The Daily Stoic - Jonathan Church On Terminal Cancer and Making Peace with Fate

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

On today’s episode, Ryan speaks to author and economist Jonathan Church about his brain cancer diagnosis, coming to terms with mortality through philosophy, the origin and nature of microaggressions, his new book, Reinventing Racism, and more. Jonathan Church is an economist and writer with degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University, who became a CFA charter holder in 2014. He has also published poems, a short story, and several papers in economics, which can be found at www.jonathandavidchurch.com. This episode is brought to you by Stamps.com, a secure Internet mailing solution to print postage using your computer. Stamps.com allows you to mail and ship anytime, anywhere right from your computer. Send letters, ship packages, and pay a lot less with discounted rates from USPS, UPS, and more. There’s NO risk. Use the promo code, STOIC, to get a special offer that includes a 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click on the Microphone at the TOP of the homepage and type in STOIC.This episode is also brought to you by Public Goods, the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients at an affordable price. Everything from coffee to toilet paper & shampoo to pet food. Public Goods is your new everything store, thoughtfully designed for the conscious consumer. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order with no minimum purchase. Just go to publicgoods.com/STOIC or use code STOIC at checkout.This episode is also brought to you by Trends. Trends is the ultimate online community for entrepreneurs and business aficionados who want to know the latest news about business trends and analysis. It features articles from the most knowledgeable people, interviews with movers and shakers, and a private community of like-minded people with whom you can discuss the latest insights from Trends. Just visit trends.co/stoic to start your $1 seven day trial.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Jonathan Church:Homepage: www.jonathandavidchurch.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/jondavidchurchSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We reflect. We prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. And we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare

for what the future will bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. So, what went through the day when you got your diagnosis, your brain cancer diagnosis, what? Just tell me that story. Okay, I can certainly, I mean, the day itself is, I don't know, pretty, pretty odd. Panges, right? Yeah, it was pretty ordinary, although actually, I actually hadn't thought about it, but now it's kind of coming back to me quite quickly.

I had to go in for an MRI, you know, 8.39 AM or whatever. And I just now remember getting involved in trough traffic. And you know, nobody likes to get in traffic. In fact, actually, it's probably the one, one of the few things that really disrupt my, you know, what you might call my stoic calm. one of the few things that really disrupt my, you know, what you might call my stoic calm. But I went in for an MRI and it was just, neither here nor there, it was pretty routine.

For the last few months, they had had some tests or a bunch of tests to try to figure out what this lesion in my brain that had been detected three months before was all about. They hadn't been able to figure it out. And so finally, the neurologist said, you know, we're gonna monitor it. So I went in for the first one

and it was near the hearing aid. I just went in for it and then I went to work. And I think as soon as I sat down, I had a call or a message and it was from the neurologist who told me to call her immediately. So, you know, I called her immediately. And I think the phrase sort of stands out for says you might want to stand out, sit down for this and then told me I had a low grade brain tumor. I had a low grade brain tumor.

And then just walk me through what to do next. But I think in terms of what's relevant here is just, I think the first word I said was congratulations. In other words, she had figured it out. We hadn't been able to figure out what was what caused the lesion. And I remember not really feeling anything. It was, you know, it made very well be that she emphasized the word low grade. And so I thought, you know, this was not too serious. It was treatable. And it was, I mean, I had surgery and so on.

But I suppose you would expect normally that when you're told you have a brain tumor, you might sort of have all these emotions run up, rush up and rush up within you. And I didn't feel a thing really. It was almost kind of relief to know that there was something somebody had figured it out. But then it was just a matter of doing what,

you know, what the doctor ordered and following up on the next steps and figuring out what I had to do, which I think I pretty much knew surgery was, surgery was coming. And so yeah, that was it. Went in for an MRI and then I went to work, got a message, I was told to diagnosis

and I said congratulations and really just kind of of went on with my day and worked. So it wasn't one of those things where you went in for a physical, thinking everything was great and your life irrevocably changed. You had some sense that something was wrong, but it was really a matter of what was wrong. Yeah, so a year before, while maybe not even a year before, in the summer of 2017, I was having some weird sensations. It was sort of spinning over to time, I shoe, and it would be like this sort of spasmic thing. It turned out to be sort of pre-seizure type experience,

but you know, it's sort of for about two or three seconds, I would lose control of my jaw, and I would sort of almost feel like I was about to lose consciousness, but I never did. But that happened a few times. I didn't really know what to make of it, and so I never really did anything about it, but I mentioned it during my physical

and the doctor thought it might, maybe it was an aneurysm or whatever and that turned out to not be the case late to December 2017. One day I had flu-like symptoms and it was just really bad so I went home early and then I ended up on the way back on the train to commuter train. It just got really bad and I got to the platform, sorry to be graphic, but I ultimately just heaved. In other words, it just came out, it's bombarded. I went to the ER because I was having really serious spasmic activity. I still didn't have a seizure, but we had a CT scan and that's when the lesion was discovered and that led to a whole bunch of doctor appointments and tests and so on.

