A Guide to the Good Life : The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (26 page)

Our ability to experience pleasure also has an evolutionary explanation. Why, for example, does sex feel good? Because our evolutionary ancestors who found sex to be pleasurable were far more likely to reproduce than those who were indifferent to sex or, even worse, found it to be unpleasant. We inherited the genes of those ancestors for whom sex felt good, and as a result we also find it to be pleasurable.

The Stoics, as we have seen, thought Zeus designed us to be gregarious. I agree with the Stoics that we are “by nature” gregarious. I reject the claim, though, that Zeus (or God) made us this way. Rather, we are gregarious because our evolutionary ancestors who felt drawn to other people, and who therefore joined groups of individuals, were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who didn’t.

Besides being evolutionarily “programmed” to seek relationships with other people, I think we are programmed to seek social status among them. Presumably, the groups our evolutionary ancestors formed had social hierarchies within them, the way troops of monkeys do. A group member who had low status ran the risk of being deprived of resources or even of being driven from the group, events that could threaten his survival. Furthermore, the low-status males of a group were unlikely to reproduce. Therefore, those ancestors who felt motivated to seek social status—those ancestors for whom gaining social status felt good and losing it felt bad—were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who were indifferent to social status. Thanks to our evolutionary past, today’s humans find it pleasant to gain social status and unpleasant to lose it. This is why it is delightful when others praise us and painful when they insult us.

According to the Stoics, Zeus gave us the ability to reason so we could be godlike. I, however, think we gained the ability to reason in the same way that we gained our other abilities: through evolutionary processes. Our evolutionary ancestors who had reasoning ability were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who didn’t. It is also important to realize
that we did not gain the ability to reason so that we could transcend our evolutionarily programmed desires, such as our desire for sex and social status. To the contrary, we gained the ability to reason so that we could more effectively satisfy those desires—so that we could, for example, devise complex strategies by which to satisfy our desire for sex and social status.

W
E HAVE THE ABILITIES
we do because possessing them enabled our evolutionary ancestors to survive and reproduce. From this it does not follow, though, that we must use these abilities to survive and reproduce. Indeed, thanks to our reasoning ability, we have it in our power to “misuse” our evolutionary inheritance. Allow me to explain.

Consider our ability to hear. We gained this ability through evolutionary processes: Those ancestors who had the ability to hear approaching predators had a better chance of surviving and reproducing than those who didn’t. And yet modern humans rarely use their hearing ability for this purpose. Instead we might use it to listen to Beethoven, an activity that in no way increases our chances of surviving and reproducing. Besides misusing our ability to hear, we also misuse the ears that evolved in conjunction with this ability; we might use them, for example, to hold on eyeglasses or earrings. Likewise, we gained the ability to walk because our ancestors who had this ability were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who didn’t, and yet some people use this ability to climb Mount Everest, an activity that distinctly reduces their chances of surviving.

Just as we can “misuse” our ability to hear or walk—use these abilities, that is, in a way that has nothing to do with
the survival and reproduction of our species—we can misuse our ability to reason. In particular, we can use it to circumvent the behavioral tendencies that have been programmed into us by evolution. Thanks to our evolutionary past, for example, we are rewarded for having sex. But thanks to our reasoning ability, we can decide to forgo opportunities for sex because taking advantage of these opportunities will lead us away from various goals we have set for ourselves, goals that have nothing to do with our surviving and reproducing. (Most dramatically, we can decide to remain celibate, a decision that will reduce to zero our chance of reproducing.) More important, we can use our reasoning ability to conclude that many of the things that our evolutionary programming encourages us to seek, such as social status and more of anything we already have, may be valuable if our goal is simply to survive and reproduce, but aren’t at all valuable if our goal is instead to experience tranquility while we are alive.

