US Civil War, that there is no such thing as a perfect person or a perfect cause. For all time, even the best of us have struggled with temptations and personal failings. This is the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, after all. Man has always been pulled apart by competing desires. Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Cato—all the Stoics struggled with it too. They knew the right thing to do—they simply couldn’t always get there. We all fall terribly short of our own standards at times—even low standards. All we can do is get back up when that happens and try better next time. We can’t undo the past, we can’t go back in time, but we can try harder to be better right now—today—and in the future. Just as we are pulled lower, towards our baser selves, we are also capable of pulling ourselves higher, towards our better selves. The North won the US Civil War. And we can win the one raging inside us too. We just have to realize which side we want to fight for. That self-evaluation starts today. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

14 Jan 20193min

There is a simple proposition at the heart of classical Christianity: if you are a good person and do good works on Earth, when you die you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven and know the full bounty of God’s unending love. But if you are a bad person on Earth, and you sin without repenting, when you die you’ll end up in Hell for all eternity. In many Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, that duality is baked into the singular notion of Karma: good intentions and good deeds will be repaid in the next life with great kindness; bad intent and bad deeds (or sin) will be repaid in the next life with great severity.The Stoics take a different approach. They don’t say that cheating or lying or murdering should be avoided out of fear of future punishments at the hands of God. Instead, they make a much more immediate and self-interested case. Seneca especially, who saw Caligula and Nero and other infamous Roman rulers up close, takes pains to point out these people are not winning. Nor are they getting off scot-free for their crimes. Actually, they’re paying for it every single day. Seneca would have liked the passage at the conclusion of the novel What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg, which renders this verdict on the empty, broken life of an immoral Hollywood studio boss:I had been waiting for justice suddenly to rise up and smite him in all its vengeance, secretly hoping to be around when Sammy got what was coming to him; only I had expected something conclusive and fatal and now I realized that what was coming to him was not a sudden pay-off but a process, a disease he had caught in the epidemic that swept over his birthplace like a plague; a cancer that was slowly eating him away, the symptoms developing and intensifying: success, loneliness, fear. Fear of all the bright young men, the newer, fresher Sammy Glicks that would spring up to harass him, to threaten him and finally overtake him.The Stoics would say don’t sin or your life will be hell. Not your next life, not your afterlife, but this life right now. Today. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

11 Jan 20193min

The author Michael Malice has a running gag: whenever a celebrity dies he posts a meme that says RIP but is a photo of a similar looking but a very different (and very alive) celebrity. It’s partly a commentary on how easily fake news spreads but it’s also an ironic dismissal of all that person has accomplished. It says: You’re dead now and we’re already forgetting your legacy. It says: You’re dead and we think it’s pretty funny. Sure, there is a trollishness to that and it’s probably definition of the expression “Too Soon” but there is also truth and Stoicism in it. Marcus Aurelius liked to remind himself that Alexander the Great and the man’s mule driver are buried in the same ground. Shakespeare was equally impious. To what base uses we may return, Horatio. Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bunghole?The point is that death is not only inevitable but it is a great and merciless equalizer. It doesn’t matter how much money you pile up, how many territories you conquer, how many people know (or tremble at) your name—in the end you will die. Not only that, but some people will laugh! They will think your death is hilarious or even deserved. That should humble you. It should serve as a Memento Mori for you. It should motivate you to live while you still can and not take any of it too seriously. Because it isn’t that serious. In fact, it’s kind of funny. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

