Stoicism Explained by Star Wars

Using pop culture to unveil the advantages and limitations of Stoicism

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius

“The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.” Emperor Palpatine

Stoicism is a school of philosophy, that rose to prominence during Ancient Greece & Rome, that teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means to overcome destructive emotions. Stoicism encourages individuals to seek virtue and remain indifferent to external circumstances such as wealth, pleasure, or pain.

Stoicism largely died down during the 4th century during the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. There has been renewed interest in Stoicism during the 21st century, with many prominent figures such as Tom Brady and Arnold Schwarzenegger not to mention countless tech and finance bros, swearing by it. This revival can be partially attributed to popular books from writers such as Tim Ferris, Ryan Holliday and Mark Madsen penning “The Daily Stoic”, “Ego is the Enemy” and “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”. These books reframe the ancient writings of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, and others making it more accessible for a modern audience.

Stoicism has a certain appeal, especially among people with a high internal locus of control. While the philosophy is packed with nuggets of wisdom, it falls short as an overarching life principle for a few key reasons. We will explore this using Star Wars and other Pop Culture references. By the end of today’s article you will have at least a high level introduction to What is Stoicism? What did the Stoics get right? What does this have to do with Star Wars? and What did the Stoics miss?

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What is Stoicism?

Marcus Aurelius’ quote above is indicative of a central belief of Stoicism that while you cannot control external events, you can control your reactions to them. By focusing on what is within your power (thoughts, actions, and attitudes) and accepting what is not, you can find inner peace. When finding yourself in a traffic jam, you can go ballistic and start screaming at other drivers, or you can accept that your anger will not get you to your destination any faster and it is not worth ruining your day over it. A Stoic could be seen sitting in their car motionless unperturbed, maybe practicing some Wim Hoff breathing exercises completely indifferent to the chaos around them.

The philosophy encourages wisdom, courage, justice, and living in the present moment without being swayed by negative emotions like anger, fear, or excessive desire. The Stoics believe that by working on cultivating this mindset, you will be able to eventually control your emotions and prevent them from clouding your judgement. This is meant to prevent instances where you lose control leading to bad decisions, possibly yelling something rude or maybe punching a wall out of frustration.

The appeal is obvious, if you believe emotions can be disruptive to optimal decision making, by eliminating harmful distractions from the equation, you would be left with a clear mind. This clear mind will allow you to live up to your max potential. According to the Stoics, this will allow you to live the way nature intended. The more time you spend cultivating this Stoic mindset, the better prepared you will be to handle the challenges that life will throw at you. Mastery of Emotions = Mastery of Life, this is why Stoicism and discipline (which is overrated) are associated.

What did the Stoics get right?

Clear thinking and optimal decision making are important, even very intelligent people can make bad choices because they fall prey to their emotions. In way too many movies, the genius villain is about to win but then hoist themselves on their own petard by gloating in a long monologue which inevitably gives enough time for their plan to be foisted by the hero or their allies. Movie villains are often driven by anger, jealousy, insecurity etc., which can help fuel them to do great things but almost always prevent them from achieving the ultimate victory.

This is the living embodiment of the popular expression “you are your own biggest enemy”. By removing harmful obstacles, Stoicism can save you from yourself. Reduce any unhelpful thoughts or feelings and focus only on what is in front of you. Beyond impairing decision making, these emotions can cause you all sorts of unnecessary pain and anguish worrying about something you can’t do anything about. By worrying about what you can control, you reduce pain and free up mental bandwidth. In any case, many people would agree that life would be much easier if we never got distracted by anger, sadness and other harmful feelings. Some of these distractions impede productivity, others can completely change the trajectory of your life. This can be found in many stories where such feelings turn a hero into an unintentional villain.

What does this have to do with Star Wars?

Star Wars is a prime example of how desires or negative emotions can lead you astray. Anakin Skywalker quickly descends from “The Chosen One”, married to Natalie Portman, to dismembered and stuck in black suit of metallic armor. His fear of losing Padme and anger towards the Jedi council was easily manipulated by Palpatine, causing him to fall to the Dark Side. Once Anakin fell to the Dark Side, he lost control and started doing horrible things he never thought he was capable of. Now, I am not a psychologist but I would suspect that unemotional people, don’t willingly murder temples filled with small children (unless they are a psychopaths, then all bets are off).

If Anakin was less of a slave to his fears and emotions, he would not have turned into Darth Vader. This is an extreme example but ordinary people have their own version of the dark side, which lead to choices they later regret. By being able to control these feelings, you can save yourself from bad decisions and mental torment. If you believe you can can control emotions, you would likely agree the Stoics were right.

What did the Stoics miss?

Despite some very good insights, Stoicism falls short of being able to help lead a full and happy life on its own. Within Stoicism, there are many perspectives, therefore not all criticism applies but here a few holes left by the Stoics. One problem with Stoicism is that the philosophy is interpreted as advocating for isolationism. Stoicism's focus on inner peace and detachment from external events can be seen as a form of escapism. Indifference to things Stoics can’t control might lead some to take apathetic attitudes towards broader societal and political issues.

