Alex on Art of Manliness - Austin Retreat January

The movement grows

I have three important things to tell you:

#1 Art of Manliness

Plutarch is in my opinion the #1 author you can read to understand, and assimilate, the classic model of western Manliness.

I went on the Art of Manliness podcast to discuss this, and the energy and power you can get from ancient heroes, w/ classic gentleman and Plutarch fan, Brett McKay.

Listen to it here:

And a big welcome to the many new subscribers who found Cost of Glory through this!

#2 Austin Retreat

Cost of Glory is going domestic! Join me, my distinguished colleague Eric Hewett, Ph.D., and other like minded men for the Sell it Like Caesar Men’s Retreat - January 23-26th, in the beautiful outskirts of Austin, TX.

We’ll give you the tools you need to begin, or consolidate, your journey to apply the lessons of classical excellence to your work and life. As always, our focus is on the ancient art of persuasion - classical rhetoric - which is the lost power skill of great statesmen like Hamilton, Napoleon, Churchill and others (not to mention Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, and of course Julius Caesar himself).

More information to follow soon, but if you’re interested don’t wait - space is limited. You can fill out an application here:

#3 Recent Episode - On Progress, Against Stoicism, the Art of Zeal

There’s a new, shorter episode out.

Listen to it here…

Transcript

The following is reported about Diogenes the Cynic, as he was just getting started on his journey to virtue:

The Athenians were keeping holiday with public banquets and shows in the theatre and informal gatherings among themselves, and indulging in merry-making the whole night long, while Diogenes, huddled up in a corner trying to sleep, fell into some very disturbing and disheartening reflexions how he under no compulsion had entered upon a toilsome and strange mode of life, and as a result of his own act he was now sitting without part or parcel in all these good things. A moment later, however, a mouse, it is said, crept up and busied itself with the crumbs of his bread, whereupon he once more recovered his spirits, and said to himself as though rebuking himself for cowardice, "What are you saying, Diogenes? Your leavings make a feast for this creature, but as for you, a man of birth and breeding, just because you cannot be getting drunk over there, reclining on soft and flowery couches, do you bewail and lament your lot?

But have you ever felt like that? Maybe you're not training yourself to live in a used barrel and relieve your bowels in public like Diogenes... but maybe, you're working hard on a project, putting in long hours, or training in obscurity for some far off competition, and nobody, nobody seems to care. And everyone else is going to the disco, picking up girls, traveling to Rome for personal development retreats, here you are squinting and sweating.

It is easy to start on the path of excellence, but it's hard to stay on it. Why else do most people give up?

Well Plutarch can relate. And today I'll share with you some strategies he offers that you can use to keep yourself going, and remind yourself that there is indeed a cloud of chad witnesses silently cheering you on.

I’m Alex Petkas, this is the Cost of Glory, where our mission is to retell the lives of the great Greek and Roman Heroes, in order that you and I can keep ourselves going, and stuff our ears to the siren song of nightclub dissipation, or whatever your vice is. 

It’s a shorter episode today. I've been doing research for the Life of Cato the Younger, a great Stoic hero, coming soon. And I'm drawing here on this little essay Plutarch wrote that caught my attention recently because it was ostensibly written to criticize the Stoics, and I thought, that's relevant.  

But as usual, Plutarch makes his case for the most part by resorting to his usual charm, and into his encouraging storytelling mode. And I found some of this really inspiring, hence I wanted to share it with you, and that's mostly what I'll be talking about.

I've got three big lessons from this essay to share, and I saved the best for last. 

So, the essay is called "How a man may become aware of his progress in virtue" (πῶς ἂν τις αἴσθοιτο ἑαυτοῦ προκόπτοντος ἐπ’ ἀρετῇ, in Latin: quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus).

The addressee is Plutarch's friend Sosius Senecio, a Roman dignitary who was consul twice under emperor Trajan, and to whom Plutarch also dedicated, among other things, his biography pair of Cicero and Demosthenes. There are a couple of letters of Pliny to this guy too, which is cool.

Now first things first, let's clear the air for those of you in the audience starting to get antsy about Plutarch delivering some devastating critique of Stoicism.  

So what's going on here? Well, Plutarch opens this essay with a criticism of a certain stoic doctrine that is not so widely discussed in Pop Stoicism in our times. For some reason.

Namely, that everything except perfect wisdom and perfect virtue is strictly speaking folly and vice. If you're not the ideal wise man, strictly speaking you're no better than the foolish young man who, as he walked out of the brothel, and saw Diogenes, ran back inside ashamed, as Diogenes howled after him “The further away from me you run, my boy, the further into the brothel you go.”

In other words, if you take this doctrine about absolute virtue and absolute vice literally, as Plutarch points out, you’ll spend your life striving and striving for excellence, making effectively zero progress, and then, one day, pow, you'll wake up and be a perfect sage. Plutarch thinks this is nonsense, and in their defense, in practice, the classic stoics like Seneca give a picture of moral improvement that does seem more open to the idea that you can make praiseworthy incremental growth, having a strong-er character along the hard road of aretē.

