Learning From The Classics Podcast: The Power Of Choice

So i'm going to get started i'm usually quite prompt i think i say that every time okay the power of choice for everybody who is here and everybody who will join welcome if this is your first time how exciting i am talking today about the power of choice and stoicism this is these lives take a the form of a sort of lecture in which i look at literary works and i i connect ideas together using those as either a starting point or a reinforcement of the point i'm trying to make i'm a lateral thinker so i open quite a few boxes simultaneously then looking into each one i pull out various ingredients like a traditional apothecary and hopefully create some impact with the combination so hold on tight if you're a vertical thinker enjoy the ride okay so i'm going to begin by just recapping what stoicism is i am glad to have seen you and know that you're there i look forward to this all week if you enjoy what you hear today if you would consider sharing these lives with your friends on the app that would be great and i'm assuming we are here either because you've met me before on a live or because you've heard some of my work and i'm hoping that we can grow this group further by as i say sharing and listening to my tracks and reading yourselves so that we're developing our minds together okay so stoicism the emphasis of the power of choice by understanding our actions and reactions rather than external circumstances are determining our well-being so the core principle here is to focus on what we can control which is our thoughts and actions and accept what we cannot so this philosophy encourages reasoned decision making and the pursuit of virtue hmm what on earth is that so virtue definition of virtue in the cambridge dictionary a good moral quality in a person or the general quality of being morally good and what are morals morals are principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong and good and bad so that's all very well and good we want to be virtuous and we want to practice good morals but where do we get those morals from well there are many different influences in our lives many forces coming together to create the people we are of course the most influential force should be ourselves but we are only as children as good as the messages we're given so let's look at where those morals come from first and then later on today i will be talking about i will be connecting this with some of the stories one of the stories particularly that i read and that will give more of a rounded picture of what i'm i'm talking about okay so where do we get the morals from research suggests certain moral predispositions like empathy sense of fairness may be rooted in our biology and evolutionary history how interesting is that now there are on some of my premium tracks are about variation in natural selection and this is where we are a product of survival right we're here so our ancestors survived the ones that survived through natural selection the ones that survived ill health disease the ones that were strong enough now our ancestors and we will go on to be an ancestor so we have inherited traits that are advantageous for survival and cooperation within social groups biologically speaking so this may well be the code by which our ancestors survived so we have this ancestral heritage that is significant they're practicing morals their predispositions affected their abilities to survive and so we inherited those so to agree with beholden to our ancestors but that's where the cycle stops because if we are alert to what we have inherited and we don't like something that we have inherited it is our choice this is where the power of choice comes in to break that cycle and i will be referring to the brontes and the austins in a little bit regarding this because of course they both had different external forces put upon them that to some degree influenced where they were coming from when they wrote okay so we've got our inheritance of traits of morals got social learning so we're learning moral codes and values from the people around us family and peers essentially we've got perhaps a cultural influence where the norms and traditions of our culture play a significant role in in developing you know the development our development of our moral codes they can influence our behavior and decision making and then we've got individual experiences so the personal things that we have experienced successes failures encounters with different people and situations and they can also shape our moral development so or at any one time there are many different external influences upon us right and then we have this sphere of choice the stoic school which is this circle and in the inner circle we have our choice over our opinions morals values and on the outside which we have control over and on the outside is everything else all the things we do not have any control over so we do not have control over our ancestral heritage what's the the moral codes that have been handed down to us we don't have control over that but what we do have within our inner circle our sphere of choice we do have the choice as to which of these to adopt okay the power of choice so let's look at let's let's just go back and refer this to what i was speaking of the brontes and the austin so we've got the brontes with Wuthering Heights with Jane Eyre okay with Tennant and Wildfell Hall heavy dark reflective moody stuff and if we look at so we're going to look at the moral codes and messages behind what they've because people as i've said so many times before writers write for a reason they are bringing something to their voice okay um is a reflection of all the predispositions they have and that's what they're bringing and their moral codes and that's what they're bringing to their work so if we look at the brontes dark work oh what a surprise charlotte emily and branwell the boy they had this unique childhood blend of creativity but tragedy they were brought up in west yorkshire grew up in the parsonage where their father was a clergyman okay um um and they struggled they had