I've been reading a little Greek philosophy lately, and I don't know shit about it, other than that there's a few things there that interest me. I'm gonna skip over the details and just share my take on what seemed cool.
Virtue is about doing good, and being virtuous means that you really have your heart in it, that everything you do is about living right, and as a result you spend your life feeling pleased and untroubled and imperturbable. Doing right and being right and feeling right is what's best for you, it's how to be happy and good. And of course doing it perfectly is nearly-impossible, but getting as close as you can is pretty much the main purpose of your life. It's what good people do, every day. They unironically commit themselves to virtue, over and over again.
It becomes like a religious faith. It's very much like discovering the divinity within you, and embracing it without restraint. If you go in all the way, you'l be rewarded with an awesome life.
And I can totally get that appeal; just surrender to it. Lose your own wants and desires and replace them with virtue's wants and desires. Lose all the pain of being an ordinary man.
It is painful to withhold yourself, to steer your own soul. We do it imperfectly and we smash into things and it hurts, and the hurt is often lasting and real. We can't escape our own mistakes. We know what we've missed.
But like many of us, I gotta steer mine anyway. I just have to. I hold nothing against my brothers and sisters who follow their heart, and who choose that other route. I followed my heart and chose my path just the same as they did. I don't even know why I must be this way. I'm not proud of it. I often wonder how much harm it has done me.
So that makes it hard for me to really get into most of those philosophies, because there is already a gulf there that we just can't cross. But I found one school of thought that suited me very nicely.
This school notes that animals sense pleasure and pain for a reason, and that avoiding pain, and doing what they could to preserve their comfort and well-being was almost invariably the right thing for them to be doing. The school even pointed out that it's often sensible to embrace short-term discomfort for long-term well-being, and that this sensible approach was best.
So they made the unsurprising assertion that maybe this ought to be a guide for how we should live - and a guide for how to become virtuous. Not the gods. Not discipline. Not somebody else's insistence on what was and wasn't virtuous. Our guide is that sensible sort of well-being, that we just figure out as best we can, as we go.
This is pretty radical shit for 2000 years ago. Back then, the Greeks would have thrown you in jail just for denying the existence of the gods.
So their basic spiel is like this: follow that sensible feeling-good stuff, and it's going to lead you to the life you should be living. And that's going to be a virtuous life, too. You'll take care of your loved ones and be kind and hardworking and careful and good and friendly and all that stuff, and you'll take time for amusements of whatever sophistication you might enjoy, but you will not go overboard on pleasure, either. You don't want so much that it makes you jaded, you don't want things that are too risky and make drama in your life, you don't want unhealthy stuff or stuff you can't afford. Go for what you do want, and what you want has good honest dependable sensible stuff at the root.
They further suggest that what you'll probably come to prefer a simple, frugal, wholesome, uncomplicated life. You can still have all the pleasures that you think are worth having, and you'll probably come to prefer a moderate approach to most of them.
Now this is very sensible shit and I think every stoner here understands it very well.
So anyway this school gets labeled as hedonists, seekers of pleasure, avoiders of pain. Everybody gets the idea that they are running around with their dicks out, drunk on wine. The critics recoil from the idea that pleasure is anything but an untrustworthy distraction; they claim it is the very opposite of discipline.
And they are right, it is the opposite of discipline. It's just realizing what you want, and doing it.
This is powerful stuff to ponder.
It's interesting, you seem to come to similar conclusions as found at the end of Candide (Voltaire), but got there from a different direction.
The moral of the story is, "Cultivate your own garden". Meaning, more or less, just handle your own shit, and make the best of your slice of the world. Let the rest of the planet fend for itself. .
It's a good book, I highly recommend it.