But I think Plutarch is right to fasten on this problem, because we really do have a tendency sometimes, say when we're in a low dopamine state, we've just recently posted something half baked online and not enough people liked it, our mind wanders away from us, we start to extrapolate, ah, for all of our effort, we're still at the very bottom of the mountain.

Or conversely, some take a sort of contrived, self deprecating approach too far — ah we're all sinners, I'm no better than you, cheez-it gamer.

And I think this is a particular temptation you can find among, for example, Christians who take the absolute depravity of man a little far. But really, it's a common feeling, as Plutarch himself in this essay attests. On the one hand, the Stoics liked these paradoxical, counter intuitive doctrines, because they were attention grabbing and pithy. But Plutarch thinks they can delude you because you can flagellate yourself with an idea like this in a low moment, and actually end up quite discouraged.

But progress in excellence is all about putting one foot in front of the other, and keeping at it. And it's hard to keep walking if you are convinced you're not going anywhere. So Plutarch spends most of the essay encouraging you with some self- analysis strategies to help you feel confident, hey I am making some progress.

Philosophy, a new life path, whatever you want to call it... we often develop an attraction to it after encountering some insightful, perhaps funny, edgy argument... our curiosity is aroused... we think, "Perhaps the world is not what I thought it was, and I must change my life? This is exciting!"

But as Plutarch notes, "those who at the outset engage in long excursions into philosophy's realms and later meet with a long series of obstacles and distractions without becoming aware of any change toward the better, finally get wearied out, and give up."

We'll get to the 3 lessons in a sec but it's worth pausing over a word here briefly.

Now, whenever you hear philosophy here, I want you to understand it in the sense of, "a dedication to perfection", to being the most effective, and flourishing, version of yourself.  This isn't something that needs to be a distraction from your main work necessarily, or a hobby you spend hours a day reading about and practicing on in isolation from anything else.  Philosophy, the love of wisdom, is mainly about making decisions in the moment that conform to your best understanding of what is wise to do in the moment.  

It's a habit, a perspective, of seeing all of your life as a whole, and every moment within, as a little arena where the struggle is to become the highest version of your nature.  That can be played out in giving a speech that makes you nervous, planning your day or week, speaking with a loved one in a conscious, wise manner, or examining your emotional response to various goings on in the world of politics. You may be building a business, and the business may succeed or fail, for factors that are inevitably, partly, out of your control.  

Philosophy, in the Plutarchan sense, is the art of playing this game of “life”—not life in general mind you, but your unique life in particular—like a grandmaster player. 

The goal is to find your worth not in the external outcome (though you try very hard at that, and it matters, certainly) but rather, your ultimate aim is a vision of who you become in the process.  In other words, once again, fullfilling your unique nature.

Lesson 1

Alright, lesson #1. Here's an indication, Plutarch says, that you're making some headway. It has to do with how volatile your emotions get around the opinions of other people:

The sober advice of friends and the bitter criticisms of the unfriendly, in the form of scoffing and joking, cause a warping and weakening of purpose, and have even made some persons renounce philosophy altogether; therefore no slight indication of progress would be shown by gentleness of demeanour in the face of such criticisms, and by not being disturbed or irritated by those who name this or that acquaintance of about the same age, and tell how he is prospering at Court, or getting a big dowry at marriage, or going down to the Forum, attended by a great crowd, to stand for some office or to advocate some cause. For plainly the man who is not disconcerted or affected under such circumstances is one on whom philosophy has got a right hold. For to cease emulating what the great majority admire is impossible, except for those who have acquired the faculty of admiring virtue. For to confront the world boldly is with some people possible only under the influence of anger or mental derangement; but to look with easy nonchalance at actions which the world admires is quite impossible without real and solid wisdom.

So maybe we fall into petty jealousy when we see some peer getting ahead through means we wouldn't use. But the true measure, Plutarch's saying, is, we don't let cheap mimetic desire knock us off our course. And he doesn't say this here but I think another good response to the manifest success of peers who are not walking your path is... we can just be happy for them, and use them as fuel to help us strive at what we're truly called to do.  

A good way to fortify yourself in your own path here is to have a little morning affirmation, a quick page, that you read over and recite aloud "this is what I'm really working on, this is what's most important to me." I've heard some people say this sort of thing in the mirror. Whatever you do, find a way to regularly remind yourself both of who you truly are and who you're planning to be in 5 or 10 years.

And then, once you notice some progress... then like a man Plutarch mentions later on in this essay, you can cry out shamelessly to the maid in your household, "Look at me, Dionysia; I have stopped being conceited."

