Stoicism, Self-Control, and Optimizing One's Environment

Natasha Brown - someone I've enjoyed interacting with both in person (at Stoicon last year), and virtually (much more often) - raised an issue well worth reflecting upon and discussing in a post in the Facebook Stoicism group earlier today. 

The Stoic virtue of self-control has been the one I’ve found consistently most difficult. Whether it’s continuing long-term exercise, eating healthily & so on. 

I’m reading James Clear’s book ‘Atomic Habits’. He argues self-control isn’t sustainable & rather we should seek to modify our environment to make it easier/more difficult to perform certain tasks. He says “make the cues of your good habits easier & the cues of your bad habits invisible”. Thus, stimulating the desired behaviour. Thoughts??

There is a good bit of back and forth conversation about the matter.  Some of it is concerned with the contention that "self-control" has its limits.  If that's true, then it seems that there might be some problems with classic Stoicism's consistent position that whether or not we develop or deploy self-control is really up to us.

It might seem, from a Stoic perspective, that making concessions to one's own limited self-control (or if you like "willpower") by changing one's environment rather than changing oneself, would be problematic. It represents a focus on externals, rather on what is really proper to oneself, matters outside of one's power rather than within one's power.  Shouldn't the Stoic strive to improve the strength of their ruling faculty and to develop the virtues (particularly temperance and fortitude), instead of making things easier on themselves by reducing challenges, frustrations, and distractions in their surroundings?

In my view, so long as one is not attempting to simply substitute managing one's environment (to minimize its problematic elements) in place of consistent use of Stoic practices, there's nothing wrong with this.  In fact, one could argue that it is actually an exercise of prudence to develop insight into where one is likely to hit one's current limits of patience, endurance, capacity to resist temptations, or the like, and then to reshape one's environment in ways that make it less likely that one will hit that failure-point.

Stoicism - like any form of intentional living properly understood - works with people where they are.  Most of us not only fall short of being the "sage" or ideal wise person, who presumably would withstand any temptation or frustration. We also tend to be a mess in many respects, or if you prefer more optimistic language a "work in progress".  If you're trying to improve your character, you labor at it as best you can, and get a little better day by day.  If for the time being, you remove obstacles to your moral progress from your surroundings, that might help you stay on track. 

The last thing to say about this, of course, is that one's environment remains within that domain that Stoics rightly consider outside of our control. So it would be quite counterproductive to get too invested in managing it, whatever one's intentions are in doing so. 

The Story of Yamantaka: Death by Infinite Reduplication

After driving down to New Jersey the day before -- to present a paper on St. Anselm's moral theory at the 6th Felician Ethics conference and then to say a few words, again about Anselm, at the 40th anniversary of St. Anselm's parish -- we made a slight detour to Staten Island, where we visited the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, a small, but very interesting collection not only of Tibetan, but also Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian Buddhist statuary, mandalas, tapestries, and artifacts.  Jacques Marchais was actually an actress (given a boy's name since her mother had wanted a son), working in the early 20th century, devoted to study of the world's religious traditions, but particularly attracted to Buddhism, and to Tibetan Buddhism specifically.

The museum -- originally a center established by Marchais in the 1940s -- is set out on grounds replicating the topography of a Tibetan monastery, ascending high up a hill, with as many stairways as plots of level ground.  As you'll see in some of the pictures below, rains had driven petals from the flowering trees like wet, soft confetti all across the slate stone grounds and outdoor furniture of the museum complex.  We were able to walk some of the grounds -- not down so far as the meditation cells -- but the main attraction for us was the collection.  And, for me, who years back had been afforded the chance to introduce prison students semester after semester in World Religions to a few of the distinctive practices and beliefs, and even to selected portions of the intricate, startling, expressive artwork of Tibetan Buddhism  -- the culmination of several weeks devoted to Buddhism -- the most gratifying parts of the entire collection was being afforded to examine, from  multiple angles, several different statues of one of the great protective beings of Tibetan Buddhism, Yamantaka, the protector who faced down, and literally scared to death, Death himself.

