The Stoics recognize "the worth of a human because they are human..." Your most recent book with Christopher Gill (Stoic Ethics: The Basics) did a great job discussing this notion! Why is every human due "recognition" and to be treated with respect according to the Stoics? Because they are capable of reason and therefore capable of self-improvement (virtue).
I really like the idea of a 'Stoic benefit of the doubt' regarding other people. Maybe that's a heuristic, but it seems like an easy way to maintain the mindset of recognizing every individual's human worth.
Good point. I think this quote from Marcus makes a really good heuristic for giving benefit of the doubt: "If he did wrong, the ill lies with him; but perhaps he did not" (Meditations, 9.38).
Great piece. I feel like self-respect causes something of a virtuous cycle in life.
If we grant ourselves self-respect, we treat ourselves well, which means aligning with virtue and excellence. When we begin to live with virtue and excellence, we enter into eudaimonic states. My experience with this is that these states feel like self-love/self-respect, and benevolence toward the world. When we are in this state, we are somewhat buffered from the vagaries of fate. We might suffer, but there's an underlying level of this high self-regard/self-respect/benevolence that doesn't diminish. And when we navigate tough times skillfully, buffered in such a manner, it naturally increases our self-respect, which leads us to want to be even better.
Really great observation. I think you're right. I guess the next question is how we can create a society that helps people develop this type of respect. I'm not sure where to begin. Any thoughts?
I don't know how to span the chasm between the general public and ideas of virtue/self-respect/eudaimonia with one giant leap, but I've been thinking about this for some time, and I think I've got an idea that may move people in the right direction.
I've always been struck by Epictetus's metaphorical slavery bit. It's never developed in a way like the dichotomy of control, but in my mind, it's much the same — The Dichotomy of Enslavement.
And I think the 21st century, and this particular moment when so many people are clearly "enslaved" to the ephemeral, shallow pleasures of social media, doom scrolling, etc, have made the idea relevant like never before. I think people are waking up and becoming aware that they are metaphorically enslaved. And they're complicit. And it's kind of pathetic and shameful in a way that — in my life — feels horrible and an undermining of eudamonia/self respect when I don't keep these things in check.
I'm working on a piece exploring this that I'll try to put out next week.
I think you're right. Epictetus does talk a lot about how we are a slave to this or that. When you put something in that context, it shames you a little. You think, "I'm letting this person or that situation have control over my happiness?" It seems so dumb when you say it out loud. You can take back that control and be free.
Like Brittany, I don't know how we improve society, but we can at least make ourselves better and that automatically makes the world a little better, too. It's a place to start.
Certainly not claiming this will cause a sea change, but here's the slavery angle and self respect. I think people realize they're being degraded, and might do something about it.
Great post! I really like all the "background enslavements" you point out. I would like to think that many people are ready to escape from all these limiting entanglements and beliefs, but I do think it takes a certain kind of person to look beyond the immediate pleasures that society offers. But like you say, hopefully this will change!
About 10 years ago, Paul Meshanko came to my military unit to teach a workshop on respect. He said (and I paraphrase), "Imagine going to work with a backpack on your shoulders. You never take it off, and it represents the emotions you carry with you. Every time someone is disrespectful to you, it adds a heavy emotion to your pack. The same is true when you do this to others. However, showing respect can lighten someone's load."
It was a great workshop and his book The Respect Effect was worth reading. I have since come to believe that respect is not something you earn, it's something you give.
This was a great article. It really resonated with my experiences. [Incidentally, a few paragraphs in, I decided to search Waterfield's translation of Epictetus for the word self-respect, and it showed up 60 times. Yet, reading further in the article, I see Brittany already knew that.]
I hadn't heard of the book by Paul Meshanko but it sounds great! I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the comment and I'm glad you are enjoying Stoic Ethics as well.
I love this. I’ve been thinking along similar lines, but about the significance of consciousness. If I can appreciate my own conscious experience — that I am capable of both well being and suffering — then it isn’t a huge leap for me to also value the well being of other conscious creatures. Perhaps this is a secular version of recognizing other humans as “being made in the image of God.” But, in my case, it expands to non-human persons as well.
Beautiful idea, and I agree that the logical next step is extending respect to all beings. The ancient Stoics thought divinity is inherent in every part of the cosmos, but they reserved respect for humans and gods due to their rationality. I think we can update Stoicism for the 21st century and extend respect to every creature, although we may have differing degrees of responsibility toward different entities. This is rich food for thought, maybe worth exploring in the future!
I am so pleased to find another SubStack author with such good topics and writing!
