On the Stoic harmony with nature
I was asked to comment on the following passage from the Enchiridion of Epictetus. While I do not consider myself a Stoic due to my wider appreciation of Greek culture (which includes [early] Stoicism), I still have several things to say on this topic.
4 Whenever you are about to start on some activity, remind yourself what the activity is like. If you go out to bathe, picture what happens at a bathhouse—the people there who splash you or jostle you or talk rudely or steal your things. In this way you will be more prepared to start on the activity, by telling yourself at the outset: “I want to bather, and I also want to keep my will in harmony with nature.” Make this your practice in every activity. Then, if anything happens that gets in the way of your bathing, you will have the following response available: “Well, this was not the only thing I wanted; I also wanted to keep my will in harmony with nature. I shall not do that if I get angry about what is happening.”
At its core, to live in harmony or accordance with nature is to have a bigger picture view of your life and of the cosmic life in general. It is to appreciate the place while being mindful of the space.
The balanced view
In Greece we have a saying that comes to us from antiquity: “nothing bad not intermixed with good” (ουδέν κακόν αμιγές καλού). A liberal translation is “there is no pure evil in this world as everything we find that is bad always has some good mixed into it.” The opposite is also true, namely, that all good things have some bad inherent to them.
This is a worldview of balance. Phenomena are neither good nor bad once considered holistically. The cosmos as such is neutral. Or, when looking at the particulars, the degree of good or bad matters as do the prevailing conditions which together constitute the case at hand.
In our everyday affairs we tend to think of actions in terms of the binary of good and evil. It is how many of our world’s religious precepts are framed. However useful this classification may be for day-to-day events, it is not helpful outside the narrow confines of human institution; of the process of enacting rules by which we regulate our shared experiences.
We may call a tsunami “bad”, for example, due to all the loss it brings about. Though there is also one or more lessons to be learnt about how best to cope with the challenges we face on our planet: where to build settlements, how to monitor relevant indicators in order to improve our preparedness, what is the significance of solidarity in the face of such calamities, and so on. These may be considered “good” once we zoom out from the immediate emotional reaction to the catastrophe.
By the same token, drinking water is “good” for each of us as it sustains our life. Though it is not purely so, as we can actually harm ourselves by drinking too much of it too quickly. That would then make it “bad”. It is no coincidence that the symbol of medicine since antiquity is the venomous snake: the difference between poison and remedy is one of degree.
Thus, the ancient wisdom of the world as admixture readies us for a life of moderation. When so-called “good” things happen, we are content but do not lose sight of how the world works. When the “bad” things occur, we may feel sad though, again, admit that sorrow is not all there is.
Couched in those terms, we may consider the diversity among people. Some will be polite and friendly, other noisy and rude, and others still will seek to harm us. Everything is possible out there and everyone will be different depending on the particularities of their situation. If we expect everybody to be strictly benevolent or malevolent, then we do not recognise what nature teaches us: it is mixed, it is nuanced, it is ever-changing in its particulars.
It is in this spirit that we may consider the Delphic maxim “nothing in excess” (μηδέν άγαν), which would loosely translate as “nothing in deviation [of the middle way].” Whatever we do, we must be of the mind that it can be inwardly corrupted or turned into its opposite if done to a degree that is not appropriate in the given case.
The organic view
In nature things happen when they are meant to. Consider how trees blossom when their spring arrives, bears hibernate during winter, rain drops when there are clouds, and so on. No phenomenon can be decoupled from its fundamentals and, by extension, no event can be independent of the totality of phenomena. The same is true for the human condition, though we may lack that kind of patience in our deeds to see how some eventuality is the result of dynamics that build up over time.
A person may only be ready when the conditions are right. A boy is a man when he is physically mature. A musician can perform skilfully after years of practice. An athlete may compete at the top of their sport when their fitness is optimal. One cannot simply wish for something to happen and it is just made manifest, no matter how much they believe in it: the prerequisites must be satisfied.
This is particularly important for our outlook. It is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, as outlined in the previous section, by obsessing about a specific outcome, while not considering the propriety of the moment. For example, to tell ourselves “I only want to do THIS in order to be happy and nothing else matters” where “THIS” is the item of our desire. It is narrow-minded because it assumes the object of the wish to be necessarily good: it sees it in a vacuum. As such, it also labours under the belief that it knows more about the case than it actually does, as it has stripped it of its details. And, finally, it is emotionally negatively disposed to the workings of the world which are independent of our plans yet whose eventualities we may ultimately like.
