Stoicism and Contentment

When I parse the first post I put the meaning of expectations to basically be the same as hopes.  Like "I expect to be treated fairly" to be pretty similar "I hope I will be treated fairly".  When you stop having that expectation or hope, what do you have?  Stoicism as defined above seems similar to giving up.  I think there's definite value in accepting what is, what can be changed, and what can't.  And it's easy to burn one's self out dealing with all of that and I think it's what part of what causes me to come off as negative at work when I know I'm not being treated fairly etc.  I just don't know if I'm really going to give up hoping for improvements where I want there to be improvements in life.

I find the idea to have no expectations to be trite and not really realistic.  My take, do whatever with it.

As the great Ray Wylie Hubbard says: The days I keep my gratitudes higher than my expectations, I have really good days.

I'm also of the mind that an excess of gratitude leads to complacency.

I'm grateful for my good health can easily turn into "I'm blessed with good health" so I don't need to watch what I eat or exercise.

Inaction is the enemy. Keep moving, stay hungry.

RX Reven' said:

Hi DaewooOfDeath,

First, thank you very much for the thought provoking post.

Honestly, I find your angst between what "should be" and what "is" troubling as it implies that you, and by extension everyone, has some unflappable moral compass reliably pointing the way to what is intrinsically "right".

On the one hand, I push back against the concept of moral equivalence (I do believe that there is a universal right and wrong) but on the other hand I believe that humans are incapable of perfection in any way including having a complete understanding of right and wrong.

As a result, I'm frightened when I hear language like what "should be"...I see that as leap frogging right over the litigation phase and rolling straight into the sentencing phase.  i.e., you "should be" doing something but you're not so here's what "I've" decided your punishment will be.

Again, thank you for a great post...I just want to be very careful with the term "should be".  "Should be" based on what objectively measurable, unambiguous, universally agreed upon criteria are you referring to??? - rhetorical question, there is none and there never will be.

I very much agree with you. I was trying to say that reducing of any standard of what "should be" to merely "what I would prefer" is the proper attitude. What exactly you prefer, what exactly you think "should be" is kind of beside the point.

Before I overcame my idealism and the hatred/misery/impotence that goes along with it, I believed that the world should be equal, free and governed by rights. The principle works the same if you think the world "should be" perfectly rational, if it "should be" geared toward procuring sacrifice for the dread gods of the Aztec or if it "should be" devoted to the manufacture of paper clips. 

I also share your concern about relativism/moral-equivalence and I think there is a solution, but that would be an involved conversation. 

pres589 (djronnebaum) said:

When I parse the first post I put the meaning of expectations to basically be the same as hopes.  Like "I expect to be treated fairly" to be pretty similar "I hope I will be treated fairly".  When you stop having that expectation or hope, what do you have?  Stoicism as defined above seems similar to giving up.  I think there's definite value in accepting what is, what can be changed, and what can't.  And it's easy to burn one's self out dealing with all of that and I think it's what part of what causes me to come off as negative at work when I know I'm not being treated fairly etc.  I just don't know if I'm really going to give up hoping for improvements where I want there to be improvements in life.

I find the idea to have no expectations to be trite and not really realistic.  My take, do whatever with it.

There's a difference between expectations of things you can control - which the stoics recommend - and expectations of things you cannot control - which they would not. 

For example, I can control how much time I spend watching the Kardashians but I cannot control the weather. It is therefore reasonable to expect myself to watch less (or more, I suppose) Kardashians. If I am watching the Kardashians too much, I should be angry with myself or, better, I should discipline myself to spend my time better. On the other hand, I'm just being silly if I get mad at the weather for not being what I wanted.  

Let me give a more concrete example. This is my research pile for my next book.

Top to bottom, left to right: school management theory, the biography of Matteo Ricci (one of the first important missionaries to China), Hannah Arendt on Education (as intepretted by Korean scholars), a biography of Emperor Hirohito, a book about Pan-Asian racial theory in the late 19th century and early 20th century, Japanese modernity book, a day by day breakdown of the Korean War, a history of the Korean War's origins, a story of an anti-Japanese independence rebel from the 1910s, a book about education as a means to "freedom," a book speculating on what East Asian culture would look like if it were united under a single empire, a criticism of moral education, Dasan (big Korean philosopher) and his theory of "Practical Learning Confucianism," a theory of rage in the classical world, Dasan's (also known as Chong Yagyong) most important book and, finally a critique of egalitarianism. (The stuff to the right of that has nothing to do with my project.)

I am plowing through this research pile because I think South Korea and Japan should stop fighting (they've hated each other for 500 years), focus on their shared interests as the only two rich democracies in East Asia and protect each other from an increasingly aggressive China. I think the best way to do this is a fundamental rethink of ethics classes in Korean and Japanese schools. I would prefer this future book change the world, end the Japano-Korean conflict and ensure the future of democracy in East Asia, but I don't expect it because that eventuality is almost completely out of my hands. I do expect spending the next two to three years reading difficult books, drafting and redrafting the text and teaching myself some elementary Japanese. I expect those things because they are in my control. 

I think you'll agree this is quite far from giving up. 

I think stoicism and idealism aren't necessarily exclusive. After all, without idealism, stagnation often occurs. There is plenty of value in fighting for what you believe in and taking realistic and measurable steps towards where you want to be. There is also a place for stoicism as it heavily influences how human beings deal with setbacks. While many things from the stock market to human rights to admiration seem circumstantial and out of our control, we can still create balanced portfolios, push our governments to protect human rights, make strategic career moves to gain professional admiration and be what we think of as good people (a highly subjective thing as morals aren't absolute across history and cultures) to gain personal admiration. There is always room for improvement and there is always time to push for improvement but it's also always key to remember that you will always have things to be grateful for. Separate realistic expectations from idealistic expectations, brand the former as "what's likely" and the latter as "I hope" and then put one foot on each side and ride the lightning. You'll be pleasantly surprised how often "I hope" can turn into "I am."

In reply to DaewooOfDeath :

I would definitely agree that what you've described working on is far from giving up.  I think there's an issue when I've heard Stoicism described in the past, as well as in your first post, what I heard (which is not always what was intended) was an extreme version of "just grin and bear it". Your project makes me feel like your viewpoints on what we can and cannot control being a litmus test for when and where we should carry expectations into a given situation would be much more inline with my own viewpoints on the subject.  At least that's how I'm digesting all of this.

This is something I want to work on in the new year.