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Self-Respect:
The topic of self-respect that you argued in the beginning of this article reminded me of my personal battle between my excellence in many aspects of personal and career, And a deep self-loathing that was conditioned in me when raised by Feminists, and the male-hate gonad crushing Ideology that when injected from crib by those that raised us and mixed mother-love and psychological manipulative punishment.
Such deep Poison crippled my productive years and escaping it was the reason for my Fridays and Saturday's binge-drinking (where Sundays then free to clear body, so Monday I could start my workweek), as my self-respect was strengthened in working hard and advancing continuously well in my focus tasks.
A good article on public school systems' indoctrination of self-loathing into males here:
"Feminist teaching encourages boys as young as 11 years old to hate themselves (and women)" by Janice Fiamengo
What small percentage of our sons, brothers, uncles, fathers, and men in our lives have not been so deeply poisoned by such male-hate vomited into them from the crib, forced on them in schools & universities? Those few are likely to have strong fathers and decent mothers that value virtues their great grandmothers had, a small-town public school system that was well monitored by local parents and others and went into a trade instead of the Usury Debt Enslaving University system.
As a man that understands men as the benefactors in so many ways of; women, society, and West, and that our now Sick baby-killing insane womanhood has been twisted into active killing of white Christian virtue-based raised manhood, fatherhood and family murdering. Kind of like most women with power over others cannot help but crap-poison in all our shared soup-pot. Of course, once torturing our babies to death on a whim is accepted as Sane, it is hard to imagine what other insanities could not be included .. what next? Sexually sterilizing and mutilating our children's mind-body-soul?!
For me, by the grace and mercy of God, all such deep crippling was removed when sometime in my early 50's I was Corrected by the Holy Ghost along with what-ever Blindness to the hellish Betrayal by those that raised me, sending me out in the world with Life-destroying failure for me and my brothers (1 dead to OD, other psychologically crippled into isolation and constant torment), and once that 'Psychic Death' passed through me I was opened to Conversion to [Traditional] Catholicism, where I spend my life as a non-practicing Quaker, to the result of a life of Meaning and perspective that all my suffering in confusion and failures in Traditional Catholic Perspective shape me into a much better person then I likely would have become without it.
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Respecting Others;
This I can hope to do in the small and the large.
Many hours in my life I have spent talking with strangers with many good results and in 'people watching' in public and meeting each person with short eye-contact.
This acknowledges their existence and their positive value (as well as the value to displaying self-confidence to any of the Predators that seem to be around us, and communicating to other men that if needed, I can and will help,) for those unwilling to make eye-contact - a flag of warning of them not willing to consider me and likely others as worth human respect (unless a nervous woman, those that have been raised by Feminists to fear men or a woman that has been abused by a man - although mostly it is a man they know, and likely one that I or most men would condemn,) and such eye-contact is an invitation for conversation - with a guaranty that any approach for that purpose would be greeted well.
And the perhaps largest practice of Respect of Others might be assuming good motivations from those demonized by media and society, most often from incomplete or distorted reports.
The school and work-place shooting is a good example.
Having been targeted by Affirmative Action meritless hires that seemed to resent me and others for advancing and being valued in basic medical research - for example - and use what I call the Witch-Whisper-Web of secrete dishonorable reputation-destroying lies that Poisons the workplace, causes social isolation, prevents friendships and lovers, intended joy-of-life murdering, and more female-evil vicious vile slimy argument examples why no man should be forced to be in such Toxic male-hating environments that nearly all workplaces have become since women have been mercilessly jammed everywhere.
.. Although this point-of-view is nearly never expressed, I argue that for those old enough to remember the later 1960's and early 1970's and worked in a field were women inclusion disOrdered the Competence Hierarchy that men always establish, few but the excellent women have used, and that has advanced the West so unusually well and rapidly over the Centuries, and suddenly the System to be Sickened by women that not only can't compete in it, but actively destroy it, in not only by being meritless hired but unable to Harris-Suck advance through, and demand it change for the worse.
And women-in-workplace and women-teachers in schools' abuses of men and boys cannot be corrected using existing systems as the default assumption in any conflict between women and men that the man is at fault, that 'trouble working with women' or typical-bad male aspects are assumed, and there are few other women that would not automatically side with the woman including lying to the inJustice and further abuse of the man, causing life-long negative record that makes future employment in that or any professional career unlikely.
So, it is with Respect that I consider the shooter may have found himself in such a situation and since the abuser(s) would not stop harming other innocent men, that killing them is a reasonable solution. This perspective is from a man that responds to the question of - if a man should never hit a woman, with that it depends on what she did, and I've known woman where a knife in their throat seems the proper response, that in many centuries of sane policies such women would have long before been burned in public as Witches for the putrid sickening murderous evil-poisons they spew.
