Become Unconquerable | Stoic Philosophy
Bound upon me, rush upon me, I will overcome you by enduring your onset: whatever strikes against that which is firm and unconquerable merely injures itself by its own violence. Wherefore, seek some soft and yielding object to pierce with your darts. Seneca.
When do you feel conquered? Are you conquered when your country gets taken by another country? Do you feel conquered when an enemy takes your house and the rest of your possessions? Or when you’re thrown into prison with your hands and feet tied together? Or perhaps when someone snatches away your prospect of dating the person you like? It’s probably different for every person to what extent circumstances evoke a feeling of defeat.
The ancient Stoics produced a treasure trove of wisdom on becoming unconquerable. They believed that people cannot be conquered by anything external, as long as they don’t give away the power over their faculties. The only way external things can influence us is when we, ourselves, let them. If we feel that something has defeated us, it’s us defeating ourselves on account of it. If we want to become unconquerable, we don’t need to conquer the world but ourselves.
This video explores Stoic philosophy on how to become unconquerable. The way we estimate external things decides how they influence us, not the things in themselves. If we attribute a high value to something, there’s a risk that we develop a desire for it. If we then encounter what we desire, we feel elated, which is, of course, a great feeling. But when we somehow can’t get what we want, we don’t feel so great. And thus, we’ve put our emotional state at the mercy of outside circumstances.
Say you really fancy someone at work or school, and you manage to approach and arrange a date with that person; you’ll be in the clouds. But when this person cancels the date last minute, you’ll be disappointed and possibly upset. Even though things like flaking, rejection, or being dumped are prevalent in dating, the way people respond differs immensely. Some just shrug it off and continue their lives. Others become resentful and seek revenge.
But if rejection evokes a strong emotional reaction within us, we could say that this occurrence has conquered us. It has the power to influence our emotional state and possibly influence our actions significantly. The same goes for insults. If some petty insults breed days of resentment, then the insulter has successfully conquered the insulted.
But there are much more severe manners in which we let people conquer us than insults or rejection. An example is a form of manipulation called blackmail. A commonly used form of blackmail is the prospect of one’s reputation being destroyed. Many people are very attached to their reputation, so they might easily succumb to such blackmail. And if this happens, the blackmailer has conquered his target.
Another example is interrogation accompanied by imprisonment and even torture, which was common practice in the Roman Empire. The effectiveness of these methods depends on how attached someone is to one’s body and how much pain he’s willing to suffer. The Stoics say that we always have a choice, even in such horrible circumstances. If we knuckle under the actions of our torturer, we’ve made a choice to be conquered by him.
But if we refuse to give in despite the severity of the torments, the torturer may damage our bodies but fails to defeat us. In the discourses of Epictetus, a vast collection of lectures by the 2nd-century Stoic sage, we see Epictetus repeating over and over again how one’s ability to choose (or “moral choice” as translated by some scholars) can never be taken away.
In every situation, no matter how terrible, we have a choice to maintain power over our actions or to submit to the circumstances. Epictetus explains this power by telling how he’d react when a tyrant threatens him: If he says, “I will put you in chains,” I reply, “He is threatening my hands and my feet.” If he says, “I will behead you,” I answer, “He is threatening my neck.” If he says, “I will throw you into prison,” I say, “He is threatening my whole paltry body;” and if he threatens me with exile, I give the same answer.
End quote. Epictetus illustrates in this passage that even though the tyrant tries to exercise power over him, he remains unconquerable. Sure, the tyrant can chain his legs, chop his head, or throw him into prison. But these are simply outside factors that aren’t up to him, and thus, according to Epictetus, they’re nothing to him. What counts are his actions, and no one but ourselves can decide these.
If we want to be unconquerable, we need to be willing to endure any hardship. We must be ready to have complete disregard for what people think, to lose everything we have (even our necessities), to have our bodies locked away and abused, and to part from everyone we love. Any strong attachment we have, anything that we’re unwilling and unable to separate from, but also anything we can’t and won’t endure has the potential to destabilize and influence our choices.
