Living Under Constraints

Living Under Constraints

Posted on by jabittan
In Letters From a Stoic, Seneca quotes Epicurus in writing, “It is wrong to live under constraint; but no man is constrained to live under constraint.”

 

Quite frankly, Seneca and Epicurus are wrong. The stoic thinkers make two arguments in the short quote, and both fail to live up to the reality of humankind’s existence. The sentiment shared is noble, and certainly rings true in my American ears, but on closer reflection, proves to be a fiction.

 

The first argument, that it is wrong to live under constraint assumes that human beings can somehow exist separate from society with all needs and desires fulfilled. Stoic thought focuses on our mind and what is within our direct control. Stoicism hinges on the idea that our thoughts and reactions are the only thing we can possibly have true ownership and control over. It encourages us to move beyond our ego, which drives us to acquire possessions, build a reputation, and always bolster our social status with things beyond our control. Stoic philosophy encourages self-awareness and a sense of self-contentedness that comes from controlling one’s mind and being satisfied by simply experiencing life, whatever life is presented to us.

 

However, having constraints in our lives is important, and might actually be better for us than unlimited choice and possibility. A famous study on jam selection and satisfaction from 2000 suggests that people who had a limited selection of jams were more satisfied with their selection than people who picked a jam from a more broad and expansive selection of jams. With unlimited choice, options, and opportunities, we are unhappy. We can’t make a selection when we are not living under constraints, and we are constantly unsure if we truly made the best choice when our choices are unlimited. Constraints play a powerful role in helping us understand who we are, where we fit in society, and by creating bounds for our decisions, actions, and lives. Without constraints, we do not always flourish, sometimes we flounder.

 

What we see is that our lives are guided by and defined by constraints. Therefore, the second argument of the two stoics, that no man is constrained to live under constraints, is clearly wrong. We might not be actively constrained by another human being, but we are constrained by our governments, our home owners associations, or our bosses or customers. We are also constrained by nature and our physiology. There is a limit to how fast we can run, what forces our bodies can endure, and much we can eat. Our brains are incredible machines, but they too are limited in how long they can operate without sleep, how difficult of tasks they can work through, and how much they can remember. There is simply no way to escape constraints, and living in a complete freedom, as Seneca seems to be suggesting with the rest of his letter after the quote above, will not lead to unbridled happiness. It is constraint, and how we learn to live within constraints, which brings forth our creativity, our imagination, and makes life actually possible.
Our Opinion Shapes Our Experience

Our Opinion Shapes Our Experience

Posted on by jabittan
A funny thing happened with people’s thoughts about the economy following the 2016 presidential election in the United States. Supporters of Hillary Clinton prior to the election had strong feelings about the economy, while Republican supporters of Donald Trump thought the economy was terrible. In the days and weeks following the election, perceptions of the economy switched. Nothing economically speaking had really changed in the immediate days after we discovered that Donald Trump would become the 45th president of the United States, but suddenly those who voted Republican in 2016 had a positive outlook on the economy, while those who had voted for Clinton thought the country’s economy was in trouble.

 

Our opinion of a circumstance can shape the experience we have of many aspects of our lives. The economic outlook of people following the election in 2016 demonstrates this ability. We can experience a great economy based on whether our favored candidate wins an election, or we can experience an economic downturn if our candidate does not, even if actual economic trends don’t change. We don’t exist in an independent or objective place outside of the world around us. Instead we take in cues about how others are doing, about our identity relative to others, and about the position of groups like us and start to create the reality we experience. Whether we want to or not, we measure our social standing against other people that we see or interact with on a daily basis and the stories we tell ourselves matter to how we feel about our place in the world and our future.

