What more could you ask for?

I was reading my last post, and it struck me that my 'list' might sound like boasting. It isn't. All I am saying is that through great luck and some effort, I was able to accomplish what so many at my age are still striving for. It isn't that I am ungrateful.

That's not it at all. I am very lucky. I was born in a great country, into a great family. Despite, or perhaps because, of choices I have made, things have turned out this way. I just want to find out why.

It isn't due to dissatisfaction, or boredom, or greed. I have tasted richness and depth and, though rarely, transcendence. I have traveled to some pretty amazing places, accomplished some cool things, eaten some weird food, and met some interesting people. Compared to my day to day life though, all of those things pale in importance.

I am not about to start filling my life with additional goals that serve no purpose besides spending what ever time and disposable income I have left. Having reached this amazing point in my life, I am asking myself what it is all for. What is the purpose of all of this?

I have been lightly reading philosophy, especially Stoicism, and I am well versed in Christian thought. I have read and toyed with atheism. I have had the briefest introduction to eastern religion and philosophy, though what I have learned appears interesting. Though they appear to have much in common, they approach the goal of life in different ways.

A brief overview seems to produce one of five possible answers to my quest.

1. Asking 'What is the purpose of life?' is a false question. It is like asking 'what is the scent of blue?' It sounds like a question grammatically, but logically it is senseless. There is no purpose. Despite our advances in technology, "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
2. The key purpose in life is to enrich and protect those things that are important to me. It is to find out what I love and am passionate about, and experience as much of that as possible. Find and embrace beauty and pleasure, avoid pain.
3. Make myself a better person, aiming at the excellence that I was born with. Learn more, get stronger, think more clearly. Study, exercise, write, produce beautiful things for the sheer joy of it.
4. Be useful. Make this world a better place for having been in it. Give my children what I didn't have. Help the poor. Work towards social justice.
5. Prepare myself for the world to come, for my next life, for the hereafter. Cleanse myself of sin/illusion/karma to join with the divine. Get my soul ready for the next great adventure, after I die. 

I will explore these five approaches to finding meaning in my life, likely with frequent sidebars into other topics as they present themselves.

Towards a Stoic Methodology

Recently, my daughter interviewed me as part of a university project. In it we discussed Stoicism in some detail. She asked me to define Stoicism, and after some round about discussion, I finally came down to this. Stoicism is a Methodology, a WAY to live, not necessarily a set of rules for living. It is all based on 'living according to nature'. First, we must understand what nature is, what OUR nature is, what ALL nature is, then live to the best of our ability according to that knowledge. Stoicism is, in effect, a rational life style that is an extension of scientific discovery. It is life, lived in the best way that we can, in the most rational way we are capable of.

Between Ancient and Dead

Pam and I have been struggling, wrestling even with our search for  Rule of Life that would be rational, compassionate, and fulfilling. Most revealed religions were passed by, not because of their tenets or life-styles, but by the appeal to the supernatural to fill the gaps. Organized atheism and secular humanism spent most of their time focused on religion as well, strangely enough. So when we stumbled upon Stoicism about a decade ago, we though this just might be 'it'. Rational (check) as far as rationality could go. Even the most disruptive emotions were explained by bad judgments. Compassionate (check) because we are all one, each of connected to each other and to the universe itself in a chain of unbroken relationships. And fulfilling (double check) due to some of the most uplifting and beautiful reflections of reality we have ever come across.

Recent events in some Stoic online groups have left the idea of a virtual community in question. The real issue though is the continuing perception that because of the fragmentary nature of the record, the distance in time, place and culture, and more recent theories about optimal human function mean that the Stoic path is not a viable one. Leaving aside the incessant grinding of minutiae on the International Stoic Forum, there is some validity to these concerns.

But here is the reality. Stoicism isn't a religion, with the need for plenary innerancy in it's supporting documents. Nor does it require flawless saints and leaders to shepherd the hapless flock. It is a series of documents, letters, journals, student notes, with common themes. That we can live our lives rationally, without fear or apprehension, without debilitating grief or guilt, and with joy and optimism. That we can love and give with great compassion, because it is what we do that matters, not whether some other deserves eternal punishment for abrogating some minute religious law, and that each day is an opportunity to challenge the 'that is the way it has always been' as well as the vicissitudes of fate. That we can be fulfilled, mindful of the present blessings, understanding beauty and goodness, feeling life all around us, and being grateful for the moment.

This is was Stoicism has offered us. This is living philosophy, and a philosophy of life. While it is ancient, it is also growing, and changing, and making lives meaningful today.

