Month: April 2020

In 1864, Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote a novella called Notes from the Underground. It was written as a response to the political and social ideologies that were emerging in Russia at the time. Particularly, it was a response to a novel called What is to be Done?, written by his fellow countryman, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, in 1863.  

Fun fact! What is to be Done? was also a novel written as a critique of ideas, those put forward by Ivan Turgenev a year earlier, in his novel Fathers and Sons. 

Thats what Russians did back then: write immortal literary fiction at each other.

Chernyshevsky’s novel argued for industrial production to be organized by socialism, utilitarianism, and cooperative ideals. It focused on the idea that man, if aimed in the right direction, would always act in his best interest. It would even inspire Vladmir Lenin and also the Russian revolution in the early 20th century.  

Dostoyevsky’s novel was aimed at disproving Chernashevsky’s ideas by showing that man is irrational, and therefore doesn’t always act according to his best interests. He showed that the utopianism ideas and collectivism that were emerging at the time didn’t take into account these truths.

Even though the novel might be political and social in nature, it was Dostoyevskys understanding of the human condition and more specifically social anxiety that makes it especially memorable. The character’s first words in the novel are some of literature’s most famous: “I am a sick man, I am a spiteful man, I am an unattractive man.”

This is from a review of the book from the Russian philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin. He describes the inner workings of Dostoyevsky’s character:

“What the Underground Man thinks about most of all is what others think or might think about him: he tries to keep one step ahead of every other consciousness, every other thought about him, every other point of view about him.”

Mikail Bakhtin

 If you’ve ever had anxiety before, you can probably relate.

Our mind likes to play tricks on us. Our imaginations create scenarios in our heads, and we can be led astray. We are driven by our emotions, an unfortunately, it means that we can suffer from them. Something John Steinbeck wrote about in East of Eden.

“Some people think it’s an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well”

John Steinbeck

Mark Twain had the same idea when he said:

““Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

Mark Twain

It’s bad enough that we filter life through our emotions, we’re also are hard wired for negativity. Together they are a recipe for unhappiness.

Ever wonder why after a handful of people give you a complement and one person says something mean, we usually only remember the mean comment. Same thing when we get our performance review at work. We don’t think about all the good things our boss has said about us. Just the areas we need to improve on.

Somewhere along the way we learned to be negatively biased. It’s tied to our evolutionary history.  

When an animal sees a predator appear, it only gets one shot at making the right decision. 

Negative conditioning helps us survive.  

We can touch the stove ten times when its cold and not learn anything. The one time we touch it when it’s hot, thats when we learn. We learn to pay attention to those moments.

A friend of mine and his girlfriend broke up a few years ago.  They were together all the time, every time I saw him, I could expect to see her too. I liked her, and we became friends. A few weeks after they broke up, I sent her a message. I asked if she wanted to get together. I had still been seeing my friend on a regular basis after the breakup, but I hadn’t seen his now-ex-girlfriend since. I still cared about her. I wanted to let her know that I thought that we were still fiends and that I was there for her.  I felt torn. I didn’t want to appear to pick sides. I even google searched appropriate ways to handle the situation. I had a panic attack. I didn’t want to seem cold, but I also didn’t want to overstep my boundaries. I felt like I was being nosey. I felt like I was intruding on their privacy. Would my friend be jealous? What would his other friends think? A hundred things popped into my head. My mind was playing out all the negative scenarios of possible futures in my head.

I became paralyzed with self doubt. I eventually reached out to my friend which wasn’t easy either. Was I blowing this all out of proportion? Was I just bothering him with my made-up problems? I told him what I had been thinking and he alleviated my fears and reassured me that everything was cool. 

I realize I could have just told the truth initially, but it’s not always easy. Maybe I figured a grander gesture might have meant more. Maybe I didn’t even think about it. 

Either way, the damage was done. My mind had already been burned on the stove. The whole ordeal had been uncomfortable enough for me to try to avoid similar situations in the future.