I feel like that limbo period must have been stressful. I did a video about this, but I had a COVID test recently because of where we are in Texas, there was a delay. That's sort of like nothing will change, but you're waiting for the news, is the thing where the mind can sort of be your worst enemy. Yeah, so you're saying the interval between the initial, well, it was initially diagnosed as an old stroke, and then the three months later when it was found to be a brain tumor. So if that's the limbo period, I would just say that,

again, I would just kinda go on carrying on with my life, and I wasn't thinking about it too much. I just, I knew what I had to do, what I had to do. You know, I had to figure out what was going on just so that you can treat it. Because we would say in stoicism that focus on what you can control and not what you can't control. And there was something there, nothing I could do. The only thing I could do is just follow the doctor's orders and figure out what it is

so we can figure out what we can do. And other than just the annoyance of having to go through a battery of tests, I can't say I thought about it too heavily. Really? Do you think there's someone who's naturally soic or is your reading on stoicism sort of explicitly guiding you here. So, yeah, I had a feeling we might address that question. And, you know, I think, I mean, in short, I would say I'm pretty much naturally stoic. And what I mean by that is, you know, I've always sort of been more reserved in

nature and, you know and very introverted. And so, I don't know, therapists would have their own view on what that means in terms of, I don't know, whatever, underlies the nature of your personality or whatever, but I came to philosophy pretty early actually around, I guess I was 14. And I think the first book I ever read was the Republic, but the ancient Greeks were particularly fascinating to me. So I eventually arrived at the Hellenistic,

the Stoics, the Sinics and so on. And I mean, I haven't, I just lack a time in other things, but I haven't done, I wouldn't say I've done a systematic, rigorous reading of every word that the Stoics have written. But when I read the Stoics, Marcus, Epochetus, just like this is me. And I mean, it's just like they are articulating what I've always sort of, you know, how I've approached life. And was there was there anything specifically from the folks that was jumping out at you as this was happening? Mortality. That's something I've thought a great deal about in life in terms of coming to terms with it. And I mean, I could talk for hours about it. Hamlet is another great work that I've

identified with because of sort of the contemplation about mortality. But you know, you read in you know, there's this You read in, you know, there's this, I mean, Marcus Arulius has, you know, numerous quotes, if I recall correctly from about, you know, coming to terms with the inevitability of death and that, you know, it's just nothing, nobody can overcome it and that, you know, death does not discriminate. It's just, when I die, everybody else who's still alive is gonna follow me.

And so I have a, or really as quote here, he who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if you shall have no sensation, neither will you feel any harm. And if you shall acquire another kind of sensation, you will be a different kind of living being and you will not cease to live.

And I mean, that's one way of looking at it. In other words, when you're dead, you're not going to know your dead, so why worry about it? And the other thing is if you end up having some other kind of sensation, you're not dead. But these are sort of perspectives that you can have on it. And Epic Titus has an, you know, I remember one quote,

which I probably is a little more controversial, because it's sort of somewhat, attacks are sort of moral sensibilities, but you know, you talk about seeing your child die and obviously that's a very grievous experience to have. But if you just remind yourself that, you know, it's not unique in the sense that there are many of many other people who see their child children die, there are many other people also die, and that it's

sort of just in the nature of the universe or in the nature of life and death, that obviously you want to, you're going to feel strong emotions and that's not what we're objecting to, but it's just a matter of perspective that perhaps allows you to absorb the shock a little bit more softly or gently if you will. So anyway, just mortality, I would think stoicism and sort of coming to terms with the fact that you just can't avoid death, that was very, very appealing to me. I think the other thing is the notion of logos, however it is you wanna interpret it, whether it's God or nature or whatever,

but the idea that there's this, I guess you might call natural order of things, but things happen. And you can impact, you can impact, try to impact how they happen, but once they happen, they've happened. And if you get all out of sorts about, you know, whether it didn't happen the way that you wanted to happen

or whatever, I mean, it's just wasted energy. And so it's, there's this sort of perseverance in Stoicism that I think I've always sort of had Nidil latent within me, which is that, you know, life is a battle, it's a war, and you're always gonna have these adversities, and the issue is to just march on, and just deal with it, as best you can to the extent that you can and control it.

So you get up every morning and you work out, you get up every morning and you work, you just keep, you know, go with the grind. And you know, not to go on and on out, you get up every morning and you work, you just keep, you know, go with the grind. And I had to go on and on, so one last thing I can recall in high school, you know, I was a state champion in the pole vault and I remember morning after I had won this, you know, event and somebody class made it ask, you know, what did you do to celebrate? And I sent, you know, I don't know, maybe this was almost kind of presumptuous, I don't know, but I just remember

saying, and quite honestly, really, is that the celebration was in the journey or the in the training and in the performance. And there was really nothing else to do after that, you know. Do you have children? I do. I have a one daughter. Do you actually do that exercise from from Epictetus or Mark? I try to actually do it as I do bedtime with my with my kids at night. It's it it's easy to think about in theory, but it's it's tricky. Well, what do you do? What exercise in particular?