10 Jan 20192min

There’s not much in Stoicism that’s particularly groundbreaking: Focus on what you can control. Be a good person. Manage your emotions. A lot of the famous Stoic quotes are pretty basic too: Epictetus: “It’s not things that upset us, it’s our judgement about things.” Marcus Aurelius: “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” Seneca: “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality” The elementary school-level simplicity isn’t a bug. It’s a feature: There’s a great line in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle: "Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan." A lot of complicated stuff isn’t actually complicated...it’s made to seem that way so no one will notice that it’s actually bullshit. A lot of philosophy is badly written...because if it wasn’t, people would actually understand what the “philosopher” was saying and laugh them out of a job. What the Stoic writings are about is not impressing anyone, nor making the reader feel like a genius for getting all the way through. No, they are designed to be short and to the point. No puffery. No throat-clearing. Using the absolute minimum number of words to make the most straightforward point. We might call this counter-signaling, or better, a show of confidence. When you’ve got the goods, you don’t need to dress it up or make a hard sell. Just lay it out and let people take it or leave it. So it should go for us, in all aspects of our lives. No obfuscation. No dog and pony show. No sound and fury. Just do the work, be the best version of yourself you can be, and people can take it or leave it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

9 Jan 20192min

Peter Barton’s beautiful memoir, Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived, takes readers along a man’s search for meaning when he’s forced to confront mortality. Struggling for a reason to persist amid a terminal diagnosis, his wife, Laura, orders Peter to "Find a point!" "So where was I supposed to find something to feel good about, some realm where I could still feel strong and hopeful? The answer now seems obvious, but for me it was the hardest place to accept: that realm was my mind. My frame of mind was something I could still control. Doing so would be a sort of victory I was not accustomed to valuing—a total inward, private victory—but a legitimate accomplishment nevertheless. I resolved to control my own discomforts, to rise above them if I possibly could. In doing so, I came to understand the deep truth that, while my pain may be unavoidable, suffering is largely optional…Pain can make you thoroughly miserable, or pain can just be pain. The trick, I've realized, is to confine it to the body and not let it infect the mind.”Not only is this separation between pain and suffering a very Stoic idea, but this idea of “Finding a point” is an exercise we all need to practice. It’s part and parcel of amor fati. When someone we love has been hurt, we need to find a point (for instance, that this will bring us closer together and remind us to not take time for granted). When a project we are working on fails, we need to find a point (to examine our choices and the systems by which we operate or simply realize that not everything we are going to do will be successful). When we are stuck in traffic, we need to find a point (that this is a chance to listen to a podcast or make a phone call). When we feel exhausted and burned out, find a point (your body is telling you something, or remember why or who you are making this sacrifice for). Do these points magically undo what we are feeling in those moments? Of course not. Nothing can. But they do make sure the feeling is not permanent, nor completely in vain and without value. This is the crucial distinction between pain and suffering. Suffering is needless. Pain can instruct.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

8 Jan 20193min

Why does Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations speak to us so? The answer, ironically, is that because the author had zero intention of doing so—in fact, he probably would have been mortified to know how well the book has been received...because it meant the exposure of his private thoughts and fears and strugglesAs Ernest Renan observed, Marcus was writing for an audience of one. “Never,” Renan said, “has one written more simply for himself, for the sole end of emptying his heart, with no other witness than God.” That’s what journaling is about. Getting the thoughts out of our head, the anguish out of our hearts, and onto the page. It’s a way of clarifying and alleviating, excising and exercising. For centuries—nay, millennia—people have been pouring themselves into private journals. Some did it at night. Some did it in the morning. Some did it in sporadic bursts or on rare occasion. But in literally countless cases, journaling has been a source of relief and self-guidance. Which is why you should strongly consider picking up the habit this year. Do it on your phone. Do it on scrap paper. Do it in a free notebook you were given in the swagbag at a conference. Or—if we may so humbly recommend it—check out The Daily Stoic Journal, which provides daily prompts and over 20,000 words of Stoic wisdom. Just as Marcus developed this daily habit, so can you. As Musonius Rufus, teacher to Epictetus, said: habit always beats theory for it’s where “one brings together sound teaching with sound conduct.”Whatever method you go with, just go with it. Give yourself quiet time where you can write simply for yourself, with no witness over your shoulder or hovering in the clouds above. Empty out your heart. Clear the racing thoughts of your mind. Leave a record of what you’re learning and what you’ve done. Practice becoming a better human.It will be the best decision you make this year. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

7 Jan 20193min