Lesson 2

Ok, so the second lesson has to do with the way we consume content. Plutarch says, if you start becoming more attuned, in your reading or listening to history and philosophy, to noticing not just zingers and nice one liners, maybe ammo you can use against the people who annoy you... but also or even primarily, if you start noticing things you can apply to your life, say, lessons on how to become more confident, disciplined, fair minded, or smarter, that's a sign you're making progress.

And it works this way because we are really making an identity change that also changes our perceptions about what's interesting. You can start to see nature and chance providing you a series of lessons as you go about your day. Like Diogenes got taught by the little mouse in the opening story.

Plutarch gives some more examples:

[the great Athenian poet] Aeschylus at the Isthmian games was watching a boxing-match, and when one of the men was hit the crowd in the theatre burst into a roar. Aeschylus nudged Ion of Chios [another poet], and said, "You see what a thing training is; the man who is hit says nothing; it is the spectators who shout."​ [The Spartan commander] Brasidas apprehended a mouse among some dried figs, got bitten, and let it go; thereupon he said to himself, "Heavens, there is nothing so small or weak that it can't save its life if it has the courage to defend itself."​ Diogenes​ at the first sight of a man drinking from his hands took his cup from out his satchel and threw it away. Thus attention and intense application makes persons perceptive and receptive of anything that conducts to virtue, from whatever source it should come.

So... a change of perspective, a good way of noticing you're making progress.  And of course, it's also a habit you can practice. A good way to slowly retrain yourself and consolidate whatever lessons you've gotten through experience during the day is a quick 5 minute journal break in the evening. This can be surprisingly satisfying.

Lesson 3

Alright, best for last, #3. Plutarch says, you'll know you're making progress by examining your emotions as you're studying the lives of men of excellence.

Here he is:

We must therefore believe we are making but little progress so long as the admiration which we feel for successful men remains inert within us and does not of its own self stir us to imitation. In fact, love for a person is not active unless there is some jealousy with it, nor is that commendation of virtue ardent and efficacious which does not prod and prick us, and create in us not envy but an emulation over honourable things which strives earnestly for satisfaction. [The word there for emulation is zelos... you may think back to some discussions we've had on this show about the PAIN of ZEAL. Going on here...] For not only, as Alcibiades​ used to say, must the heart feel such anguish at the philosopher's words that tears will flow; but more than that, the man who is truly making progress, comparing himself with the deeds and conduct of a good and perfect man, and being pricked by the consciousness of his own shortcomings, yet at the same time rejoicing because of his hope and yearning, and being filled with an urging that is never still, is ready in the words of Simonides:

To run like a young colt beside a stallion,

So great is his craving all but to merge his own identity in that of the good man¹.

And here's more... 

All more is this the case if we do not limit our admiration of the good to their days of unclouded fortune, but if, just as lovers fondly welcome even lisping or a pallor in their beloved... so we do not shrink at the thought of the exile of Aristeides,​ the imprisonment of Anaxagoras, or the poverty of Socrates, or the sentence pronounced on Phocion,​ but because we believe that virtue, even when attended by such afflictions, is worthy of our love, we try to approach close to it.

I love that... you start to sort of cherish the sufferings and pain of these men, just as much as their successes. Because these show you what stuff you'll need to have, in order to endure when you get to the hardest parts of your own journey.

And here's what Plutarch says it feels like to be inside the head of such a person so carefully dialed in to to the frequency of greatness in the figures he emulates:

With men of this sort it has already become a constant practice, on proceeding to any business, or on taking office, or on encountering any dispensation of Fortune, to set before their eyes good men of the present or of the past,​ and to reflect: "What would Plato have done in this case? What would Epameinondas have said? How would Lycurgus have conducted himself, or Agesilaus?" And before such mirrors as these, figuratively speaking, they array themselves or readjust their habit, and either repress some of their more ignoble utterances, or resist the onset of some emotion.

It just dawned on me the other morning, I was looking back over the career of Plato and I realized that, if he had died when he was around my age, nobody would have the foggiest idea of who he was. He hadn't done his work at Syracuse, he hadn't written his greatest works like the Republic or the Phaedo or Symposium, he hadn't founded his great Academy, in earnest.

So, ask yourself how you feel, really, when listening to the story of a Pompey or a Lysander, or, when we get there, Cato? Maybe you should listen again to the episodes we did on them periodically, to test yourself? Or, better yet, give it a try reading Plutarch himself. Or the story of some other figure you admire. Has that feeling, that pain of zeal, gotten stronger over time?

And as you're finishing off this episode, ask yourself, what content would Caesar put on next?

That's all for today, stay strong, stay ancient, this is Alex Petkas, until next time.

1. Rest of the quote: “Indeed a peculiar symptom of true progress is found in this feeling of love and affection for the disposition shown by those whose deeds we try to emulate, and in the fact that our efforts to make ourselves like them are always attended by a goodwill which accords to them a fair meed of honour.”