difficult experiences challenges but we see that if we compare them to the austins lost my thread there a bit if we compare them to the austins formerly educated at boarding schools largely home-based education um quite affluence um quite affluent and supported and nurtured we see the difference coming out in the norms themselves so where you've got the brontes with the darkness and the brontes with the reflecting the illness they experienced as children the death okay of siblings the struggles they had we can we can feel that we can hear that within their work whereas whereas you've got the austins okay and we've got jane austin writing pride and prejudice for example they are more literary witty and playful accounts of society and you get the sense that they can afford to be casting aspersions so jane herself is casting aspersions on this she's making a societal account of what's happening and she's casting aspersions she's saying right well you know some of these characters are to be very proud and some of them are going to be a bit prejudiced and i am going to comment on the ridiculousness of it all now that comes from a place of so her morals are very much coming from a place of i don't agree with this and we've got the brontes morals and brontes messages coming across as this is real life and this is hard and this is difficult and we need to know how to deal with this whether to be stoic or whether to be good christians or bad christians or what to be and there's a direct dichotomy there okay so what what am i saying what i'm saying is apologies i lost my thread of it there what i'm saying is according to our background and experience we will come to a place either of literary um excellence or whoever we are whichever choices we make we will come to that place with some predisposed assumptions undeniable we cannot escape that so some philosophers argue that morality is based on reason and our capacity for moral judgment so we can see with stoicism that the focus is put upon us to make those choices regardless of those predispositions and that's where the power is and that's why this life is called power of choice so it's up to us to learn study and understand how to use our critical thinking skills to analyze moral dilemmas and develop our own moral compass which is the strength of studying literature because when we look at other examples that are recorded we can make sense of other narratives other than our own and we can learn from that we can practice that we can choose the elements that ring true for us and we can grow i'll look a bit more into the Brontes and Austens in a moment but i just want to talk about this sphere of choice so if we're attaching value to things outside of our choice we have placed that choice in someone else's hands if we are we are giving away our power okay so Epictetus said who is the invincible human being one who can be disconcerted by nothing that lies outside the sphere of choice and i think this is the point it's not always possible to be oblivious or to be able to filter out those things outside of our sphere of choice so health possessions wealth family friends there are many different influences and forces upon us all the time what i like about reading literature is there are different points of view there are different alternatives to how to behave in one any given situation by the characters and it is for us to learn from that and make recent choices depending on what we've read and what seems to work what doesn't all the while being aware that of course this is written from somebody else's point of view so stoics believe making decisions is based on reason and virtue and that's crucial for a meaningful life and the acceptance that we cannot change things beyond our control we must strive to hold on to our inner moral compass even though things beyond our control are happening to us or coming at us all the time and it's up to us to perceive situations in a way which impacts our behavior and impacts our emotional response to that so that's where the mastery of emotion comes in and i will be talking a lot more about that in the future it is a practice something that must be learned but the moral compass that we have is something we choose and that is in the sphere of choice okay so we attach our self-esteem to only what we can control so let's look at Helen in Jane Eyre Helen Burns so if you don't know the story of Jane Eyre we've got Jane Eyre she's a young girl she is parentless so she's an orphan she is taken in by her uncle who promptly dies and her aunt who doesn't want her her rich aunt brings her up and farms her off to Lowood school very quickly as soon as she can she gets to the school and she's bullied at Lowood school by Mr Brocklehurst and Miss Scatchard and all seems lost and then she meets this girl called Helen Burns Helen Burns is suffering the same bullying tactics and she accepts this calmly and quietly and Jane can't really understand why now Helen Burns is set up as someone who has an unaltering faith in God now it's in a way this is whether it's a Christian God or any other kind of God is irrelevant she has an unaltering faith and I'll talk a bit more about that in a minute it so happens that Helen Burns is sick she's aware she's sick she knows that she's going to die and she's suffering this bullying constantly as is Jane but her quiet faith and acceptance are presented as a more genuine and compassionate form of her faith so she's got the head of Lowood school Mr Brocklehurst and he is a self-proclaimed Christian so he is flying the flag of I am the right and the true and I have a good moral compass and I'm going to use it to beat you with Helen is also a Christian but she comes to her faith in a stoic way whilst Mr Brocklehurst and Miss Scatchard's and controlling regime oppresses and of course it's a form of hypocrisy so they use it to control the children with so when we look at this contrast what Bronte is doing is she is exploring the complexities of faith she's exploring its impact on individuals and society and she is not making the statement but she is leading the discussion what is the value of faith?

