Life should not be about perpetual pain. Life is not pain management. Life in its natural form is pure joy and pure bliss. Anything else is disease and illness. Unhappiness, stress and depression, feelings of emptiness despite the money and the wealth are all what is called mental illness. And that is what billions of people are drowning in daily.
Life really should not be this way. What caused it? What is the proposed sound remedy? This article articulates or rather proposes a path out of mental pain, suffering, stress and depression.
I find it hard to begin? Where is the beginning? Let us begin from the dawn of history, the dawn of human beings.
Stoicism is important for today in two fronts. First thing realize about Stoicism is that it has been a way of life since the dawn of history. People practiced Stoicism from the very beginning. Even stone age people practiced Stoicism. Stoicism is opposite to Existentialism and psychological movements that took center stage of life during the 20th century. Existentialism as founded by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre is about a person who find himself or herself disconnected from everything else and now out of himself or herself weaves a world that he or she exists within. It is like a spider that out of itself weaves a web that it lives within to the exclusion of other people.
People today are feeling lonely as more and more people are now born and growing up in a bonded community. It is unlike past eras where people have solid historical roots and deep community and affection.
Today people move around. A person cqn buy a house in a particular community and you find that person after some three years or five years selling that house and go start life somewhere. This sort of life is common these days and is the root causes of lack of community roots, community bonding and affection that is necessary or has been there with humanity since the dawn of history. What you get are individuals who are rootless and having no anchor, their lives lacking depth and gravitas.
What I have just described above was the reason for the birth of the existentialism movement. It was a solution to this sort of life. That a person can, by himself or herself, weave a world around which he or she can live within. Existentialism was put forward as a remedy for despair. The existentialist individual he find himself or herself disconnected from everything and in despair and gloominess. The individual then by reason chooses not to despair.
The unsoundness of existentialism is the fact that human beings are not just reasoning persons. There is actually no high premium in reason. There are powerful forces that simply sweeps off reason and reason find itself defeated. The basic example is the issue of sex, sex appeal and sex seduction. How many reasonable people in high positions found themselves swept across by sex seduction, the power of sex to the detriment of their careers, political life or business life?
What about the issues of spirituality? If you are not in the know most of what we know about Western traditions and customs is based on Christian spirituality.
So you can see why existentialism has no firm legs. Its legs are weak and can not walk very far. You simply cannot live your life reason. Reason in child. No power. Take for example, a gentleman that got fired from his job, and later on he is divorced. That gentleman will not use reason to keep himself going. Depression and ultimately perhaps, suicide will take over him, despite the fact that he reasons that “I will be alright” or “I am strong”. No matter what he thinks (which is reasoning) he will not defend himself from the tsunami of depression coming for him.
Let me give a practical example. Chris Cuomo is a wonderful journalist star. He has been number one at CNN. But when in 2022, he found himself in the situation where he got fired from CNN, and losing a $6 million job, because of the side work he was doing trying safe his brother Andrew Cuomo who was Governor of New York but was facing a barrage of sexual harassment allegations from her girl staffers, Chris Cuomo went into severe depression. We get from his Cuomo of the Counch confessions that he resorted to drinking and employed the service of a therapist to safe himself from completely falling apart under depression. And who cannot acknowledge that Chris Cuomo is a strong reasoning person. Reason in itself has no power. That is where existentialism is lacking.
That brings me now to psychology. Psychology is wholly not science, we all should know that, what amounts to psychology is about speculations. Sigmund Freud speculated that at the core of human beings is sex and we want it all. Albert Ellis following along the footsteps of Freud speculated that sex without guilt. Another psychology graduate Hugh Hefner established the Playboy empire to create a movement where people are just playboys and playgirls having fun and enjoying sex everywhere and with everyone all the time.
Then from there we also have positive thinking, with the book the Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale selling ten of million copies across the world.
These are the branches of approach to life that took center stage during the 20th century. While one acknowledges some level of truth about them tet they do not tell the whole story, and we are here deep into the 21st century reaping the fruits from that past 20th century era. What do we get? Mental illness. Mental health breakdowns, stress and depression as well as anxiety, neurotic people, lack of affection and deep felt love among the people who are in a relationship. That is where we are.
We have lost connection with history and sound philosophy. In opening this article I made a remark that Stoicism can be seen in two ways. First thing I already said, that it has been a way of life since the dawn of history. The second thing I have not stated. So let me state it here as a I conclude. The second thing about Stoicism lies in its essence. At the core of Stoicism is a life lived in accordance with nature, or what Zeno said, the cosmic world.
In order to get a solid grip of Stoicism, it’s essence, it’s power to heal all absurdities of life, it medicinal value to evaporate stress and depression in your life get this audio program. It is remarkable and serves as a solid introduction to Stoicism, that inner peace giving philosophy. Throughout history before the 21st century, people lived depression and stress free lives, and enjoyed the tranquility of daily peace.
The audio program has been distilled from the solid classical teaching of the masterful historian Eugen Weber who was professor of History and Dean of College of Letters and Science at the University of California at Los Angeles. It is a rare remarkable distillation of his mountain of work. And is developed with the view of serving as a solid background and history stoicism; what is it about and how it can be put into practice in your life. It presented in the simple yet powerful voice of the master historian himself not a voice over artist.