Humans are social creatures and we live in communities, the risk of blocking out everything outside of your control, might advance yourself personally, but it could come at the expense of your neighbors. If everybody ignored things they couldn’t control, would anyone look out for those not able to manage their own affairs? While it is fair to argue that you shouldn’t have to be responsible for others, a likely retort is that you would not want to live in a society where people did not care for others. Such an isolated society would likely feel pretty lonely or could descend into being very transactional instead of altruistic.

We see this a bit in Her (2013), where Joaquin Phoenix lives in a society where people are increasingly absorbed in their own digital worlds, often neglecting real-life human interactions. With personal AI assistants to cater to their every need and preference, the characters seem to be less concerned with the world around them. This highly individualistic society leads to a world where genuine human connection becomes rare and people are increasingly disconnected.

Beyond the isolationist concern, critics also take exception to Stoicism overemphasizing reason as the primary guide in life. Stoics fascination with rationality neglects other important aspects of the human experience, such as emotions, creativity, and spirituality, which are also important for a fulfilling life. Subject to debate, but great art is rarely accomplished without the artist feeling deeply passionate and emotionally invested in their creations.

When Martin Scorsese, one of the greatest film directors ever, made Taxi Driver (1976), he nearly shot a studio executive because he wanted to remove a scene from the film (seriously). The lack of emotion might lead to a society of dispassionate individuals incapable of creating incredible art. Rationalism is good but sometimes irrationality is needed to be truly great at something. Kobe Bryant’s obsession with greatness gave him a work ethic unseen by any other athlete¹. A rational human would not have cared as much as Scorsese or Kobe, which is also why they standout from the rest.

A final criticism worth discussing, is the notion of control. Stoicism emphasizes worrying about what you can control, but hubris might expand your view of what falls under that definition. Instead of accepting the limitations enforced by nature, one could decide that they could bend nature to their will. In Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche decided to choose violence with a devastating critique of Stoicism. Nietzche believed that the Stoics claimed they were following nature, but they were really just imposing their own ideals onto nature. He considered this as a form of self-tyranny, where the Stoics force themselves to see the world through a distorted lens, ultimately believing that their rigid discipline can somehow bend nature to their will (see footnote for whole quote²).

Instead of actually discovering the truth, Stoics need to take a more narrow perspective in order to believe that they have as much agency as they would like to believe. Returning to the Star Wars example, if you have seen the prequel films (Episode I-III), you will recall that the Jedi Council, who preach suppressing emotions amongst their acolytes, are themselves completely out of touch. The absence of the Sith or a great enemy turned them into bureaucrats or pawns of the senate. Their distorted view caused them to completely miss the entire plot hatched by Palpatine. They cannot blame their incompetence on their emotions; the Jedi were not making good decisions and for all their rationality, outsourced their thinking to the Senate.

As insightful as Stoicism is, controlling your emotions and focusing internally are not enough to avoid bad decision making. While the ability to control your emotions and avoid distractions are great tools to have at your disposal, this by itself will not guarantee you success and happiness. A few weeks ago, in Sorry Jocko, Discipline is Overrated, I discussed why discipline by itself won’t make you successful, I see Stoicism the same way. The ideas behind Stoicism are very appealing but taken to its extreme, a society filled with limited emotion where we could control everything, would not be very interesting.

Like it or not, there will always be elements that we cannot control and that is fine. If everyone always behaved rationally without experiencing pain or emotions, how would we even know if we were alive? Art would be much less interesting. Stoicism can prevent much unnecessary self-inflicted pain, but then it would also lessen the pleasure we receive. Finding the right balance between being able to experience emotions without allowing them to control you, can help you achieve more of your life goals without eliminating all the pleasure from your life.

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1. Kobe’s offseason training regiment consistent of at least 4 daily training sessions. His first one at 4AM, the second at 9AM, third at 2PM and last one at 7PM. There might be a few parallels between Kobe and the Siths.

2. Aphorism 9 Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche

“Do you want to live "according to nature"? O you noble Stoics, what a verbal swindle! Imagine a being like nature - extravagant without limit, indifferent without limit, without purposes and consideration, without pity and justice, simultaneously fruitful, desolate, and unknown - imagine this indifference itself as a power - how could you live in accordance with this indifference? Living - isn't that precisely a will to be something different from what this nature is? Isn't living appraising, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? And if your imperative "live according to nature" basically means what amounts to "live according to life"- why can you not just do that? Why make a principle out of what you yourselves are and must be? The truth of the matter is quite different: while you pretend to be in raptures as you read the canon of your law out of nature, you want something which is the reverse of this, you weird actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to prescribe to and incorporate into nature, this very nature, your morality, your ideal. You demand that nature be "in accordance with the stoa ," and you'd like to make all existence merely living in accordance with your own image of it - as a huge and eternal glorification and universalizing of stoicism! With all your love of truth, you have forced yourselves for such a long time and with such persistence and hypnotic rigidity to look at nature falsely, that is, stoically, until you're no long capable of seeing nature as anything else - and some abysmal arrogance finally inspires you with the lunatic hope that, because you know how to tyrannize over yourselves - Stoicism is self-tyranny - nature also allows herself to be tyrannized. Is the Stoic then not a part of nature?.... But this is an ancient eternal story: what happened then with the Stoics is still happening today, as soon as a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates a world in its own image. It cannot do anything different. Philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the spiritual will to power, to a "creation of the world," to the causa prima [first cause].”