 

Being aware of this, however, can help us tone down negative impulses and thoughts that might be triggered by this type of social comparison. As Seneca wrote in Letters From a Stoic, “what does your condition matter, if it is bad in your own eyes?” If we constantly look around and see others who have more than us, who look better than us, and who in one way or another demonstrate a higher social status than us, then we will never be content with ourselves and our position. A solution is to step back and consider ourselves without defining ourselves as successful or as a failure relative to others. We can consider ourselves more fully, redefining what we need to be successful in our lives, and basing success on factors that don’t involve our relative social position to others. Through self-awareness and reflection, we can begin to focus more on what matters, on the things that actually make people valuable, and change how volatile our notion of good or bad can be.
What we need for happiness

What We Need For Happiness

Posted on by jabittan
A challenge in our world today is to be content without the need for too many things. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements about things we could buy and about how happy we would be if we had more stuff. We attach material possessions to lifestyles and people, and in some ways we look toward things to define people. Advertisements and mental images work because we believe them, but they don’t truly reflect the reality of the world around us or what would make us happy.

 

In Letters to a Stoic, Seneca writes, “the Stoic also can carry his goods unimpaired through cities that have been burned to ashes; for he is self-sufficient. Such are the bounds which he sets to his own happiness.”  The quote is part of a larger passage about finding happiness in oneself and in the world around us rather than in our things or specific items that we might want. Stoic philosophy, as Seneca describes, encourages us to avoid the desire for stuff, because stuff can be taken away from us, burned down, or never attained in the first place.

 

What we need for happiness, Seneca suggests, is simply our mental faculties. An awareness of and appreciation for life that isn’t dependent on what we own, the quality of our clothes, or price tag of our car. Unlike the way of thought that we tend to fall into in America, where we associate being a lawyer with owning a sports car, associate being a runner with owning an expensive GPS watch, and associate being a hipster with owning expensive glasses, stoicism encourages happiness through relationships, and an appreciation of simple, yet wondrous moments of life. Indeed, having lots of stuff can take the wonder out of life and fill it with the stress of managing finances, space, and security of possessions.
Friendships

Friendships

Posted on by jabittan
Friendships for children always seem so easy, but as we get older, friendships seem to grow more and more difficult. One reason for why it may be so difficult to keep friends as adults is that we are just so busy and have to manage all our resources. We have to keep track of our time, our money, keep-up the space where we live, fix and repair things that break with our cars, and replace worn-out items and consumer goods. We get used to thinking of things in terms of what we get from them, and it is easy for us to start thinking of our friends in the same way.

 

In Letters from a Stoic, Seneca writes, “one who is chosen for the sake of utility will be satisfactory only so long as he is useful.”

 

The problem for us is that friendships are about more than just utility. Having lots of friends just because you receive some benefit from their friendship leaves you with a series of superficial relationships, none of them robust enough or strong enough to actually provide you any real utility during a time of hardship. In this way, a utility approach to friends backfires. If you only remain friends with someone when they have something they can provide for you, then you won’t actually have a real friendship.

 

The reality is that friendships require work and effort. Seneca also quotes a philosopher named Attalus in writing, “It is more pleasant to make than to keep a friend, as it is more pleasant to the artist to paint than to have finished painting.” New friendships are exciting, spontaneous, and offer promise of new allies for future situations. Maintaining a friendship requires lugging around baggage and figuring out how to adjust as people, times, and places change. Friendship requires real effort to stay invested in the lives of others.

 

But in the end, keeping a friend helps us better understand ourselves, helps us develop better understandings and connections with other people, and makes us more pleasant and thoughtful human beings. Keeping a friend requires that we think about more than just ourselves and what we get from a friendship. It requires that we think about what we can do for others, knowing that we might not get the same material benefits back from the other. This is why friendships are hard as you get further into your busy and hectic life, but the same challenges reveal why friendships are so valuable.
Focus on Process

Focus on Process

Posted on by jabittan
Recently, Tyler Cowen released a podcast interview he did with Annie Duke, someone I remember from the days when my brother watched tournaments for the World Series of Poker.  A line from the interview really stood out to me and is something I think about in my life all the time, but haven’t stated as eloquently as Duke. In the interview she says, “The way to happiness is to focus on process. Then the winning becomes secondary to that. It becomes a way to keep score on how you’re doing on the process piece. And to really focus on that as opposed to focusing on the end result.”

 

I really like the way that Duke thinks about life, happiness, and process. So often in our lives we look at the end results. We ask ourselves if our house is big enough, if our car is fancy enough, if we have a good enough job, and if we took a good enough vacation this year. The problem, however, is that these are end results that we use to judge ourselves. They are lag measures, not lead measures, and as a result they only tell us how we are doing long after we have a chance to make improvements and adjust our approach. The second problem with thinking about the end results is that the end result we pick is arbitrary and in many cases our chances of achieving our desired end result are often beyond our control. There are so many random variables that can determine how successful you become and exactly where you end up. In poker, the randomness and chance within the game is part of its appeal, and sometimes whether you walk away with the most chips or with none is as much a matter of luck on a single hand as it is a matter of skill and intelligence.

 

Similarly, in Letters From a Stoic, Seneca writes, “When one is busy and absorbed in one’s work, the very absorption affords great delight; but when one has withdrawn one’s hand from the completed masterpiece, the pleasure is not so keen.” This quote from Seneca highlights the importance of maintaining good process. We are happy when we are engaged and active in our pursuit of a goal. Achieving our goal and no longer have work to do in pursuit of our goal is actually less fulfilling than the process to obtain the goal itself.

 

When we consider the quotes from both Seneca and Duke we see how important it can be to think about our daily habits, routines, and processes. If we can focus on goals related to process then we can have something meaningful to engage with that is unlikely to disappear and leave us feeling empty once reached. For a poker player, walking away from the table with a large stack of chips is what the game appears to be all about, but it is in playing poker, discussing strategy, and focusing on one’s abilities and weaknesses that professional poker players find the most enjoyment. Those are the pieces the player can control and engage with, and if the player focuses on process, they will improve and reach their end goals to ultimately be successful in the game. Focus on the process to build success and to enjoy the path toward continued success and excellence.
Crowds Change Who We Are

Crowds Change Who We Are

Posted on by jabittan
When writing about being in crowds, Seneca states, “I never bring back home the same character that I took abroad with me.” He is writing about the ways that crowds change us. They change our behavior, they can stir-up emotions we work to keep at bay, and they can drive us to think in new ways. Crowds change who we are in a way that seems to be beyond our control.

 

“Certainly, the greater the mob with which we mingle, the greater the danger.” 

 

I remember first seriously thinking about crowds and our reactions to them during a psychology class in my undergraduate degree. We talked about people who don’t call the police when they see an act of violence, illegal activity, or someone in an emergency medical situation when they are in a crowd. When we are not clearly the person responsible for calling first responders, we seem to think that someone else will. If you do rush in to help, one of the best things you can do is point directly at another person and say, “you, call 9-1-1.”

 

In addition to this form of paralysis, crowds also change who we are by inciting great energy and action within us. Certainly on our own most of us would not throw something at a statue, even if the statue commemorated a deplorable figure from the past. We might see the statue and loath what it represents, but on our own, we are not likely to do anything about it. In a large crowd, however, our anger and energy seems to be released more easily, and whether it is chanting something we wouldn’t say on our own or tearing down a statue, we seem to be capable of things we normally couldn’t bring ourselves to do.

 

There are a lot of directions to go with the reality that we are not ourselves (or maybe more accurately the same version of ourselves) when we are within crowds. What I would like to consider is how this knowledge should shape the way we think about ourselves. Introspection and self-awareness is important, and part of that is an awareness that we are not exactly the people we tell ourselves we are. We can come to understand ourselves as being someone or some type of person in most of the settings in which we find ourselves, but crowds and unique circumstances can reveal that we are also other people. We are not a static entity that is consistent across space and time. We change in response to other people, in response to activities, and in response to success or threat. Strive to be the best version of who you can be, but remember, who you think you are is a myth, and the fact that crowds change who we are reveals that we don’t have the control over ourselves and our stories in the way that we like to believe we do. We can turn this recognition onto others as well, and see them as not a single static entity, but someone who can be influenced by forces beyond their control, and who can change for better or worse depending on the circumstances we (or society or life) put them in.
Seneca on the Deserving Poor

Seneca on the Deserving Poor

Posted on by jabittan
I really enjoyed studying public policy at the University of Nevada, especially when I had a chance to dive into Social Construction Framework as a way to understand the legislative process. Social Construction Framework (SCF) posits that the way we think about the targets of a policy, that is the characteristics and traits that we ascribe to the population who will be rewarded or punished by a policy, determines how we structure the policy and how likely the policy is to be passed by a legislature. The world is too complex for us to have nuanced, detailed, and accurate understandings of everyone and everything, and so we make shortcuts. These heuristics help us understand the decisions we have to make, and we bring them into the political arena with stereotypes and simplifications of people and social processes. The final policy that we enact is not an objective and scientific product of rational thought about the complex nature of humanity and the universe, but is instead based on these heuristics and social constructions.

 

It is in this framework that I have recently been thinking more about the deserving poor. I have recently done a bit of reading into homelessness, and there is a tension in America in terms of the social constructions attached to homelessness. The homeless can be seen as deserving of aid because (now two) economic downturns have wrecked their financial opportunities or because they faced parental abandonment or abuse growing up, and never got off to a good start. Alternatively, we can see the poor as undeserving, because we think they may be lazy, may be drug users, and might just make poor decisions and they need to pay the consequences. These two ways of conceptualizing the homeless play into the SCF and determine whether we pass policies that help them or punish them.

 

SCF is relatively new and isn’t something that is discussed by the broad public very often. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t think in ways that are described by SCF, and it doesn’t mean that these ways of thinking are new to Americans in the 21st century. Seneca, in his book Letters From a Stoic wrote, “My situation … is the same as that of many who are reduced to slender means through no fault of their own: everyone forgives them, but no one comes to their rescue.”

 

What Seneca describes is the way that we see poor people who face economic hardship through unlucky situations as being deserving of aid. As opposed to those who lose a fortune gambling, making bad investments with grifters, or appear to be poor due to personal flaws like laziness, those who lose their fortune due to an unpredictable cancer diagnosis, the tragic loss of a loved one, or a sudden natural disaster are viewed as less blameworthy. They are somehow deserving of sympathy and aid, but often times, these individuals are politically weak. Children don’t have much ability to shape public policy because they can’t vote, but they are a sympathetic constituency. The same may go for the elderly poor, widowed wives of military veterans, or people with disabilities. They are socially praised, or at least not blamed for their dire situations as Seneca noted, but that doesn’t mean they are likely to get a lot of help.

 

Because these groups are well liked, we don’t actively make things more difficult for them, the way we would for people convicted of violent crime or for drug users. But because they don’t contribute a lot to society (in the views of most people) and because they don’t have a lot of political power, they often receive positive rhetoric from elected officials and members of the public in general, but they don’t often receive much aid. This was true when Seneca was writing his letters which became a book, and it is still true today. Viewing people as deserving or undeserving goes back a long way, and we should work to be consciously aware of how we think about groups, and what policy we put forward based on how we understand a group’s level of deservingness.
Time

Think More About Your Time

Posted on by jabittan
A little over a year ago I took a job that had a long commute, a little over 30 miles one way, 60+ miles daily for the round trip. Mornings were usually pretty quick, because I would be out of the house early for a work out and would beat a lot of traffic, but afternoons were often brutal for me, with a minimum 45 minute drive home. If there was an accident on the freeway, it easily became and hour and half drive home in the afternoon. The time I spent by myself in the car, listening to podcasts, occasionally calling a friend, or maybe listening to some music made me think about just how important the good use of ones time is. Each day, I spent at least one hour and fifteen minutes in a car by myself. I had to dress professionally, which meant that I had to have gym bag packed with slacks, a belt, a dress shirt, and from time to time a tie. In the mornings I woke up early to write and blog, and then I was out of the house quickly to get to the gym on time. I had to rush through work-outs and a post-work shower to make sure I had enough time to change into my business clothes for the remainder of the drive to work. After work, I felt a pressure to get out the door as quick as possible and get across the 30 miles of road to my house, minimizing the time I was on the road and the chance I would get caught in a traffic jam from an accident. In the evening I had to spend at least 30 minutes prepping my lunch for the next day and making sure I had all my clothes set in my gym bag and ready to go. As it turns out, I’m not great at this, and I frequently forget my lunch or to pack my shoes when I am on a time crunch and will need to have a bunch of stuff ready and with me.

 

I was feeling first hand, until the pandemic started and I shifted to working from home, what it is like to not have enough time. I have heard on a few podcasts (I searched but couldn’t find where exactly) that the word time is the most frequently used word in the English language. It is the one thing that we always have, but never have enough of. It is the one thing we can never get more of, and it is important that we use it well. However, as I look around at the people in my life, I see that we rarely think of how we use our time as critically as we should. As Seneca wrote to his friend in Letters From a Stoic, “Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession.”

 

We can lose our possession of time if another person takes our life. We can lose our ability to use our time if someone creates some major obstacle for us that we have to climb through (like working through identity theft). And on top of that we can squander our time in a meaningless way (like by commuting long distances by ourselves in our cars).

 

My recent experiences have forced me to re-think how I have used time, experienced time, and what it means to be aware of time. When we think about our time, we can change our approach to our day and re-shape our habits, routines, and activities so that we don’t waste our time and let it slip through our fingers without control. I know I am lucky to be in a place to make changes in my life to adjust how I spend my time, and I know not everyone has the same privileges to adjust their lives in relation to time, but for those of us who can, I think it is important that we think more about our time. We should make adjustments to give time back to our lives by spending more time with loved ones or with meaningful activities that engage us with others and build a sense of community. We should avoid long commutes, we should focus on spending our time doing things that help improve our communities, and we should not be willing to trade too much of our time for money, if we are in a position to say no to the extra money we get for the time we give up.
An Epidemic of Disconnection

An Epidemic of Disconnection

Posted on by jabittan
Over the last few years I have become increasingly aware of the importance of developing real senses of community and connection between everyone in our societies. Johann Hari’s book Chasing the Scream was one of the books that kickstarted these ideas in my mind. We are social creatures, and we create the worlds we live in together, through shared efforts and visions. As we have lost our shared visions and isolated our efforts, our communities have suffered, and people have responded with drugs, addiction, and further isolation. We have created an epidemic of disconnection, and we have been facing the consequences for the last several years.

 

In his book, Hari writes, “The places with the biggest opioid crises are also the places with the highest suicide rates and the highest antidepressant prescriptions—which help us to see that what is really going on is an epidemic of deep disconnection.”

 

Drug abuse, addiction, and overdose are common across the country, but are not evenly distributed. There are parts of our country where deaths of despair are a major concern and are so prevalent that among some demographics overall life expectancy is decreasing. People are facing incredible challenges, and don’t have the support systems and communities that they need to help them through their challenges. Drugs are a way to blunt the pain, to numb the constant worry, and to try turn off the part of the mind that only sees life as downward spiral. The epidemic of disconnection that we see in our country is self-reinforcing and threatens lives and communities.

 

We need to find more ways for people to belong, for people to matter, and for people to be engaged in creative endeavors in their community. Isolating ourselves with Netflix, gating off our communities, and building walls between ourselves, our property and the outside world of trouble will only exacerbate the epidemic of disconnection and further the inequalities which lead to our societal problems. We have to find more ways to invest in our communities, to do things together (even in a pandemic), and help encourage people to be responsible to each other and society. We cannot only be responsible to our own homes, families, and bank accounts. In order to combat the opioid crisis, we have to reconnect with people who feel disconnected and isolated, and help fill their lives in ways that opioids never will.
Shifting Drug Use

Shifting Drug Use

Posted on by jabittan
In the United States we often fail to think about alcohol use when we think about drug use. Our country is comfortable with the idea of recreational drinking to take the edge off a tough day, to enjoy a party or social gathering, and to celebrate a holiday. Alcohol has a lot of downsides, especially when people drink in excess. Whether people have an addiction or just drink too much one night, consequences can include drunk driving car crashes, liver and stomach problems, and general poor decision-making. Alcohol is dangerous for the user and for other people within society. Nevertheless, we understand that it can be used responsibly, and unless you have a history of alcohol abuse, it is strange to not drink.

 

Other drugs don’t enjoy the same acceptance in society. Marijuana is becoming more accepted, but other drugs remain strictly prohibited and shrouded in fear and secrecy. When states consider increasing access to medical marijuana or marijuana legalization, legislatures and the public will debate for hours on end all the potential consequences of legalizing marijuana and the dangers which could stem from more marijuana use. But rarely will we have the same discussions of alcohol, and rarely will we consider the consequences of people shifting their drug use as policy changes.

 

However, research suggests that we should strongly consider shifting drug use when we think about drug policy. When I was completing an MPA at the University of Nevada, I looked at research on people switching from opioids to marijuana within states that legalized marijuana or expanded medical marijuana programs. There is good evidence to suggest that many people will shift away from opioids, which can be dangerously addicting, to marijuana when weed is more accessible. Marijuana seems to be less dangerous than opioids, with fewer risks for overdose. There are certainly consequences for using marijuana – I know of studies that look at negative health impacts of smoking weed studies that look at potential damage to intellectual functioning. However, opioids have been ruinous for many communities in the United States, with arguably worse health consequences than marijuana. The shifting drug use might not be the best outcome we could hope for, but it might be a step in a better public health direction.

 

In his book Chasing the Scream, Johann Hari looks at these ideas around shifting drug use. He writes, “After California made it much easier to get marijuana from your doctor … traffic accidents fell by 8 percent.” People were not driving under the influence of alcohol as much once they began using marijuana instead. As a result, the roads became more safe. Hari gives several examples of shifting drug use that might occur if more drugs (or all drugs) were legalized. The drugs used and settings for their use would change, which would have a lot of implications for public health and safety. He shows that in many instances, shifting drug use away from alcohol would make us safer and more healthy. We don’t always recognize this, and we don’t always think about shifting drug use appropriately because we fail to think of and count alcohol use as drug use.

 

Hari writes, “If you don’t count alcohol as drug use, then drug use would go up. But if you do count alcohol as drug use, then there is some evidence suggesting overall drug use will not go up after legalization.”  Patterns of drug use are complicated, and we don’t have a lot of evidence to help us anticipate shifting drug use in a world where access to drugs in a legal way was more available. However, if we want to express an opinion about shifting drug use, we should remember that alcohol is a drug, and we should think of it within the larger context of drug use, not as its own thing.

 

Ultimately, I (and I think Hari) would like to live in a world with minimal or almost non-existent drug use. However, our current approach to get there, drug prohibition, doesn’t seem to be working and seems to actually make our societies more dangerous. Shifting to a world where drugs were legalized and provided in a safe form by the state (or private entities) could lead to greater drug use, might lead to changes in what drugs people use, and would like change where, when, and how people use drugs. If we moved in this direction while simultaneously creating a strong system to help people stay healthy while using drugs and that encouraged them to find a lifestyle that didn’t include drugs, then our societies might become more healthy, and we might not actually see drug use increase in a dangerous way.