How the Stoic Can Weather the Tyranny Of Technology
Even as you get thrilled that you have booked your new 32 GB Smartphone, you might just land flat on your face when the next-door Jones books something better with a 64 GB Internal Memory. His cell is sharp and looks good with a boom loud enough to hit you.
Isn’t it obvious then that galloping technology has not turned around the human personality, or upgraded its mental anatomy or emotional map? We are all still stuck in the pre-neanderthal age, smarting from envy, greed and the frustrations of failure. Or elations of success.
You find that in every cycle and generation, humans have not been born better or wiser, but only fatter and more comfortable. Even advanced technologies like nanotechnology or artificial intelligence are hoped to be drivers of a brave, new world, yet where is the loving, compassionate personality that has transformed through millennia? You would just not find him — yet, at least. Today’s people are born as raw and hurting as the earliest humans.
But as the world shoots through changing technologies, you also get amazed that the deepest and best philosophies and concepts are as old as the Big Bang. You can look back for human solutions. Stoicism, at least, is a rule book to help the selfish human. It clarifies the definition of “virtue” or “moral good,” whose fundamental message is that it is most important to live virtuously. This interesting philosophy is something that most of you know — in the Silicon Valley or out of it. But the do-good theories has its first avatar in the second century Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, who is an excellent exemplar of a Stoic philosopher. He explains: “Wherever life is possible, it is possible to live in the right way.”
Now that is a concept that is echoed in almost every religion. Hinduism, for instance, which talks about ‘karma’ or duty, seems similar to the stoic way of life. Even as Manu, author of a book of rules for its practitioners talks about the different responsibilities of its followers, Marcus Aurelius writes of his father-emperor as being “a man who looks to what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man’s acts”.
Stoicism is a rational philosophy which gets more brownie points in the modern age. Yet, with its die-hard theories of detachment, love and brotherhood, Stoicism is actually no different from any religion.
One of the enduring stories related to Stoicism has been narrated by James Stockdale shot down from the skies over Vietnam in 1965. Imprisoned in Vietnam for five years, he writes that it is philosophy that helps him to ward off his worries and longing for release. He survives without hoping for freedom and without surrendering to despair and depression, just by being Stoic.
Stoicism is all about being detached, emotionally controlled and balanced. It is more important in today’s world of intense and immediate one-way communication with everyone, which fuels a lot of conflict. Seneca, a follower of Epictetus, explains the emotions triggered off by continuous communication: “To consort with the crowd is harmful; there is no person who does not make some vice attractive to us, or stamp it upon us, or taint us unconsciously therewith. Certainly, the greater the mob with which we mingle, the greater the danger.”
What is the Internet if not mobocracy? The global, racial implosion is all about being swayed bycrowds. Each communication is a rabble-rouser, sure to inflame passions. Stoicism functions as an emotional filter, or an air-conditioner of heated feelings. It is not about being apathetic, or an emotionless robot or granite block, but just preventing emotions from creeping in and eating away your inner self.
Stoicism then is a modern buzzword, seemingly tailormade for such “hard times.” Even though it is a plant that has been seeded and nurtured in pre-Christian Athens, it still provides the balm for security, peace and a hoped-for happiness in a mechanical world. You are the driver of your emotions, so take over the reins, says the Stoic. The philosopher Epictetus, a crippled slave, is a master of the Stoic dispassion. He writes: “If anyone is unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone.”
Moreover, technology has shrunk the entire globe to fit into blinking screens of your small cubicle. Even as you pride yourself over your religion, nationality and status, you immediately trigger off conflict and egocentric identity-criseswhen you talk to a million fractured egos through it.
What helps to bring the world closer would be the first western Stoic philosophy of universal brotherhood and membership “of the great city of gods and men.” Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius follows the dictum that a king should “love the world as much as he loved his native city.” Stoic Cosmopolitanism is the need of the hour. It is not only crucial in that old Roman Empire with diverse races, but also a loud catchword in an extraordinarily modern world wind-swept by multiplevoices.
Stoicism, then, is not a classical artefact, but a dynamic, living motor and stabiliser of technological ferment.