You know, he talks about actually sort of as he says, as you tuck your children in tonight, it reminds yourself they may not make it to the morning with actively doing that momentum or it with people you love. Is that is that something you actually practice? I find it to be both haunting and and very centering. Like I never whenever I do it to be both haunting and very centering. Like whenever I do it, I immediately ceases any impulse

to rush through bedtime. I do not actually. I mean, she's only just turned four. And so I haven't exactly started trying to teach philosophy to her, but You know, I mean yourself. I think I to me the exercise is as you is your tucking your kid in at night Because my son is for you know, you're laying there reading a book You know, you can feel this pull to like you know, I got to go answer some emails

I got to get back to work. I you know, I wanted to work out tonight before it gets dark whatever it is What I find when I do that exercise I go what am I rushing towards? I see what am I rushing I'm rushing towards death, you know, I'm rushing away from Five more, you know, I feel like whenever I do that exercise and then my son goes can we read one more book? Can we watch one more video? I'm like, are you kidding me? Of course, you know, like, why am I trying to rush through this? I'm rushing towards death. I see what you're saying. Yeah. And, you know, honestly, that is a struggle for me because I guess you could say I like, I think I, or I'm not the like, but I just am, you know,

sort of what I, so productivity, fanatic and, yeah. And as an introvert, I can, you know, you spend, you know, several hours with, you know, your kid, and you get, you know, kind of emotionally drained just as I would with anybody. And so, you know, it does, there is that impulse to want to, tap this up. Yeah, and, but, I mean, maybe it's so, it's soicism, maybe it's sort of paternal instinct or whatever, but yeah, I mean, if she wants to do one more story or one more, you know, I am pretty, I do tend to be lenient in that regard, but, you know, then again, you do have to be firm as well in the sense that, you know, you do have to keep to a regimen. To me, that's a little bit of stoicism too, as you're teaching that

regimentation has its own virtues as well. But yeah, sure. But yeah, I can't say that I've actually consciously thought of stoicism when I reach a moment like that. Although now I may very well do that. when I reach a moment like that, although now I may very well do that. When I thought was fascinating about your essay, about your diagnosis, is that, and in the headline, it's terminal brain cancer. I mean, obviously that was a few years ago,

and here you and I are talking. And so I remember I was thinking, like, how terminal is it, right? That was my, like, there's even that, that curbed, that episode of, of Kerber enthusiasm That was my, like, that's what there's even that, that, that curbed, that episode of, of Kirby enthusiasm, where it's like, is it the good, the good Hodgkins, you know, like he's asking, like, like, how serious it is. And, and your point was, like, sort of all brain cancer is terminal. There's no cure for it, but you were saying that the differences, like the doctor was saying, like, you have this growth, this tumor, this thing, and it is going to continue to progress until it

kills you, which I found to be so sort of haunting and interesting because it's like, that is also the status, the Stoics would say, that is the status quo for all of us. There's a line I think it's from Stenicae, he talks about some guy who's grabbed by the emperor and you know, drug off to be killed. And he says, you're dragging me where I was already going. Yeah. So yeah, my my understanding from doctors and some reading is that, you know, we just haven't found a cure for brain cancer. At this point, it's pretty well managed.

It's still very small and it is not as far as I know. I just got an MRI yesterday, but progressed to any kind of high-grade status and the doctors are pretty optimistic that I still got several years and you know that certainly is a relief you know because yeah, things I want to do like anybody else, but but yeah that is where we're all going but you know, if you can obtain several more years, then, you know, by doing radiation and going through some chemo,

which is what I'm doing now, just actually the radiation is over, but just got through the second round of chemo. So they detected an enhancement in March. Not that it had been, it was, it came really large, but there was some kind of enhanced contrast and so they wanted to get ahead of it before it, it becomes, it just gets out of control. So it was a proactive decision to go ahead

with radiation and chemo. And so now I'm kind of going through it. That was one of the reasons for the MRI, just after the second cycle. So yeah, I mean, I'm going to do all that and just keep living my life as well, even when the chemo kind of gets your little fatigued. But yeah, we are. We're all going to death. And I mean, it's not, I just don't,

I don't take it personally. How does the reality of it, it's like, like so I know as a at birth, I was also given a terminal diagnosis, but we find ways to not have to face that. We tell ourselves, though, this is in the very distant future. The difference between me going, hey, I have several more decades and you being forced to wrestle with several more years, how does that shape your day-to-day consciousness?

How do you think as a result of that sort of change in perspective. There is a very good, see if I bring it up, but there's a very good quote from Mark and Ceruleus on that. But basically, it just makes me say that, you know, I'm trying to say this without sound and cliche, but, you know, just, you know, maximize the time that you have, you know, you just, I mean, I haven't really changed my life in any particular way. I just kind of, you know, I, largely come to terms with who I am, but that's not to say that there is an day of day flux and you're kind of always rediscovering yourself in a sense, you develop new interests and whatever, but I'd say I'm pretty well anchored,

and so I just kind of carry on with the same sort of moral compass, but it certainly made me more conscious of being productivity, fanatic, and so on, of wanting to do what my inner nature, soul, whatever the word is, wants to do. So I guess you could say it makes it more proactive. I'm not sure if that's the word, but urgent, there's the sense of urgency. But at the same time, you also, you know, I don't want to imply a sense of anxiety about that,

because again, to me, it's like, you're, I guess you're trying to make use of that consciousness in a way that is able to make an impact on things that you can control. Again, I'm trying to resort again to the stoic language. There's nothing to do about it. If you get really anxious about it and you try to do too much, you end up undermining your your efforts because you just you'll have just get worked up anxious, distracted and so on. But if you're able to rain that in a little bit, it can make you more productive and more proactive without losing sight of the overall perspective of, you know, death is coming to us all. And, you know, that is coming to us all. And, you know, just continue to be reconciled

to what the world is presented to you. And, you know, that, that sort of thing. So, I guess it's just a more of a heightened awareness of what I had already been aware of. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the

