As usual it takes longer for me to read philosophy book because I need to really digest it.
The author embarks in intellectual journey in following the footsteps of greatest thinkers - from Socrates to Ghandi to offer practical lessons about life. I’m sharing few excerpts from the book highlighting interesting points from those thinkers.
1.How to Enjoy like Epicurus
Epicurus defined pleasure differently from the way most of us do. We think of pleasure as a presence, what psychologists call positive affect. Epicurus defined pleasure as a lack, an absence. The Greeks called this state ataraxia, literally "lack of disturbance." It is the absence of anxiety rather than the presence of anything that leads to contentment. Pleasure is not the opposite of pain but its absence. Epicurus was no hedonist. He was a "tranquillist."
Beyond a certain point, Epicurus believed, pleasure cannot be increased just as a bright sky cannot get any brighter but only varied.
That new pair of shoes or smart watch represents pleasure varied, not increased. Yet our entire consumer culture is predicated on the assumption that pleasure varied equals pleasure increased. This faulty equation causes needless suffering.
2.How to Pay Attention like Simone Weil
Wei's radical empathy helps explain her radical views on attention.
She didn't see it as a mechanism, or a technique. For her, attention was a moral virtue, no different from, say, courage or justice, and demanding the same selfless motivation. Don't pay attention to be more productive, a better worker or parent. Pay attention because it is the morally correct course of action, the right thing to do.
There's a name for attention at its most intense and generous: love.
Attention is love. Love is attention. They are one and the same. "Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention," writes Weil. Only when we give someone our attention, fully and with no expectation of reward, are we engaged in this "rarest and purest form of generosity." This is why the attention denied by a parent or lover stings the most. We recognize the withdrawal of attention for what it is: a withdrawal of love.
3.How to Fight like Gandhi
We are results-oriented. Fitness trainers, business consultants, doctors, colleges, dry cleaners, recovery program, dieticians, financial advisors. They, and many others, promise results. We might question their ability to deliver results, but rarely do we question the underlying assumption that being results-oriented is good.
Gandhi was not results-oriented. He was process-oriented. He aimed not for Indian independence but for an India worthy of independence.
Once this occurred, her freedom would arrive naturally, like a ripe mango falling from a tree. Gandhi didn't fight to win. He fought to fight the best fight he was capable of fighting. The irony is that this process-oriented approach produces better results than a results-oriented one.
4.How to Cope like Epictetus
"Wisdom" is one of those words everyone knows but nobody defines.
Psychologists have struggled for decades to nail down a working definition. In the 1980s, a group of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin sat down to hammer one out once and for all. The Berlin Wisdom Project identified five criteria that define wisdom: factual knowledge, procedural knowledge, life-span contextualism, relativism of values, and management of uncertainty.
The last criterion, I think, is the most important. We live in the age of the algorithm and artificial intelligence, with their tacit promise to manage the uncertainty, the messiness, of life. They have not. If anything, life feels less predictable, and messier, than ever.
This brings us to another vaccine in the Stoic dispensary: premeditatio malorum, or "premeditation of adversity." Anticipate the arrows of Fortune, says Seneca. Imagine the worst scenarios and "rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck."
Imagining adversity is not the same as worrying about it, the Stoics say. Worrying is vague, inchoate. Premeditated adversity is specific-the more specific the better. Not "I imagine suffering a financial setback," but "I imagine losing my house, car, my entire bag collection and am forced to move back in with my mother." Oh, suggests Epictetus, helpfully, also imagine you've lost the ability to speak, hear, walk, breathe, and swallow.
5.How to Grow Old like Beauvoir
Stop Caring What Others : Think something curious and wonderful happens when we age. We no longer care what others think of us. More precisely, we realize they weren't thinking of us in the first place.
And so it was with Simone de Beauvoir. She grew more sure of herself, more accepting of her idiosyncrasies. More humble, too. She had her Copernican Moment, losing "the childish illusion of standing in the very middle of the world."
6.How to Die like Montaigne
Death makes philosophers of us all. Even the least contemplative person wonders at some point: What happens when we die? Is death really something to fear? How can I come to terms with it? Death is philosophy's true test. If philosophy can't help us deal with life's most momentous and terrifying event, what good is it? As Montaigne puts it:
"All the wisdom and reasoning in the world boils down finally to this point: to teach us not to be afraid to die."
I know, this is quite lengthy. Actually I’m writing this for the sole purpose as my future reference. Hope you all would benefit as well.
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