A Little Bit About a Lot: Ike Gai to Stoicism, Part 2

This first step also is the most involved and largest of the eight steps. Like building a house, the foundation has to be the most solid part of your home, because everything else rests upon it. This first step is foundational.

So how do you identify your purpose? How do you decide if your purpose is career or personal oriented? The short answer is that your goals should be a reflection of your personal life, although a career purpose likely will spring from your evaluation of your personal purpose.

This is where the use of Ike Gai and Stoicism will be beneficial.

First, a bit about the two, with a brief explanation of Feng Shui and Ayurveda, to assist. These two are focused more on how you live than on how you choose a path.

Feng Shui involves surrounding yourself with an environment that is peaceful and calming, allowing you to focus without stress. Ayurveda emphasizes healthy diet, healthy lifestyle and healthy environment.

Once you have determined your focus, or purpose, you will analyse your choice and refine it employing the principles of Feng Shui and Ayurveda. We will define that process in our workbook at the end of this segment.

Traditional stoicism consists of nine tenets or principles.

  1. Nature is rational. In an age where rational behaviour seems in short supply, we turn to nature to see that even seemingly random occurrences have cause and effect.  Evolution is a prime example of the rationality of nature: things evolve because of other forces that encourage that evolution.

This does not mean that nature is predictable or beneficial. The coexistence of forces requires that they play against and/or with each other, but, at least at this time, we are unable to predict accurately exactly how nature will respond. At the same time, what is beneficial for one part of nature may not be so for another. If we attempt to eradicate mosquitoes and the diseases they carry, we take way essential food supply for scores of birds and animals who, when they die, cause a chain reaction of issues in animals higher on the food chain. Or, unpredictably, another pest becomes dominant.

Nature also is at our core, with Stoics believing that we are all part of a divine or central structure, and each of us has a purpose in nature. This also leads to the idea of duty, since we are not completely individual, but a part of a collective spirit.

  • Reason dominates. In tandem with nature being rational, the laws of reason prevail in the entire world. Again, while currently the world is in chaos, reason will prevail in most instances. Even seemingly unreasonable behaviour may be reasonable to the perpetrator, serving a specific cause. This is the way of many political actions. The actions may not be reasonable for the population at large but may be so for a small segment. The problem, then, is to identify for what purpose an action is reasonable.
  • Virtue is Important. This is not the virtue of a chivalrous era, but virtue defined as a life led according to rational actions. Happiness arises from a virtuous life, when we temper our desires and impulses to align with the four cardinal virtues. Happiness, in stoicism, is not found in things, but in actions.
  • Wisdom is the essence of virtuous action. Wisdom brings the cardinal virtues of courage, insight, temperance and justice.
  • Apathea, or apathetic response combats irrationality. This does not mean that we are apathetic about the world, but that we should mitigate against extreme passion and feelings, which is irrational. This idea is part of today’s cognitive behaviour therapy. Apathea also says that we cannot control all external events. We control only our own actions, thoughts, decisions and opinions.
  • We have the tools. Much like religious faith, we need to believe that we have or can acquire all the tools we need to fulfill our purpose and to thrive. We should not look to blame others but accept responsibility for our actions completely.
  • We should eliminate toxic emotions.  This includes hope, fear and anger. Understand the pros and cons of pleasure. Pleasure is neither inherently good nor bad. It depends on the cause of the pleasure and if it encourages selfishness, interfering with the quest for virtue.
  • What we believe to be evil may not be so. Illness, death and poverty are not inherently evil. They merely are unpleasant circumstances.
  • Call to duty. This is an overarching ide in stoicism. We should seek virtue, and employ knowledge, for the sake of duty to others and to justice. No one is an island. Our personal growth is bound with others, and how we cooperate. We need to persist and resist. The overriding principle is that we will never be perfect, but we should always strive for progress.

While stoicism arose during the Greek heyday, many of its tenets remain valid. However, the moral code of that era is different from today, and living a stoic lifestyle may be untenable. There are essential, or core values within stoicism, though. This includes the concept of virtue (and its 4 cardinal virtues), the understanding of our place in the world, the role of duty and the truth that happiness and fulfillment occur only through actions, not items.

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