We ARE All Connected

I was studying for the Sellars questionaire (section 3 on Physics). To deepen it, I have also been reading to White (Cambridge Companion to the Stoics) and Sandback (The Stoics). I was reading the sections on tensions (hexis, phusism, psuche) as well as those on the classical elements (fire, water, earth and air). There was some talk of the creative fire, the great conflagration, the 'not-something' status of surfaces and the Stoic theory of interconnectedness and harmony of the cosmos.

As I tried to combine these ideas into a single, unified system in my mind, I was reminded of images I have seen describing the electro-magnetic spectrum, a wide stripe of multiple shades and colours, strecthed out in a linear pattern.

Think of Stoic tonos as tensions (more easily visualized as concentrations) of the 'stuff' of the cosmos, and then plot the increasing tension on a similar stripe, like the bands of frequencies in the EM Spectrum. The very top of the scale would represent the complete attenuation of the cosmos into pure logos or pneuma, as described during the great conflagration. This is the universe at its most basic energy, as super-strings or even the energy that strings are composed of, and occupying the greatest volume (reminiscent of the theories regarding the ever increasingly fast expansion of the universe). The very bottom of the scale, the Stoic passive princple, is the singularity that exists before the moment of creation, the ultimate concentration of all cosmos at the beginning of the big bang, occupying the least possible volume, possibly even to the level of the Dirac constant. Stretched along the continuum between these two points in a widening stream (to reflect the overall increase of volume), from bottom to top, are hexis, phusis, psuche, even logike psuche as regions or overlapping bands along the continum, where the fabric of the universe is concentrated at different tensions. Even within hexis, we can place the four basics states of matter, solid [elemental earth], liquid [elemental water], gas [elemental air], and plasma [elemental fire]. These are not absolutes (as the ancient Greeks believed) but points again along a continuum. The various combinations of concentrations through the cosmos give us the myriads of materials and forces that constitute our cosmos.

Given the Stoic rejection of the corporeality of surfaces, and the subsequent research into subatomic particle, we are litterally merely thicker parts of the cosmos, swiming in a soup of matter. In my minds eye the entire universe looks like pointillist or impressionistic paintings, perhaps as envisioned by Van Gogh, Monet and Degas.

Now I am not trying to say that the Stoics foresaw all of this, but rather that their cosmology, their physics, on which their ethics are based, can be modernized without sacrificing much of the ethics that stand on it. We can still live a rational, ethical life, and live according to nature, using the most up to date science, much like the Stoics did in their day.

On the Meaning of Death

This morning, on my way to work, driving down Sussex, I noticed a memorial that had been erected outside the Lester B. Pearson building. From the brief glance I got of it, it was a multi-speed bicycle, completely spray-painted a mat white. This was tied to a lamp-post, along with a large wreath, some ribbons etc. This was the site where an STO driver hit and killed a cyclist. It seemed to be a remembrance of this woman's death. I know no other details of this person's life, and not many seem to have been handed out. By contrast, I recalled another death, that of a young girl struck by a drunk driver, who was also cycling. The outrage poured out as a result of this tragedy was focused on making this girl the poster child against drunk driving. The father of this young girl was quoted as saying that, by contrast, he didn't want his daughter's life defined by the moment or method of her death, but rather, that her life be measured by her accomplishments and her potential.

As a Stoic, I was reminded that death is not an evil thing, whether it is a sudden, 'un-natural' death, like these two were victims of, or one that come after a long life. It isn't death that makes a life worthwhile, but the life that led up to it. The moment by moment, choice by choice building of our lives, the victories and losses, the valiant stands and courageous retreats, these are what make a life. Not the death.

So many have said "I would die for this," as if it would make their commitment meaningful. Better to say, "I will live for this," and bend all of your will and energies to it. Then, when death comes, your life will have been lived, and you will have fulfilled the promise you were born to.

If

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:


If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
...


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!


From If by Rudyard Kipling


View this poem recited by Harvey Keitel.

My Creed

To live as gently as I can;
To be, no matter where, a man;
To take what comes of good or ill
And cling to faith and honor still;
To do my best, and let that stand
The record of my brain and hand;
And then, should failure come to me,
Still work and hope for victory.

To have no secret place wherein
I stoop unseen to shame or sin;
To be the same when I'm alone
As when my every deed is known;
To live undaunted, unafraid
Of any step that I have made;
To be without pretense or sham
Exactly what men think I am.

From My Creed - Edgar Albert Guest

View a video of Ben Kingsley reciting the above.