The Calm Light of Mild Philosophy

The Calm Light of Mild Philosophy

A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. C. Scot Giles

Countryside Church, Unitarian Universalist

February 7, 2021

The Value of Philosophy

Do you have a favorite play? For me, it’s The Tempest by William Shakespeare. Growing up where the Shakespeare Festival Theater was located, I’ve seen almost all of the Shakespearian plays on stage.

Did you know that George Washington had a favorite play? It was called Cato by Joseph Addison. Written in 1712, it recounts the last days of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, the Stoic Philosopher who resisted Julius Caesar’s tyranny, and died for it. Here is the relevant quote:

The speaker is Marcus, one of the sons of Cato, speaking about the dictator Caesar:

— Thy steady temper, Portius,

Can look on guilt, rebellion, fraud and Caesar,

In the calm lights of mild philosophy; 

I'm tortur'd, even to madness, when I think  

On the proud victor: every time he's nam’d

(Act 1, Scene 1)

In its time, this play was famous. It was so famous in the 18th century that most educated people could quote it by heart, and if you recited a passage, everyone would recognize it without you having to say where you first heard it. 

Some historians consider the play the literary inspiration for the American Revolution. Patrick Henry got his famous phrase “give me liberty or give me death,” from the play, and Nathan Hale coped his famous “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” from it too.

George Washington loved the play and had it staged for his troops before the Battle at Valley Forge. He was fond of quoting one particular line, and said it when speaking about his return to private life after the Revolutionary War was over. He said he was now “Free from the bustle of a camp and the intrigues of court, I shall view the busy world ‘in the calm light of mild philosophy,’ and with that serenity of mind, which the Soldier in his pursuit of glory, and the Statesman of fame have not time to enjoy.”

“In the calm light of mild philosophy.” That speaks to what I call the Golden Way - the essence of ancient Greek and Roman teachings about the best way to live, that has also become my personal philosophy of life. It goes by the name Stoicism, and it means learning to use our gift of reason to temper emotions and thereby make better decisions.

It’s actually a bit similar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and that’s no accident. The person who created that system of therapy, Albert Ellis, was a student of Stoic Philosophy.

It’s also similar to the 1932 Serenity Prayer of the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.

The similarity is no accident. Niebuhr was steeped in Stoic Philosophy and apparently copped the idea for the prayer from Epictetus, who taught around the year 100 CE. 

In this sermon, I want to speak about Stoicism - both because it is my personal philosophy and one that I am finding especially relevant in our troubled times, and to encourage those of you who find it interesting to look at it some more.

In our time we use the word “stoic” incorrectly to mean someone who is without emotion. But in ancient times it described a rich philosophy that dated to the third century BCE. 

Supposedly founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens, it took its name from the Stoa, or the porch of the Acropolis where Zeno used to hold classes. The most famous of the Stoic Philosophers are Marcus Aurelius, once Emperor of Rome, Cato, Senica, Zeno, Epictetus, and many others. 

Most of these philosophers lived and thrived during the most politically difficult times of the Roman Empire, including the reigns of Nero and Caligula, emperors who were “malignant narcissists.” If you’ve never heard that diagnosis before, you might want to learn it because it seems to be becoming more common. It’s a combination of narcissism in someone who is also a sociopath. Yet the Stoics found a way to be happy and productive, even when Rome was ruled by malignant narcissist with an iron grip on the government.

It’s Dull

I once shared my view of life with a young lady I was dating back in college with disastrous results. I told her that I wanted to live “in the calm light of mild philosophy,” and she looked at me as if I had grown antenna and become a cockroach.

“How incredibly dull!” she said. 

Trust me, that is not what a young man wants to hear from a young lady he is dating. Things didn’t go well. 

But I do understand why she said it, and I completely forgive her for promptly dumping me. Living “in the calm light of a mild philosophy” does sound dull. It’s not at all the sort of thing that gets people inspired.

Promethean Mythology

What gets people inspired are heroic, Promethean themes.

Prometheus was the ancient Greek god said to create humans from base clay, and then stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity along with the gifts of civilization and learning. He was punished for this transgression by the King of the Gods, Zeus, but expresses no regret for his act.

We get off on that sort of flashy heroism! We’re supposed to “Climb every mountain,” and to “fight the unbeatable foe,” to get into our spaceships and “boldly go where no one has gone before!” 

We love the superheroes we read about in graphic novels or watch in the movies. We cheer Bruce Willis in Die Hard and its four sequels (or is it five now?). We groove on Jack Ryan and John Wick. Heck, we even like it when David slays Goliath with nothing but his slingshot.

