The Saturday Exhale Episode 16: What Are We Living For?

Vadim Gershteyn, PhD, MPH served as my editor for StressHacked and contributed writing to my upcoming book The Stone Wall. He joins me for this discussion.

VG: In a reading of Chapter 22 from StressHacked: The Mind, you speak about the importance of small victories. To summarize this idea briefly, relatively minute accomplishments can add up to large successes and, perhaps more critically, help you build resilience overall, making large successes possible to begin with. There is another way to look at this idea, first with Aristotle, and Charles Peirce, and I would like to interpret your idea through their philosophical lenses.

First, Aristotle states, “We become just by doing just acts. We become courageous by doing courageous acts.” You quote this in StressHacked. What a virtuous character is for Aristotle is simply this: a man or woman who achieves small victories, done over and over again, usually in silence—thereby not demanding recognition. It’s the repeated successes in small ways that carry over to who you are overall. If you are a moral person overall (ignoring the problems with an idea like morality for a second), doing immoral acts seems much harder, more “out of character,” than an individual who is generally immoral in their day-to-day. This goes without saying. Peirce takes it in a much more surreal direction.

Peirce, having read Nietzsche, was invariably influenced by Nietzsche’s notion that “there is no ‘being’ behind doing, acting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction imposed on the doing—the doing itself is everything.” In particular, Peirce claims that the universe itself is composed of habits. By habits Peirce means the stuff that entities do consistently in response to signs, and not only entities but non-living material, too. Perhaps most interestingly, habits actually exist for Peirce (in other words, habits are the only things that do exist). Like Nietzsche claims that there is no self besides what we do in an achievement of that self, Peirce claims there is no universe besides what the universe does, attesting that what is actually real is not things or entities but the regularities in how things or entities behave.

In scientific career at the turn of the 20th century, Peirce famously studied protozoa (what he termed life-slimes) in his laboratory. He, deliriously, or perhaps not—given what I just stated—claimed that protozoa feels, which is to say they respond to habits, just like we do. Ergo, one of the most anti-human conceptions of philosophy was developed by Peirce: we are no different than protozoa. Our small victories are the same as what the protozoa considers, or, more accurately, extends in order to maintain its self-preservation, or, to put it another way, to express its will-to-power.

Do you believe, contra Aristotle and Peirce, that there is something “more” to life than small victories? If so, what is it? In a previous newsletter, I posed the question to you, “What are we building resilience for?” Here, I’m posing a similar question: what are we living for? In StressHacked, you criticize Dave Ramsey for advising people to clip coupons rather than extensively research the large purchases they are making. Does your advice to attain small victories differ from his?

AT: I think it does. Our small victories create the habits and patterns, as you state, that allow us to build character and capacity to deal with larger challenges, chaos, and adversity when they arise. Clipping coupons does not deliver to us the habits or skills needed to properly negotiate and contemplate larger purchases and deals. These concepts are not synonymous, but because we falsely equate them, clipping coupons may give a false sense of confidence that we are being wise with our finances, ironically undermining our ability to make large changes and improvements.

Peirce’s position is very cause-and-effect, deterministic. We have debated free will often, and my position always comes back to the following: regardless if we have free will or not, it is better to believe we do, as the data and research demonstrates we behave differently when we believe we are in control. This is where Sam Harris’s pithy advice comes into play, to paraphrase his words: “treat yourself as if you have free will, but have compassion for others knowing that they probably don’t.”

If we don’t have free will, it is these habits that develop over time in the cause-and-effect interplay between experience and action. These habits make us. In this scenario, I am fortunate and lucky enough to have developed the habits I have that lead to my success. Perhaps, writing them down and sharing them with others will be sufficient external force to drive them towards some benefit. If we do have free will, then understanding that our habits and actions matter reinforces our vision and conception of our ‘self’. By committing to the habits, the small victories, we are making a deal with ourselves on who we believe ourselves to be, but more importantly, who we wish to become.