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things to you, like everything happens to a reason or everything happens for a reason. And she's like, you know, what reason I'd love to know. But how do you deal with what's what seems like would be very natural feelings of anger, unfairness, fear. How do you deal with those emotions, which I got to imagine, bubble up, at least time to time. If you mean anger, fear, and whatever, with respect to the tumor itself, the cancer,

I actually don't, I've never really felt angry, anger, or fear. I mean, not me, it gets to depends on what you mean by fear. I mean, I think for everybody in the moments before death, I mean, when it really sort of is imminent, I think everybody is going to feel anxious to say the least. But I'm not a fan of the phrase, everything happens for a reason. I should say that it's a cool thing to say to people. And I'm saying that I agree.

And I, you know, if you think about, I was thinking, trying to think about, like, say, playing chess, one of the things that I kind of like to do and I sometimes have to exert some stoic discipline to rein in the addictive, you know, it can be addictive. But the thing is, you're trying to win the game. And so you're doing what you have to do to win the game. So there's a reason that you're playing the game. It's to win. But then it's either you're either going to win or you lose. And when you lose, you lost, you lost because, you know, you made a miscalculation or you were just playing a blip better player or whatever. And, you know, you can get upset because you made a stupid move and whatever.

But the fact is, I mean, it's done. The game is over, you lost or you won. And there's a reason everything happened in the sense that, you know, you can explain it in hindsight. But now it's done. it is what it is, the world can carry on. And similarly for any athlete, whether you're trying to shoot a bow in arrow or throw a football, whatever, it's not entirely random.

And you could say it happens for a reason, but not in the sense of design or that there's some active power behind it that's against you or whatever, it just happened. Like you lost the game for whatever reason and now you have to reconcile to reality and move on and maybe move, you know, when the next game. And with respect to the cancer, you know, I don't know how it happened. It just happened, some mutation or whatever. And now, I can't go back in time and change the DNA to get it back to where it was. You just carry on with the treatments that are available, and hope that it will extend your life as much as possible.

But then also understand that this is the reality that you're dealing with. It's like in economics, which is my sort of field, you talk about constrained optimization. You have a set of constraints that you're operating with and you optimize within those constraints. And that's what you do. The constraints are there. There's no evil, banal power behind it. They're just there. And then you try to optimize as best you can. You can focus on what you can control and not on what you can't control. Yeah, it's, I think, I think the Stokes would say sort of,

it's wasted energy to feel regret or anger, right? Or any of these things at the, at the reality of the experience you have. But there's also this moment in Marcus's life, he loses his favorite tutor who dies of something. And he starts to cry. And one of his philosophy instructors begins to talk to him about exactly what we're saying. This is pointless. You don't need to cry. And Antonynes' stepfather goes, you know, let the boy be human for once, you know. He says like, you can't, it's, people die, it's sad.

Do you let yourself have some of those experiences or had there been some cathartic moments like that? I just feel like there's this idea that stoicism is the absence of emotions. Yeah, and I'm not sure that's right. No, it's not. I actually have written some few articles aside from the Kuala S.A.

And one of them was entitled, why I'm a man who chooses not to cry. The point of the essay was basically that emotional restraint is not the same thing as emotional repression. So emotions are in the part, they're in the order of the universe, so to speak. I mean, we feel emotions. And it's not so much, I guess this may be Spinoza like language, but it's not so, it's very stoic too, but they're kind of related, but it's not so much that you want to get your emotions, you want to issue emotions as much as you want to develop the right perspective on emotions as Spinoza I think would say have adequate ideas about emotions and so yeah I mean

for certain I wrestle with emotions like anybody else you know it's not about being a robot but it's also not allowing emotions to distract you from developing a healthy perspective about the universities that you face. And so like, I think one of the things I said in the essay is that crying is sort of like a stormy, into-lude that doesn't really resolve anything. And it's not as if I'm incapable of stirring up tears. It's just that I don't feel this compelling need to burst out. And not saying that nobody else should,

it's just something that I have sort of grown into. And I think a lot of it is just about being reconciled to adversity and focusing more on what I can do about it rather than just sort of, you know, a chaotic release. So, yeah, that's sort of my perspective on that. Yeah, it's like Nassim Talib says it's about stosism is the domestication of emotions, not the absence of them. Yeah, I like that. So this idea, and I think you did everyone a great service when the APA came out and sort of defined this idea of toxic masculinity and tried to sort of shoehorn in stoicism as an example of that.