But I don’t suggest you emulate them too closely. Generally, speaking, acting in a Promethean way is a bad idea.

Let me be clear, there are people who do individual acts of heroism and they are admirable. They are the medical personnel, firefighters, law enforcement officers, the astronauts and test pilots. They are the courageous statesmen and stateswomen who vote their conscience even though it may being a reprisal. The world is better for such people. 

That said, such brave urges are best tempered with common sense and good training, and in the case of actual heroes, nearly always are. 

Don’t mistake fantasy for reality. Real life is not a movie. Fighting “the unbeatable foe” is a really great way to get your behind kicked, because that’s what “unbeatable” means.

I don’t know about you. But I’d rather win, and that almost never happens if you don’t think before you act. Even people who do heroic things usually have made decisions about their values, and those considered values determined their behavior. 

Heck, in the story of David slaying the giant Goliath we read that David carefully picked up five smooth stones, evaluating them to be sure they would be good ammo and fly true. He had practiced with his slingshot and presumably was a marksman. He didn’t just wing it on the spur of the moment using an unfamiliar weapon.

The Inner Meaning

I regard most mythology, ancient scripture or otherwise, as actually containing a hidden thread beneath the surface structure of the story. The mythology of our species is full of stories of people who lived, and sometimes died, heroically. This is true of even anti-heroes like the protagonist of the movie John Wick. The stories have staying power. Why?

Surely they are not advising us to go get our behind kicked by fighting for a lost cause, or doing something flashy that actually leaves us worse off. 

Instead, I think these stories exist to transmit something really wise. That wisdom is the warning that if you set your goals too low, you will never become all you are capable of being. While you don’t want to stretch yourself so far that you break, some stretching is a good thing. 

Stories about heroism encourage us to consider that kind of stretching. They remind us to not settle, at least not to settle for too little, and to keep trying to be a better version of ourselves. Even if the risk doesn’t pan out in the end, still there is something that comes to us by having made the attempt, provided the attempt was reasonable. 

But if you do something that isn’t reasonable and thereby fail, no one considers you a hero. They consider you foolish.

Thinking things through rationally will almost always lead to better actions, bringing better consequences. 

That’s what I neglected to mention when I told my date that evening when I said I wanted to live my life “in the calm light of a mild philosophy.” 

How To Win

The play about Cato is a tragic play. Cato dies having gotten on the wrong side of Roman politics. His comrades decry the “guilty world” where good people like Cato perish and bad people like Caesar prosper. 

But those comrades do go on to a better day. They take with them the example of Cato, and held him up as a model of the best way to live. Cato made decisions rationally and in pursuit of what he regarded as noble. Making rational decisions is the basis of the Stoic Philosophy. While there are never any guarantees, I’ve come to believe the Stoic way is smart.

Stoicism

The goal of Stoic Philosophy is to be happy and at peace. It isn’t based on the elimination of emotion. Rather, it is based on the regulation of emotion. One thinks about everything in terms of three bright categories.

First, consider what you can control. Pretty much this will be your own thoughts and behavior. Decide your values and act accordingly.

I can’t control that, for example, my supervisor at work is an idiot, or that the leadership of the company I work for is bad. I can control how I respond to that. 

I can sit at my desk and fume, to no purpose, or I can use use the energy as motivation to polish up my resume and networking. 

Alternatively, I can decline to become part of the problem in the company by keeping my head down and doing my best to shine. 

Other people cannot make you angry or sad. They do not have that power. We are the one who chooses to respond with anger or sadness, or chooses to respond otherwise, after the initial rush of feelings has past.

I sometimes tell my clients that the difference between reacting emotionally to something, and responding rationally, is about ten seconds of silence and a couple of deep breaths. That’s it.

I control my behavior, and endeavor to do those things that will actually serve me well in the longer term.

I had a client who failed to do this. His family shafted him out of an inheritance. He became rageful and took it out on his spouse and kids. It was all he could talk about for a long time until his wife threatened to take the kids and leave.

That was when he realized that what happened showed him how manipulative his family was. He realized that manipulative people are usually worthless to those in relationship with them. He put a boundary in place so they couldn’t hurt him again, and reconciled with those who actually loved and cared for him - his spouse and offspring. His siblings squabbled among themselves and were miserable. My client went on to be okay. He never got the inheritance - that was beyond his control. But he stopped hurting himself and his family because of that.

First, consider what you can control, and make good choices about that.