Even though that I knew deep down that none of those things were true, that I was misjudging the characters of those around me, I still convinced myself that the worst case scenario was the likely outcome.

It has taken a long time for me to overcome some of these anxieties. I’ve had to learn to not listen to my irrational self. It’s not easy and I’m not always good at it.

This is a quote that I repeated to myself countless times. It has helped me think clearly and logically. I have it permanently etched into my mind.

“You wouldn’t worry so much about what other people think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

It’s so true, and it’s another example of how our decision making ability is far from rational. How often do we think about other people? Definitely not as much as we think about ourselves.

Marcus Aurelius understood this too.

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinions than our own.”

Marcus Aurelius

So…Why do we do this to ourselves?

Psychologists, Daniel Kahnamen and Amos Tversky spent years studying questions like these.

They came up with the notion of “cognitive bias” and they would eventually win a Nobel prize for their work.

Their names might sound familiar. The true story behind the movie Moneyball, was based on their theories.

Here are a few of the common examples of their cognitive biases:

The anchoring effect: Relying too much on the initial piece of information.

Confirmation Bias: Focusing on information that only confirms existing preconceptions.

Endowment Effect: The tendency for people to ascribe more value to things merely because they already have them.

Gamblers Fallacy: Believing that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in fact they are unchanged. 

There are about a dozen more of these cognitive biases.

By using judgements like these, we create subjective realities from our perceptions of our inputs. They can lead us to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgement and illogical interpretation.

I stole that last bit from wikipedia. I don’t give a shit. I’m not in school anymore.

So Dostoyevsky was right. We’re irrational beings, and we can’t always be trusted to make the best decisions for ourselves. But by choosing to think instead of react, by teaching ourselves to be governed by our minds and not our emotions, we can overcome many of our minds nasty habits and tricks.

We all know that Dostoyevsky didn’t need to write a book to prove that Chernyshevsky’s ideas would fail, but I’m glad he did.

I love these old classic books because so many of these old writers were more than just entertaining story tellers. They have so much more to teach us. Dostoyevsky was a psychologist and a philosopher just as much as he was a author.

“Maybe the knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small. Maybe kneeling down to atoms, they’re becoming atom sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses – the whole world over his fence.”

John Steinbeck

Thanks for reading.

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Thomas Paine

It can be difficult to stay optimistic during times of crisis. The Coronavirus pandemic has us all feeling isolated, anxious, scared, angry and confused. Its especially hard when there is so much uncertainty and negativity.

People are dying. Many are losing their jobs. Some have had to delay their retirement. The financial markets are volatile, and the economy is in a recession.

Our government restrictions are getting more firm. We can feel overwhelmed with the information they give us, but also skeptical of their lack of transparency and cohesion.

It can all feel hopeless, having all of our decisions made for us. Forced to follow along, without an end in sight. It can feel like we have no control.

In times like these we are always told to stay calm, not to worry, and stay positive. More of those empty phrases that we hear that are easier said than done. 

However, these old adages have roots, and they connect us to some of the worlds greatest minds.  

This is a summary of one of the main principles of stoicism described in an introduction of Marcus Arelius’s Meditaions:

“All events are determined by the logos, and follow in an unbreakable chain of cause and effect. Stoicism is thus from the outset a deterministic system that appears to leave no room for human free will or moral responsibility. In reality the stoics were reluctant to accept such an arrangement, and attempted to get around the difficulty by defining free will as voluntary accommodation to what is in any case inevitable. According to this theory, man is like a dog tied to a moving wagon. If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or to be dragged.”

Gregory Hays

That doesn’t sound like a very encouraging sentiment, but it can be helpful when thinking about life’s events.

By accepting that a given situation is inevitable, it helps us realize that no matter what, no amount of whining, complaining, or blaming will change the outcome. 

Lets think about that wagon story again. If we focus on the lack of choice we have, we might become resentful and blame the wagon driver for driving. We might blame our parents for ever bringing us into the world. We might even blame the wheels on the wagon for being round, but none of that changes anything.  We still move forward, only we get muddy and bruised if were dragged along.  However, when we choose to accept our fate, we can focus on the positives of the situation. We can run. We can strengthen our lungs, build muscles in our legs, and we can become stronger, so that eventually, running along side the wagon won’t seem so bad.