With this perspective it is not hard to not consider at least a few of those shootings are violent response to what is a growing Toxic male-hating society wide system of abuse towards [white] Christian-values raised men.
.. after all it fits with the systematic Western-wide deprivation of professional employment of white men regardless of experience and other positive merits by throwing-away of their job-applications because they are white men, as many whistleblowers have testified too, and polling of professions connected to hiring have acknowledged has been the unwritten policies for a generation or longer.
If any group of men is unable to acquire resources, attract a wife, and support a family, that group should be considered under genocidal threat, and as world white population percentage have been decreasing steadily until we are now only 9%, and likely started when such policies were implemented - but white genocide is considered a false 'Conspiracy Theory', of course, because those you would kill off as a race completely, they would never be lied-to by such genocidal psychos.
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There are many other good points and arguments in the reminder of the article, but I will need to stop here, as other tasks call to me to do.
For some reason, this article brought back childhood memories of my mother. In context, I’m eligible for Social Security and Medicare, so the experiences were long ago. These comments are directed towards the ‘Respect for Self’ section, precisely ‘Appraisal Respect.’ Back to my childhood memories, my mother made sure when I dressed for school that my pants didn't have holes, that they fit appropriately, and that my hair was combed. I don’t need to mention it, but now you can wear anything from pants halfway over your ‘Gluteus Maximus’ 😂, loosely fitted, etc. In Stoicism, our thoughts are toward the personal character, the four Cardinal Virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. However, reading this, I wondered how much ‘personal appearance’ affects self-respect.
That's interesting! I agree that the way we present ourselves is often a reflection of our self-respect. To a certain extent appearance, but also things like posture and eye contact. It is a rather old-fashioned idea but that doesn't make it any less relevant today!
The Stoics recognize "the worth of a human because they are human..." Your most recent book with Christopher Gill (Stoic Ethics: The Basics) did a great job discussing this notion! Why is every human due "recognition" and to be treated with respect according to the Stoics? Because they are capable of reason and therefore capable of self-improvement (virtue).
Exactly! Thank you for mentioning the book. This notion is really at the heart of Stoic ethics!
Great book (so far). It is our chosen book for the Book Club on the Stoic Fellowship Network.
Every time I see a new Musonius Rufus quote, I like him more.
Respect for the fantastic post on respect!
I really like the idea of a 'Stoic benefit of the doubt' regarding other people. Maybe that's a heuristic, but it seems like an easy way to maintain the mindset of recognizing every individual's human worth.
Good point. I think this quote from Marcus makes a really good heuristic for giving benefit of the doubt: "If he did wrong, the ill lies with him; but perhaps he did not" (Meditations, 9.38).
Great piece. I feel like self-respect causes something of a virtuous cycle in life.
If we grant ourselves self-respect, we treat ourselves well, which means aligning with virtue and excellence. When we begin to live with virtue and excellence, we enter into eudaimonic states. My experience with this is that these states feel like self-love/self-respect, and benevolence toward the world. When we are in this state, we are somewhat buffered from the vagaries of fate. We might suffer, but there's an underlying level of this high self-regard/self-respect/benevolence that doesn't diminish. And when we navigate tough times skillfully, buffered in such a manner, it naturally increases our self-respect, which leads us to want to be even better.
Really great observation. I think you're right. I guess the next question is how we can create a society that helps people develop this type of respect. I'm not sure where to begin. Any thoughts?
I don't know how to span the chasm between the general public and ideas of virtue/self-respect/eudaimonia with one giant leap, but I've been thinking about this for some time, and I think I've got an idea that may move people in the right direction.
I've always been struck by Epictetus's metaphorical slavery bit. It's never developed in a way like the dichotomy of control, but in my mind, it's much the same — The Dichotomy of Enslavement.
And I think the 21st century, and this particular moment when so many people are clearly "enslaved" to the ephemeral, shallow pleasures of social media, doom scrolling, etc, have made the idea relevant like never before. I think people are waking up and becoming aware that they are metaphorically enslaved. And they're complicit. And it's kind of pathetic and shameful in a way that — in my life — feels horrible and an undermining of eudamonia/self respect when I don't keep these things in check.
I'm working on a piece exploring this that I'll try to put out next week.
I think you're right. Epictetus does talk a lot about how we are a slave to this or that. When you put something in that context, it shames you a little. You think, "I'm letting this person or that situation have control over my happiness?" It seems so dumb when you say it out loud. You can take back that control and be free.
