A lot of people these days are pleasure-seekers. They organize life around obtaining the most satisfying experiences possible of food, drink, travel, and leisure. We even hope to find our work satisfying so that doing our jobs feels like play. Sometimes, this is tied up with implicit competition with online friends: Whoever can post photos depicting the most pleasurable experiences wins the game.

One of the things that’s interesting and valuable about philosophy is that it challenges us to entertain different viewpoints. This includes unconventional ones that we wouldn’t otherwise even have dreamt of. In doing this, philosophy challenges us to become more self-aware by understanding the reasons why we do what we do.

Thinking philosophically, it is natural to ask: What alternative viewpoints are there to the one according to which life should be lived in pursuit of pleasure?

In the service of living a life of virtue, Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius exemplified a willingness to shun worldly comforts.

Aurelius wasn’t just a philosopher who sat in an armchair, becoming lost in a world of ideas. Instead, he used philosophy for life. He was the ruler of the Roman Empire between 161 and 180. His famous work, the Meditations, is thought to have been composed between 170 and 180. He wrote it as he planned military campaigns.

From an early age, Aurelius decided that he wanted to live the life of a philosopher. When he was 12, he chose to sleep on the floor and wear a rough cloak. This was against his mother’s wishes. But even at that age, he knew that there was something to be gained through such voluntary discomfort. It would enhance his character, allowing him to focus on cultivating the virtues that mattered most. Contrast this with our present-day preoccupation with the comforts of life.

Aurelius is known for his embrace of the Stoic idea that when we come across an obstacle, we shouldn’t think of it as the problem. Instead, our distress arises because of the judgments we form of the external situations in our lives. In the Meditations, he writes: "[i]f your distress has some external cause, it is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgment of it—and you can erase this immediately."

This idea has currency in our own times, most notably in cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT. This psychological therapy teaches people to manage distress in life by reframing the way they think.

A recent psychological study supports the approach to embracing frustration that Aurelius espoused. The study was meant to test whether people do better in uncomfortable situations if they reframe their frustrations as opportunities. Given how daunting the idea of participating in improvisational theater is for many, if not most, people, it was natural to conduct the research in an improv class.

The idea was to instruct participants that their *goal *in carrying out the improv exercises should be to feel awkward and uncomfortable. In other words, they were not to operate with the belief that the exercise was going well if they were feeling relaxed and at ease, and that it was going poorly if they were feeling uncomfortable.

The researchers compared two different groups of improvisation students. The first group were given the instruction to embrace the awkwardness and discomfort, and the second group were not. The study found that those in the first group persisted longer in the improv exercise and took more risks.

In an improv class, embracing discomfort, as opposed to purely pursuing pleasure, seems to be beneficial. This lesson applies to life, more generally.

We are entering an age in which our lives will be lived alongside AI chatbots, service robots, and virtual reality worlds that will become highly adapted to us. I have referred to this as the "algomodern age.” These technological innovations risk making us increasingly unable to tolerate discomfort, taking away our opportunities to cultivate virtues.

Philosophy Essential Reads

Instead of simply falling into the cushy life that was available to him, Aurelius embraced discomfort in his pursuit of virtue. This perspective will no doubt be key to any philosophy of life that will help cultivate wisdom in our changing world.

References

Aurelius, M. (2006). Meditations (M. Hammond, Trans.). London, England: Penguin Classics.

Woolley, K., & Fishbach, A. (2022). Motivating personal growth by seeking discomfort. Psychological science, 33(4), 510-523.