Are We Paying Attention?

I never thought I would be discussing political drama when I set out to create this publication, but today I must do exactly that in order to make a broader point. I’m not mentioning these current events in order to discuss them. Instead, I’m mentioning them because they highlight a shared character flaw that so many of us have become vulnerable to: instant assent to false impressions.

The impressions

I ask that you do not make this edition about the specific issues at the center of the examples I’m about to give. These are simply recent examples of a behavior and tendency that should worry us as Stoics. The point of this edition is not the social discussion surrounding and concerning these topical events. Here are the impressions:

1. Olympic boxer Imane Khelif was the victim of an assumption, made by nearly everyone (whether they were the type who, if the assumption were true, would defend it or decry it): that she is a transwoman.

The truth? She is a biological female who, due to a rare medical condition which causes the body to produce elevated levels of testosterone, enjoys a considerable (but entirely natural-in-origin) advantage over her opponent.

2. The 17-year-old murderer of three young girls in Southport, England, Axel Rudakubana, kicked off a nationwide series of riots and protests when it was assumed he was both an immigrant and a Muslim.

The truth? He was born right here in the United Kingdom, in Wales, to Rwandan parents and is not, himself, a Muslim (neither are his parents).

In both of these cases, we saw the “lie” make it halfway around the world, perhaps all the way around, perhaps twice, before, as the saying goes, the truth had a chance to put on its pants.

Put the politics of these issues out of your mind, they aren’t the point

Again, I want us to put entirely out of our minds the politics and social debates that underpin the examples above. Instead, I want us to answer just one question: why did we assent to these false impressions of reality, and why so willingly?

Perhaps there are some who did not, and I applaud those individuals, but most did.

Whether we are pro- or anti- trans athletes, most of us rushed to assert our views and opinions on an issue that, in fact, was not relevant to what was true in the cases of both Imane Khelif and Axel Rudakubana.

We told anyone who would listen either (A.) that a non-trans person is a mentally ill trans person who is ruining the spirit of the Olympics, or (B.) that we support a non-trans person battling gender norms and conformity by competing as a trans person in the Olympics.

Whether we are pro or anti-immigration, or pro or anti-Islam, we rushed to assert our views on a reality that wasn’t reality at all. We either (A.) told anyone who would listen that this non-immigrant, non-Muslim was the perfect example of what is wrong with immigration and the Islamic religion, or (B.) told anyone who would listen that this non-immigrant, non-Muslim is a mere one-off example of a troubled Islamic immigrant and that this is being politically leveraged by Islamophobic anti-immigration racists.

But no matter our position, whether it is supportive of or in opposition to the false reality, we ignored our responsibility as Stoics to do everything we can to avoid assenting to false impressions (realities).

We spent weeks tripping over our own tongues, ignoring the most fundamental concepts of our philosophy, chasing an opportunity to indulge in our irrational passions and to pamper our self-righteous indignation.

Have we forgotten the test of one’s Stoic practice?

Prosochē. It is always prosochē—the act of paying attention.

If we are not paying attention to our thoughts, attitudes, actions, and choices, how can we say we are actively practicing our philosophy?

We can’t.

But it’s not just that we’re not paying attention—it’s also that we’re mistaking participation in the drama du jour for what matters. We’re ignoring what our roles require of us, what those roles even are, and, worst of all, we’re forgetting entirely the impact externals have on the development of our characters toward Virtue (which is none).

What does the Dichotomy of Control (or Dichotomy of Choice, or Fundamental Divide, if you prefer) suggest about an Olympic drama, or an act of violence (no matter how wanton and gratuitous)?

Does it suggest that we ought to choose to see these things as “ours to choose” — or does it suggest that these things are not ours to choose and that to focus our energy on them is (in Epictetus’s words) “slavish” behavior (slaves to our primitive baseness) which negatively impacts our ability to see reality clearly and to work toward rational, just, and appropriate behavior within that reality?

Certainly the latter.

However, this truth does not mean we cannot choose to engage with such dramas or tragedies. It only means that, when we choose to engage with such things, we’re meant to engage with them appropriately — and the determination of what is “appropriate involvement” necessitates a clear and honest understanding of reality so that what we deem to be appropriate behavior is, truly, exactly that.

When we fail to do this we go off “half-cocked”, with a false reality embraced as the true one, and from there we make more and more unjust and inappropriate choices — with each next choice an order of magnitude worse than the previous because each next choice is built upon one more assent to yet another falsehood.

This many-forked path of vicious choices leads, inevitably, to an insurmountable cognitive dissonance. For when the truth reveals itself, and we are too invested in our false reality to bear turning away from it, we dig in our heels, and our slow moral death becomes a slope greased in duck shit.

🦆 Quack, quack, Prokoptôn. Quack quack.

This is not meant to discourage from participating in the body politic

By all means, hold a sign, send a tweet, cast a vote, stake out a moral position, stand your ground, get loud and take action, and be a contributing member of the Cosmopolis…

Just make sure the way you choose to do this is just and appropriate, and that your involvement in the first place isn’t for the sake of impotent, self-righteous indulgence.

The intoxicating feeling of being part of an empowered mob at its peak of power and influence might feel exciting and energizing, but it comes at a grave cost.

Thanks for reading.