04 Dec Getting Past the “Meme-ification” of Knowledge
I spend about an hour-and-a-half a day on social media, partly for business purposes, but I do my share of entertainment scrolling as well. About one in four of the posts in my feed are words of wisdom. Quotes from Eastern Philosophy, Western Traditions, Indigenous Knowledge and other sources abound. Contemporary thinkers pop up with some frequency as well.
But what to do with all of this? An overabundance of words often leaves us believing in both everything and nothing at the same time, hardly a path to leadership and self-mastery. One possible solution begins with recognizing that this confusion may not be as novel as we think.
Enter the Stoics. We think of stoicism as the practice of emotional restraint and self-discipline, but the name itself comes from the “Stoa Poikile”, the “Painted Porch” on the southern side of the Agora, the central plaza of ancient Athens about twenty-five hundred years ago. Athenian philosophers, politicians and others would gather there to discuss the news and ideas of the day. Think of it as an open-air market where ideas were exchanged right alongside produce, grain, cloth and other commodities. One would hear ideas debated as you debated the relative merits of different pieces of crockery. Should one restrain oneself completely or enjoy the pleasures of life? Is the universe made of many different things or is it a unified whole, and what difference does this make to us when facing life’s challenges? What happens to us after we die, and does that make any difference in how we should live? People were debating the same questions we do now.
The Stoics didn’t solve these problems any more than we have, but they developed an evaluation method that still applies to our lives. Put simply:
They asked logical questions about how to live a good life.
They chose a set of ideas based on their efforts to answer the questions.
They searched for evidence to support their ideas.
They applied the results to their lives.
They evaluated the results.
They remained open to new ideas.
The ancient Greeks took the ideas into their lives along with the crockery. If the ideas and the crockery held up, they continued to live by them. If not, then they went shopping for new ideas and better pottery. I am oversimplifying, of course. But part of the reason it sounds so simple is because we are so familiar with it. In the midst of the confusion of our modern life lies one method for mastering it.
Choose an idea that sounds like it has something to offer you.
Put it to work in your life.
Evaluate the results.
Remain open to new ideas (and hopefully, no longer overwhelmed by them).
Part of the power of this logical thought process is that helps to winnow out the ideas which do not work in your life, allowing you the room to go deep on the ideas and thought systems which do. To put it another way, “It does not matter how many books you have, but how good are the books which you have.” This was stated by Seneca, a Roman who lived in the 1st Century AD but who was nonetheless part of the Greek Stoic tradition. Taking the time to evaluate the ideas you read will help you avoid being overwhelmed by them.
Let me know how you do. I’d love to hear from you. Here’s an interesting book to help you on your way: The Consolations of Philosophy. Here’s another: Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius.