The Problem of Progress
Since plugging into the internet, humans have changed. We are certainly no longer the same species as our primal hunter & gatherer ancestors. Instead of being armed with bows and arrows, and staying loyal to our native tribes, we now send messages all around the world, signaling whether or not we approve of people we have never met, places we have never been to, and things we have little say over.
This post explains how a population with instant access to an ever-growing database of information (aka the internet), has birthed an environment where everyone is comfortable to sit, wait, and watch the next bad thing happen—precisely because we have grown accustomed to nonchalantly carry the weight of the world (and its entire history) around with us in our pockets. However, by using Stoic principles, you can help manage the feeling of being held hostage by your own conscience.
There are so many voices to listen to. Although it is never a good idea to overthink or internally catastrophize things that out of your control, we are all miniature presidents over our own internal universes. Everyday, we wake up with millions of that affect our thoughts, feelings and emotions. If you allow it, the world will feel like an ant trapped beneath the glare of a magnifying glass on a hot, sunny day. Like the ant, the simple and intricate nature of our daily lives is constantly interrupted—and has become infected with—things that are out of our control, and things that other people have deemed important for us to pay attention to.
Why do we allow this to happen? Why are we so obsessed with the next big news story, when it is almost certainly going to be bad news? The answer is really quite simple: Rather than being trapped by the burning glare of magnifying glass, we are similarly handcuffed to the calamity of our planet by the unstoppable force that is our own addiction to more information. As a result, we have had to casually accept things like record rates of anxiety, social insecurity, and suicide.
Trust and Unity
During the pandemic, Gen-Z and Millennials were relieved of their duties from serving society as social media guinea pigs, in order to become full-time social isolation crash test dummies. For a group of already-anxious individuals, staging a nationwide lockdown was like straightjacketing a paraplegic; as businesses and universities deployed face masks and 6-foot floor stickers as counter-attacks, young people were sequestered their dorm rooms and muzzled from face-to-face communication. For months on end, the entire world was cut-off from interpreting commonplace facial expressions and innate social cues. As a result, we have become much less trusting and much accepting of one another.
“Recent public opinion surveys show that our trust in each other, in many important institutions, and (in) information has fractured. There is a sense that those with differing perspectives can’t find common ground. We have lost trust in basic institutions—from media to government to education—that are meant to serve us, leaving many unsure of who to turn to for essential information.”
—The Aspen Institute, a global nonprofit who has been conducting groundbreaking humanistic research for nearly 75 years.
The two infographics below show a clear trend about trust in America.
Rather than facing the threat of a deadly disease as a unified front, fear, anger, and violence were broadcast, en-masse, across all communication platforms. Just a few weeks after the first confirmed cases of COVID in America, cities were turned into warzones and 25 people were killed between May 25 and June 7, 2020, as a direct result of the violence that followed George Floyd's murder.
During that time, as the country was being primed by countless examples of hysterical news coverage and the highest level of civil unrest since the 1990s, our hunger for information grew as our reliance on technology bolstered. Each of these separate, yet connected pieces: (1) an increased distrust of others, (2) the threat of a deadly disease, (3) violence, frustration, and anger at the government and the police, (4) an ultra-dependency on the internet, forced the baseline for social interaction to become extremely altered. Allow me to explain.
Intuition and Safetyism
Social interactions thrive on intuition—which is like “auto-pilot” for your brain; intuition allows us engage in things “small-talk” and “off-the-cuff conversation,” but also helps us navigate through uncomfortable or ambiguous situations. Thus, our intuitiveness often determines our sense of relatability and level of comfort around one another.
There are many ways to shut down a conversation and force someone away from being their intuitive, relatable self—but one of the most effective methods is to create skepticism, suspicion, or distrust. For example, asking someone, “How much money do you make?” may elicit negative thinking from the other side of the conversation. They may think to themselves, “Why would they want to know how much money I make? Are they trying to say they’re better than me? Maybe this guy wants to rob me!”
Certainly, some topics are just too personal to get into. But when too many topics become taboo, touchy, or off-limits altogether, things get pretty squirrely, pretty quickly.
Due to our declining trust in one another and our apparent inclination to disagree, safetyism—or the concept that we must be protected from the people who disagree with us—has begun to take hold of America.
In their book, “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure,” authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathon Haidt explain how the mind-virus of safetyism has created a widespread and socially-destructive belief, based on the idea that all threats to safety—especially threats to one’s emotional safety as the direct result of being exposed to dissenting ideas, opinions, or facts—must be eliminated, unwaveringly.
“Safetyism is founded on someone else knowing what’s best for you; you are freed from having to determine your own choices, freed from weighing up logic and proportion before you take action; you just need to follow rules set out in front of you. This freedom from responsibility also has a price; soon we will lose any sense of proportion because when safety is placed above all else, a risk-averse culture follows, one that infantilises us and strips us of important skills. After all, nothing’s our fault anymore as we’re being looked after. Only in the human zoo could this state of affairs exist.”
—Billy Morgan and Frances Hutchens, movementum
"Safetyism is the belief that safety should always be prioritized above all else, even at the expense of personal growth and the ability to have meaningful, authentic relationships. It can lead to the creation of interpersonal barriers and the avoidance of vulnerability, ultimately preventing us from truly connecting with others and living fully."
—Quote generated by ChatGPT with the prompt: “type me a quote about safetyism and putting interpersonal guards down in social situations”
One of the places where the perils of safetyism are most pronounced is on college campuses. Universities are in a weird spot right now. On one hand, they must cater to their students so that they can keep their enrollment numbers flowing. But at the same time, they have a job to do; they must prepare their students to face the outside world (and all of its dissenting thoughts, opinions, and facts).
Haidt and Lukianoff further explain how the coveted amenities that decorate today’s college campuses, such as LSU’s 586-ft lazy river, High Point’s five-star steakhouse, or Auburn’s $50 million dollar rec-center, have morphed once-respected institutions into catering, spa-like getaways for 18 through 20-somethings. Their formula—to limit exposure to adversity and systematically remove environments where critical thinking is required to see multiple perspectives—allows colleges to give their students exactly what they desire most: an opportunity to move out of the house and be around people who won’t criticize their decisions. However, in doing so, colleges, universities, and overprotective parents refuse to instill resilience in their children, by providing them with minimal opportunities to develop effective coping skills to face problems that have real-world consequences.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Freedoms (FIRE), higher-ed institutions are shunning away from controversial speakers at a record rate.
Attempts made to disinvite scheduled speakers from college campuses (2004-2010): 115
Attempts made to disinvite scheduled speakers from college campuses (2010-2016): 146
Attempts made to disinvite scheduled speakers from college campuses (2016-2022): 236
*information gathered from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) “Campus Disinvitation Database”
Safetyism shuts down intuitiveness because it creates a perpetual fear of being haphazardly intrusive, offensive or confrontational. Today, one of the worst things that you can do to somebody is assume something about them. To be safe, we have begun to ask “test-questions” to get a feel on how a conversation may go. Ultimately, expressing lukewarm concerns over things like facemasks, pronouns, and voting preferences dub the larger concern of whether or not we can comfortably put our interpersonal guards’ down for the moment.
Even this ultra-conservative, right-wing lawmaker is not safe from safetyism.
“Republican state lawmaker in Texas sent a list of 850 books to school districts asking them to investigate ‘material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.’”
—Elliot Ramos, NBCNEWS
How Stoicism Can Help in Modern Life
Most people will never forget the birth of their child, where they were on 9/11, or who dropped the game-winning touchdown for their home team in the Super Bowl. We care about the things that make us the most emotional. However, the same things that make us the most emotional are often the same things we most passionately disagree with. In the age of information, as we continue to be constantly blitzed with ads, updates, and notifications that are purposefully-designed to rile us up, the complex relationship between our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors automatically runs at maximum RPMs.
That is why, when we see someone who seems like they have it all together, it feels like they just stepped out of a time machine. Some people appear so set in their own skin that I wonder whether they have any insecurities, anxieties, or emotions at all! Still, nobody can be truly equipped to handle all of life’s curveballs. Can they?
This may be surprising to read, but you are living, breathing proof of someone who has been able to handle every single curveball life has ever thrown your way—up to this point. Essentially, that is lesson #1 of Stoicism: you are resilient.
Stoicism is an ancient philosophy on the meaning of life. It was developed by an ex-merchant, a named Zeno, who lost everything he owned in a shipwreck, just off the coast of Greece. After washing ashore, he was then taken in by the “Cynic” school of philosophers (which is where the modern word "cynical" or "cynicism" gets its meaning"), who taught their disciples that they key to happiness was to “reject everything nonessential life had to offer."
That may sound super virtuous and minimalistic, but most Cynics did not even believe it was necessary to spend time on things like personal hygiene, gaining money, power or status, or even upholding familial responsibilities. Although they were essentially a group of glorified loafers, their teachings did provide Zeno with the bedrock principle that he used to create his own philosophical code of conduct: Control what you can control.
From the jump, the founding Stoics only debated one question: “How can we find a path to happiness?”
For them, the answer was simple: “You are the sole creator of your happiness.”
“To achieve freedom and happiness, you need to grasp this basic truth: some things in life are under your control, and others are not.
Within your control are your own opinions, aspirations, desires, and the things that repel you. We always have a choice about the contents and character of our inner lives.
Not within your control is literally everything else. You must remember these things are externals, and none of your concern.”
—Epictetus (50-138 AD)
That powerful mindset caught fire among the royal classes in Ancient Greece and Rome and many of the greatest rulers from this era wrote Stoic philosophy. The most notable, Marcus Aurelias, spent two decades ruling over the Roman Empire and recorded his personal thoughts on life and Stoic philosophy in his private journal. Today, his notes are available as a 12-book set, aptly-named “Meditations."
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
“The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t.”
“I, then, can neither be harmed by these people, nor become angry with one who is akin to me, nor can I hate him, for we have come into being to work together, like feet, hands, eyelids, or the two rows of teeth in our upper and lower jaws. To work against one another is therefore contrary to nature; and to be angry with another person and turn away from him is surely to work against him.”
—Marcus Aurelius
This is one of the most powerful rulers the world has ever known, yet he is writing notes to himself about being kinder, more charitable, and more empathetic.
Another key to Stoic philosophy is recognizing that the things that we value most typically require the most effort. When you become angry or upset, it is always harder not to slam the door, not to scream at your neighbor, or not to do the thing that you think will help you feel better in that moment. Stoicism hinges on the reminder that by remaining patient and calm in the face of life’s most challenging moments, you preserve the ability to use clarity and composure during them and, thus, will be better-prepared to handle change. In other words, pressure makes diamonds—but if you can control the pressure, then you can make the diamonds.
Death’s Dance
Ultimately, life’s biggest change comes at the very end of it. For that moment, the Stoics have one simple instruction: to meditate on your death.
Stoics do see death as a morbid idea to be avoided but, instead, realize that each day of life provides opportunities—to learn, to grow, to change, to become better—in spite of the fact that one day you must die.
Growth is gradual. Nobody has it all figured out. Knowledge, power, and wisdom can only be gained through experience. Experience, however, is limited by time; and time is completely out of our control.
3 Places to Start
Deep quotes are great, but actually having tools to help you navigate through the life’s chapters is even more beneficial. Luckily, Stoicism provides both.
Reflect
Getting into the habit of meditating, journaling, or even just going over the day’s events with someone at the end of each day can help keep emotions, and expectations, in check. Consistency breeds temperedness. Making an effort to reflect promotes gratuity, fulfillment, and happiness. It can also lead to an increased sense of contentment, which lends itself nicely to more overall stability, peace, and contentment in your life. Those feelings pave the way for the development of self-awareness, which can help you realize just how easy it is to get hung up on small, meaningless problems.
Embrace the suck
Avoid mentally escaping from uncomfortable and difficult situations. Moments of suffering are just that—moments. In those moments, we are provided with opportunities to learn about ourselves. We may learn how much stress we can handle, what kinds of actions or words we are willing to tolerate from others, or how far we can push ourselves to achieve success. Moral victories are a real thing, if you become better prepared to face life’s next challenge through it. By embracing the suck, we find new ways to cope and adapt to changing circumstance—which is basically like practicing for life.
Seek wisdom
If you have seen the show Avatar, then you probably know that when Prince Zuko and Aang team-up to defeat Firelord Ozai, the evil ruler over the Avatar world, they go to see the original fire benders (the last two remaining dragons) to learn the true meaning of fire bending.
Again, here are two of the most powerful fighters in the Avatar World seeking wisdom to help them on their journey. And that is what life is about; everyone is writing their own book on life, but nobody can succeed without the help of others. Understanding that everybody’s story is unique, and accepting the fact that everybody can teach you something about your own life is a hard lesson to forget, but a necessary one to realize the truth about our purpose, here, together.
“In Focus: Strengthening Trust”
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/in-focus-strengthening-trust/
Lois Beckett reporting for theguardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled
Fifth paragraph under heading “property damage”
Brian Dean reporting for backlinko.com
Zoom meeting minute statistics: https://backlinko.com/zoom-users
Tobias Weaver, author of oriophilosophy.com
https://www.orionphilosophy.com/stoic-blog/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-stoic
Tobias Weaver, author of orionphilosophy.com