There are positives like that in every situation. Every. One. You just have to dig for them. When people, who have gone through a trial or hardship, are asked if they would do it all over again if given the choice, most say yes. There is something about looking back on our past that makes us see through rose coloured glasses.

“Like muscles, a man must exercise his virtues and strengthen them, misfortunes are the means by which men exercise virtue.”

Seneca

I remember the evening before my dad died, my mom brought me into the hallway of the palliative care unit of the hospital. It was late and the hall was dark. A shadow covered most of her face, but I could still see the tears swelling in her eyes. When she finally managed to fight off the lump in her throat, she told me that the nurses said that they didn’t think our dad was going to make it through the night. I can still hear the sadness in her voice when I think back. We hugged. We took some deep breaths, and we let out a sigh of relief. We knew that there was going to be an end to my dad’s nine month long battle with cancer which kept my mom living in the hospital for most of that time. I remember that particular moment because, like all mothers do, she tried to ease her child’s suffering. She told me that she was grateful that our father got sick when we were adults, and not small children. She allowed me to think about anything positive about the situation. I was able to see what I had, instead of what I was about to lose. I’m proud to tell this story and repeat what she said. It belongs here, on a blog called What the Wise Have Said.

When someone tell us to stay positive, it can help to remember these words from a man who was a slave for the first 18 years of his life.

“Man is not disturbed by things, but by the view he takes of them”

Epictetus

If you’ve ever read Hamlet in high school, those words might have sounded familiar. Shakespeare must have read the stoics, or maybe he met my mom.

“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.

Shakespeare

How about this jovial, enlightenment philosopher.

“He is happy, whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent, who can suit his temper to any circumstances.”

David Hume

Another individual who saw the benefits of this maxim first hand, and on a large scale, was Viktor Frankl.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose ones attitude in any given circumstances, to choose ones own way.” 

Viktor Frankl

Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and the author of the book, Mans search for Meaning. It’s an autobiographical account of his devestating experiences in Nazi labour camps. Frankl developed a school of psychology called Logotherapy. Remember the Logos?

The concept is based on the premise that the primary motivational force of an individual is to find meaning in life.

That brings us to one of my favourite people: Jordan Peterson. He is a Canadian clinical psychologist, who gained attention in 2016 when he was criticized for his views on political correctness. I won’t go into detail, but he is a fascinating character. Worth checking out.

Peterson spent years of his life studying European totalitarianism. He was heavily influenced by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

“The purpose of life, as far as I can tell, is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant”

Jordan peterson

Fredrick Neitzche, zee German philosopher, came to a similar conclusion in 1887:

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” 

Friedrich Nietzsche

So how did we get from being positive to finding meaning in suffering?

Its all about responsibility.

“Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitual order.”

Jordan Peterson

There will always be things in our lives that don’t go according to plan, but we can teach ourselves how to respond to adversity. We can choose to think instead of react.

Being responsible is being accountable for our actions. life is difficult, and it’s seldom fair. If we neglect responsibility we can become bitter, resentful and nihilistic.

Look for the positives in your situation. They’re there. Focus your energies on others instead of yourself. When we compare ourselves to others less fortunate than us, we realize that we don’t have it so bad.

We live better today than the kings of the past.

When we shift our perspectives, we can start to think a little differently.

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become”

Carl Jung

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“The faculty of communication would not gain ground in evolution unless it was by and large transmitting true beliefs”. 

Daniel Dennett

How many times have you heard the phrase: “money can’t buy happiness”? It’s repeated so often that it probably goes in one ear and out the other.

It’s like telling someone to drive slower. They might not listen at first, but wait until they get a $250 speeding ticket. They might listen then.

So its not surprising that when someone tells us that money can’t buy happiness, we don’t listen, we figure we’d rather find that out on our own. We think it would be different for us. We still buy our lottery tickets, and we still dream about winning big and having all our problems melt away.