Is it necessary to have faith to overcome adversity?

And I would say yes so Helen Burns has faith even though she knows she's going to die her faith is I accept I can't change these things that are happening to me but I do believe inherently that this is my path and I will do good whilst I'm here and she does good she looks to Jane and she protects Jane and she shows Jane the love that Jane has never seen so we've got Helen Burns who is faithful has a strong faith and then you've got Mr Brocklehurst and Miss Scatchard who just believe and this is the contrast between faith and belief and we can see the same in stoicism I'll go on to that in a minute okay so Helen Burns quote it is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all that are connected to you what's that saying is it's a bit like the old bible saying turn the other cheek endure it do not repeat the cycle break the cycle do not commit a hasty action in retaliation and prolong the agony whereas Jane finds it very difficult to do that Helen says why then should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress when life is so soon over and death is so certain an entrance to happiness to glory why then should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress so going back to stoicism the circle the sphere of what we can control okay the sphere of choice we are going to experience awful things we are going to experience difficult people we have experienced all of these things and we can prolong that or we can say to ourselves that's outside my sphere of choice they are going to behave like that am i going to sink is this going to overwhelm me do i have a choice well yes you do have a choice is the answer to that the fury jane says of which she was incapable have been burning in my soul all day so she sees Helen Burns distressed hurt and then quickly coming to an acceptance of that and moving herself distancing herself internally and Jane cannot let it go she's annoyed she's furious the fury of which she was incapable that's telling Jane is saying Helen is incapable of being annoyed she's just so calm what's the matter with her i will be angry for her as a stoic character as a stoic individual i get that it is difficult for people to see when you can absorb contain and process quietly a very difficult situation and everyone around you is going absolutely crazy if it is something that is unjust unjust behavior to yourself it will it will create that reaction for those who are not capable of containing that reaction it doesn't mean you're not feeling the sting it is very difficult to be a highly empathetic person and with your empathy also a stoic it's very difficult because you feel intensely but you internalize it to a degree and then you step away and in time you process it in your own way society wants to see drama society is addicted to action in any dramatization you see there has to be a call to action there has to be pain,

Torture,

Suffering more so these days unless you watch Murder She Wrote of course which is a big favorite of mine so it's difficult to be highly empathetic and yet stoic but it's essential for prolonged well-being I would argue because once you've let that emotion go in an elevated and dramatic way you've lost control and mastery you've given something away to the experience you've allowed it to take control over you so Helen is not oblivious to the injustices that girls suffer at Lowood okay she understands there's injustice she understands they're all suffering she has a quest for love and happiness and peace,

Inner peace and she being a Christian believes in God's ultimate judgment my take on that is or I can substitute that with karma the truth will out justice will play its hand in good time and that's what we're talking about a gracious acceptance of what we cannot change there are some things we cannot change and the question is should we keep trying to change that?

Should we give our energy to that over and over and over again in the vain hope that it will change I would suggest not sometimes things are not going to change so we're talking about when we looked at Helen Burns and we looked at Mr Brocklehurst,

Miss Scatchard we're talking about faith faith and belief Helen has faith she has faith in something beyond herself and she knows that the only control she has is to believe and master her outward expression of what she's feeling so that she can find some way to deal with it herself through faith okay so is it necessarily is it necessary to believe in every aspect of that thing to practice that thing?

This is the question do you,

If you're a Christian have to believe in every element of Christianity?

I would suggest no I would call myself a Christian but there are very many things very many times I've taught Sunday school or gone into church and I do not agree with the things that I've seen and not all the words ring true is faith the same as belief?

I have faith that there's a higher universal order that there's something spiritual that is overseeing us that involves trust and commitment often in the face of adversity trust and commitment I have trust and commitment in my ability to manage what I'm feeling and my faith that something beyond me will make it right whereas if I just merely believed I would just mentally accept that something is true I believe in God I mentally sign up to that and that is my that is who I am I carry that label or that's not me so it's faith versus belief and there has to be an element of faith in Stoicism we need to trust that when things go wrong our commitment to our inner moral compass and what we can control our opinions and inner sanctum will protect us that is the inside of the sphere and I think that's what I'm getting at here the lessons learned by the characters we come across when reading,

