Practicing Poverty: What Was Seneca Really After?

We don’t need to worry about Big Brother and the Thought Police, but rather our very human addiction to comfort.

Throw a rock in any direction, and you’ll hit someone quoting Seneca.

He was a stoic rockstar, after all, and stoics are popular. A philosopher filled to the brim with insight and radical ideas. A man who inspired and challenged his followers in unique ways.

“Set aside a certain number of days,” Seneca said, “during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?”

See what I mean by challenge?

Who wants to take a few days, much less a week or more, and live well below their means? Humans, if anything, grow accustomed to the way things are pretty quickly and will fight like mutant Gorillas to maintain their status quo.

That doesn’t make Seneca wrong, of course. In fact, it’s our very human nature that makes practicing humility precisely what we need.

The idea is to reduce fear of what could be through exposure. To teach ourselves that “we suffer most in our imagination.” That much more austere conditions might…