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THE STOIC PHILOSOPHER
A quarterly eJournal published by the
Marcus Aurelius School
of the College of Stoic Philosophers
OCT/NOV/DEC 2016: Issue # 20
Being Content
by Erik Wiegardt
Introduction
I wrote this more than three years ago. I know it's hard to remember that life existed way back then,
back before the current American presidential election, but it did. That was back when Americans were
often laughed at by the more cynical citizens of older countries for being hopelessly idealistic and
naïve. I suppose that in some circles they still are. But when Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton became
the best leaders that America could offer, suddenly the snickers became exclamations of high anxiety.
Yes, life was simpler back then - just as it was before 9/11, and before the Vietnam War, and before
Kennedy was assassinated, and before indoor plumbing, and so on.
Speaking of indoor plumbing, the toilet in particular would be hard for some of us to give up. I had to
call a plumber today to address a clog somewhere in the system. He came out and worked on it a
couple of hours ago, but it still isn't fixed, and it's times like these when you realize that the toilet is one
of the truly great inventions of all time. I'm really glad we no longer have to wade through streets
flowing with raw sewage. Maybe I've gotten too soft. Apparently tribal people didn't need indoor
toilets. I guess it didn't occur to them how much more convenient it would be to do their business inside
the tent instead of outside in the bushes.
This brief essay was written at a time when I was thinking about how tribal people of the past were so
often destroyed by those whose only claim to superiority was based on technology, not virtue. Unlike
people living in nature civilized individuals and cultures were
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more frequently discontent with their
tools and methods, so they invented things, all kinds of things to make work easier and killing even
easier. But those individuals and cultures who were content to just accept what Nature gave them,
failed to invent much or advance. Primitive weapons of war left primitive peoples at the mercy of the
merciless. Both American continents were civilized in this way.
It made me wonder if contentment was a good thing; that is, when you're about to become the victim of
slavery or genocide is contentment the right feeling for such an occasion? Of course these ignorant
tribal people didn't know that in order for the rich and powerful to become even more rich and more
powerful it was necessary for them and their tribesmen to be killed or enslaved or worked to death.
Those people living in nature didn't know that even the humble city clerk would be ready and willing to
kill them so that he or she could pan for gold or have a bit of dirt to farm. They didn't know that in socalled civilized countries it has always been thus. They had never heard of Machiavelli, and so they
were unprepared.
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Stoics believe that if we are content with the way things happen as ordained by Fate, we will never be
upset or disappointed. Hmm. Yes, but we may be killed for our contentment, not just individually killed
but also members of our families and indeed our entire culture as a people. Should we be forever and
on all occasions content with whatever happens? Does a Stoic have enough faith in Fate, our
providential God, to be happy regardless of who gets killed or elected President of the United States?
Can a Stoic remain calmly equanimous with either Trump or Clinton as their president?
That's like asking if Stoics of ancient Rome were able to be happy when Nero was emperor. If course
they were. Don't forget, Epictetus was the crippled slave of one of Nero's former slaves. But, let's be
realistic, contentment can be a double-edged sword.
EW, 27 September 16
*
Contentment: The Old Ways
May 2013. I have a sampler framed and hanging on the wall a few feet away. I can see it from where
I'm sitting now. You know what a sampler is, right? . . . a piece of cloth embroidered with flowers or
little animals or wise sayings. Making samplers used to be part of a young girl's education many years
ago. Not any more. So anyway, the sampler I have says, “Contentment is not the fulfillment of what
you want, but the realization of how much you already have.”
Hmm. Well, yes. I like that. After all, I'm the one that bought the sampler and hung it on the wall. I
must have liked it at the time I bought it, but I've been thinking about contentment lately and
wondering if there's another side to this story. I mean, what's the difference between contentment and
stagnation? If we had known more contentment in human history wouldn't we all still be Huntergatherers, or at most agrarian types?
Where
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have all the Hunter-gatherers gone? The Amish are here and apparently content with their selfimposed eternal Agrarian Age, preferring buttons to zippers, which they consider too technical. When I
get frustrated with my computer I'm inclined to agree with them. There are about 273,000 Amish here
in North America, and they always have the most beautiful farms wherever they settle. The Hunters and
gatherers - who were also content with the way things used to be - are mostly gone now. We've killed
them off to get their land or their gold, or both. I guess there are a few hundred left in the Amazon
region. Why didn't they want to make progress the way the rest of us have? Was it because they were
content with the old ways?
For the Hunter-gatherer the “old ways” were living not just in agreement with Nature but actually
100% in it. Nature was both mother and father, nurturer and teacher; and, despite what the English
philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) said, living in a state of nature does not condemn one to a
life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” That's only the opinion of one, so-called civilized
man, and one that freely admitted he lived entirely apart from nature due to an overwhelming fear of it.
Hobbes was afraid of nature.
Philosophers today may consider Hobbes to be a second-rate intellectual, but Hunter-gatherers would
consider him to be a complete fool. Listen to what Chief Luther Standing Bear (1868-1939), Oglala
Sioux, said on the subject of living in harmony with nature:
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Only to the white man was nature a “wilderness” and only to him was the land
“infested” with “wild animals and savage” people. To us it was tame. Earth was
bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not
until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices
upon us and the families that we loved was it “wild” for us (Land of the Spotted Eagle [1933]).
Nothing the Great Mystery placed in the land of the Indian pleased the white man,
and nothing escaped his transforming hand...But because for the Lakota there was no
wilderness, because nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but
friendly, Lakota philosophy was healthy - free from fear and dogmatism. And here I
find the great distinction between the faith of the Indian and the white man. Indian
faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance
of surroundings...For one man the world was full of beauty; for the other it was a place
of sin and ugliness to be endured until he went to another world, there to become a
creature of wings, half-man and half-bird...But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that
man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing,
living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to
nature's softening influence (The Wisdom of Native Americans, MJF Books, 1999, pp. 39-40) .
* * * *
Erik Wiegardt is the Founder of New Stoa and Scholarch of the College of Stoic Philosophers. He is currently a
seminarian at the Chrysippus School of Theology.