Listening to this classic literature the writers we listen to will be slightly different for each of us so some of the messages that you get from stories I might not get it depends on who is coming to the story at what time from which place some of my listeners cannot listen to The Talent of Wildfell Hall whether they have direct experience of that themselves this abuse from Arthur Huntington to his wife Helen or they watch their parents go through it or they're just too sensitive to it some cannot process that and they detach themselves from that and they will not expose themselves to that that's a choice that's a power of choice there are similar reactions to Wuthering Heights and the way that Kathy demeans Heathcliff her refusal to inhibit her emotions and own her own feelings and Heathcliff's abuse of Isabella and his family son very dark gothic novel many people can't listen to that that is the power of choice and an understanding that these novels will be written these experiences will happen and it's up to us to protect our inner sanctum what we need to remember is the study of literature and word spoken and thought by those who have walked the earth before us is beneficial even considering alternatives to our own narrative even considering the tough stuff it's all relevant but it's up to us to maintain our own moral compass and edit our experiences our personal experiences and that's where the beauty lies okay so with this literature it's reaffirming and understanding how little we know about ourselves because really how much do we have to learn how much can we learn from others who have already speaking about the ancestral heritage people that have already done it why would we ignore them and we can build on their work we can see their vital efforts as foundations in our own lives so actually we we are the lucky ones we have the examples and it's up to us on how to look at them and what to take from them so i'm going to end today on an anecdote i'm going to use an example of conducting an experiment in the kitchen because we need to relate this school of thought to our own lives and what we're doing now so let's use an example of conducting an experiment in the kitchen what can we do to limit the variables so we can make informed predictions let's look at it in a scientific way to limit the variables so we can make informed predictions so here we are in our sphere of choice and we are going to attempt an activity and we are going to limit the things that could go wrong so that we can make some kind of a prediction about what might happen and therefore to a degree determine the outcome so what is within our control what is within our sphere of choice well we have prior experience we have control over what experience we've had before we start cooking how we measure the ingredients what the temperature of the oven is okay these are all control variables and sorry these these are all things that we can keep within our control then we've got controlled variables so we can experiment every now and then we can look outside of the circle and say okay well maybe i'll add an ingredient in a controlled way but i understand that this is something new and it is outside of my sphere of choice i've chosen to try something but i understand that i can't quite predict the outcome because i've never done it before and there comes the faith i have faith i've done everything i could to prepare for this i've measured the ingredients i've set the temperature i've done this before i've read up on it and at that point i can choose to believe if this thing if this cake is going to rise or it's not if it's going to work or it's not okay i can choose to believe but my faith is unerring i know i've done everything i can to prepare but i also know that i've tried something new now i'm going to choose to believe and of course if you're a positive person like me you will believe it's going to work and it doesn't always but then suddenly there's a knock on the kitchen door it fires open and somebody comes in to disturb you they need something immediately oh no the phone's ringing ah guess what the flour got wet now what?

It's ridiculous to concern yourself with those external pressures there's nothing you can do about them they are outside of your sphere of control so if the cake does not work if the cake does not rise if it doesn't taste good do we attach our self-esteem to all those things that went wrong?

No because we have faith that we did the best we could we have faith yeah we understand that we made the right choices but some things were just out of our control we do not attach our self-esteem to those things Stoicism is a little bit about the method it's about defining our time and space ensuring that we do our best that we are virtuous that we try to lead a virtuous existence but everything beyond that we cannot control and we understand that and we let it go and that's freeing in itself as long as we're true to the process we will exist in our authentic self I've talked for a long time today as usual I'm just going to check any comments so if um hi Robin hello Mohammed this is timely great good thank you Margaret what a nice thing to say okay so I hope you all got something from that I did qualify it by saying I open a lot of boxes and throw a lot of things in but I do try and always connect to the literature I do always push that and the reason I'm pushing that agenda the reading the referring to works classic works is because if we use those foundations we are already one step up on the ladder in our lives we are already ahead and at that point it's our choice whether to be a Helen Burns or to be a Jane Eyre and certainly not to be a Mr Brocklehurst if you haven't listened to Jane Eyre please check out my tracks I've been re-listening to Wuthering Heights and I must say I struggled with it some at points but I'm coming to see that there's great power in the struggle between antagonists and that's really what Wuthering Heights is about so what am I saying here?

I'm saying that I'm very,

Very grateful you're all here keep listening next week we are going to continue with the Stoic theme but I'm saying just consider when you are listening to the various characters that come up in the stories I read including my own just try and approach it with an objective mindset and understand each of them is existing for a purpose and that purpose is for us to greater understand ourselves if you come to literature with that in mind or any form of learning you cannot take nothing away there's always something to be gained and that's my message for today the power of choice this is our choice to immerse ourselves in the lessons learned by many of those that have walked the earth before us if you miss any lives you can catch up on them with my recordings my live playlist I'm here every Friday 3pm GMT and it's so exciting there are some of you from all over the world how exciting and I shall see you next week