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PREMEDITATION

 



A premeditation is a technical term, invented by the Stoic philosophers of Ancient Greece and Rome, to describe a process, normally to be performed once a day in bed before getting up, whereby one looks into one’s future and systematically imagines everything going wrong in it. It is a deliberate, artful, ritualised meditation on varied options for upcoming disasters. The practice is based on the view that our minds are congenitally unable to face up to the risks we face and do us an enormous disservice through their sentimental, unexamined optimism, leaving us unprepared for the catastrophes that will inevitably come our way. A premeditation constitutes a deliberate attempt to bring our expectations into line with the troubles we face. It builds on a fundamental idea about anger: that we don’t get angry simply because something bad has happened; we grow furious only when it is bad and unexpected.  The Stoic philosopher Seneca believed that the greatest service we can pay ourselves is to crush hope. Here is an example of a Senecan premeditation: ‘The wise will start each day with the thought: fortune gives us nothing which we can really own. Whatever has been built up over years is scattered and dispersed in a single day. No, he who has said “a day” has granted too long; an hour, an instant, suffices for the overthrow of empires. Look at your wrists, a falling tile could cut them. Look at your feet, a paving stone could render you unable to walk again. We live in the middle of things that have all been destined to be damaged and to die. Mortal have you been born, to mortals have you given birth. Reckon on everything, expect everything.’ Of course, premeditation doesn’t remove the bad things. But by getting us to admit, frankly and bravely, that we are likely to encounter hell one day, it can leave us a little less distraught when it eventually comes our way. Ideally, our culture would do some of the work of premeditation for us: it would constantly feed us – through a wise emotional education delivered via culture – certain realistic ideas about the sadly demanding and radically imperfect nature of existence. But until it can overcome its congenital sentimentality, we should take care never to start the day without our own private premeditation.

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