VG: Peirce advocates for something called ‘tychism,’ which occurs when “real novelty,” as he calls it, emerges in the universe, through these habits interfacing over time. So, while Peirce was a hardcore evolutionist (keep in mind Peirce was writing shortly after Charles Darwin’s publication of On The Origin of Species), he was applying the evolutionary model to metaphysics, predating what is today called Quantum Darwinism. So in short, while I think its fair to read determinism in Peirce’s ontology of habits, he did contend there is novelty-generation that is caused by repeated processes, which you can also insert into the domain of humans. The self-help kernel is perhaps this: since all things are defined by what they do (Peirce), you really can’t do anything only once (i.e., if you want to change yourself, you have to change your habits). If you want to be good at something—that is, to make something new, tychistically, in the universe—you have got to do the thing again and again. And, to be more precise, you’re not always doing the things-in-themselves over and over, you’re doing the things around them. Building resilience. Preparing. However, not “clipping coupons” necessarily because the amount of money you save doing so is not worth the cost of your time, in many cases (I could only begin to imagine the myriad of writing experiences that lead up to me writing this for this audience; I have been writing “this” passage for 20+ years, in different forms, to follow Peirce).

You state, “I am fortunate and lucky enough to have developed the habits I have that lead to my success. Perhaps, writing them down and sharing them with others will be sufficient external force to drive them towards some benefit.” I think this is the goal of writing: to give someone something to emulate, if one is an emulatable person. The other goal is to keep people from making one’s same mistakes, if one is not said emulatable person. We do not communicate except to share information, even deceptively—contrary to the likes of Noam Chomsky who claims language arises for the fun of it (to grossly simplify). I digress.

Part of the excitement of The Saturday Exhale, for me (not to mention your other writings: StressHacked and the upcoming Stone Wall) is that you are indeed an emulatable guy, and so it benefits me to “pick your brain” about what it is you did that worked, and for your audience to hear it. From editing your works and therefore reading them, I was both surprised and comforted to the degree to which you attributed success to these habits—these “small victories.” At the same time, you also recognized the degree to which luck played a role: starting with your genetics. This, of course, applies to all of us—in terms of being born lucky or unlucky.

The Ramsey spin in my opening passage may have obscured the more pertinent question. You are right that the performative act of clipping coupons (or whatever its contemporary equivalent is; Groupon?) is not the same as wisefully planning larger purchases; more critically, you state that coupon-clipping gives one false confidence to take away from the energy required to fix problems in one’s life. But, if you’re not clipping coupons (metaphorically speaking), and you’re wisely planning your future and future capacity, what are you planning for? (I’m talking about you, personally). What are you living for? You wisely intuited that many people would want to be you, hence why they would read your books (not only for the scientific and philosophical content, which of course is the more substantive layer). What should they expect when they get to your level? What would drive them—in other words, what drives you?

AT: First, an aside, one thing many miss is the ways we are lucky with the degree in which we are unlucky. As much as my innate abilities, I owe to my early adversities. They were to such a degree in which they created struggle and hardship, but not so much as to break me or be insurmountable. That is a delicate balance, it is luck, and I am fortunate to have been born into, and then dragged through, the chaos and catastrophes of my youth. The poverty, traumas, insecurities, and the keen awareness of my shortcomings—all against the backdrop of my successes, which were frequent and intense enough to instill a hope and confidence I could overcome the rest.

As for what I am planning for, I am quite vocal that I have no long term goals, nor do I believe in maintaining them. I keep a loose idea of the vision I want my future to be, which adjusts based on new experience and evidence, and create short term plans and strategies to propel me in that direction. Additionally, I maintain almost extreme flexibility, aware that new opportunities can arise at any moment, and that I need to be cognizant of them, and flexible enough to seize them if they fit into my grander concepts.

As for the second part, I think this needs some context. People who do not know me, and are simply aware of the privileges I have attained, may want to have these privileges, successes, and such. Certain friends and family may find these aspects of who I am commendable, inspirational, or in other cases, may transcend into the more negative emotions of envy, wishing to take what I have, or believing them to be more worthy.

That said, those who know me well absolutely do not want my life. They see my challenges, stresses, workload, and weigh them heavily—for they are not familiar with these stresses, and cannot imagine themselves bearing them. In some instances, they may have comparable stresses and challenges to overcome, but they are their challenges and as such they are already familiar with them: “the devil you know…” Moreover, our egos do not allow us to covet and resent those closest to us in this manner, not usually, anyways. For these reasons, it would be delusional and insulting to state that others would want to be me.

What may be a better and more accurate way to frame this is that many may find value in the lessons I have learned in becoming who I am, in order to become who they wish to eventually be. Rather than covet, they can borrow inspiration from my journey in order to forge their own path, build their own life, and dedicate themselves to their own self, raising their status, influence, capacity, all while hopefully helping to protect and lift others close to them and in their extended communities. Through this lens, I hope to be someone that is one day appreciated, who has inspired others to rise up, and to never become someone that is widely resented, my successes and the life I’ve built routinely or popularly coveted, or derided, by those who may possess ill intent.