An example of being unconquerable is the psychiatrist and philosopher Viktor Frankl who survived three years of imprisonment in several Nazi concentration camps. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, he describes how Jewish prisoners became helpers of the prison guards, doing terrible things to their own people in exchange for food and better treatment. Frankl noticed how easily people succumb to harsh circumstances and do anything to survive, including betrayal and ill-treatment of others.
But other people refused to let the circumstances influence their values, as they continued acts of kindness and compassion. So, the Nazis were able to imprison, torture, starve, and exterminate these people; they could not conquer them. Seneca stated that hardships aren’t the problem, but our surrendering to them is.
Therefore, a Stoic sage will not be disturbed by hardships, which means they can’t touch him. I quote: What element of evil is there in torture and in the other things which we call hardships? It seems to me that there is this evil, - that the mind sags, and bends, and collapses. But none of these things can happen to the sage; he stands erect under any load. Nothing can subdue him; nothing that must be endured annoys him. For he does not complain that he has been struck by that which can strike any man. He knows his own strength; he knows that he was born to carry burdens.
Of course, the ideal of the Stoic sage is challenging and almost impossible to reach. As with everything great, becoming more unconquerable in the Stoic sense takes practice. The ancient Stoics realized this as well but encouraged us and themselves to at least try to improve. Also, it’s tough to be purely ‘reasonable’ all the time, as our rational faculties don’t seem to have a complete grip on our emotions.
The ancient Stoics noticed that emotional reactions initially arise before we can intervene, so even the sages are startled sometimes. Hence they distinguished the passions from the emotions. According to the Stoics, we have control over our passions: distress, fear, lust, and delight. The Stoic sage ideally remains free from passions. But most of us aren’t sages and will most likely experience the passions at least from time to time.
The good news is that even when our passions strike us, we can still choose. Even if we lay on the ground weeping because of what has overcome us and thus are to a certain extent ‘conquered,’ we can still decide what we do next. So, we could say there are different defense lines the enemy can cross, from which the final one is our ability to choose; if someone crosses that line, he has fully conquered us.
So, if we want to become unconquerable, we have to defend our battle lines. In this analogy, the line of the passions we can defend with reason and restraint. The video ‘How Not to be Pathetic’ explores this further. We can defend the line of our choice (or moral choice) with the same weapons, but it’s going to be a bit more challenging when the first battle line is taken.
If the enemy conquers our emotional state, they will influence our decision-making. For example, when there’s a strong desire, we’re more likely to base our decision on it. Or when we’re angry, we’re more likely to act out. So, when the enemy stands on our doorstep, we need firepower to defend our ability to choose.
We could say that this firepower is our inner strength: the power to make the right decision even when we’re overwhelmed by emotion. An example of this we see in the movie Lord of the Rings after Frodo accepts an almost impossible mission: to bring the One Ring to Mordor and throw it into the fires of Mount Doom.
The danger of the One Ring is its ability to create a strong attachment between itself and the carrier. Consequently, the person wearing the ring becomes so obsessed with it that he’ll do anything to prevent separation. Frodo indeed grows attached to his so-called “precious,” just like Gollem, who’s trying to take it from him.
Now, although Frodo did give in to his attachment at the very end, he was able to carry the ring for thousands of miles, overcoming countless moments of temptation. Most other characters would have probably surrendered to the ring much earlier, like Boromir, for example. Again, according to the Stoics, there’s only one thing truly conquerable: our ability to choose.
Everything else is outside of our control and will fall to the whims of Fortune anyhow. We can lose everything, from our wealth to our freedom of movement to our reputations. But our ability to form opinions, desire, hate, accept, abstain, talk, or keep silent, remains ours. As Viktor Frankl stated: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Thank you for watching.