Sometimes The Obstacle Isn’t The Way

You don’t have to accept it.

The Roman emperor Augustus had a slave for everything. He even had a slave to fan him while he slept at night. If you were a Roman citizen, your life was pretty great. If you were a slave, it wasn’t.

I’ve always had a little bit of a problem with stoicism.

That problem is history.

Sure, the Romans gave us philosophy. They also kind of stole it from Greece, like they appropriated most of Greek culture after conquering them and completely destroying the city of Corinth (as an example) in 146 B.C. As my historian friends remind me:

Be careful when you borrow ideas from the Romans. They’re not your friends.

If you ever traveled back in time to meet a real Roman, they would’ve considered you subhuman, inferior.

The Romans conquered a huge part of the world and enslaved its population. Centuries later, Europe paid it forward by doing exactly the same thing to virtually every other civilization. So if we’re going to give them credit for stoicism and aqueducts, let’s not forget the imperialism we also inherited. They taught us that, too.

I’ve always been conflicted about books like Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle Is The Way, which has inspired hundreds (maybe thousands) of articles and blog posts about stoicism. Sure, it’s important to get a handle on the things you can and can’t control in your life. Our egos often do get in the way, and we can definitely sabotage our own happiness. A mindset that embraces resilience and problem-solving can take you a long way.

You can learn how to turn obstacles into opportunities.

Of course, if your obstacle was a Roman legion, you were kinda screwed. It strikes me as ironic that the guys who tell us to reach for the stars were the same ones who would murder you and your family, and burn your city to the ground, if you ever tried to stand up to them.

It bothers me.

Roman glory depended on slaves.

The Roman empire was built by slaves.

Your chances of winding up as a slave in Rome were about one in three. There were lots of ways to fall into slavery. You could be born into it. Your city could get conquered by a Roman general. You could get kidnapped by pirates or bandits, and sold off at a market. You could go bankrupt, and have no choice but to basically sell yourself.

Slaves worked incredibly hard. They did everything.

They grew food for the empire. They treated Roman citizens when they were sick. They taught their kids. They made their clothes. They dressed them and bathed them. They styled their hair. They sailed ships. They drove the economy. Roman citizens openly acknowledged all this. They believed slavery was a moral necessity for greatness. It was the only way they could live their own wonderful, luxurious lives.

Slaves had no rights.

You couldn’t own property. You couldn’t get married. You could pair up with each other, but your master could still sleep with you whenever he wanted. He could split you up and sell you. He could do the same thing with your kids, if your were allowed to have any.

If you made a mistake at work, your master could beat you. He could torture you. He could starve you. He could do the same thing to anyone you cared about, because you were all just property.

You weren’t a person.

You were a thing.

Pop stoicism completely ignores slavery.

Most of us don’t study stoicism in its historical context. We just read them for inspirational quotes and free interpretation. That’s how popular authors have presented them to us, as life advice.

That’s fine, I guess…

When you read through all that stoic life advice, you’re not going to see them talk about slavery, and that’s not because it didn’t exist. Even under the great Marcus Aurelius, 30 percent of the population lived in slavery. Some of them were treated pretty well, but they still had no rights. The stoics themselves almost never mentioned slavery in their essays and letters.

Seneca once wrote:

“Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters.”

Seneca also trivialized slavery:

Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear… No servitude is more disgraceful than that which is self-imposed.

Honestly, it makes me cringe a little. Seneca is basically whatabouting slavery, even when he knows it flies in the face of all his other meditations. He might as well just come out and say it: Everything he says about living a good life only works if you’re a free person.

If you’re a slave, then sorry not sorry.

Pop philosophers and life coaches pave right over these problems, because they’re inconvenient. It’s hard to cherry-pick Seneca and Epicurus for life hacks when you have to contend with the fact that they weren’t simply products of their environment. These were dudes who had plenty of free time to sit in contemplation of human nature.

Let’s face it, our beloved stoics understood the deep contradictions between their philosophies and the lives of slaves. They couldn’t reconcile the two, so they just shrugged it off. They pretended that spiritual or internal slavery was worse than actual, physical slavery.

It’s a little lazy.

You can’t make everything an internal problem.

When you give the stoics a hard look, you can see how their attitude lays the foundation for modern self-help’s political indifference. This is where we get the constant insistence that every problem is internal, and that every dilemma can be solved by managing your emotions.

It’s awfully convenient.

Seriously, there’s a lot of value in learning a basic level of personal responsibility and accountability.

Most of us get that.

We’ve all met plenty of people who overreact to problems. We all have a toxic friend who self-sabotages. Sometimes, we are that friend. Obviously, it helps to read about ways to fortify yourself. In the end, nobody wants to constantly rely on help from everyone else.

Self-reliance is great.

That said, philosophies of resilience and grit can fall into the wrong hands. When that happens, you get politicians and podcast hosts blaming poor people for all their problems while completely ignoring all of the barriers that keep us down. It’s not an accident. It’s intentional.

If we’re not careful, all these prescriptions on how to live a good life don’t help. They turn into a series of excuses and justifications for injustice, and they wind up defending the status quo.

Roman slaves had internal problems. They were human. Whatever internal problems they had were compounded by their external problems. Their masters didn’t care about how they felt.

They couldn’t quit their jobs. If they didn’t like where they were, they just had to deal with it the best they could. They had to try to keep their masters happy, and practice an ancient kind of self-care, which meant not thinking too much about what they really wanted to do with their lives. It didn’t do you much good to feel bitter about your fate. If you complained, your master had the right to literally smack you across the face.

If he told you to smile, you had to.

The only way to escape this life was the process of manumission. Basically, you could buy your freedom with money you earned through years of dedicated service and excellent behavior.

It was rare.

Your hopes of manumission relied completely on whether or not you had a kind master who appreciated all your hard work. Even then, you probably gave up the best years of your life.

One of the biggest principles of stoicism is amor fati, or the acceptance of fate. Don’t waste your time complaining about your circumstances. Accept what you can’t control, and do your best.

That sounds really great if you’re in the top 10 percent of Americans who almost never have to worry about things like rent or worker exploitation. You truly have options and choices. You can impress your friends by quoting Marcus Aurelius. Now imagine saying amor fati to a slave who had to accept all kinds of dehumanization, whose only hope of self-improvement was to be perfect at their job, and smile while doing it.

It has a slightly different tone.

We can’t whatabout injustice.

Telling someone all their problems are internal is a sneaky way of minimizing the social forces that shape our lives and influence our choices.

Almost everyone wants a sense of agency.

Even if it’s a lie…

That’s why ideas like self-sabotage and grit sell so well. It’s true, we all do things that undermine our own happiness. We can all work on ourselves. That doesn’t mean we can excuse the abuses of billionaires and corrupt politicians. We still deserve fair pay and affordable places to live. Demanding it doesn’t mean we’re complaining, or being lazy.

Right now, our rights and freedoms are under assault. There’s a concerted effort among the elite to reduce us, as much as possible, to the status of Roman slaves. They want us to work all the time, own nothing, and act happy about it. They expect us to smile and accept our fate. They’re teaming up with life coaches and marketers to convince us that true misery is enslavement to vices, just like Seneca told everyone ages ago.

Don’t fall for it.

There are times when other people’s actions and behaviors put a constraint on our own. There are people who want to stick their perceived rights and freedoms ahead of our own, and we can’t let them.

Sometimes the obstacle isn’t the way.

It’s just oppression.