Progressive Passion vs Conservative Stoicism
Yesterday I finished listening to the book Sex at Dawn, which argues that we are probably more miserable now as a species than we have been in the past, and that the rise of agriculture is the root cause of the violent and controlling characteristic of humans that expresses itself in contemporary gender roles, including incorrect and mentally confusing ideology about sex. The book is an upbeat, horrifying look at how we’ve put ourselves into some kind of death trap psychologically as our cultures have evolved around the shift from foraging nomadic lives to agrarian, City-state living. The authors don’t provide a lot of solutions, but I would say the argument is, don’t believe it when you hear that you’re lucky to be alive right now. If you feel miserable right now, there’s a good chance it has to do with having your evolved social proclivities being completely bent into painful poses by unrelenting and unnatural social constructions.
Today I am re-listening to the book A Guide To The Good Life, about the philosophy of Stoicism, which teaches that maintaining your tranquility should be your primary objective and that it’s always within your power to do so.
I agree with both ideas. I believe that it is one of the most difficult times to be alive for humans, that the way the world works right now is putting that incredible, discomforting pressure on our psychologies in ways far worse than for average humans 100,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago, and that also, the respite from this l remains as accessible as it ever has been, as it is internally located.
There is a tension between these ideas. I observe progressive thinkers and their aim to fix system problems in order to alleviate suffering for the disenfranchised, but I think (possibly incorrectly) that when people get out from under any portion of their oppression they will find they still need to do the work of learning to find tranquility through personal internal means. And people of privilege also have to do that same work if they ever wish to be tranquil. And the doing of that work is accessible to (and challenging for) people who are oppressed (like the slave Epictetus, one father of Stoic Philosophy) or privileged (like the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, another father of Stoic Philosophy). So no need to wait: do it now.
It’s my view that some progressives misunderstand as cruelty some portion of conservative thought that is actually better described in this type of context. I have sincere thoughts about others of this flavor quite often. When I see my kids wanting something, I think, when they have it won’t they be surprised how they still feel miserable! And when I see some writers who yearn so much to publish a book, I think, they are going to feel even worse after they get that and they still feel empty inside.
Then, I wonder sometimes how much easier it is for me to know this because of having had a rather privileged life. Now as I experience some difficulty in my life, I have this experiential knowledge that others who go the opposite direction don’t have. People born oppressed who rise out of it might always be thinking that peace and contentment and joy is one rung of safety or freedom or validation or power ahead of them, while I have the benefit of knowing that when you get those things, you still feel just as anxious or hungry. That’s been my experience at least. The privilege of having been there, done that, paid the AMT taxes.
Perhaps the scaled up social perspective I should work on projecting would accommodate a separate perspective for the utility of progressive passion at the societal level and separately the reality of the stoic opportunity for any individual. It is noble to work for social justice (that long arc of the moral universe ain’t gonna bend itself lol), but as an individual, you personally don’t need anything else to change in order to find tranquility.