Post-Stoic-Depressive Humanism
Many of my favorite philosophers explore the ideas of suffering and what it means. Emil Cioran, who I write about often, claims that life is a terrible thing, and we should all want to die: the act of resisting this desire is what makes us “meaningful.” The intensity to which he expresses these ideas in his writing is rather overwhelming, often bordering comical. Yet I love his philosophy because it’s so clear that all he is trying to do is come to terms with suffering — find meaning in it.
Others, like Schopenhauer, led lives of suffering themselves. Again, they try to come to terms and find meaning in it all, but what’s the point of understanding life without experiencing life? And by experiencing, I mean living life and enjoying it. The stoics, mentioning of course Marcus Aurelius, say that we should face suffering with dignity and pride. Though to all these people and their groups I have just mentioned, one common point stands out: Suffer and endure it.
I agree that it’s very important to learn how to deal with suffering. Life isn’t easy, that’s what every philosopher writes about. But you can deal with suffering for your entire lifetime, and that means nothing about how you will live. The question, therefore, is why focus on dealing with suffering when it’s also possible to focus on living a beautiful life? I suppose it’s less “philosophical” to explore those ideas — that perhaps ventures more so into the realm of self-help, which some philosophers do explore.
That said, I want to highlight humanism: the idea that our meaning and happiness comes from ourselves, by seeking happiness and helping others do the same. Stoicism helps us endure. It does not help us live. Depressive philosophy helps us survive. It also does not help us live. As a world at large, we need to focus more on what we can do to bring meaning and purpose to our lives — to live good and happy lives without needing to find means of merely coping with a mournful existence.
Something that bothers me a lot these days is the modern protest. There’s nothing wrong with wishing for an end to war or for equality. But what are these protests going to accomplish? There are weekly protests about a certain issue here in Reykjavík, and the government truly couldn’t care less. Nothing has come of it other than solidarity among the participants. However, imagine if these hundreds of people instead focused on fixing issues that they can resolve. What if they banded together and formed a group that advocated for workers’ rights? to help the troubled youth? to help new immigrants? to help refugees coming here? to support the impoverished? And so on.
Rather than building up their own society, people are latching onto ideas that aren’t theirs. Again, there’s nothing wrong with supporting such causes, but no real change will come from it. I dare present myself as an example of what change can be: how I’m building communities for my city, organizing communal events, and bringing people together and giving them means to express themselves and simply have fun and enjoy life. Of course we can still voice our ideas about the likes of world peace and equality, but my point is that voicing ideas, on its own, doesn’t change anything. Whereas a built-up community does have the power to change things on a larger scale.
This is all to say that my idea of change and moving past the ideology of “life is suffering, so deal with it,” is that we must start from our own, small communities and grow from there. What’s the point of changing the grand and distant world if we aren’t even happy in our own homes? What’s the point of screaming out to the world that “this is how things should be,” if we don’t even experience that for ourselves?
We should not be at peace with things as they are, living in a world that is unfair. But we can’t change the world. Nobody has that kind of power. What we can do is connect and unite the people around us, build a better world for ourselves, and allow the influence of that better, local world to spread.
I’ll end by saying that there’s nothing inherently wrong with protests like I described, I simply feel like such intense energy can be better directed. And I’ll point to The Consolation of Philosophy as beautiful reference on happiness.