You wrote a great piece, talking about the distinction, I think essentially the distinction between lowercase stoicism and uppercase stoicism, right? The sort of stoicism of no emotions and the strategies that helped you deal with the most severe difficulty of your life. difficulty of your life. So walk me through like what this idea of toxic masculinity and so, and stoicism gets wrong. Yeah, this is part of a larger concern I have about, I guess you, I would say, excesses in social justice activism. And I would say the central concern I have in general, and I've written,

fair amount about this, is the idea, as you mentioned, shoe-horning experiences, individual experiences, into preconceived frameworks. And so with social justice activism, I guess I should preface this by saying, I'm not against quote unquote social justice issue is what constitutes social justice. In fact, I've had quite a history myself writing about social justice. I kind of came to this from a background of having written in support of various

initiatives. So I feel like I need to preface that. But the reigning paradigms of social justice activism these days sort of come from a framework that sees everything as stemming So, as I said, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know,

the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is, you know, the system is tendentially go down that road. But one of these so-called systems of power and privilege and so on is masculinity, patriarchy and so on. And it's not so much so the argument goes that it hurts, you know, whether it's women or boys or men themselves. And one example is taken to be this notion that men are taught in society to repress their emotions, be a man, and then that carries forward

into adult behaviors of being overly aggressive and competitive and so on. And I think, you know, if you really want to walk through all the nuances, as you can see pros and cons and you can see incident. And so I'm not going to disagree with all of that. But with respect to stoicism, it just struck me as another example of trying to take Another example of trying to take stoicism as it's understood in layman's terms, emotional repressiveness and that sort of thing, and she wanted into this notion of toxic masculinity. What I thought was unfortunate about that is it obscures this distinction between lower case stoicism and upper case stoicism?

I would argue that stoicism, and I think cognitive behavioral therapists and maybe other therapists would agree with me, Donald Robertson, I think, for example, stoicism is very much a healthy approach to dealing with adversity in life. And it's not just this stop cap, get through type of, you know, just get through war type of thing and deal with the emotions later. It's very much about actually dealing with emotions, but in a healthy way. And so it's the extent that you have this rating paradigm that is just dead set on, shoe horning all of this into its paradigm, you end up conflating a very hard distinction between unhealthy manifestations of emotional repression

and healthy manifestations of emotional restraint. I think that's right. I would say the other thing, this pertains to your new book, which I want to get into next, but there's almost this tendency, I think, in academia and in our culture to attack the flaws in everything, right? Like to go, like, here's an imperfection in this system. Here's a problem with this. Let's put a label on this.

And what we end up doing is we sort of knock away the legs of all these different things that sort of society and culture and just normal people trying to get through adversity depend on. And we don't replace it with anything better. So if you told me there's a system that stoicism is flawed for the following reasons, lower case or uppercase. I'd be willing to hear that. But what tools are you equipping a man in your case or a woman in Kate Bellers case?

What tools are you giving them to deal with a diagnosis like brain cancer, pancreatic cancer? It's not like these things are being replaced with a better system. It's sort of like Churchill's line about democracy being the least bad of all the systems. Like sometimes life just fucking sucks. And you don't like Churchill either. Of course not. Yeah, I would say that, you know, I say this carefully because there's a fairly large literature now, you know, and people have different

takes on it, and it's controversial. There's the cynical theories book, which sort of it says it's all rooted in post-modern philosophy, and it's successive generations, and I think that there is something to that, although you can argue here, there are various details. And so anyway, where this comes from, that is, social justice, whatever you want to activism, so ideology, whatever, that's one thing. And a large part of my effort is sort of, is critiquing that explanatory paradigm. But there's also a large literature on how to go about overcoming this. So things

like implicit bias, training and so on, which themselves are very flawed. And so to the extent that they are relying on these kinds of alternatives, I mean, I just find them also, Florida, and I kind of come back to things like stoicism and so on. microaggressions, that's another very popular notion. And it's based on a 2007 paper by Darrell Winsu and co-authors. And it sort of originates in a plane trippy cook, took in which he and a colleague were asked to sit at the back of the plane to balance out the weight. And, you know, I, not to go into all the details, but basically you can see arguments coming

from both sides and whatever about, you know, whether, you know, he should have, they should have asked the three guys, what white guys in front of him to do that and whether there was any intentional harm or whatever. But anyway, he wrote a paper about how this was a microaggression. And then that became, that sort of entered into the lexicon. And in 2017, I guess, Lillian field, the psychologies wrote a very comprehensive literature view, saying that this is a new term. We haven't really understood exactly what this term is

in terms of construct fidelity and parsing out various biases, the research and so on. But anyway, where I'm going with this is that one of the things he identifies is what, I guess, what psychologists call negative emotionality, which is that some personalities are more emotionality, which is that some personalities are more predisposed to take offense or they're a little more sensitive or what have you. And that's a factor that you need to take into account. Now, stoicism, for me, is a way of trying to deal with, you know, having a sort of, again, I always want to say this carefully, not to be understood, but when you are overly sensitive or negative emotionality, whatever it is you want to say, sometimes to me that might be an indication of just needing to grow a little bit more

maturing or whatever, like there are things that I would have taken offense to or get all worked up about 10, 20 years ago that I never, I don't get worked up about anymore. And so saying something like America is a melting pot or, you know, some other examples that are taken to be quote unquote microaggressions, just striking me almost as kind of silly. And if we're really getting worked up about, you know, calling America a melting pot, so to speak, and that that's taken to be somehow offensive, a micro-wish question, whatever, it just, like, I can't see a someone who is partaking in a sort of stoic approach to life can really see that as, you know, crucial to understanding how we address racial inequality, justice, one of the four virtues, you know, one of the things that we're supposed to be concerned with. So, yeah, I mean, I can go on and on about this.

