Yesterday was good: all of it outside on a beautiful Fall day, more peripatetic motion this time, followed by a larger turnout for Happy Hour at the Boulevard. Let's keep it growing! (But maybe let's find a quieter corner of the patio... or even consider a quieter venue, if anyone would care to suggest one.)
Mac 3-4
1. What is our "existential illness" that needs treatment?
2. Why are emotions problematic in Stoicism?
3. What did Cicero and Seneca say about medical self-help?
4. What is RAIN?
5. What's the promise of Buddhist awakening?
6. What useful function do the jhanas perform?
7. Mental health of the nirvana kind would be what?
Discussion Questions:
- Are all of us really "deluded and grasping"? About what? For what?
- Are the Stoics right to equate virtue with rationality? 29
- Aren't things outside us really good or bad?
- Are emotions really unnatural? 30
- Is there really no such thing as moderate emotion? (What would Spock say?)
- How do you keep your own emotions from getting "out of hand"? 32
- What "worldly cravings" have you happily satisfied? 35
- Was the Buddha's resigned acceptance of backache just a product of his misfortune in being born before the advance of medical science? 37 Or was the Buddha in fact resigned?
- Is CBT (and Epictetus) right about "things"? 39
- Were you (like many westerners) under the impression that karma-as-rebirth was a good thing? From a western perspective, wouldn't multiple lives be desirable? What does this say about the respective attitudes of eastern and western traditions of thought towards life, suffering, the future etc.?
- Were you (are you) a fan of Kurt Cobain's Nirvana? What element of Buddhist nirvana (if any) did they represent?
- Is "What goes around comes around" a reasonable paraphrase of karma?
- Is an impermanent world devoid of substantial/enduring selves really so bad?
- Do you meditate? What do you get out of it?
- Have you had an experience you'd describe as "mystical"? Did it meet James's criteria? 49
- Do you think Kant and Nagel were right about our inability to discover reality in itself? 50
1. What is our "existential illness" that needs treatment?
ReplyDeleteBoth the Stoic and Buddhist traditions see humans as suffering from a disease that leads them to cling to things that are transitory and impermanent. We spin away the hours and days of our life trying to accumulate that which does not last. When asked what we are doing we might often reply, "I am just killing time". In Christian parlance, we choose to serve the demon god Mammon. In my experience many of the things people spend their time and money on turn out to be illusory and "not as advertised". I blame modern advertising and cybernetics for ramping up this disease in American society and worldwide. I recall going to a garage sale and finding a whole house full of items still in their packaging which were obviously compulsively bought through a television shopping network and never needed or used. In another case, a clothing bank was offered a large contribution of items after a person had died and the family was cleaning out the house. The donation included at least fifty boxes of shoes that were still in the box and had never been worn. The internet is equally seductive and can lead people to become obsessed with online shopping or gaming and misinformed by dangerous conspiracy theories. Addiction to gaming is described in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as a diagnosable and treatable mental disorder. So, in my view, the Stoics and Buddhists are right on target in describing such attachments as "existential illness".
Agreed. For me, though, it's more reason to gravitate to the Epicurean critique of mindless materialist consumerism. "Too much stuff!" As Delbert McClinton and friends say...
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBYVRERVf8Q
DeleteDelbert McClinton Lyrics
Delete"Too Much Stuff"
Big house, big car, back seat, full bar.
Houseboat won't float. Bank won't tote the note.
Too much stuff. There's just too much stuff.
It'll hang you up dealing with too much stuff.
Hangin' out on the couch puttin' on the pounds.
Better walk, run, jump, swim. Try to hold it down.
You're eatin' too much stuff, too much stuff.
It'll wear you down, carrying around too much stuff.
Hundred dollar cab ride, fogged in, can't fly.
Greyhound, Amtrak, oughta bought a Cadillac.
Too much stuff. Too much stuff.
It'll slow you down, fooling with too much stuff.
Well, it's way too much.
You're never gonna get enough.
You can pile it high
But you'll never be satisfied.
Rent-a-tux, shiny shoes, backstage, big schmooze.
Vocal group can't sing, won awards for everything.
Too much stuff. Too much stuff.
They just keep on going, rolling in all that stuff.
Got hurt, can't work, got a lot o' bills,
But the policy don't pay 'less I get killed.
Too much stuff. Too much stuff.
Just my luck, counting on too much stuff.
Well, it's way too much.
You're never gonna get enough.
You can pile it high
But you'll never be satisfied.
Running back can't score till he gets a million more.
Quarterback can't pass. Owner wants his money back.
Too much stuff. Too much stuff.
You know, you can't get a grip when you're slipping in all that stuff.
Women every which-a-way messing with my mind.
You know, I fall in love every day three or four times.
Too much stuff. Too much stuff.
It'll mess you up, fooling with too much stuff.
Yeah, too much stuff. Too much stuff.
Too much stuff. Too much stuff.
You never get enough 'cause there's just too much stuff.
You know you can hurt yourself, fooling with too much stuff.
Yeah, it'll tear you down, fooling with all that stuff.
Good job on creating an argument and I enjoyed the personal story. Due to my actions regarding personal possessions i don't know if I can agree entirely.
Delete4. What is RAIN?
