What is good life? What is happiness? What is success? What is
pleasure? How should I treat other people? How should I cope with
unfortunate events? How can I get rid off unnecessary worry? How should I
handle liberty?
The answers to all these questions are condensed in a little book,
The Ten Golden Rules co-authored with Michael Soupios:
1. Examine life, engage life with vengeance; always search for new pleasures and new destines to reach with your mind.
This rule isn’t new. It echoes the verses of ancient Greek philosophers
and most notably those of Plato through the voice of his hero,
Socrates. Living life is about examining life through reason, nature’s
greatest gift to humanity. The importance of reason in sensing and
examining life is evident in all phases of life– from the infant who
strains to explore its new surroundings to the grandparent who actively
reads and assesses the headlines of the daily paper. Reason lets human
beings participate in life, to be human is to think, appraise, and
explore the world, discovering new sources of material and spiritual
pleasure.
2. Worry only about the things that are in your control,
the
things that can be influenced and changed by your actions, not about
the things that are beyond your capacity to direct or alter.
This rule summarizes several important features of ancient Stoic wisdom —
features that remain powerfully suggestive for modern times. Most
notably the belief in an ultimately rational order operating in the
universe reflecting a benign providence that ensures proper outcomes in
life. Thinkers such as Epictetus did not simply prescribe “faith” as an
abstract philosophical principle; they offered a concrete strategy
based on intellectual and spiritual discipline. The key to resisting
the hardship and discord that intrude upon every human life, is to
cultivate a certain attitude toward adversity based on the critical
distinction between those things we are able to control versus those
which are beyond our capacity to manage. The misguided investor may not
be able to recover his fortune but he can resist the tendency to engage
in self-torment. The victims of a natural disaster, a major illness or
an accident may not be able to recover and live their lives the way they
used to, but they too can save themselves the self-torment. In other
words, while we cannot control all of the outcomes we seek in life, we
certainly can control our responses to these outcomes and herein lies
our potential for a life that is both happy and fulfilled.
3.
Treasure Friendship, the reciprocal attachment that fills
the need for affiliation. Friendship cannot be acquired in the market
place, but must be nurtured and treasured in relations imbued with trust
and amity. According to Greek philosophy, one of the defining
characteristics of humanity that distinguishes it from other forms of
existence is a deeply engrained social instinct, the need for
association and affiliation with others, a need for friendship.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle viewed the formation of society as a
reflection of the profound need for human affiliation rather than simply
a contractual arrangement between otherwise detached individuals. Gods
and animals do not have this kind of need but for humans it is an
indispensable aspect of the life worth living because one cannot speak
of a completed human identity, or of true happiness, without the
associative bonds called “friendship.” No amount of wealth, status, or
power can adequately compensate for a life devoid of genuine friends.
4.
Experience True Pleasure.
Avoid shallow
and transient pleasures. Keep your life simple. Seek calming pleasures
that contribute to peace of mind. True pleasure is disciplined and
restrained. In its many shapes and forms, pleasure is what
every human being is after. It is the chief good of life. Yet not all
pleasures are alike. Some pleasures are
kinetic—shallow, and
transient, fading way as soon as the act that creates the pleasure ends.
Often they are succeeded by a feeling of emptiness and psychological
pain and suffering. Other pleasures are
catastematic—deep, and
prolonged, and continue even after the act that creates them ends; and
it is these pleasures that secure the well-lived life. That’s the
message of the Epicurean philosophers that have been maligned and
misunderstood for centuries, particularly in the modern era where their
theories of the good life have been confused with doctrines advocating
gross hedonism.
5. Master Yourself. Resist any external force that might
delimit thought and action; stop deceiving yourself, believing only what
is personally useful and convenient; complete liberty necessitates a
struggle within, a battle to subdue negative psychological and spiritual
forces that preclude a healthy existence; self mastery requires
ruthless cador. One of the more concrete ties between ancient
and modern times is the idea that personal freedom is a highly desirable
state and one of life’s great blessings. Today, freedom tends to be
associated, above all, with political liberty. Therefore, freedom is
often perceived as a reward for political struggle, measured in terms of
one’s ability to exercise individual “rights.”
The ancients argued long before Sigmund Freud and the advent of
modern psychology that the acquisition of genuine freedom involved a
dual battle. First, a battle without, against any external force that
might delimit thought and action. Second, a battle within, a struggle to
subdue psychological and spiritual forces that preclude a healthy
self-reliance. The ancient wisdom clearly recognized that humankind has
an infinite capacity for self-deception, to believe what is personally
useful and convenient at the expense of truth and reality, all with
catastrophic consequences. Individual investors often deceive themselves
by holding on to shady stocks, believing what they want to believe.
They often end up blaming stock analysts and stockbrokers when the truth
of the matter is they are the ones who eventually made the decision to
buy them in the first place. Students also deceive themselves believing
that they can pass a course without studying, and end up blaming their
professors for their eventual failure. Patients also deceive themselves
that they can be cured with convenient “alternative medicines,” which do
not involve the restrictive lifestyle of conventional methods.