The Stoics, as we have seen, thought that although Zeus made us susceptible to suffering, he also gave us a tool—our reasoning ability—that, if used properly, could prevent much suffering. A parallel claim, I think, can be made about evolution: Evolutionary processes made us susceptible to suffering but also gave us—accidentally—a tool by which we can prevent much of this suffering. The tool, once again, is our reasoning ability. Because we can reason, we can not only understand our evolutionary predicament but take conscious steps to escape it, to the extent possible.

Although our evolutionary programming helped us flourish as a species, it has in many respects outlived its usefulness.
Consider, for example, the pain we might experience when someone publicly insults us. I have given an evolutionary explanation for this pain: We experience it because our evolutionary ancestors who cared deeply about gaining and retaining social status were more likely to survive and reproduce than our ancestors who were indifferent to social status and who, therefore, didn’t experience pain on being insulted. But the world has changed dramatically since our ancestors roamed the savannas of Africa. Today it is quite possible to survive despite having low social status; even if others despise us, the law prevents them from taking our food from us or driving us from our home. Furthermore, low social status is no longer an impediment to reproduction; indeed, in many parts of the world, men and women with low social status have higher rates of reproduction than men and women with high social status.

If our goal is not merely to survive and reproduce but to enjoy a tranquil existence, the pain associated with a loss of social status isn’t just useless, it is counterproductive. As we go about our daily affairs, other people, because of their evolutionary programming, will work, often unconsciously, to gain social status. As a result, they will be inclined to snub us, insult us, or, more generally, do things to put us in our place, socially speaking. Their actions can have the effect of disrupting our tranquility—if we let them. What we must do, in these cases, is use—more precisely, “misuse”—our intellect to override the evolutionary programming that makes insults painful to us. We must, in other words, use our reasoning ability to remove the emotional sting of insults and thereby make them less disruptive to our tranquility.

Along similar lines, consider our insatiability. As we have seen, our evolutionary ancestors benefited from wanting more of everything, which is why we today have this tendency. But our insatiability, if we do not take steps to bridle it, will disrupt our tranquility; instead of enjoying what we already have, we will spend our life working hard to gain things we don’t have, in the sadly mistaken belief that once we have them, we will enjoy them and search no further. What we must do, again, is misuse our intellect. Instead of using it to devise clever strategies to get more of everything, we must use it to overcome our tendency toward insatiability. And one excellent way for us to do this is to use our intellect to engage in negative visualization.

Consider, finally, anxiety. We are evolutionarily programmed, as we have seen, to be worriers: Our evolutionary ancestors who, instead of worrying about where their next meal was coming from and about the source of that growling noise in the trees, sat around blissfully enjoying the sunset probably didn’t live to a ripe old age. But most modern individuals—in developed countries, at any rate—live in a remarkably safe and predictable environment; there are no growling noises in the trees, and we can be reasonably certain that our next meal is forthcoming. There is simply much less for us to worry about. Nevertheless, we retain our ancestors’ tendency to worry. What we must do, if we wish to gain tranquility, is “misuse” our intellect to overcome this tendency. In particular, we can, in accordance with Stoic advice, determine which are the things we cannot control. We can then use our reasoning ability to eradicate our anxieties with respect to these things. Doing this will improve our chances of gaining tranquility.

A
LLOW ME
to recapitulate. The Stoics thought they could prove that Stoicism was the one correct philosophy of life, and in their proof, they assumed that Zeus exists and created us for a certain purpose. I think it is possible, though, for someone to reject the Stoic proof of Stoicism without rejecting Stoicism itself. In particular, someone who thinks that the Stoics were mistaken in their assertion that we were created for a purpose might nevertheless think that the Stoics, in their philosophy of life, chose the correct goal (tranquility) and discovered a number of useful techniques for attaining this goal.

