STOICISM | The Power Of Judgement
In earlier videos, I talked about the things that are up to us and the things that are not up to us. In this video, I want to go a bit deeper into how we approach life by a powerful yet dangerous tool in our toolbox: our judgment.
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First of all, thank you Jacob and thank you Daniel for supporting me on Patreon. I appreciate it, guys. Now let's talk about stoicism. Have you ever asked yourself this question: what do I truly control in this world? Well, the truth is that the number of things that are up to us is surprisingly small and does not exceed the confines of our own actions. One thing that is up to us is our ability to judge.
Life consists of a series of events that aren't inherently good or bad. This could be a fried egg, a traffic jam, or a plate of fried rice somewhere in Asia. Nevertheless, people seem to be overly judgmental these days. Judgment makes reality good or bad, desirable or undesirable, fun or boring, etc. Thus, by our judgments, we categorize the universe, which defines our position towards it.
The problem with judgment is that we will prefer some things over other things. Strong preferences and strong dis-preferences generate cravings and aversions, which are both potential sources of misery. Marcus Aurelius said about this, and I quote: “You take things you don't control and define them as good or bad, and so of course when bad things happen, or the good ones don't, you blame the gods and feel hatred for the people responsible or those you decide to make responsible.”
An example: our minds conclude that money is necessary to survive in this world, so we make sure we have enough of it. However, our judgment towards money might result in the opinion that wealth is good and poverty is bad. Thus, we start craving money, which makes us greedy. I've experienced this myself when I was hung up on cryptocurrencies two years ago. When the market went up, my mood went up, but when the market went down, my mood went down. As soon as I realized the vicious cycle I was in and made an effort to detach myself from it...
A version is the other side of the same Bitcoin. If we, for example, averse poverty, we not only spend our lives avoiding it. If fate decides that we become poor, we become absolutely miserable. The problem is that both wealth and poverty aren't up to us. Therefore, judging one as good and one as bad will make us chase the one and avoid the other. This means that we live our lives in fear and worry and be miserable when the things we averse overcome us and when the things we crave for don't.
I know that non-judgment is a difficult thing to do. Personally, reminding myself that whatever I pursue I do not control the outcome has helped me to regain my peace of mind in times of worry. This stoic mind hack is called amor fati, and I made a video about it.
So how should we judge? Marcus Aurelius proposes this, and I quote: “Much of our bad behavior stems from trying to apply those criteria. If we limited good and bad to our own actions, we'd have no call to challenge God or to treat other people as enemies.”
To harvest the power of judgment, we should judge ourselves. Stoics aim to live virtuously because virtue leads to happiness. Self-judgment means that we evaluate our own actions and decide if they indeed are aligned with nature. This way, we can use our judgment to learn what we did wrong and make better choices in the future. Simply put: don't judge what isn't up to us, judge what is.
If you want to see more videos about stoicism, please check out my playlist. Thank you for watching.
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