6. Avoid Excess. Live life in harmony and balance. Avoid
excesses. Even good things, pursued or attained without moderation, can
become a source of misery and suffering. This rule is echoed in
the writings of ancient Greek thinkers who viewed moderation as nothing
less than a solution to life’s riddle. The idea of avoiding the many
opportunities for excess was a prime ingredient in a life properly
lived, as summarized in Solon’s prescription “Nothing in Excess” (6
th
Century B.C.). The Greeks fully grasped the high costs of passionate
excess. They correctly understood that when people violate the limits of
a reasonable mean, they pay penalties ranging from countervailing
frustrations to utter catastrophe. It is for this reason that they
prized ideals such as measure, balance, harmony, and proportion as much
as they did, the parameters within which productive living can proceed.
If, however, excess is allowed to destroy harmony and balance, then the
life worth living becomes impossible to obtain.
7.
Be a Responsible Human Being.
Approach
yourself with honesty and thoroughness; maintain a kind of spiritual
hygiene; stop the blame-shifting for your errors and shortcomings. Be
honest with yourself and be prepared to assume responsibility and
accept consequences. This rule comes from Pythagoras, the famous
mathematician and mystic, and has special relevance for all of us
because of the common human tendency to reject responsibility for
wrongdoing. Very few individuals are willing to hold themselves
accountable for the errors and mishaps that inevitably occur in life.
Instead, they tend to foist these situations off on others complaining
of circumstances “beyond their control.” There are, of course,
situations that occasionally sweep us along, against which we have
little or no recourse. But the far more typical tendency is to find
ourselves in dilemmas of our own creation — dilemmas for which we refuse
to be held accountable. How many times does the average person say
something like, “It really wasn’t my fault. If only John or Mary had
acted differently then I would not have responded as I did.” Cop-outs
like these are the standard reaction for most people. They reflect an
infinite human capacity for rationalization, finger-pointing, and denial
of responsibility. Unfortunately, this penchant for excuses and
self-exemption has negative consequences. People who feed themselves a
steady diet of exonerating fiction are in danger of living life in bad
faith — more, they risk corrupting their very essence as a human being.
8. Don’t Be a Prosperous Fool. Prosperity by itself, is not a
cure-all against an ill-led life, and may be a source of dangerous
foolishness. Money is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the
good life, for happiness and wisdom. Prosperity has different
meanings to different people. For some, prosperity is about the
accumulation of wealth in the form of money, real estate and equities.
For others, prosperity is about the accumulation of power and the
achievement of status that comes with appointment to business or
government positions. In either case, prosperity requires wisdom: the
rational use of one’s resources and in the absence of such wisdom,
Aeschylus was correct to speak of prosperous fools.
9. Don’t Do Evil to Others. Evildoing is a dangerous habit, a
kind of reflex too quickly resorted to and too easily justified that
has a lasting and damaging effect upon the quest for the good life.
Harming others claims two victims—the receiver of the harm, and the
victimizer, the one who does harm.
Contemporary society is filled with mixed messages when it comes to
the treatment of our fellow human beings. The message of the
Judaeo-Christian religious heritage, for instance, is that doing evil to
others is a sin, extolling the virtues of mercy, forgiveness, charity,
love, and pacifism. Yet, as we all know, in practice these inspiring
ideals tend to be in very short supply. Modern society is a competitive,
hard-bitten environment strongly inclined to advocate self-advantage at
the expense of the “other.” Under these conditions, it is not
surprising that people are often prepared to harm their fellow human
beings. These activities are frequently justified by invoking premises
such as “payback,” “levelling scores,” or “doing unto others, before
they can do unto you.” Implicit in all of these phrases is the notion
that malice towards others can be justified on either a reciprocal basis
or as a pre-emptive gesture in advance of anticipated injury. What is
not considered here are the effects these attempts to render evil have
upon the person engaging in such attempts. Our culture has naively
assumed that “getting even” is an acceptable response to wrongdoing —
that one bad-turn deserves another. What we fail to understand is the
psychological, emotional, and spiritual impact victimizing others has
upon the victimizer.
10. Kindness towards others tends to be rewarded.
Kindness
to others is a good habit that supports and reinforces the quest for
the good life. Helping others bestows a sense of satisfaction that has
two beneficiaries—the beneficiary, the receiver of the help, and the
benefactor, the one who provides the help.
Many of the world’s great religions speak of an obligation to
extend kindness to others. But these deeds are often advocated as an
investment toward future salvation — as the admission ticket to
paradise. That’s not the case for the ancient Greeks, however, who saw
kindness through the lens of reason, emphasizing the positive effects
acts of kindness have not just on the receiver of kindness but to the
giver of kindness as well, not for the salvation of the soul in the
afterlife, but in this life. Simply put, kindness tends to return to
those who do kind deeds, as Aesop demonstrated in his colourful fable of
a little mouse cutting the net to free the big lion. Aesop lived in the
6
th century B.C. and acquired a great reputation in
antiquity for the instruction he offered in his delightful tales.
Despite the passage of many centuries, Aesop’s counsels have stood the
test of time because in truth, they are timeless observations on the
human condition; as relevant and meaningful today as they were 2,500
years ago.
