If a tree falls in the forest, the Stoic must consider it

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Many who come to Stoicism expect that it’s something like the philosophical equivalent of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude — a place (and way) to be alright on your own, unaffected by anyone and everyone else, and to become silently disciplined.

None of that is true.

Stoicism will, however, produce in you, once you’ve practiced it long enough, the ability to continue to pursue Virtue despite loneliness, despite the behaviour of others, despite all of the goings on in your life, and despite anything that is external to your own mind.

But there’s a considerable difference between the ability to endure loneliness while continuing to pursue Virtue, and the incorrect belief that one should pursue solitude as a means of attaining Virtue.

It’s difficult to word this, and no doubt I will fail to say it eloquently, but society is to Stoicism what a conduit is to electrical current. Without a conduit, electricity can’t get anywhere — and without society, Stoicism can’t be practiced.

A quick thought experiment

Imagine you’re driving down the road. It’s raining out, and it seems a big storm is brewing. As you go along, you notice someone sitting in a car off to the side of the road with their hazard lights on. They seem to have broken down. You get the impression the driver is a parent or caregiver as you can see a couple of kids in the backseat. You also notice the tires of their vehicle don’t look flat. You think, maybe, that the battery could be dead. You assent to the impression that this could be the case, and you remember that you have jumper cables in your truck.

What does Stoicism require of us in such a scenario?

The answer is, as always, it depends on the context of our life as an individual.

However, part of the answer will always be: engage your rational faculty to determine an appropriate choice re: your evolvement.

Anytime we encounter something where we have the ability to choose whether or not we want to get involved, we Stoics must reason through to the choice we make.

It’s not required that we stop and offer the stranded individual a jump, but it is required that we reason through whether or not we should in a way which is reflective of an individual seriously pursuing Virtue.

Extend this requirement to anything and everything which prompts us to choose a position, an action, a thought, or even our words, and we’ll realize that Stoicism is as much a philosophy of social involvement and engagement as it as one of pursuing knowledge.

Anyone pursuing Virtue must always be determining the right way to choose, and anyone who has attained Virtue is always choose rightly.

Not getting involved can sometimes be the right choice, but it’s extremely unlikely that it will always be the right choice. You may not choose to stop and help the family stranded on the side of the road, but you’d need to provide just reasoning for why you made that choice.

This next part is going to seem exhausting, but no one said Stoicism was easy.

We’ve just learned that Stoicism requires us to, in our attempt to always choose rightly, always think about how to choose every time we choose anything. If that’s true, nothing which ever crosses our radar can be ignored.

If we hear about it, we must analyze it, and choose how to think, feel about, and regard it — and, sometimes, what to do about it.

If a homeless guy on the street asks us for change, we cannot say “his well-being is an indifferent to me, I can ignore him.” Instead, we must ask whether giving him change is morally appropriate.

Perhaps we have only $5000 to our name. Perhaps our mortgage payment is due tomorrow, our kids need money for new textbooks next week, our partner is using some of that money to go to physical therapy on Friday, and we’ve got to pay off the credit card debt we racked up last month for an expensive and unexpected car repair. Maybe there’s just too little left to justify charity in this specific moment given all our specific context and role-related duties.

Or maybe we’ve seen this homeless guy getting drunk and harrassing people in the evening on many previous nights, and we suspect that if we give him money he’s going to choose to use it to similar ends.

Or maybe we’ve got a spare $100 that isn’t spoken for and that we were going to use to take our wife and kid to the movies tonight. Maybe there’s a few dollars in there to give to someone who is down on their luck, or maybe we can pop into a store real quick and buy them a sandwich.

It’s not about the choices we ultimately make. Instead, it’s about how we reason ourselves to making them.

Any choice we make without reasoning, or that we make carelessly, is antithetical to a Stoic’s ultimate aim.

So, if we see it, hear about it, or become otherwise aware of it, we have to reason through it.

Using the poll below, I’d like you to respond to the following question:

When did you recently succeed in working through an choice you felt was approaching Virtue?

And also, when did you recently fail at doing the same?

Just vote how you felt about this edition, and then use the additional thoughts box (after you click) to add your answers.

Thanks for reading.