As for what drives me? Something I spoke about in StressHacked: a crushing feeling that I will never again accomplish anything of note, so to ensure that I am not destroyed by this existential anxiety, I move forward. As I move, accomplish, and conceive of new thoughts, my thoughts and projects evolve to match the capacity I have built, aspiring to keep growing the means I have to execute, such as influence and finance, fast enough to match my own rate of evolution in terms of my capacity to accomplish these challenges and visions, by means of my individualistic growth.

VG: I think you’re right that people wouldn’t want to be you, even if they are envious of you. Perhaps they just want the fruits of your labor. “People want to go to bed poor and wake up rich,” as you state.

I likewise think people forget how subjectively constituted our lives are, which is a lesson found in Marcus Aurelius’ writings and that of the other Stoics. For instance, I have been writing a phenomenology about eating, with the understanding that food plays a significant part of my life (and all of our lives) but in most cases we do not think much about it. In this phenomenology, I recall that one of the best meals I had was Japanese pan noodles in Moscow, because the food was so spicy it brought me out of the fact that I was temporarily living in Moscow. Meanwhile, I also recall a conversation I had with a “bloke” at a bar in London. This bloke stated that his favorite meal was also in Russia, but it was a meal of butter and kasha at an orphanage. He stated after working all day eating peasant food with Russian orphans was the best experience of his life. Most people would not want to transport themselves to an orphanage to eat peasant food. The satisfaction of it makes no sense until you realize how (necessarily) personal our experiences are.

I speak in The Stone Wall about Jacques Lacan’s concept of jouissance. Pleasure, pursued excessively, feels bad. There’s no way around this. I’m not saying your life is pleasureful—some of it certainly is or must be—but even if it was (wholly pleasureful), we wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, because good things wear off quickly. They wear off more quickly than bad things that linger, and if all things seem “good,” the bad stuff feels stronger and more debilitating than if there was an emotional balance. This seems to me to be the lesson of hormesis.

In the film Mesrine: Killer Instinct, starring Vincent Cassel as Jacques Mesrine, a notorious French criminal, Cassel-as-Mesrine gives an impassioned speech about his will-to-power. Namely, he states that if he sees something in a shop window, he wants it, and would stop at nothing to get it. Of course, Mesrine is a criminal so his methods of acquisition are parasitical and not laudable. Further, there is more to life than material possessions. However, I admire the honesty of Cassel’s character. He cares not for society and social conventions. He cares about himself first. He realizes where his will-to-power is sublimated in others’ desires and when it is “wholly” his own. Few of us even know what we desire. If we did, we might be satisfied with kasha outside an orphanage. In fact, we may say it’s the best meal we ever had.

AT: I agree that few of us know what we actually want until we already have it. This is the process of becoming, finding ourselves, our purpose, and what makes us satisfied and fulfilled in an ever changing confluence of who we are, and what is occurring around us. In simple terms, it can be stated in a concept taught in sales that is simultaneously true, but also used to justify manipulation and extraction. I’ve heard it said many ways, to paraphrase: “People don’t appreciate what they are buying until they own it.” This is absolutely true in most instances, however, people also buy many things that have no value to them, because they have been convinced by a salesperson or marketer that they will gain value.

It’s also true that we often chase the emotion of an experience, such as a memorable meal, conflating the emotional memory with the food itself. Of course, the food has to be good, but our memories tend to be magnified by other factors, and in instances where this occurred there is no reasonable way to replicate the experience. When we try to recreate the experience, either at the same restaurant, or by trying to prepare the dish ourselves, we will be “let down.” It may taste very good, but something will be missing. Many of us chase these experiences like an addict chases the first high they will never again enjoy. I’m one of these people, and to be frank, even knowing this and purposefully tempering my expectations in full awareness my memories could be clouded, I am still routinely let down. Knowing “why” this occurs reduces the intensity of the disappointment, and allows me to “let go” of the obsessive urge to replicate, but doesn’t seem to wield the power to prevent this amplified and impossible to reach expectation my mind builds. Perhaps this is as good as it gets, or maybe in time this will diminish, also, freeing me from this emotional trap. Only time will tell.