The summer is an excellent time to put day-to-day life in perspective. Reflect on things, and broaden your horizon. Learn things not directly related to work.

Currently, I am spending some time off reading A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine. The book is a nice introduction to stoicism: What the Stoics believed, why they believed it and how you can, with the benefit of hindsight, replace the sometimes incorrect reasoning that underpinned their beliefs and come out the other end with truths that are nevertheless useful and relevant today.

One such truth that the Stoics understood was this: Fulfilling our desires is no route to happiness. Because when desires are fulfilled new desires pop up in their place, and stuck in the unhappy state of desire we are left. Today, that can be understood by thinking through the lens of evolution: The Sapiens who always wanted more turned out to be the ones who survived and got to reproduce, and gradually everyone became slightly more like those. Therefore, we are inclined to strive to fulfill our desires. But we don't only want to survive, we want to be happy. The stoics got this, but by following a different line of reasoning. They got there by invoking Zeus and the "natural state" of humans.

I believe the same pattern is common in the history of ideas. Ideas survive, not because they are based on a correct line of reasoning, but because they contain truth in them that is useful and valuable. Over time, the reasoning changes, but the truth in them survives and is refined. For instance, a religion might recommend that you sit under a certain tree because that is supposed to bring health according to God. The tree does in fact bring health but little do you know, that is because a chemical substance in the tree strengthens your immune system, not because of God. So you continue to sit under the tree and enjoy the related health benefits, not knowing exactly why it works. And since the idea works it spreads. One day, people who don't believe in the religion see that tree-sitting works and try to come up with better explanations of why that is. Science catches up and the reasoning improves. We get to the right place by going the wrong way. We stumble on a place that appears to be good to stand, even though we might not know exactly why.

It is important to have in mind before judging and discrediting beliefs, particularly when they stem from another era, that it might be easy to single out part of an edifice of ideas as incorrect. But deep in there, truth may be buried, truth that is valuable and useful. Truth that can be transferred into other parts of life. If that helps to live the good life, then who is one to judge?

The summer is an excellent time to put day-to-day life in perspective. Reflect on things, and broaden your horizon. Learn things not directly related to work.

Currently, I am spending some time off reading A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine. The book is a nice introduction to stoicism: What the Stoics believed, why they believed it and how you can, with the benefit of hindsight, replace the sometimes incorrect reasoning that underpinned their beliefs and come out the other end with truths that are nevertheless useful and relevant today.

One such truth that the Stoics understood was this: Fulfilling our desires is no route to happiness. Because when desires are fulfilled new desires pop up in their place, and stuck in the unhappy state of desire we are left. Today, that can be understood by thinking through the lens of evolution: The Sapiens who always wanted more turned out to be the ones who survived and got to reproduce, and gradually everyone became slightly more like those. Therefore, we are inclined to strive to fulfill our desires. But we don't only want to survive, we want to be happy. The stoics got this, but by following a different line of reasoning. They got there by invoking Zeus and the "natural state" of humans.

I believe the same pattern is common in the history of ideas. Ideas survive, not because they are based on a correct line of reasoning, but because they contain truth in them that is useful and valuable. Over time, the reasoning changes, but the truth in them survives and is refined. For instance, a religion might recommend that you sit under a certain tree because that is supposed to bring health according to God. The tree does in fact bring health but little do you know, that is because a chemical substance in the tree strengthens your immune system, not because of God. So you continue to sit under the tree and enjoy the related health benefits, not knowing exactly why it works. And since the idea works it spreads. One day, people who don't believe in the religion see that tree-sitting works and try to come up with better explanations of why that is. Science catches up and the reasoning improves. We get to the right place by going the wrong way. We stumble on a place that appears to be good to stand, even though we might not know exactly why.

It is important to have in mind before judging and discrediting beliefs, particularly when they stem from another era, that it might be easy to single out part of an edifice of ideas as incorrect. But deep in there, truth may be buried, truth that is valuable and useful. Truth that can be transferred into other parts of life. If that helps to live the good life, then who is one to judge?