WHY WE HAVE FAILED TO CHANGE OURSELVES

Stoic philosopher and columnist, Massimo Pigliucci, confesses that stoicism has profound limitations as a change strategy:

·       …people want to use it as a magic wand to solve any and all problems, as if practicing a philosophy of life…provided some kind of superhuman powers that can make us transcend our limitations as finite beings. Which is ironic, given that a central tenet of Stoicism — the dichotomy of control — is precisely about just how limited human powers really are.

Pigliucci identifies the problem that many others refuse to acknowledge – that we are very limited in terms of changing ourselves, whatever our philosophy of life. He cites another who has attempted to apply philosophy to psychotherapy:

·       Lou Marinoff, wrote a best-selling book provocatively entitled “Plato, Not Prozac!” about philosophical counseling as a tool for, as he puts it, “therapy for the sane.” But even Lou, despite his obvious skepticism of psychiatry, acknowledges in the introduction to the book that if your mind does not function properly you may, in fact, need Prozac (or whatever other effective medication).

Prozac is hardly an answer; perhaps instead a tradeoff at best, especially in light of the fact that so many mass murderers had been on psychotropic medications.

Isn’t it ironic that humanity has accomplished so much technologically and yet has utterly failed to change ourselves – the thoughts and emotions that afflict us. It is almost as if there was a divine plot set against our pride and attempts at self-aggrandizement.

Perhaps there is. Perhaps we were not created for self-attainment but for a divine relationship in which our sins would be forgiven and our identity supremely validated by an all-defining love. Perhaps this is the reason that the various human interventions have failed.