No, no, I do, I do want to get into it. I think microaggressions are interesting because it's like, it, it strikes me as being pretty straightforward. It's like, are there such things as microaggressions, Ways that society is set up or practices or things that sort of disproportionately affect different minorities or different people? Of course, look, I'm left-handed. Scissors are mostly made for right-handed people, and that's an unpleasant thing I have to deal with. Certainly, there are such things at a much more serious level affecting different people. So it's like microaggressions probably exist. Should you as a person try to limit

the negative externalities or consequences of the behaviors and decisions and beliefs that you have on other people? Of course, this is your stoic duty of justice. Yeah. And then the third part though, is that are people going to direct these microaggressions or even regular aggressions at you? Absolutely. And that's where the stoicism comes in of like,

are you going to let this ruin your life? Or are you going to focus on what you control? And either try to live your life despite it or spend some of your time and energy trying to fix this injustice in the world. But being hurt about it and letting it ruin your life is not the solution either. Yeah, so in Lillian field's paper, he does say nobody should deny that racial insensitivities and so on are an everyday occurrence. So there really isn't any dispute about that. I think we can all acknowledge that racism or prejudice, insensitivity, and so on.

There's all sorts of things that we need to fix. So the issue with micro-progressions is that when you look into the literature, the conceptual framework that it given rise to, really does tend to have a sort of incoherence to it. And for instance, two instances of micro-aggressions, they call micro-insults and micro-assults, which, to me, don't strike me as very micro. But then there's also there's just a whole other set of issues with the research and so on. And so really the point is

that it's just a concept that's sort of gotten way ahead of the research. But that aside, that is you articulated what it is that essentially, you know, with respect to Stoas and how I would agree with that, I mean, I would say that in some sense, slits or insensitivities or what have you that I've encountered in life have often been a motivating factor for me, and not something that I just sort of gripped about and let it sort of get the best of me and sort of paralyze me. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

And I wanted to get into the new book. You basically are talking about sort of, it's sort of a sober patient look at this idea of white fragility, which I think is another interesting concept because is there such a thing as white fragility, which I think is another interesting concept because is there such a thing as white fragility? I mean, of course there is. I think the irony as someone who's sort of not, not a, I would sort of identify as center right or sort of a radical centrist, but as a result, not a fan of Trump, you know, I've noticed no one is a more of a snowflake than a Trump supporter in 2020. There is such a thing as fragility and white fragility at the same time if you take a good,

if you take a good person who honestly strives to be colorblind, who tries to seek out and address injustice in the world. And you suddenly redefine what racism is to them as in a much more sort of aggressive context in an academic context that introduces a whole bunch of concepts that frankly they're not familiar with. And you suddenly move the lines as to what racist is and you take behavior that previously wasn't racist and you make it racist and they have a reaction to that, it's sort of unfair to call that fragile. Yeah, so I, I mean, I don't really have anything to object to that. I would say, however, I take issue with the idea that there is something called white fragility

in the sense as, as the angelo herself tries to articulate it. I say in the book, I say in an essay, that I think it should not be surprising or unexpected that you, as you sort of very reasonably said that if you come into a seminar to talk to people about these sort of new paradigms and new ideas and redefining races and so on, and this is true of Rainyfield, to those who are uninitiated, that you should encounter resistance and objections and so on.

The issue is that you also have to be open to the possibility that you're sort of raining paradigm or you're redefinition of racism and so on itself is worthy of critique and that there are critiques that can maybe be made of them and that when Essentially as I argue and I think other people see,

when you dismiss essentially any critique as an instance of white fragility, you have this sort of Kafka trap issue where any objection is just taken as evidence of your guilt. And so in that sense, I argue there really isn't such a thing as white fragility in the sense that in the way that it's defined within the overall sort of academic discipline of critical race theory and whiteness and so

on. Frankly, I think it's something that she identified it really as early as 2004 in her dissertation because she was encountering a lot of hostility and resistance. And I would argue that maybe that's just largely in part because she was ineffective and that she was trying to figure out a way to explain maybe to shed her own responsibility. I mean, I guess that's something I would want to think about a little bit more, but it's not the first person to make that critique, but I have a lot of sort of reservations about the overall paradigm of whiteness studies and critical race theory, and not that I dismiss

it all out of hand. And to the extent that I have those reservations, I also call into the question the notion of quote unquote, white fragility that is derived from that. But that said, I mean, you're right. And I write this in the book that it's not as if we need to dismiss her out of hand as well. I mean, if we're not open-minded and willing to consider the ideas like Eduardo Bonilla

still goes notion of color-brined racism that she very heavily relies on. If we aren't willing to engage with the idea, and even if we're gonna critique it, but engage with it, then in some sense, we're dismissing, when I say we're meeting critics, dismissing things out of hand and it sort of becomes its own sort of Kafka trap.

