Are you a wise person?
Are you special?
Do you have talents?
Are you better than other people?
Do you love compliments?
Many of us are interested in philosophy and self-improvement,
Not for the purpose of becoming wiser.
Maybe that's part of the equation.
But actually,
More importantly,
Is the reputation of being wise.
I want other people to see me as being a sort of superhero.
I want other people to think that I'm clever,
Intelligent,
Powerful,
Strong.
Since we are social animals,
And the Stoics recognize this,
We are social animals and we are rational animals,
We find validation and positive feedback from other people addictive,
Very pleasurable.
And with the age of social media,
Which hacks this innate drive to get the approval of other people,
We can spend hours each day obsessing over how other people perceive us.
Many of us will try to find the perfect photo and caption to upload to our social media account,
Almost like it's a school project,
Simply because we want to see the likes pour in.
Deep down,
We know that this is a fabrication,
An edited version of a tiny portion of our life.
But we take those likes as being significant.
They're important to us.
We mean something.
The ancient Stoics saw that this desire to get the approval of other people and to be seen as special and better is actually a threat to true wisdom.
Because if we are always chasing the approval of other people,
And we're always trying to satisfy their wishes,
We are living through other people's intentions.
And we are therefore willing to change our natural personality to accommodate their opinions.
And that is not something that is synonymous with wisdom,
And courage and justice and integrity.
In fact,
It's the opposite of that.
So Epictetus would encourage us to actually accept being seen as ignorant.
He would say that if you want to make progress as a Stoic,
Or a person who aspires to have excellence of character,
You must accept being perceived as ignorant or naive on certain matters of the world.
Be okay not knowing the recent celebrity gossip or the current political happenings.
Resist the desire to know every detail about your neighbour's new job.
You don't have to learn to be impressive anymore.
You can let it go.
If you want to increase the number of words you know,
Because you just love words,
Great.
But many of us learn new words so we can impress other people.
Many of us read encyclopedias so that we can tell people fun facts around the dinner table.
And Epictetus is telling us,
Let that go.
It doesn't matter anymore.
It doesn't matter if other people find you intelligent.
Don't waste hours of your life in an attempt to create an image of yourself that exists only in the eyes of others.
Instead,
Say to yourself the following maxim,
I would rather have deep knowledge of philosophy than shallow knowledge about worldly affairs.
And when it comes to the praise that you receive from other people,
Learn to detach a little bit from it.
Take it with a pinch of salt.
Really accept compliments from the heart.
Really see the intentions of other people.
If someone says,
Hey,
You're a great writer.
Really let that in and recognise that that individual who's saying that is trying to express something,
Something in their experience,
And it's something that is nice to hear.
And it's pointing out something important that you might have skill and it's encouraging and you can take motivation from it.
But at the same time,
If others are impressed by your knowledge and wisdom,
Don't fall into the trap of believing it wholeheartedly.
If you take it too serious,
You might start living a life designed to keep getting more of it.
Think of the difference between pleasure being a healthy reward and pleasure becoming the source of your life,
Your philosophy of life.
This would be hedonism,
Someone who lives for pleasure.
This is someone who just has pleasure being a part of a healthy,
Balanced life.
It's not that you can't enjoy praise,
But you don't want to live a life designed to acquire more and more praise.
The Stoics would call this an unnatural appetite.
There are certain things in life that can be satisfied quite easily.
When you're cold,
You can get warm.
When you're hungry,
You can get food.
When you're lonely,
You can get company.
But praise has no end.
It's an unnatural appetite and those appetites we have to be a little bit cautious about.
So the maxim here we can use is I appreciate praise from others,
But I also know it's only part of the story.
Just like blame is part of the story.
If someone says,
I am to blame for this,
Or this other person is to blame for this,
In CBT,
This would be a distortion,
Blaming or other blame.
Reality isn't that simple.
It's really one person,
One thing that is the cause of the situation that we find ourselves in.
If we start to unpack it,
Life is complicated web of cause and effect.
And so to round things off,
To seek the reputation of being wise is in itself unwise.
Since reputation,
If you remember the dichotomy of control,
Is out of our control.
Status,
Health,
Possessions are in some sense out of our control.
Things can get stolen from us.
Illnesses can pop up.
Our reputation can be ruined.
It's not within our control.
So if you care too much about one,
You lessen the likelihood of achieving other.
And so if you wish to truly be reasonable and wise,
Which is a great goal,
You have to let go of the desire to appear to be that way to others.
It's like a lot of us want to be more confident so that other people will think we're more confident.
True confidence isn't like that.
True confidence is when you don't really care either way.
Truly confident people don't think about confidence at all.
They just are who they are.
So the maxim here is I can pursue wisdom or the reputation of wisdom,
But never both.
What will you pursue?
