How Then, Shall We Live?

 

Why do we read books on philosophy? Maybe because we feel the world has gone crazy and we need some kind of structure in our lives. And who better to look to, than the ancient philosophers,Socrates et al.?

It started with me picking up Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by Donald J. Robertson at BookXcess, the Amcorp Mall one. It looked good but you know, these books are a hit and miss. Well, this one was a hit. And I did what I have never done before, which was underline whole passages in the book (which at some point I will go back and re-read) and I took down the books he referenced.

One of which was (ta-dah, drumroll please) Jules Evan's Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situtations. After I finished Stoicism, I took myself off to Kinokuniya (my first visit there since the lockdown - let's call a spade a spade, shall we?) and I had to line up outside and observe social distancing before I was let in to the bookshop. Yeah, that's how many people wanted to get in.

Anyway, of all the books on my list, I only found Philosophy for Life and Marcus Aurelius's Meditations (which I'll get to at some point in these crowded memoirs of mine, well, when I read it). After faffing around with some other books in the middle, I decided to get to Evans.

Oh boy, this really was a philosophy book for the likes of me. He interviews people from all over (all over, being the UK, where he is from, and the US) who have actively incorporated some ancient school of philosophy into their lives. Be they Stoics or Epicureans, or maybe they prefer Aristotle or Plato. Or Plutarch (he wrote about heroes, role models, and everyone could use a role model).

I realised that I really, really hated Plato. When I read his stuff before (OK, I only read his diatribe against artists), I thought, jeez, telling us what we should read, what constitutes real art and how we should think? You sound like Chairman Mao. Or Hitler. Or Stalin. Philosopher priests forsooth!

I don't know about Diogenes. On the one hand, he lived an unrestrained life. On the other, he peed on passers-by. I don't know about you, but I find that pretty antisocial. And living in a barrel is just not my thing. (Where would I keep my cats?) I was delighted to read what he said of Rousseau. Having just read a book which glorified Rousseau's view of humanity, I was amazed to read that the fler was known for flashing at people.

One of my favourite chapter featured one of my heroes Tom Hodgkinson who started the Idler's Academy. I've read three of his books (How to be Idle, How to be Free and Business for Bohemians) and his brother Will's book, The House if Full of Yogis (also a find from BookXcess, but I got the last copy). He's pure Epicurean, although Evans takes pains to inform us that we don't really understand what that means. The popular myth of Epicureans - feasting, boozing, all-night sex parties - is probably not true. Not at least, during the time of Epicurus.

"If Epicurus was a hedonist, he was a very austere and rational one. He had few possessions, and kept to a simple diet of bread, olives and water. On particularly festive days, he might have a bit of cheese," says Evans.

Epicurus himself wrote: "When we say that pleasure is the end and aim in life, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as are understood by some through ignorance, prejudice or wilful misrepresentation. By pleasure, we mea the absence of pain in the body and disturbance in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul."

A friend called me, or rather texted me, while I was walking up and down beside the condo pool to fulfill my 10,000 steps for the day and we had a discussion about Stoics etc. I said the book was basically about how to live.

"How?" she asked.

Simple, I replied. Give. Forgive. Be kind.

"Not so simple," she said. "You do that, people step all over you."

Ah, there's the rub.

How to give, forgive and be kind without people stepping all over you. How to not let someone else hijack your thinking and manipulate you into thinking you're bad unless you go along with what they want.

Reasons, so many reasons.

She wanted me to break it down into something she could transmit to her juniors, the people she mentors and trains. But she said, most of them would be like, huh? What you talking about, Willis?

Yeah, well, I don't read to transmit. I read to absorb. So I'll just go through the books I got by myself. Maybe having conversations with a few who are interested, maybe just writing here.

My favourite part of the book was the bit about Jean Vanier. Evans, who is neither religious nor spiritual, decides to go walk the Camino towards the end of the book. He meets a young Irishman called Ciaran who told him he was going to work with a philosopher after he completed the pilgrimage, a man who had set up a community in France where volunteers lived with the mentally handicapped. Vanier had originally studied Aristotle at university before leaving academia to set up the community called L'Arche (or The Ark).

Evans was intrigued and made a beeline for Vanier after he completed the Camino. Here's what he had to say about that:

"Now, there's something valuable in that idea: as adults, we need to learn to stand on our own feet, to achieve autonomy, to recognise that we don't necessarily need the things we think we need. Yet, we can become too independent, can strive for too much autonomy and invulnerability, ending up lonely and cut off."

Here, I paused, looked around my tiny, unpeopled apartment, stroked my cats, and soldiered on.

"Loneliness, Vanier had written, is the great sickness of our time - and it partly comes from our shame at admitting that we're all flawed, imperfect, wounded creatures."

Vanier says: "A good society is one in which you enable people to meet, not to tell each other what to do, not to prove we are better than each other, but to reflect on our common humanity, to create friendship, to celebrate life by eating together, living together, dancing together. There's not much dancing in Greek philosophy."

Amen, I said, to that. And decided to shuffle off to spray my knees with magnesium oil as they were aching from walking 17,000 steps today.