Good Night, Irene

Shortly after my last post, I encountered a "perfect storm," one main component of which was the recent storm Irene and its consequences for the region where I now live, the Hudson Valley.  The storm itself proved not to be as dangerous as some feared and others seemed to have hoped, provoking a number of complaints particularly in the region south of us -- New York City --that it had been "hyped" (but also in other places along the East Coast)  That's perhaps understandable, given how much media attention gets paid well in advance to developing weather, how many recriminations and second guessing those charged with overseeing public safety face even when they plan prudently, actively issue order, and in general get things right, and how little control the ordinary person senses themselves to have over important aspects of their lives when caught up in the effects of forecasted unpredictabilites of nature, policies and responses of communities, unavoidably opaque efforts by corporations to restore infrastructure, and the behavior -- even the very bodily presence -- of so many other people enmeshed in the same complicated systems suddenly more visible because of an event.

Portions of New York City were issued evacuation orders by Mayor Bloomberg well in advance of Irene's landfall.  Mass transit and bridges were shut down by Saturday.  Many coastal towns and cities in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and in Long Island (which looked to be particularly vulnerable) were also evacuated, National Guards were mobilized and sent into some places, and there were worries in some areas that the incoming weather could also prove fertile for breeding tornadoes.  As it turned out, Irene hit the coast in an already downgraded state and -- mercifully to most but perhaps disappointingly to some -- did much less and much more readily repairable damage than had been feared or even expected.  Further inland, away from the coastal megapolis of New York City and the smaller coastal cities, however, the damage was considerably greater but more dispersed, and for that reason less easily, less quickly remedied. It took multiple places and forms across a spectrum of types and degrees of that broad, equivocal, but real category of "damage", one type or incident often enough interacting with or contributing to, occasionally causing, another.

Which ISME Do You Mean?

Last week, with my partner, I participated in and presented in an excellent, fruitful conference of one of the two ISME organizations with which I am involved.  There are, as it turns out, at least four associations bearing that acronym (as well as a women's fashion catalog, not surprising given that Philosophy also names a skin care product line, and Orexis a rather dubiously successful male enhancement pill).  I've been a longstanding member of the International Society for MacIntyrian Enquiry, and more recently became involved (in a currently much more amateur manner) with the International Society for Military Ethics.

Last week's conference was the meeting of the former organization -- and I'll write more in posts soon to come about selected highlights of those sessions -- but I was not the only attendant to belong to -- or even note the anacronymic ambiguity of -- the two organizations.  The MacIntyrian ISME as a matter of deliberate policy -- since this is in fact what the tradition-dependent moral inquiry Alasdair MacIntyre espouses requires -- invites keynote speakers who are not for the most part MacIntryre scholars or even admirers (sometimes, they are strong critics). One of the keynote speakers, James Connelly, began by noting that he was more accustomed to thinking of the second organization, in whose conversations, projects, inquiries, and debates he was very active.  His presentation dealt with two different fields of ethics, typically called and thought of under the rubric of "applied ethics":  military ethics and environmental ethics.  And the guiding question, which he developed into a stark and detailed contrast, was: what are thought of, spoken about, or advocated as "virtues" in these two fields?

Memories and Meadows

After signing off for the summer -- practically speaking for the remainder of June and the whole of July, since I'm now back at my base and resuming writing -- I drove from the Hudson Valley in New York to the Midwest, where I picked up my children and headed out with them on a series of trips traversing northeastern Illinois, northwestern Indiana, and southwestern Wisconsin, residing alternately with family, friends, and occasionally at hotels.

This has become a yearly ritual, a marathon of days, a few of which comprise down time, many of which involve some additional travel from whatever places we temporarily call home.  This five-week period, we hit Michigan City's Summerfest, the Waukesha County Fair, a local 4th of July Celebration, and our annual 3-day Lemco Family Reunion.  We ate at  restaurants, picnicked, cooked, and hit LeDuc's for what remains still the best frozen custard.  We visited, among other places, Navy Pier, a Lego Museum, Donely's Wild West Town, two Zoos, the Milwaukee Public Museum, Holy Hill, and a Honey Museum, located just north of Ashippun, Wisconsin.  And, it was at the latter -- or rather by it -- that I realized something.