Being the Type

Stoicism was Close

by Robert Atwater, December 15, 2023
Unknown Sculptor

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Do you ever wonder about the purpose of life? While many precious pieces contribute to this beautiful puzzle, they all lead to one clear truth: the purpose of life is to achieve the greatest happiness possible. This greatest happiness, or sense of well-being, is attained through the persistent cultivation of Stoic virtues.

Stoic philosophers define virtue as the beliefs and behaviors that an individual can fully control. In other words, Stoic virtues are character traits that lead to happiness, while vices are those traits that result in misery. According to Stoicism, everything else that we do not fully control, even if significant in our lives, holds less value and should not dominate our focus.

However, Stoicism may downplay the importance of emotional validation and empathy, which modern psychology recognizes as essential for mental health. Devaluing pain and failure would be a grave mistake; the discomforts of life provide the wisdom and motivation necessary to cultivate virtue. Despite these limitations, Stoic philosophers offer a valuable starting point for understanding the nature of true happiness.

These well-being categories each deserve lengthy articles, but I'll attempt to briefly introduce the concepts. Note: while describing these concepts, I will use happiness, well-being, and joy interchangably.

Virtue and Vice

As mentioned earlier, virtues and vices encompass the moral character traits and behaviors individuals can fully control. In other words, virtues and vices cannot be taken away from, nor forced upon, anyone. And each of these traits exist in opposition to their counterpart, with a virtue corresponding to every vice. This is the only element of our well-being is entirely with-in our control, and if neglected, it can entirely sabotoge our sense of well-being. The list of virtues with their contextual nuances already fills many books, and will fill many more. But as a brief example, an individual can be:

• Loving or Hateful
• Trusting or Cynical
• Patient or Impatient
• Humble or Arrogant
• Honest or Deceptive
• Cautious or Reckless
• Hard Working or Lazy
• Considerate or Selfish
• Enlightened or Ignorant
• Courageous or Cowardly
• Trustworthy or Unreliable
• Forgiving or a Grudge Holder

And while virtues are subject to context, they are not subject to moral realtivism. In other words, your preference doesn't make something a virtue or a vice. For example, saying something genuinely kind to someone is virtuous regardless of how much you like that person. Likewise, saying something hurtful will always be a vice, no matter how much one believes they deserve it.

But out of context, it is common to mistake a virtue for a vice. For example, confidence may look like arrogance, and prudence may look like fear. Individuals may even assume themselves guilty of a vice while demonstrating a virtue.

Regardless, to whatever degree an individual inculcates such traits, beliefs, and behaviors into their character, that individual becomes more virtuous.

Some claim that individuals can choose to be happy. But, this is a misunderstanding of what causes happiness. However, you do have complete control of your virtue. It is your choice to trust, forgive, love, work, hope, accept accountability, and be brave, kind, loyal, persistent, patient, humble, honest, and considerate. And, to whatever degree we succeed in making virtuous choices for virtuous reasons, we are happy.

As clearly as I can state it, happiness is the unavoidable consequence of being virtuous. In an imperfect world, pain and failure are inescapable. But happiness will boldly and stubbornly persist through suffering to the exact degree that virtue is maintained, provided no vice is causing a denial of that happiness.

Success and Failure

Why do we care about success if happiness is the result of virtue? Passionately pursuing success (persistent hard work within one's courageous capacity to act) is a virtue! It's also the engine by which we gain many other virtues. But, take note here that the virtue of pursuing success is not the same as actually achieving success. Success, by this nuanced definition, is at least partly outside of your control. You can love someone (virtue), but they must choose to love you back (success). Virtue and vice strongly influence the likelihood of success, but they don't guarantee it. Therefore, virtue is a description of who you are, while success is only a partial description of how an imperfect world responds to who you are. So, don't inappropriately base your self-esteem upon your successes and failures; they aren't who you are.

Although success is subjective (meaning that we choose what to seek), even meaningless success brings pleasurable satisfaction in that moment of victory (assuming we still want what we won). Likewise, even if this subjective success would have been worthless, our failures still inflict painful disappointment in the moment.

The pleasure that success produces directly cooresponds to the amount of effort required, difficulty, importance, urgency, and risk of failure. For example, a last-second championship victory over the best competition is far more satisfying than a blowout against the worst team in an exhibition match.

Virtues increase the motivation and urgency to achieve meaningful success, they intensify the sweetness of victory, and they dull the sting of meaningless failures. Perhaps counterintuitively, virtues also increase the sense of pain and disappointment caused by meaningful failures. The same virtues that bring the most exquisite satisfaction enable the most crushing disappointment. Because of this, some say to deny hope and keep your expectations low so you can't be disappointed.