Like Brittany, I don't know how we improve society, but we can at least make ourselves better and that automatically makes the world a little better, too. It's a place to start.
Certainly not claiming this will cause a sea change, but here's the slavery angle and self respect. I think people realize they're being degraded, and might do something about it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewperlot/p/epictetuss-key-insight-for-taking?r=1xulhu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Great post! I really like all the "background enslavements" you point out. I would like to think that many people are ready to escape from all these limiting entanglements and beliefs, but I do think it takes a certain kind of person to look beyond the immediate pleasures that society offers. But like you say, hopefully this will change!
About 10 years ago, Paul Meshanko came to my military unit to teach a workshop on respect. He said (and I paraphrase), "Imagine going to work with a backpack on your shoulders. You never take it off, and it represents the emotions you carry with you. Every time someone is disrespectful to you, it adds a heavy emotion to your pack. The same is true when you do this to others. However, showing respect can lighten someone's load."
It was a great workshop and his book The Respect Effect was worth reading. I have since come to believe that respect is not something you earn, it's something you give.
This was a great article. It really resonated with my experiences. [Incidentally, a few paragraphs in, I decided to search Waterfield's translation of Epictetus for the word self-respect, and it showed up 60 times. Yet, reading further in the article, I see Brittany already knew that.]
I hadn't heard of the book by Paul Meshanko but it sounds great! I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the comment and I'm glad you are enjoying Stoic Ethics as well.
I love this. I’ve been thinking along similar lines, but about the significance of consciousness. If I can appreciate my own conscious experience — that I am capable of both well being and suffering — then it isn’t a huge leap for me to also value the well being of other conscious creatures. Perhaps this is a secular version of recognizing other humans as “being made in the image of God.” But, in my case, it expands to non-human persons as well.
Beautiful idea, and I agree that the logical next step is extending respect to all beings. The ancient Stoics thought divinity is inherent in every part of the cosmos, but they reserved respect for humans and gods due to their rationality. I think we can update Stoicism for the 21st century and extend respect to every creature, although we may have differing degrees of responsibility toward different entities. This is rich food for thought, maybe worth exploring in the future!
Well-done! I learned a lot about Respect. Thank you Brittany!
Great piece. We've written and talked about this too: https://www.stoaletter.com/p/stoic-emotions-shame
Nice! I especially like your point that "the self-respecting person is free." I hope we can follow up on this idea sometime!
I am so pleased to find another SubStack author with such good topics and writing!
-
Self-Respect:
The topic of self-respect that you argued in the beginning of this article reminded me of my personal battle between my excellence in many aspects of personal and career, And a deep self-loathing that was conditioned in me when raised by Feminists, and the male-hate gonad crushing Ideology that when injected from crib by those that raised us and mixed mother-love and psychological manipulative punishment.
Such deep Poison crippled my productive years and escaping it was the reason for my Fridays and Saturday's binge-drinking (where Sundays then free to clear body, so Monday I could start my workweek), as my self-respect was strengthened in working hard and advancing continuously well in my focus tasks.
A good article on public school systems' indoctrination of self-loathing into males here:
"Feminist teaching encourages boys as young as 11 years old to hate themselves (and women)" by Janice Fiamengo
https://fiamengofile.substack.com/p/feminist-teaching-encourages-boys
What small percentage of our sons, brothers, uncles, fathers, and men in our lives have not been so deeply poisoned by such male-hate vomited into them from the crib, forced on them in schools & universities? Those few are likely to have strong fathers and decent mothers that value virtues their great grandmothers had, a small-town public school system that was well monitored by local parents and others and went into a trade instead of the Usury Debt Enslaving University system.
As a man that understands men as the benefactors in so many ways of; women, society, and West, and that our now Sick baby-killing insane womanhood has been twisted into active killing of white Christian virtue-based raised manhood, fatherhood and family murdering. Kind of like most women with power over others cannot help but crap-poison in all our shared soup-pot. Of course, once torturing our babies to death on a whim is accepted as Sane, it is hard to imagine what other insanities could not be included .. what next? Sexually sterilizing and mutilating our children's mind-body-soul?!
For me, by the grace and mercy of God, all such deep crippling was removed when sometime in my early 50's I was Corrected by the Holy Ghost along with what-ever Blindness to the hellish Betrayal by those that raised me, sending me out in the world with Life-destroying failure for me and my brothers (1 dead to OD, other psychologically crippled into isolation and constant torment), and once that 'Psychic Death' passed through me I was opened to Conversion to [Traditional] Catholicism, where I spend my life as a non-practicing Quaker, to the result of a life of Meaning and perspective that all my suffering in confusion and failures in Traditional Catholic Perspective shape me into a much better person then I likely would have become without it.
