This week I’ll discuss a few ideas from Stoicism and how they helped me during my deconstruction and eventual deconversion.

Before I do, I’d like to follow up on something I wrote earlier. In “Intro: Stoicism for Deconstructors,” I wrote:

It’s not my goal to “convert” you or convince you but to inform you. Stoicism is not one-size-fits-all, and I can’t know you like you know you. But having some conscious philosophy of life is essential.

I want to backpedal a bit: I’m not prepared to say that coming to some concrete philosophy of life is essential. It may be that for a long while, we need to spend our energy recovering from a lifetime of unreasonable expectations while being the best people we can be without overthinking it.

I will say that having a conscious philosophy of life can make answering some questions much easier, add richness and depth to your life, and help you on your way to tranquility.

Now on to Stoicism.

What is Philosophy?

At some point, I realized I needed to leave church, but I didn’t know where to begin. It seemed so overwhelming. Thankfully, I had already started reading the Stoics, and they have opinions on where to begin.

The Stoics and other ancients believed that philosophy was the “art of living.” People who lived deliberately and reflected on their lives were philosophers. Very different from the current perspective that treats philosophy as a purely academic discipline.

The art of living requires knowledge, so they encouraged learning theory, but it didn’t matter until you put it into practice.

Why does this matter?

Many of us grew up in a context where we were told the rules and expected to follow them. Losing that set of rules can be bewildering, to say the least. Learning to think differently about the art of living can help us make sense of an uncertain and constantly changing world.

Excellence of Character

When I was in the throes of deconstruction, especially after I realized I would have to leave the church, I can’t say I was thinking much about meaning. I was in survival mode. However, after I finally resigned my church membership, I realized I had to learn how to build community for myself and make my own meaning. For me, the Stoics provided a great starting place.

The Stoics believed that excellence of character, being the best human you can be, was the goal of life. They thought you would achieve eudaimonia, or flourishing, if you pursued this goal.

In Intro: Stoicism for Deconstructors, I wrote:

Humans are rational and social, so to be the best human we can, we must pursue excellence of character first by getting better at thinking clearly, and by practicing living well, especially in the context of the people and world around us.

This means to live a fulfilling life, we need to develop our character in the service of those around us and, ultimately, humanity.

It also means ethical action is centered around our character, not some rules handed to us thousands of years ago and interpreted by other people. Ethics, not mere obedience.

Why does this matter?

Since Stoicism is a kind of Humanism, it gives us a place in this world and provides us a tribe. At a fundamental level, there is no Us and Them. We’re all in this together. Stoicism gives us a practical way of working through that reality and helps us adopt all of humanity as our own.

All this gives us something significant to live for: the betterment of the human race. It’s actionable and direct. As we work on our character, we can see the benefits immediately as we benefit the people around us. In the words of the band Gojira, “When you change yourself, you change the world.”

Making the growth of my character a primary goal has been very fulfilling, not to mention clarifying.

Sorting Emotions

In my circles of Christianity, emotions weren’t talked about much except to warn about how untrustworthy they were. Making sense of these emotions was not a thing that was taught very much other than to direct people to prayer.

The Stoics distinguished between some key concepts:

• Impressions. These are mental representations of the world around you. Things like “That cake would be good to eat.” or “That person is angry at you.” You can’t control these impressions.
• Response to the impressions. These are either “yes,” “no,” or “maybe.” You can control this response.
• Emotions. These result from that response and push you to some action. Sometimes this action is only to get upset. You can control these emotions.

Like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Stoics believed that your emotions are often the result of underlying beliefs.

Also, having a concept like “impressions,” which aren’t up to you, gives you a place to put intrusive thoughts, knee-jerk reactions, and other emotional-related things that aren’t under your power.

Why does this matter?

This one has been so powerful for me. I no longer feel guilty for intrusive thoughts (like unwanted sexual thoughts or imagining pushing someone over a cliff). These days I just roll my eyes and move on. No longer do I feel completely helpless to address my emotional difficulties. I can rely on the practices of Stoicism and problem-solving from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to address the underlying issues leading to the emotions that I am having trouble with.

Planning for Setbacks

I think people generally don’t do a lot of planning for setbacks, so when they happen, they are often caught flatfooted. I don’t think Christianity is unique regarding this lack of preparation.

Because the Stoics realized it was difficult to address emotional issues in the moment, they took as much action as they could to prepare for future challenges. One way they did this was through the premeditatio malorum, or premeditation of ills.

The idea was to imagine vividly some negative thing happening, then imagine yourself handling it successfully. By the time the event came around, you’d have taken some of the sting away and bought yourself some space to manage it more wisely.

(This can be abused. If a company CEO is planning unjust layoffs and uses this technique to reduce the sting of feeling bad about hurting a bunch of fellow humans, that CEO is not being virtuous, even though they might be imitating something the Stoics did. They are not practicing Stoicism.)

Why does this matter?

This premeditation is an example of the pragmatism that I like about Stoicism. Christianity tends to spiritualize everything and, therefore, often doesn’t have consistent or reliable ways of addressing real-life issues.

Conclusion

There’s so much more, but my main goal here has been to introduce you to some of the ways Stoics think about life. Hopefully, this has been helpful to you!

We are nearly done with Stoicism for now, but I would like to spend a couple of posts talking about some practical, specific Stoic ideas.