Practice like a Stoic: 51, Pay attention to the right things

Nothing has ever been improved by not paying attention to it

Paying attention, by Midjourney.

[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic.Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosophical background. Check the book for details on how to practice the exercise, download the exercise forms from The Experiment’s website, and comment below on how things are going. Greg and/or I will try our best to help out! This week’s exercise is found at pp. 293-294 of the paperback edition.]

“When you relax your attention for a little, do not imagine that you will recover it wherever you wish; but bear this well in mind that your error of today must of necessity put you in a worse position for other occasions. For in the first place—and this is the most serious thing—a habit of inattention is formed, and next a habit of deferring attention, and you get into the way of putting off from one time to another the tranquil and becoming life, the state and behavior that nature prescribes. Now if such postponement of attention is profitable, it would be still more profitable to abandon it altogether: but if it is not profitable, why do you not keep up your attention continuously?

‘I want to play today.’ What prevents you, if you attend? ‘I want to sing.’ What prevents you, if you attend? Is any part of life excluded, on which attention has no bearing, any that you will make worse by attention and better by inattention? Nay, is there anything in life generally which is done better by those who do not attend? Does the carpenter by inattention do his work better? Does the helmsman by inattention steer more safely? And are any of the minor duties of life fulfilled better by inattention? Do you not realize that when once you have let your mind go wandering, you lose the power to recall it, to bring it to bear on what is seemly, self-respecting, and modest; you do anything that occurs to you and follow your inclinations? To what then must I attend?

First to those universal principles I have spoken of. These you must keep at command, and without them neither sleep nor rise, drink nor eat nor deal with men: the principle that no one can control another’s will, and that the will alone is the sphere of good and evil. No one then has power to procure me good or to involve me in evil, but I myself alone have authority over myself in these matters. So when I have made these secure, what need have I to be disturbed about outward things? What need have I to fear tyrant, or disease, or poverty, or disaster?

‘But I do not please So-and-so.’ Well, is he my doing? Is he my judgment? ‘No.’ What concern is it of mine then? ‘Nay, but he is highly thought of.’

That will be for him to consider, and for those who think much of him. I have one whom I must please, one to whom I must submit myself and obey: God and those who come next to God. He commended me to myself, and made my will subject to me alone, and gave me rules for the right use of it. And if I follow these in syllogisms I pay no heed to anyone who contradicts me; if I follow them in dealing with variable premises, I pay regard to no one. Why then am I annoyed by those who criticize me in greater matters? What is the reason for this perturbation? It is none other than that I have had no training in this sphere. For every science is entitled to despise ignorance and the ignorant, and this is true of arts as well as of sciences. Take any shoemaker, any carpenter you like, and you find he laughs the multitude to scorn when his own craft is in question.

First then we must have these principles ready to our hand. Without them we must do nothing. We must set our mind on this object: pursue nothing that is outside us, nothing that is not our own, even as He that is mighty has ordained; pursuing what lies within our will, and all else only so far as it is given us to do so. Further, we must remember who we are, and by what name we are called, and must try to direct our acts to fit each situation and its possibilities.

We must consider what is the time for singing, what the time for play, and in whose presence; what will be unsuited to the occasion; whether our companions are to despise us, or we to despise ourselves; when to jest, and whom to mock at; and on what occasion to be conciliatory and to whom. In a word, how one ought to maintain one’s character in society. Wherever you swerve from any of these principles, you suffer loss at once; not loss from without, but issuing from the very act itself.”(Epictetus, Discourses IV, 12.1–18)

We’re nearing the end of our journey. Epictetus has a lot to say, and we wanted to give you, the reader, a good sense of his style and reasoning. Plus, this is really important.

You may have noticed Epictetus references “God,” or “He that is mighty.” Marcus and (less frequently) Seneca make similar references. As we have mentioned before (see Week 8), the Stoics were pantheists. They thought of the universe as a living organism endowed with reason (the Logos), and they called this universe “God.” This conception of God implies a kind of providence, as when Epictetus says that He “commanded” things and “gave me rules.” There is a strong temptation to read Epictetus in a Christian sense, but it should be resisted as that is not the conception of God or providence the Stoics had in mind. The rules Epictetus is talking about are more akin to the laws of nature, or the outcome of a web of cause and effect, rather than to the dictates of a Christian-type divinity. Some modern Stoics retain the original intended meaning in the framework of pantheism; some opt instead to ignore the ancient context and reinterpret what Epictetus and the others are saying in monotheistic terms; and still others, also discarding the ancient context, read it in a completely secular fashion. The interpretation is entirely up to you, so long as you are clear about what Epictetus and company actually meant. We think that any one of the above metaphysical interpretations is viable, in the sense that they don’t change the practical meat of the matter, to which we now turn.

To begin with, then, Epictetus exhorts his students to pay attention, and to be mindful of their judgments in everything they do. The first reason is that any instance of inattention is going to reinforce that habit, making their practice more and more difficult. On the contrary, the more they routinely pay attention, the more the right habit of mind is reinforced. The second reason is, put simply, that nothing becomes better by being done inattentively. Being distracted when we drive, or take an exam, or converse with others does not improve our driving, chances of passing the exam, or the quality of our conversation. (Be, ahem, mindful of this the next time you whip out your phone in a social setting, thinking that you can do what is actually impossible for the human mind: multitasking.).

But what is it, exactly, that we need to pay attention to? The short answer: Stoic rules for living and the roles we play in life. That is, the rules related to the Discipline of Desire, the roles to the Discipline of Action.

In terms of rules, Epictetus very clearly restates the basic principle of the dichotomy of control and the knowledge that comes from the virtue of practical wisdom. The latter concerns itself with what is truly good or evil. In no uncertain terms, then, for the Stoics the only thing really under our control is our will; it is good for us if our will is inclined toward virtue, bad for us if it is inclined toward vice. The buck stops with each of us—nobody can force us to change our will, though we may agree (of our own volition!) to change our actions under duress. If someone is not pleased with us, that is their business, not ours—not in the sense that we shouldn’t care if we hurt others, but in the strictly Stoic sense that others’ opinions are up to them. So long as we have acted justly, the fact that others may disapprove is their problem. This fundamental principle, this crucial bit of Stoic knowledge, says Epictetus, ought to stay with us in every moment of our lives. Never leave home without it!

In addition to our judgments, we need to pay attention to the roles we play in life, which originate from the Discipline of Action. Epictetus asks us to pay attention to “who we are,” which, first and foremost, are rational and social animals. We should keep this role at the front of our mind, applying reason to our initial impressions and making sure we attempt to act prosocially in all situations. We also have specific roles that we can figure out by “the names we are called.” Examples include parent, friend, and employee. Our roles vary depending on who we are, what we’ve chosen for ourselves, and even the time of day. Paying attention to what role we are filling at any given time allows us to “direct our acts to fit each situation and its possibilities.” It allows us to derive what actions are virtuous for us at any given time. We must always be rational and prosocial while fulfilling the specific role that is fitting for the given situation.

Lastly, there’s a bonus from this practice of attention to rules and roles (besides living a eudaemonic life, a life worth living): We become serene. We can be sure in the knowledge, derived from the “syllogisms,” that if other people insist we should be concerned with their judgment, then they just don’t understand what a judgment is. They don’t appreciate the fact that only our own judgments are under our control, and are our own business. It cuts down the clutter quite a bit!