I remember when I was a teenager how all I wanted was to become a professional football (soccer) player. Nothing else mattered to me as a career path and I had what it took in terms of talent and work ethic to realise my dream. An injury combined with the financial situation forced me to quit, which I did not like at the time though eventually grew to appreciate the value of: I took a completely different path that I had not anticipated but which ultimately brought with it fulfilling experiences. In the grand scheme of things, the injury was neither good nor bad. What I learnt in the process is that nature shows us how little we really know about ourselves, our plans, and our ability to make them happen. To become knowledgeable in this regard is the sign of wisdom.
By taking an organic approach to life the way plants grow when they must, we are grounded in the bigger picture view of the world as one of admixture. It then is more likely that we do not get disturbed when our ambitions are not realised, for we have already internalised the relevant lessons and admit to our relative ignorance. What we desire the most may ultimately be what we do not like or indeed need: let the world reveal as much.
In this light, we can think of the Delphic maxim of “certainty is beside ruin” (εγγύα παρά δ’Άτα), which literally means “assurances stand next to Ate (goddess of ruin)”. If we are convinced that we can force things to happen, if we do not pay attention to the prevailing conditions, if we overestimate our ability to enforce our will in the moment, and, if in other words, we do not recognise how our immediate milieu is constituted, we are going to harm ourselves (or others).
The adaptable view
The Greek word for “nature” is “physis” (φύσις) which refers to things that grow. They develop organically, as noted above, and have a life of their own that is couched in terms of the cosmic continuum of life: they are all coexistent and interdependent. To live in accordance with nature, then, is to go with the flow of the prevailing conditions, else to be adaptable. When trees cannot grow directly upward because some obstacle is in their way, they grow sideways, circumventing the problem.
Compare this to the attitude of forcing things to happen, of declaring our wants, and trying to implement them regardless of the prevailing conditions. If the tree insists on only going straight up, then it will perish. Same principle for humans. What would my life be like had I insisted on becoming a footballer and did not show the requisite adaptability to try new things and to ultimately find value in them? I would probably be miserable the whole time, as I would be fighting against forces I could not overcome, never to realise my goal, and never to have the necessary openness to take in what the world was showing me.
In this regard, any specific plan is not worth clinging on to: let whatever transpires happen in its natural life cycle. There can be a general direction of the balanced life, in accordance with the aforementioned, though not of a series of prescribed experiences that necessarily have to unfold within predefined boundaries. This goes for individual projects and relationships. They all come and go.
Adaptability is the flip-side of sustainability, another quality of nature. Things not only happen when they are meant to happen, they also have a cycle that is not self-annulling. If we force things to happen, we will not only fail to meet the prerequisites, but also risk harming ourselves in the process.
Suppose we want to improve our fitness. The sustainable option is to make small changes with regularity, whose cumulative effect will be that of fitness. The unsustainable and likely self-destructive approach is to, say, try to run a long distance at full speed. The stamina is not there, the muscles are not ready. Therein lies injury or even death.
Sustainability makes us think of the bigger picture from a different perspective: that of being committed and patient as well as relaxed. We are not haphazard and opportunistic, nor are we oscillating between the extremes of excitement and disappointment, as we switch from one task to another, one wish to another, without paying attention to the balanced and organic aspects of nature.
Against this backdrop, the Dephic maxim of “know yourself” (γνώθι σεαυτόν) is a reminder that we have to be mindful of who we are in relation to what our immediate surroundings make us be. The self cannot be decontextualised and considered without its environment, for the cosmos is a continuum, where each form of life is in the presence of all the rest of life. Those who does not know who they are will also violate the other two core Delphic maxims that I mentioned previously. To live in harmony with nature is to have those three maxims as the foundation of your conduct.
Returning to the quote from the Enchiridion what Epictetus is telling us is to (i) remember that the world had good and bad things to it so do not get disappointed by having false expectations, (ii) that things happen independent of your volition and you must thus recognise you are not the epicentre of the world, so, do not have false wants, and (iii) that no particular project is necessarily viable at all times, and your ambitions must thus be kept in check while you operate with adaptability.