But, low expectations create weak motivations. Instead, expect everything! And, as Theodore Roosevelt might say, dare greatly! And when needed, acknowledge and fully embrace the pain and disappointment of failure. Because that pain and disappointment, if directed wisely, is the raw material from which our most godly virtues arise. And at the same time, these serve as proof of the virtues you've demonstrated in your pursuit of success! So, take comfort in your need to mourn for the loss of things and people you love. Your suffocating sense of loss serves as the most authentic and conclusive proof that you are the type of person who can love deeply!

Pleasure and Pain

I’m convinced that our ability to experience happiness is entirely determined by our nervous system’s physical and emotional interpretations of pleasure and pain. Every physical and biased inclination we’ve ever experienced has been either in pursuit of pleasure or in avoidance of pain. As an extreme example, even masochists are seeking pleasure; they simply derive enjoyment from the hormonal rush associated with their self-inflicted pain. But, masochist-like pleasure and pain trade-off investments are standard practice for everyone; that is, all individuals are willing to sacrifice some pleasures or endure some pains in pursuit of greater pleasure or to avoid greater pain.

So, if the experience of happiness is just a physical experience, how are virtue and success even relevant? Why not take a shortcut to pleasure and simply medicate ourselves into a state of bliss? To illustrate this question, consider the following thought experiment: what if a drug existed that was completely safe, did not cloud your mind, and was capable of delivering exquisite, unending pleasure. How would this scenario unfold in your life? This might seem harmless or even fantastic! And at the start, it certainly would be. Yet, to an outside observer, the long-term reality would appear nightmarish. While you might maintain a clear mind, the persistent ecstasy would eventually diminish your desire to seek out the richer experiences of life, leaving you unfulfilled despite your state of bliss. Before long, you would be unable to distinguish between lying on a rock, staring blankly into space, and the euphoria of the most passionate romance or the most awe-inspiring beauty and artistry. In essence, you would have become a purposeless zombie, lacking any inclination to act, existing merely as an object to be acted upon. In this state, the lack of contrast would turn your pleasure into a drifting disengaged numbness. And anyone so inclined could harm your body in every way imaginable, but you would maintain a complete comatose-like indifference. Ultimately, you would allow life to slip away, with no hunger or thirst, simply withering from neglect, having wasted every opportunity for love, growth, and creation.

How grateful we ought to be for bodies with natural hormonal and nerve responses that provide necessary feedback about our circumstances. However, it is also true that our bodies are far from perfect at accurately interpreting these circumstances. These inaccurate interpetations are partly outside of our control, but many remain within our ability to significantly correct and improve. For example, biases play a decisive role in our interpretation of physical experiences. And with adequate mental and emotional investments, biases can be changed. This is why individuals can and regularly do choose a painful path to success or a less pleasurable life of virtue. It's never that individuals hate pleasure and love pain. Instead, they wisely recognize the value of the pleasure-pain trade-off investments, or sacrifices as mentioned above.

Those who don't make wise sacrifices in the moment are far more likely to experience greater pains or miss out on greater pleasures later. Notice the critical distinction between the pain you choose and the pain inflicted upon you. For example, you are free to enjoy the comfort of inaction, even though you know you will be hungry soon. But the result of this inaction is that a healthy body will offer hunger pains as appropriate feedback. Thus, by not choosing the discomfort of action, the pain of hunger was forced upon you.

Like all other actions, growth is motivated by this gradient of pleasure and pain. I know of no growth that has ever happened except that which was motivated by a hope to reduce pain or increase pleasure. If I am correct here, it must be concluded that maintaining virtue demands a willingness to regularly allow pains and deny pleasures to self and others.

Final Thoughts

True happiness can only be found in the physical experiences created by a gradient of pleasure and pain. It is through these experiences that we gain the feedback necessary to form wise biases that can then guide our body into giving more appropriate feedback about our current circumstances. So, why is virtue the dominant factor in finding lasting happiness? Well, the whole point is that things are or aren't virtuous based on their ability to guide you into making wise sacrifices. Virtues enable individuals to know when and how to sacrifice good things for the best things.

Gratification is the act of claiming some possible pleasure. Hedonism is bad because it encourages individuals to gratify themselves immediately, without regard for the consequences. Whereas, Stoic-style virtues (shared largely by most religions) encourage individuals to either claim or delay their gratification for when it will be the most potent, permanent, and least harmful. As a result, attempting to live a virtuous life is far more likely to create both the most intense and the most enduring forms of pleasure and happiness. But until the time for gratification comes, creating strong biases which incline you towards the virtues of patience, hope, trust, and persistent hard work can sustain an emotionally driven happiness. In this way, we are not showing an indifference towards reality, but rather a hopeful, open-minded uncertainty towards a reality that we, as individuals, understand very little about.