As you are likely aware if you have been brave or bored enough to read my previous blogs, I am enjoying reading some of Seneca’s writings at the moment. One of the things that I am noticing is how much of modern psychology and psychotherapeutic theory has its origins in ancient philosophical writings. In one of his letters to Lucilius ‘Only Philosophy will Wake us’, Seneca covers what a Transactional Analysist would read as ‘discounting’, he also covers the link between discounting and depression, then he gets all Freudian and Jungian by wandering into dream analysis whilst having a little dabble in more Freudian waters by pondering the depth of consciousness! He then rounds things off with an amusing petis fours, going all philosomophical by stating how wisdom/understanding makes us more powerful and competent than the gods. Not bad for one letter really.
Seneca begins by telling his friend of a recent experience where he was persuaded to take a trip by boat over the sea. The sea was calm when they set off, but there was a downpour and there was a heavy swell. Seneca was quickly so sick he insisted the helmsman got them to shore as soon as possible. As soon as he got close to land he jumped out of the boat, into the sea and nearly drowned when the heavy woollen clothing he was wearing got waterlogged! If only he had remembered he got seasick!
‘…it’ll take me twenty years to reach my destination if I ever have to journey anywhere by sea!’
Which makes it clear he will not be getting on a boat anytime soon. As he had no smartphone or internet to distract him at this point, Seneca had time to sit with himself and ponder:
‘As soon as I’d settled my stomach… I began to reflect how we are attended by an appalling forgetfulness of our weaknesses, even the physical ones which are continually bringing themselves to our notice, and much more so with those that are not only more serious but correspondingly less apparent.’
‘Suppose our feet ache, with little needling pains in the joints: at this stage we pass it off and say we have sprained our ankle or strained something in some exercise or other… but once it starts bending the feet… and makes them both misshapen, we have to confess we’ve got the gout.’
This sounds very similar to the Transactional Analysis theory around ‘discounting’, which Ken Mellor defined as ‘The person who discounts believes or act as though some aspect of the self, other people, or reality is less significant than it actually is.’
By not acknowledging the significance of the problem, the problem becomes worse and the ability to resolve the issue more complicated or potentially not possible.’
Strange how the same theory around an aspect of self and psychology can be written nearly two thousand years apart. In simple terms both Seneca and Ken Mellor are saying, don’t ignore at a low level those things that might have a more serious consequence if not noticed and sorted out.
Seneca also appears to discuss the concept of depression and also goes into a rather Freudian discussion around consciousness as well as dream analysis when he writes:
‘With afflictions of the spirit, though, the opposite is the case: the worse a person is, the less he feels it. You needn’t feel surprised, my dearest Lucilius; a person sleeping lightly perceives impressions in his dreams and is sometimes, even, aware during sleep that he is asleep, whereas a heavy slumber blots out dreams and plunges the mind too deep for consciousness of self. Why does no one admit his failings? Because he’s still deep in them. It’s the person who’s awakened who recounts his dream, and acknowledging one’s failings is a sign of health.’
Again, just a clear example that what we class as ‘Freudian’ now, was in effect being written about and discussed thousands of years ago. No ‘new’ theory or approach in psychology or psychotherapy is new or particularly groundbreaking, it will have its roots in some form of ancient wisdom or observation. This is one of the reasons I am currently interested in reading about what Seneca and his contemporaries, they help keep me grounded in a reality that is hard to find in the 21st century.
With all the modern ‘advances’ in technology and social media at the moment, so much information (a lot of it vaguely useless or actually overtly harmful) flies around the interweb and into peoples hands, heads and homes. As a society we seem to be arrogantly sitting in a largely self serving and smug viewpoint that the present is great and everything that came before was shit or not as good as things are now. We have ‘AI’ that will fall in love with us and we can get our dead relatives to sing by uploading a picture to a website, and as much as I enjoy watching videos of dogs smiling, or cats stuck in boxes walking around a room, I am not sure this is what the next stage of human development and evolution was actually meant to be.