Second, consider what you can influence, although not control. Pretty much this will be your behavior with other people in families, groups or nations. 

Voting in an election would be in this category, as are making charitable donations, or apportioning volunteer time. Also in this category is setting a personal example in work, home, in relationships and family about the way people should behave. 

Your influence may or may not carry the day, but we’d surely have a better world if we all were intentional about the impact we have.

Finally, consider what you can neither control nor influence, and stop trying to control or influence those things. 

Trying to do that is the equivalent of trying to beat the unbeatable foe. It’s not going to work. Instead, see if you can use the struggle to make yourself into a better version of you.

A whole world of hurt comes to people because they get this wrong - and a lot of people do.

Life isn’t fair. You can be a wonderful person and still die in a car wreck because of a drunk driver. The highway doesn’t care about your personal worth. Bad stuff will happen, and usually there isn’t much we can do beyond controlling ourselves and influencing what we can. 

In Stoic Philosophy this is call Premeditato Malurum - Remember that bad stuff will always happen. Try to make the best of it when that takes place.

Like any helping professional I hear people whine. It always sets my teeth on edge. One of my parish colleagues put a little sign in her office that said “We do not serve cheese in the minister’s study. Please take your whine elsewhere.”

I don’t think her parish ministry lasted too long, but I think she was on the right track. My wife, Lindsay, Minister Emerita after a forty year ministry to our sister congregation in Geneva, Illinois, used to have a “hour glass” in her study that she’d picked up at the Bristol Renaissance Faire. The sand in the glass would run out after ten minutes. She used to turn it over and tell troubled parishioners that she would listen to them whine for ten minutes exactly. Then, they had to talk about what they were going to do about their upset - change something or to use it to develop a positive part of their character. That’s a Stoic idea.

Whining is when someone complains powerlessly. They can not do anything about what they are upset about, but they complain about it anyway. It is the destruction of mood, relationship and health.

Complaining about what you cannot change is a formula for making you miserable. 

Considerations

It’s awful that you and I are living though a global pandemic that has disrupted everything. 

There are things we can control, like mask wearing and social distancing. We can get vaccinated when that’s possible. 

There are things we can influence. We can support our legislators and health professionals so they can do their jobs. We can push for much better treatment of first responders and essential workers.

But we can’t do anything about the fact that we are living through the disruption of a global pandemic. 

Short of the American Civil War (I almost said the “First American Civil War,” whoops), it’s really tough to live through such a dark political time in our nation. 

We can act responsibility, seek to de-escalate conflict, push to elect better legislators - things we can control or influence. But we can do little about the macro events of the pandemic or the national political turmoil.

Instead, we can take these and use them to do some work on ourselves. 

Can we learn to get by with less if our income has been impacted? Can we discover how to help others who need a hand up because they’ve become ill? How can we enrich our home lives so the food on the table is better (even if not restaurant quality). Can we make our home entertainment or workouts more engaging?

How can we deepen philosophically as people living through a dark time? 

Those are the Stoic questions. Don’t complain about what you cannot change or influence. Instead, use the circumstance to hone yourself to a sharper edge.

I tell my clients that it may be really tragic that you may have come down with cancer or some other life-changing diagnosis. But given that you have, and you cannot change that, how can you make this time of treatment a time where there are some good things for you?

One of the most important books in cancer care is Cancer as a Turning Point, by Dr. Lawrence LeShan (now in its fourth edition). It was one of the most influential books on my professional and personal development as I live with a life-changing diagnosis myself. His discovery was that if someone used their time of diagnosis as the motivation to make long-desired life changes, they almost always did better medically. They didn’t just rage or collapse into sorrow about the diagnosis. They realized they couldn’t do anything about it. Instead, they used it as the opportunity to work on themselves. 

When I was a parish minister I used to say to hurting parishioners that it’s awful that your beloved wife, husband, partner or child may have died and you are now alone. But as that has happened, how can you experience yourself as a survivor who honors the memory of the one you lost by becoming a better person? 

Consider what you can neither control nor influence, and stop trying to control or influence those things. Do not fight, or rage against, the unbeatable foe. Instead use that issue to make yourself or your circumstances better. You will spare yourself a lot of pointless pain, by living in the calm light of a mild philosophy.

And that’s my sermon.

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You can learn more about Stoicism, and it’s related themes of Skepticism and Epicureanism from my four “Golden Way” videos. They are available for free on my YouTube Channel, which you can access through my website at www.csgiles.org.

Also, see https://dailystoic.com