The idea is so prevalent in our culture that were reminded of it everywhere. Most villains in our stories are motivated by the pursuit of money or power, and things never turn out well for them.

We even see celebrities, who appear to have both, commit suicide.

It’s also mentioned in the Bible:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”.

Mark 10:25

Still we don’t listen.

We ignore empty phrases like this one because they are thrown at us without any context or explanation. We don’t think about what they mean, and we don’t always ask why.

In the 16th letter of his book, Letters from a Stoic, Seneca quotes Epicurus, whom he quotes frequently:

“If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.” 

Epicurus

No matter how much we fill our lives with extravagance and material possessions, whether to impress other people or whether we think we are satisfying our own desires, we will never have enough.  Seneca adds: “all these things will only induce you in a craving for bigger things.” 

He summarizes his idea with a metaphor. “When a person is following a track, there is an eventual end to it somewhere, but with wandering at large there is no limit.” 

What do we see around us today?

The internet offers limitless possibilities, we can talk to anyone, do anything, see anything, learn anything. 

We are buried under an abundance of freedom and choice. We have businesses with their hands in our pockets and their propaganda in our heads.

Massive companies spend billions of dollars a year and employ armies of people, who’s full time jobs are to figure out how to sell us things.  

Were caught in the middle of a tug of war over our attention.

We can even suffer from something called decision fatigue. The more decisions we make in a day can cause our brain to be tired. Our self-control wears down and we either behave recklessly or choose to be idle and resentfully accept the status quo.  

Seneca then asks us: “whether (this journey) is capable of coming to rest at any point; if after going a long way there is always something farther away, be sure it is not something natural.” 

The Scottish economist, Adam Smith, “The Father of Economics”, and author of The Wealth of Nations, wrote this in 1776:

“The desire for food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniences and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and house hold furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary.”

Adam Smith

Sound familiar? 

Studies have shown that people who make $50,000 a year are happier than those who make $10,000 a year, but those who make $5,000,000 a year are no happier than those who make $125,000.

“It is the poor man who’ll ever count his flock”

Ovid

So maybe next time we hear the phrase “money can’t buy happiness”, we will know why. We might think twice before making an impulsive purchase. We can ask ourselves questions about why we want something.

Is someone trying to sell me something I don’t need?

Does the thing I want have a limit? Is the journey capable of coming to an end at any point?

Will it create more anxiety with it in my life?

Will I be upset if the things stops working or breaks?

We can also try to remove negative things from our life instead of adding new, positive ones. We can choose not to desire things. We can focus our energy on helping others, or setting goals for yourself.

Here are a few more quotes that I couldn’t fit in, but are too good to leave out.

“Desire is just an excuse to be unhappy until we get what we want”

Naval Ravikant

“To the best of my judgement, when I look at the human character I see no virtue placed there to counter justice, but I see one to counter pleasure: self-control.

Marcus Aurelius

Thanks for reading. What do you think? Do you agree with me? why or why not?

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great”

Zig ziglar

This is a quote that I’ve repeated to myself when I’ve needed some positive encouragement. Quotes like these can have the power to completely shift our perspective. There is always the presence of fear and uncertainty in new beginnings, but the wisdom we can learn from others can reassure us and propel us forward.    

So Who am I? 

My name is Murray and I’m 30 years old. I’m a machinist from Regina, Sk, Canada. I love to read and learn. I have an insatiable curiosity, and like everyone else, I’m just trying to figure it all out.

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious”

Albert Einstein

I’ve been keeping a notebook of quotes like this one for a few years. I’ve filled it with words written by authors, poets, politicians, artists, innovators, scientists, and philosophers.  The wise men and women who have discovered truth the hard way, with thoughtful introspection, experience, and creativity.  

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it”

Winston Churchill

In 2014, my curiosity led me to attempt to read the 100 greatest books of all time. As of April 10th, 2020, I have read 155 books, but my to-read list grows faster than I can finish them. 

