For the ancient Greeks, philosophy was close to what we’d think of today as self-help. Philosophy, it was claimed, made you wiser, better and happier, by teaching you various ‘skillful means’ to cope with difficult emotions or situations. It was like a form of medicine, and it gave its students a first-aid kit of techniques they could use to “doctor themselves”, as Cicero put it.
Philosophy had various different branches - logic, ethics, physics - but they were all designed to be a form of therapy, which enabled you to transform yourself. So the ancients never practiced logic for the sake of it. They practiced logic so that they could be aware when their own faulty thinking was messing them up and causing them suffering.
The same is true of their physics, and their astronomy. It was practiced as much for its therapeutic and spiritual effects as for the search for objective truth. Contemplating the stars was a form of astro-therapy. It broadens your perspective, the Greeks believed, lifting you from your little ego bubble, and helping you to see quite how vast and mysterious the universe is, and how insignificant your problems are in comparison.
Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic emperor of Rome, told himself: “Many of the anxieties that harass you are superfluous: being but creatures of your own fancy, you can rid yourself of them and expand into an ampler region, letting your thought sweep over the entire universe, contemplating the illimitable tracts of eternity.”
Visualing the immensity of the cosmos is what psychologists call a distancing or minimization technique. It’s like zooming out from your life, to place it in a cosmic perspective, and thereby to gain a measure of detachment. We say that anxious or depressed people tend to ‘make a mountain out of a molehill’, zooming in, until each little obstacle seems of enormous and terrible significance. Well, you can practice doing the opposite, zooming out, until you make a molehill of every mountain. This is what Aurelius does, whenever he feels himself getting over-anxious about his responsibilities as emperor of Rome. He imagines Rome from a cosmic perspective: “In the universe Asia and Europe are but two small corners, all ocean’s waters a drop, Athos a puny lump of earth, the vastness of time a pin’s point in eternity. All is petty, inconstant and perishable.”
Of course, if you practice this technique too much, it could make everything on Earth seem petty and meaningless. Why bother doing anything or caring about anyone, from a cosmic perspective?
Still, it’s a useful technique if used intelligently, in those moments when your own earthly problems seem overwhelming. And I thought of it when I interviewed the astronaut Edgar Mitchell, last week, to hear about how the experience of going into space had transformed him, and many other astronauts. Mitchell calls it the Big Picture Effect. Have a listen to the interview.
Jules Evans is a journalist, blogger and writer, who writes about philosophy and psychology for several publications, including his own blog, www.politicsofwellbeing.com.
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