The Auriga was an enslaved person with gladiator status charged with accompanying triumphant Roman Generals on their victory parade through the streets of Rome. Appointed by the Senate, each Auriga was given a relatively simple task: whisper into the ear of the General during the procession, “Memento Mori” (remember you are a mortal being who will die).
"Some years ago, at a gathering to discuss my books, a reader asked about stoicism, and I found myself discussing two of that philosophy’s principal ideas, “Amor Fati” and “Memento Mori.”
Amor Fati means loving one’s fate, and Memento Mori means remembering that one will die. I could see that this discussion made an impression, but I was still surprised when we met a few months later to see that she had tattooed these words on her wrists, one phrase on each hand.
I was reminded of this a few days ago when viewing a Bill Maher special called “Adulting.” Bill flipped into a spiel about the ubiquity of tattoos, particularly the practice of being tattooed with words. “What,” he asked, “if you change your mind later?” This got an honest laugh from me.
The matter might have ended there but for a question this week from another reader who wrote, “Dear Robert, What are your thoughts on stoicism for a good life?”
Here is my reply:
The ancient Stoics favored various practices or approaches to life that they believed would lead to happiness. For example, Amor Fati (love your fate) advised embracing change and accepting whatever might arise in one's experience. This sounds like a good idea, but you can't make yourself love what you don't love, can you? How?
In my experience, practices of any kind must give way to the understanding I have written about in my two books. In that view, stoicism is not a practice or an approach to life but the natural outcome of seeing that in each moment, things are as they are—including perceptions, feelings, and thoughts that no one can concoct or control. You see what you see when you see it. You feel what you feel when you feel it. You think what you think when you think it.
What might appear to be stoicism from the outside, when understood experientially, is only the realization of the lack of the ability to choose or decide anything.
In that view, apparent choices and decisions bubble up from unknown, unconscious depths, and "myself" takes credit for them after the fact.
There is robust evidence for this, some of which I have cited in my writing, such as in Chapter 6 of The Ten Thousand Things. (see below)
Video interviews with Robert Saltzman, author of
The Ten Thousand Things and Depending On No-Thing
This is brilliant. I met you, Robert, IIRC, when you joined the No Free Will (NFW) Facebook group, and you shared the last bit of that about the magnetic stimulation. This longer passage is one of the best descriptions of the lack of free will that I've ever seen, at least of its type - there's the dry philosophical stuff about causation, which is where I got into it, and other ways to grok it.
This excerpt also cleared up really well a confusion I've always had. I started reading about Yoga philosophy when I was a teenager and continued to imbibe Eastern mysticism for decades, but without really understanding how the different ideas fitted together. I sort of knew some of it would be coming from various Hindu perspectives and some various Buddhist ones, but that Vedanta/Buddhism split, the Universal-Consciousness/Impermanence (I could put it) is really useful.
It's true that we can't make our selves love what we don't love, but the beauty of 'us' - of society and education - is that new input changes our cognition, so the reminder to accept our fate can help us relax instead of getting upset once we hear it or see someone model that behaviour.
Knowing these things is one thing, putting them into practice is another, because of our habits, as I've just proved to myself while I was typing this. I noticed it was raining and dashed out to get the washing off the line, railing at the weather - literally calling it foul names! - and expecting it would take the piss again by stopping as soon as I'd brought the washing in. And it did. :)