So in sort of in keeping with stoic pursuit of wisdom, if you will, temperate analysis, the pursuit of justice and if you will, temperate analysis, the pursuit of justice and truth and so on, right? You wanna sort of cultivate the courage to reasonably critique what is widely considered to be kind of a reified truth, if you will, which is that see a critical race theory is the way to go and so on.

So really, I see this critique is very much in keeping with the stoic pursuit of wisdom, you know, temperate analysis, not keep becoming an online troll mudslinging and whatever, but really just conduct a very sober analysis and evaluate on the source of the merits. Well, there's a line from Crescipes, someone is sort of asking him, why is he not doing this thing everyone else is doing? And he says, you know, if I wanted to follow the mob, I wouldn't be a philosopher. And or I wouldn't have studied philosophy. And I think that's a thing I try to remind myself, you know, there's that twain line, you know, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, pause and reflect,

that's what been an interesting thing over the last couple of years, where the point of that is not to be a contrarian, right? The point of that quote is not always do the opposite of what other people believe. The point of that is to go to first principles and think for yourself, to go, why do I believe this? Do I believe this? Because everyone believes it or do I believe it that it's true? And I think that's the tricky thing about your critique of white fragility of, and then also the people who

just sort of reflexively go, racism is over, everything's solved. No, the truth is almost always complicated, and there's a little bit here and a little bit here, and you've got to figure out for yourself from your own research and your own thinking where you come down on all of that. Yeah, that's very well said. Actually, I was listening to your podcast with, I think, Joe London'sdale. Yeah. And I think the notion of being contrarian came up. And yeah, the issue is not simply to be a contrarian per se.

That's really not the issue. And I think one of the frustrating things about writing about this, I mean, Daniel does tend to be a little belligerent in her approach. And that can be a little belligerent in her approach and that can be a little irksome. So you can sort of understand maybe to some extent the acrimonious reactions. But the most difficult thing about this is that I really think that there are very reasonable critiques to be made, but I don't think that we dismiss critical theory and other, you know, these sort of ideas out of hand. There are pros and cons throughout. And just, you know, not to promote myself when I, but I recently had very brief exchange on Twitter

and comments with somebody who, you know, I had sort of, you know, I guess maybe the mood I was in, but I sort of dismissed Bonilla Silva as someone I didn't really hold in, high regard. And so this other person was sort of attacking me as saying lying, I was lying about my, my, about his book and whatever. And so, you know, it became a little acrimonious. And I was ready to do disengage because I don't really, when things get heated,

I don't really see a point. But at some point, the question arose as to pursuing this a little bit more length and so I proposed a exchange on letters of the letter medium so that you have more space to work this out. And, you know, this was, it turned out to be a temperate, sober sort of back and forth between me and what I learned was a sociology professor. so somewhat unsurprisingly, because this is very popular in that field that I understand it.

And you know, we had a very extensive set of exchanges, and we were able to come to agreement on various issues. We didn't agree on everything. But I think we ended up arriving at a position of really respect, you know, a respective, respectable disagreement, as well as agreement on various things. And I think we all came out well as a result. In other words, that initial real acrimony has exchanged really kind of blossomed into this very fruitful and progressive productive discussion about the pros and cons of things like critical race theory, colorblind racism, or ideology, the white racial frame, and so on. And I think that's really what

you're aiming for, the stoic pursuit of wisdom, injustice, and so on, is you're not trying to get into these mud slinging things on Twitter. You're really trying to engage in honest, good faith discussion. And I was sort of happy that that was able to blossom in that way. And the point is to show that, yes, you could acknowledge the pros and cons and then arrive at either agreement or respectable disagreement in the pursuit ultimately of racial justice. Well, I'd argue too that Twitter as a medium is almost inherently anti-wistom. Like, if you were to go back and talk to Marcus, really, there's a centric on me, like,

okay, flashing forward to the future, we're going to conduct the majority of our cultural discourse on a medium that originally you could communicate in no more than 140 characters, but was recently expanded to 280 characters. And this is where the intellectuals of our time, professors, journalists, leaders, uh, philosophers, et cetera, they're going to be battling it out in 140 to 280 character quips with each other. No one would think like, oh, that's a medium you're going to get to truth. So I feel like Twitter has unfortunately radicalized a whole generation of people on the right and the left that instead of thinking in long form, as you mentioned with letters, instead of defaulting towards finding common ground,

instead of thinking about complicated, complex truths, we think in terms of virality, we think in terms of dunking on each other, and we think in terms of being clever more than concrete. Yeah, I don't have any objections to that. One thing that always does come to mind is talk, Alexis Dei, Tocque Phil, Turing, talking about newspapers and the tyranny of the majority and so on. And I think those principles are as operative then as they are now and I think that the thing about Twitter is that it just heightens or just makes it more extreme and just further polarizes that tendency or further advances that tendency towards polarization. And particularly as because of what you're saying is that you're battling out in 280 characters or less. And it doesn't