I would love to put Seneca and Freud in front of a computer and show them the interweb. I cant imagine what they would think. If I had to guess though I would bet they would be overawed, amazed and then as they delved into it more deeply the would be horrified, especially Seneca. To see so much of the human experience trivialised or actively dehumanised (so much hatred, racism and anger is out there at the moment and so easy to access by all), I am sure he would be despairing at how we have wasted the gifts that the modern world offers us.
Too many of us out in the world today seem to take comfort from the fact that as a species we are ‘advanced’ and that there is little to be learned from looking backwards in time. In reality all that has ‘advanced ‘is technology, the basic psychological and physiological processes that define the human experience are immutable and exactly the same in 2025 as they were in 25ad when Seneca was alive and learning about life and the human experience.
Technology does not define us or give us anything on a social level that is actually necessary, or that we didn’t have already in some other, more positive form before it existed. All we need as individuals and as a social group, already exists in all of us and technology, if anything, distracts us away from the core aspects of self and our social groups that are vital to us knowing who we are, where we are going and what is important.
To make matters worse, social media in all its forms actually triggers anxiety, depression, insecurity and other mental illness in large numbers of the people using them. Whether people are being vicariously traumatised by seeing pictures of dead bodies, animals being harmed (these things appear in people feeds without warning, prompting or request all the time), whether a person’s addiction is being triggered by seeing adverts for gambling or alcohol, or whether someone’s adverse childhood experiences are re-triggered by a story or advert for a TV show, computer game or mental health service, social media creates and brings back to the surface much more harm than it does good.
The very technologies and social media platforms that purport to improve our lives through ‘connection’, ‘sharing of information’ or whatever other form of psychobabble that emanates from so much that is out there in social media land are not for our benefit, their true purpose is to make as much money as possible for the mix of sociopaths and psychopaths who run and control it whilst also keeping the masses of people less privileged and less rich than they are, quietly distracted and not looking at the great damage they are doing to all the different societies, cultures and people that they have infiltrated and infected.
Seneca puts this much better than I ever could when he writes:
‘… a wise man has much scope before him as a god with all eternity in front of him. There is one thing, too, in which the wise man actually surpasses any god: a god has nature to thank for his immunity from fear, while the wise man can thank his own efforts for this. Look at that for an achievement, to have all the frailty of a human being and all the freedom from care of a god. Philosophy’s power to blunt all the blows of circumstance is beyond belief. Never a missile lodges in her; she has a strong, impenetrable defence; some blows she breaks the force of, parrying them with the slack of her gown as if they were trivial, others she flings off and hurls back at the sender.’
If we are curious about ourselves and the way we work in an intelligent and challenging way, we are gods, capable of dealing with what ever life throws at us with a mere swipe of the slack of our gowns! If we work hard in life and on ourselves we will all have impressive, flowing luxurious and impenetrable gowns (mine gown has a picture of my wife and stepson on it with the Birmingham City badge underneath them, underneath the badge would be a drum kit with a bass drum that had a picture of Irvin Yalom on it! It is a magnificent gown!), and those gowns would be our defence against life’s harshness and troubles.
At the moment though, most people try and take the easier path of following the shiny lights of self discovery that exist on Facebook and Twitter. We are too easily distracted by their bright lights and loud voices, so much we are losing the ability to be still and process our experiences with ourselves, or in a healthy way with others. In social media land no one needs a gown at all, indeed Twitter, tikky toks, Facebook and all the others actively want every last one of us to take our gowns off and stand psychologically naked in front of them and the rest of the world, with only a laptop that has a piece of paper with pictures of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage stuck onto it in front of us, defending us.
This image is terrifying I am sure you will agree! That would be about as much use to us for psychological wellbeing as thrash metal band playing endless lift music on an infinite number of theremins whilst moshing with a backpack full of cat poo in it (that one is for my stepson 😉)!
This is another of those vaguely morose blogs I’m afraid as I don’t have a solution to any of the problems being created by social media currently. Personally I would switch it all off and not let it be switched back on until there were clear, ethical rules around its use and there were some non sociopathic/psychopathic people in charge of it. I don’t know that will ever happen though sadly.
All I can really recommend is picking up a book that challenges you and makes you think and then reading it instead of watching a dog have a great time on a skateboard for the thirtieth time. That might be a place to start!!