Thus, if someone asked me, “Why should I practice Stoicism?” my answer would not invoke the name of Zeus (or God) and would not talk about the function that humans were designed to fulfill. Instead, I would talk about our evolutionary past; about how, because of this past, we are evolutionarily programmed to want certain things and to experience certain emotions under certain circumstances; about how living in accordance with our evolutionary programming, although it may have allowed our evolutionary ancestors to survive and reproduce, can result in modern humans living miserable lives; and about how, by “misusing” our reasoning ability, we can overcome our evolutionary programming. I would go on to point out that the Stoics, although they didn’t understand evolution, nevertheless discovered psychological techniques that, if practiced, can help us overcome those aspects of our evolutionary programming that might otherwise disrupt our tranquility.

Stoicism, understood properly, is a cure for a disease. The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear, and various other
negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence. By practicing Stoic techniques, we can cure the disease and thereby gain tranquility. What I am suggesting is that although the ancient Stoics found a “cure” for negative emotions, they were mistaken about why the cure works.

T
O BETTER UNDERSTAND
the point I am making, consider aspirin. That aspirin works is indisputable; people have known this and used it as a medicine for thousands of years. The question is, how and why does it work?

Ancient Egyptians, who made medicinal use of willow bark, which contains the same active ingredient as aspirin does, had a theory. They thought four elements flow in us: blood, air, water, and a substance called
wekhudu
. They theorized that an overabundance of wekhudu caused pain and inflammation and that chewing on willow bark or drinking willow tea reduced the amount of wekhudu in someone experiencing pain or inflammation and thereby restored his health.
¹
This theory, of course, was wrong: There is no such thing as wekhudu. What is significant is that even though their theory about how aspirin works was mistaken, aspirin nevertheless worked for them.

In the early centuries of the first millennium, the use of willow bark as a medicine was widespread, but then Europeans appear to have forgotten about its medicinal power. It was rediscovered in the eighteenth century by an Englishman, the Reverend Edward Stone. He knew that willow bark was an effective analgesic and antipyretic, but was as much in the dark about how it worked as the ancient Egyptians were. In the
nineteenth century, chemists determined that the active ingredient in willow bark is salicylic acid but remained ignorant of how and why salicylic acid works. Indeed, it wasn’t until the 1970s that researchers finally figured out how aspirin works: Damaged cells produce arachidonic acid, which triggers the creation of prostaglandins, which in turn cause fever, inflammation, and pain. By preventing the formation of prostaglandins, aspirin short-circuits this process.
²

The thing to realize is that people’s ignorance about how and why aspirin works did not stop it from working. I would like to make a parallel claim about Stoicism. The Stoics were like the ancient Egyptians who stumbled across a cure for a common ailment and exploited it without knowing why it works. Whereas the Egyptians stumbled across a cure for headaches and fever, the Stoics stumbled across a cure for negative emotions; more precisely, they developed a group of psychological techniques that, if practiced, could promote tranquility. Both the Egyptians and the Stoics were mistaken about why their cure works but not about its efficacy.

The early Stoics, it will be remembered, had an active interest in science. The problem is that their science was primitive and could not answer many of the questions they asked. As a result, they resorted to
a priori
explanations for the efficacy of Stoicism and the techniques it provides—explanations based not on observations of the world but on philosophical first principles. Would they, one wonders, have offered different explanations if they had known about evolution and, more important, evolutionary psychology?

S
OMEONE MIGHT
, at this point, take the aspirin analogy one step further and turn it against Stoicism. In the same way that we have a better understanding of science than the Stoics did, we have (in part, because of this improved understanding) medicines that they lacked. In particular, we have tranquilizers such as Xanax that can relieve feelings of anxiety that would otherwise be an obstacle to our tranquility. This suggests the existence of a “royal road” to the tranquility the Stoics sought: Rather than going to our bookstore to buy a copy of Seneca, we should go to our doctor for a Xanax prescription. According to this line of thinking, the Stoic strategy for attaining tranquility can best be described as old-fashioned. Stoicism might have made sense for people who lived two thousand years ago; medical science was in its infancy, and Xanax didn’t exist. But for someone today to resort to Stoicism to deal with anxiety is like someone going to a witch doctor to deal with an ulcer.