ReplyDeleteRAIN is an acronym describing a meditation outcome where mindfulness can help us lower the impact of mental or bodily pain and suffering. These techniques are used in modern medicine to alleviate suffering in cancer patients and others. The technique is remembered using the letters RAIN to refer to: "Recognise what is happening; Allow the experience to be there; Investigate with kindness; Non-identification." (Macaro, p. 33, Kindle Edition)
Into each life a little RAIN must fall. Really important to not identify with our afflictions. The Stoics were very good at this. Buddhists too.
DeleteIs CBT (and Epictetus) right about "things"? 39
ReplyDeleteMacaro tells us that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which was founded by Albert Ellis, was partially derived from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus' "idea that it is not what happens to us that disturbs us but how we react to those things." (Macaro, p. 55, Kindle Edition) Fifty years ago my pastoral counseling training was focused on Freud, Jung, Piaget, Carl Rogers, Erik Erikson, and BTW William James. Here at MTSU I have audited many Psychology classes and found that these names are hardly ever mentioned today. Largely these classes focused on CBT as the method of choice. Many aspects of CBT appear to be very practical and useful. However, I also picked up a sense that the driving force behind the dominance of CBT in psychotherapy today is that insurance companies prefer short highly focused therapy and the cost savings realized as a result.
It's outrageous that we allow insurance companies to influence therapeutics.
DeleteThey don't talk about Wm James in psychology? That's even more outrageous.
New Study Says Key to Happiness Is Super Boring and Obvious
ReplyDeleteThe results are kind of boring, to be honest.
https://www.fatherly.com/news/new-study-says-key-to-happiness-is-obvious/
By Lizzy Francis
Sep 24 2021, 11:23 AM
New research out of the University of Kent and University of Reading in the United Kingdom has come to a fairly obvious, if boring and annoying, conclusion: regularly exercising and consuming high amounts of fruits and vegetables can make you happier. The study confirms positive causation between lifestyle and life satisfaction.
A press release in ScienceDaily about the research states that it’s “the first of its kind to unravel the causation of how happiness, the consumption of fruit and vegetables and exercising are related, rather than generalising a correlation.”
The researchers, Dr. Adelina Gschwandter, Professor Uma Kambhampati, and Dr. Sarah Jewell, looked at UK Understanding Society Data, a set of data that covers 40,000 UK households over time from 2009 to today.
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The researchers used wave 5 of the UK Household Longitudinal Study, and data from the general population because that wave of research was where “the delayed gratification questions are asked alongside the fruit/veg and sports activity questions.” The researchers used data from about 14,000 individuals — almost 6,000 men and a little over 8,000 of women.
The researchers then looked at how two “measures of lifestyle” — eating fruits and veggies and exercising — had an effect on well-being overall.
Not only did they find that being able to delay gratification had a major role in influencing the ability to make healthy lifestyle choices — which has a good impact on physical and mental wellbeing — they also found that both “fruit and vegetable consumption and sports activity increases life satisfaction”, though differently for men and women.
Men were more likely to exercise and women were more likely to eat healthily. They also say that the results are robust to all different identity segments from religious affiliation, education level, income brackets, and more.
There are clear limitations to the study, however. Researchers point to the fact that exercise and consumption of fruit and vegetables, though key components of a healthy lifestyle, are just a small factor — and suggest that “more precise measures of exercise” like whether someone walks or runs or lifts weights, and measurements of other habits like if a person smokes, or drinks, could provide more data to the study.
The same is true of eating habits, as there is far more to eating healthy than just eating carrots and apples. Personality and genetic factors could also play a role in people’s healthy lifestyle habits and how they’re able to delay gratification, but the study couldn’t measure those factors. And the researchers only looked at data from people at one point in time instead of following them over a number of years, which could have yielded more insights.
Still, the research is significant in that it does show positive causation between investing in health and overall happiness. So go grab that bowl of carrots. It seems like it’ll help you be happy.
Only a jaded Brit would be "annoyed" by such useful, practical information. And I say that as an anglophile and English heritage descendant (my people on the paternal side disembarked from Bristol, UK).
DeleteIf you don't like carrots there are other choices available. Try eating at the Farmers Market (in our Student Union) once in a while. And let's keep walking.
Poetry for a Stoic by Barbara Kingsolver
ReplyDeleteO misery, Imperfect
universe of days stretched out
ahead, the string of pearls
and drops of venom on the web,
losses of heart, of life
and limb, news of the worst:
Remind me again
the day will come
when I look back amazed
at the waste of sorry salt
when I had not more that this
to cry about.
Now I lay me down.
I'm not there yet.
Kingsolver's terrific.
Deletehttps://www.google.com/search?q=kingsolver+books&oq=kingso&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j46i67i275j69i57j0i67j46i67l3j0i67j46i512j0i67.1257j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Outside from the back door is quieter! That was a fun time with conversations that went on well after you had left! I learned a lot about SO many different topics!!!
ReplyDeleteGood, let's target that spot next time.
DeleteI'm also open to considering quieter venues, if anyone can suggest one.
Aren't things outside us really good or bad?
ReplyDeleteNo, good and bad are subjective terms humans use to discribe things that are or arent in their interest. I learned a great deal about this in my extrapolation of Spinoza's Appendix within the Ethics. This is something that I think needs more attention within the community we live in today. We decide so much based on what we think is good or bad thinking it has to do with things outside of us. I think we would all make far better decistions if we just had little more awareness in this department.