Search results for ""Author William B. Irvine""

Some people bounce back in response to setbacks; others break. We often think that these responses are hardwired but this is not the case. William B. Irvine combines key lessons from the ancient Stoics with modern psychological techniques to develop a simple strategy for dealing with life’s unpleasant surprises. These include minor setbacks like being caught in a traffic jam or having a flight cancelled, as well as major setbacks, like those experienced by Stephen Hawking or Bethany Hamilton. By using the updated Stoic strategy, life’s setbacks can be transformed into opportunities to become calmer, tougher and more resilient. The Stoic Challenge is a practical guide to using centuries-old wisdom to help us cope better with the stresses of modern living.

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What are you? Obviously, you are a person with human ancestors that can be plotted on a family tree, but you have other identities as well. According to evolutionary biologists, for example, you are a member of the species Homo sapiens. To a microbiologist, though, you are a collection of cells, each of which has its own cellular ancestry. A geneticist might point out that besides these identities, you can be understood as a gene-replication machine, which can be plotted on a "genetic tree." Finally a physicist will give a rather different answer to the identity question: you can be understood as a collection of atoms, each of which has a very long history. Some have been around since the Big Bang, and others are the result of nuclear fusion that took place within a star. Not only that, but most of your atoms belonged to other living things before joining you. From your atoms' point of view, then, you are just a way station on a multibillion-year-long journey. You: A Natural History offers a multi-disciplinary investigation of your hyper-extended family tree, going all the way back to the Big Bang. And while your family tree may contain surprises, your hyper-extended history contains some truly amazing stories. As the result of learning more about who and what you are, and about how you came to be here, you will likely see the world around you with fresh eyes. You will also become aware of all the one-off events that had to take place for your existence to be possible: stars had to explode, the earth had to be hit 4.5 billion years ago by a planetesimal and 65 million years ago by an asteroid, microbes had to engulf microbes, the African savanna had to undergo climate change, and of course, any number of your direct ancestors had to meet and mate. It is difficult, on becoming aware of just how contingent your own existence is, not to feel very lucky to be part of our universe.

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Some people bounce back in response to setbacks; others break. We often think that these responses are hardwired but this is not the case. William B. Irvine combines key lessons from the ancient Stoics with modern psychological techniques to develop a simple strategy for dealing with life’s unpleasant surprises. These include minor setbacks like being caught in a traffic jam or having a flight cancelled, as well as major setbacks, like those experienced by Stephen Hawking or Bethany Hamilton. By using the updated Stoic strategy, life’s setbacks can be transformed into opportunities to become calmer, tougher and more resilient. The Stoic Challenge is a practical guide to using centuries-old wisdom to help us better-cope with the stresses of modern living.

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One of the great fears many of us face is that despite all our effort and striving, we will discover at the end that we have wasted our life. In A Guide to the Good Life, William B. Irvine plumbs the wisdom of Stoic philosophy, one of the most popular and successful schools of thought in ancient Rome, and shows how its insight and advice are still remarkably applicable to modern lives. In A Guide to the Good Life, Irvine offers a refreshing presentation of Stoicism, showing how this ancient philosophy can still direct us toward a better life. Using the psychological insights and the practical techniques of the Stoics, Irvine offers a roadmap for anyone seeking to avoid the feelings of chronic dissatisfaction that plague so many of us. Irvine looks at various Stoic techniques for attaining tranquility and shows how to put these techniques to work in our own life. As he does so, he describes his own experiences practicing Stoicism and offers valuable first-hand advice for anyone wishing to live better by following in the footsteps of these ancient philosophers. Readers learn how to minimize worry, how to let go of the past and focus our efforts on the things we can control, and how to deal with insults, grief, old age, and the distracting temptations of fame and fortune. We learn from Marcus Aurelius the importance of prizing only things of true value, and from Epictetus we learn how to be more content with what we have. Finally, A Guide to the Good Life shows readers how to become thoughtful observers of their own life. If we watch ourselves as we go about our daily business and later reflect on what we saw, we can better identify the sources of distress and eventually avoid that pain in our life. By doing this, the Stoics thought, we can hope to attain a truly joyful life.

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