Everything you ever read about getting better is true. And it’s all useless.
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A legendary stoic invents seppuku - Death of Cato by Johann Carl Loth
RYAN HOLIDAY’S MINDLESS MISTAKE: WHY THE STOIC SELF HELP MARKETER HAS ZEN ALL WRONG
Ryan Holiday knows there’s more to stoicism than its common definition as a synonym for spartan (cold, rigid, brutally harsh). He knows that if it really was just that stereotype, the philosophy wouldn’t have lasted so long. Nor would he be able to write numerous illuminating articles and two best-selling books on it. Which is why it is so disappointing that he could not pay Stoicism's Eastern cousin, Zen Buddhism*, a modicum of the same respect--dismissing it in a few sentences with the straw man stereotype of the monk-recluse alone in his garden on a cliff.
What Ryan does not mention is that feudal Japanese life, like caste-based Indian life or Imperial Chinese life--all lives Zen and Buddhism made better--was anything but a holiday. It was a grueling, hierarchical and wretched existence full of familial obligations and draconian laws. These were the ties that bound people together in a land where resources were scarce and disaster was always a couple of bad harvests and a disgruntled warlord's rebellion away. It would be very easy under such repressive and oppressive regimes for leaders to tyrannize their subjects and engage in needless bloodshed, as many did.
But there was one group of people whom the daimyos and despots not only feared, but who were capable of changing their hearts and slaking their bloodlust: Zen monks. Those gardens weren't celestial pleasure domes where Orientalists like Coleridge might have escaped from reality, but places of meditation where emperors and commoners alike sought advice, gained mental clarity and even sparked creativity, not unlike the bedside of Marcus Aurelius or the olive tree under which Socrates and his friends sat.
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10 Questions to Stop Being So Mad
One major reason that Trump won, and a reason why friends of mine are out protesting in the streets, is because he got both sides really mad. He got Republicans and undecided voters so mad enough to go and vote. And he got liberals so mad that they stopped making sense and became the rage wrecks that we love laughing at Tea Party rednecks for being.
So here's a simple 10 point list to examine the next time you feel your rage bubbling. Because thinking societies are made up of thinking people, and it's really hard to think when you're red (or orange) with rage.
- Why you mad, bro?
- Why is that making you mad?
- What are some good things that can come out of the reason you're mad?
- How might you have chosen this unhappiness and how might you be able to change it?
- What can you control that will make you less mad? i.e. What can you do to make yourself a little less mad right now that won’t make you more mad long term?
- What are some long term things you need to change in order to not be mad again?
- What are some things that you are grateful for?
- Is there someone you appreciate that you should call or message?
- Can you make something using your mad (article, art, blog, etc.)?
- Do you realize that it’s okay to be mad, that unhappiness is as much a part of life as happiness, and that so long as you keep taking steps to get out of these feels, eventually you’ll make it out?