allow you to engage in the complexities and nuances that really could serve to mitigate the tensions that arise when you're just sort of throwing these attempts to be clever. So you add on top of that the algorithm, right? So it's like, even what you're pulling on the theme, you're not seeing things that challenge you that make you think, you're not seeing what you discipline. Like I feel like if I'm sort of zooming out and evaluating my own thinking, I almost always leave Twitter more certain of whatever it is that I think,

and very rarely do I leave Twitter with anything that I'm going to go chew on. One of the things that really puzzles me is that is the frequency with which people mute and block each other. I don't mute and I don't block. And maybe, I mean, I can understand people have like hundreds of thousands of followers. I mean, maybe at some point you just got to, but I want to know when people criticize me, this to me again is very stoic. Like, first of all, there's a cool, I don't know, I think it's Marcus Relays or somebody who says, you know, when somebody criticizes them, you know, you, you, you essentially say, yes, and then tell them more about what they could critique you about. In other words, it's sort of a, it's not really needed to be even harsher, he says.

Yeah. And so there's that, but there's also just being open-minded. And, you know, for instance, this letter exchange I had, you know, I could have just immediately muted a block dispersion, but instead chose to try to engage and it turned out to be a very productive. So I don't mute or block because I want to be open to critique. And I think that's very much in the in the spirit of so so is isnicism as well. And maybe, unfortunately, that's not what people are in time to do on Twitter. And so you do get these echo chambers that you're referring to. So my last question for you, because I agree with you

that a lot of this stuff. And again, I'm someone who's written about this, talked about it quite a bit. I'm a big believer in social justice. I think it is the key still at virtue. You know, I believe what Marcus really says when he's like, you can commit injustice by doing nothing. You know, I believe deeply in this idea of the common good, but I believe a lot of the stuff, a lot of the sort of extreme stuff on the left. And I say this again, as a centrist person, is not even wrong. Like, it's just nonsense, right?

It's, it's the's the I'm I'm been very critical of a lot of academic philosophy. I think a lot of academic sociology and some of these critical theories are not even wrong. There's nonsense. Even if the person's heart is sort of generally in the right place. But I'm curious like how do you decide you're someone who has you know less amount of time to live than you might have otherwise expected. You have so many things to write. What I'm just I'd love to hear like why did you decide to write about this? How do you even decide what to work on and not work on with this kind of ticking clock being more vivid for you

than it is for other people? Well, boy, I want a question to end it with because that's something I think about often. And I don't have an easy answer to that. I just started off the new year, all of a sudden, like seven different essays came to mind that I wanted to write. And at the same time, there's basically three more books

I want to write if I can get the time. One is the one I want to start that I've been, this started the new year working on, which is, you know, it's in a reasonable shape, but I still have more to write, which is basically about stoicism and a stoic sky to, you know, love masculinity and death, I think. I forget what the... But there's that. And then there's two novels that have been in progress for years. And I got distracted from all that because I ended up getting immersed in this white fragility stuff, which really just started off as a curiosity when I was writing articles about social justice, some of them, only some of them, being critical.

And those being dismissed out of hand as instances of white fragility, which really just struck my curiosity and before I knew it, I had a book. But basically, I know the three books I want to write if I'm given enough time. And after that, it's just a matter of, you know, just doing it day after day after day, and trying not trying to rein in the, the desire to write every essay that come, every idea that comes to mind into an essay. So, I mean, really, I know the books I want to write. So I think that's a line I've been able to cross. As far as yeses, it's just I try to keep it within fields that I know something about

topics that I know something about and not get sort of cast the night and start a whole new, start a new and a whole new other field. But in a sense, you're just trying to gauge your interest day by day and wherever your passions tend to zoom in on a particular day, you sort of, try the verb is escaping me, but you try to steer them in a very productive, reasonable way. But it's hard. I mean, I just, like I now have about seven essays I want to write, and I've just said to myself, no more until these are done.

But that's hard. The three books I have, but the essays, they just keep coming in, and you just have to, at some points, say, say okay right the essays before you can think of other ones. And I don't have an easy answer to that it's just you struggle with it every day. No, and there's also this sense I think as a writer you just sort of you go where your heart leads you and you you got to I always tell people you have to write what you can't not write. Yeah, that's not always what you think it's going to be. Sometimes you just, this is something I feel I have to say because if I don't say it, somebody else won't. Yeah. That's right. I don't have any. Yeah. I don't have any. You captured in few words what I took too long to say, but yes, exactly. Well, let's close there. Jonathan, this was so great to talk. I, I, I hope you are with us for many, many more years. I hope I'm here for many more years, but as, as the Stoic

say, none of that is, is up to us and we're all mortal. But in the meantime, I, I think you've done, you've done great work in the time you're here, and I, I look forward to your, your contribution to, to Stoicism with your next book. Thanks for having me, and thanks for everything. And I appreciate the good sentiment and to your contribution to stoicism with your next book. Thanks for having me and thanks for everything and I appreciate the good sentiment and I send the same to you. So thank you very much.

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