Despite my best efforts not to deviate from my list, I’ve taken some detours along the way. Whenever I came across an author who caught my attention, which happened more often than not, I would usually read some of their other works that weren’t listed on whatever “greatest book” website I happened to be referencing. 

If you’ve read War and Peace, chances are you’ve read Anna Karenina. Grapes of Wrath; East of Eden. 1984; Animal Farm. These digressions aren’t just influenced by the author either. I enjoyed 1984, so I read Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and Darkness at Noon. The dystopian genre even inspired me to revisit Lord of the Flies, which unlike in high school, I actually finished.  

Friends and family would also recommend books, so then too I would, sometimes reluctantly, deviate from my list.

“Who cares?” you might be asking.

Well, no one likely.

I probably come across as a virtue signalling snob who is waving his accomplishments like a flag. You might be thinking that I’m using the books I’ve read as a vanity metric or treating them like things I’ve conquered.

A year ago, you would have been right.

Since then, I’ve had to face some uncomfortable truths, but I’ve also come to realize some positive, life changing ones. I’ve had to examine why I was doing what I was doing. These books had become my identity, they weren’t just my hobby, they were all I wanted to talk about. I became obsessed.

So when I realized that I had been reading for all the wrong reasons, It made me think about what the right reasons were. I put aside the idea of conquering my list. I gave myself permission to be free and to explore authors and books which had formerly escaped my attention. I still have a “to-read” list but Im not afraid to veer off in other directions.

New avenues of wisdom opened up for me. I discovered inspiring thinkers like Jordan Peterson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both of whom have dramatically changed my outlook on life.

My new freedom allowed me to explore in depth a favourite topic of mine: Stoic philosophy. 

Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus have become major inspirations to me. Their messages are pithy and simple, but powerful and profound. Perfect for someone who keeps a notebook of quotes.

My notebook led me to the the right reasons I was looking for. A few months ago I started keeping a journal. For every journal entry I made, I would copy a quote from my notebook and write about it. It was helping me to memorize them so I could use them as mantras in my daily life. It was like having a quick supply of wisdom on hand that you could use in a pinch.  I found that the more I was thinking about these little bits of wisdom, the more I started putting them into practice. I was discovering truths that other people had to suffer to learn, or at least had more presence of mind and wisdom than I have.

Another question would continually rise in me. Who was I going to share this wisdom with?  My brother and his wife had twins in 2017 and it has shifted my perspective toward children.  I have become recently engaged, and the talk of my fiancé and I having kids of our own has become more frequent.  I’m excited about the opportunity to share old wisdom and new ideas with my own children. 

My father passed away when I was 21. I’ll never get the chance to know him like two adults can know each other.  Not as father and son, but as friends. I don’t want that for my children, I’d like them to be able to know me on a deeper level if they choose to. The rest of my family is similar, no one kept a journal or a diary. The only information we have about our ancestors are from photos or stories told to us by the people who knew them. 

Photos fade and people die, and unfortunately, so do their stories. 

 So I’ll keep this blog, like a journal, for my children to read one day, and for my family and friends to read now.

For anyone one else who happens to find me, understand that wisdom and truth are universal, and that even though the wisdom I’ve gained has been filtered through my lens:

“The things of greatest merit are common property”

Seneca

I am not a self-help Guru, and I’m not here to fix your problems, or to align your chakras.

I want to carry on a memory that might otherwise be forgotten. I want to pass on wisdom that I’ve learned.

Not everyone is willing to read Heart of Darkness to discover an example of what Carl Jung meant when he said: “No tree can grow to Heaven unless its roots reach down to Hell.”

Furthermore, with the ongoing situation regarding the Coronavirus pandemic, now more than ever, people might be in need of some encouraging words of wisdom. Shifts in our perspectives and reassuring words can do wonders for our mental health.  

So I want to thank you for reading and I encourage any questions or comments you might have. 

Welcome to What the Wise Have Said. 

Before I hit “publish” on my first post, I’m encouraged by one last quote:

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear”.

George Addair