-
Respecting Others;
This I can hope to do in the small and the large.
Many hours in my life I have spent talking with strangers with many good results and in 'people watching' in public and meeting each person with short eye-contact.
This acknowledges their existence and their positive value (as well as the value to displaying self-confidence to any of the Predators that seem to be around us, and communicating to other men that if needed, I can and will help,) for those unwilling to make eye-contact - a flag of warning of them not willing to consider me and likely others as worth human respect (unless a nervous woman, those that have been raised by Feminists to fear men or a woman that has been abused by a man - although mostly it is a man they know, and likely one that I or most men would condemn,) and such eye-contact is an invitation for conversation - with a guaranty that any approach for that purpose would be greeted well.
And the perhaps largest practice of Respect of Others might be assuming good motivations from those demonized by media and society, most often from incomplete or distorted reports.
The school and work-place shooting is a good example.
Having been targeted by Affirmative Action meritless hires that seemed to resent me and others for advancing and being valued in basic medical research - for example - and use what I call the Witch-Whisper-Web of secrete dishonorable reputation-destroying lies that Poisons the workplace, causes social isolation, prevents friendships and lovers, intended joy-of-life murdering, and more female-evil vicious vile slimy argument examples why no man should be forced to be in such Toxic male-hating environments that nearly all workplaces have become since women have been mercilessly jammed everywhere.
.. Although this point-of-view is nearly never expressed, I argue that for those old enough to remember the later 1960's and early 1970's and worked in a field were women inclusion disOrdered the Competence Hierarchy that men always establish, few but the excellent women have used, and that has advanced the West so unusually well and rapidly over the Centuries, and suddenly the System to be Sickened by women that not only can't compete in it, but actively destroy it, in not only by being meritless hired but unable to Harris-Suck advance through, and demand it change for the worse.
And women-in-workplace and women-teachers in schools' abuses of men and boys cannot be corrected using existing systems as the default assumption in any conflict between women and men that the man is at fault, that 'trouble working with women' or typical-bad male aspects are assumed, and there are few other women that would not automatically side with the woman including lying to the inJustice and further abuse of the man, causing life-long negative record that makes future employment in that or any professional career unlikely.
So, it is with Respect that I consider the shooter may have found himself in such a situation and since the abuser(s) would not stop harming other innocent men, that killing them is a reasonable solution. This perspective is from a man that responds to the question of - if a man should never hit a woman, with that it depends on what she did, and I've known woman where a knife in their throat seems the proper response, that in many centuries of sane policies such women would have long before been burned in public as Witches for the putrid sickening murderous evil-poisons they spew.
With this perspective it is not hard to not consider at least a few of those shootings are violent response to what is a growing Toxic male-hating society wide system of abuse towards [white] Christian-values raised men.
.. after all it fits with the systematic Western-wide deprivation of professional employment of white men regardless of experience and other positive merits by throwing-away of their job-applications because they are white men, as many whistleblowers have testified too, and polling of professions connected to hiring have acknowledged has been the unwritten policies for a generation or longer.
If any group of men is unable to acquire resources, attract a wife, and support a family, that group should be considered under genocidal threat, and as world white population percentage have been decreasing steadily until we are now only 9%, and likely started when such policies were implemented - but white genocide is considered a false 'Conspiracy Theory', of course, because those you would kill off as a race completely, they would never be lied-to by such genocidal psychos.
-
There are many other good points and arguments in the reminder of the article, but I will need to stop here, as other tasks call to me to do.
God Bless., Steve
For some reason, this article brought back childhood memories of my mother. In context, I’m eligible for Social Security and Medicare, so the experiences were long ago. These comments are directed towards the ‘Respect for Self’ section, precisely ‘Appraisal Respect.’ Back to my childhood memories, my mother made sure when I dressed for school that my pants didn't have holes, that they fit appropriately, and that my hair was combed. I don’t need to mention it, but now you can wear anything from pants halfway over your ‘Gluteus Maximus’ 😂, loosely fitted, etc. In Stoicism, our thoughts are toward the personal character, the four Cardinal Virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. However, reading this, I wondered how much ‘personal appearance’ affects self-respect.
That's interesting! I agree that the way we present ourselves is often a reflection of our self-respect. To a certain extent appearance, but also things like posture and eye contact. It is a rather old-fashioned idea but that doesn't make it any less relevant today!
What a wonderful essay!