Finding a Moral Compass Hurts
Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations , Lifehacker’s weekly dip in the pool of stoic wisdom and a guide to using its waters to meditate and improve your life.
This week’s selection is drawn from Epictetus and his talks . In Book 3, Chapter 23, he suggests that ethical improvement is not a cake walk, and it shouldn’t be:
“The philosopher’s auditorium is a hospital; you should not get out of this with pleasure, but with pain. “
Here’s another version:
“The School of Philosophers, buddy, is a surgical clinic. You should not leave after having a pleasant time, but after you have been in pain. “
What does it mean
Ethical philosophy is not meant to be fun. The study and application of virtuous thought will sting. You are confronted with concepts that may radically contradict what you believe in and how you feel, but that’s the point.
Epictetus goes on to mention that “you feel bad” when you enter the philosopher’s lecture room. You are here to heal, but as anyone who has ever been seriously hurt can tell you, healing is painful.
What to take from there
These philosophy lessons should make you think differently, but they should also get on your nerves and reveal some unpleasant truths. After all, these are not mantras designed to empower you, but tools that will break you down so you can rebuild yourself and become a better and more ethical being. These truths should challenge your worldview and the smug comforts in which your mind has settled. It hurts to be wrong, but you have to accept it and allow yourself to be wrong so that you can learn and grow.
It takes mental discomfort to become a better person to do real ethical teaching. As Epictetus writes in the second chapter of the third book, you should not be “insensitive as a statue” while you adjust. This pain — the pain of delusion, the pain of remorse — is what drives your ethical growth. Like lifting weights in the gym, it takes effort and intention to grasp the concept and get closer to it. You will get tired and sick. The process must damage. This is the only way to get better, to get better.