A Cold Body of Water Teaches Us What We Are
Practicing worst case scenarios to prepare ourselves for future crucibles
The Stoics used deliberate exposure to physical hardship to toughen the mind and train the inner discourse.
They were quite brutal in their advocacy for the simple reason that hardship is not an “if” - it is a “when”.
What happens when our modern mode of living interacts with ancient forms of hardship? We wake up. A cold body of water teaches us what we are.
While pre-state peoples were hardened by temperatures ranging from sub-25 degrees to greater than 130 degrees Fahrenheit, we can spend our entire lives in buildings and cars set to 75 degrees. One ethnographer lived among a group of Australian Aboriginal peoples and documented their mode of living. While remarking how comfortable the aborigines were in their year round nakedness, he wrote that, “… on a winter's morning you wonder how can they be so warm in their bare skins while you’re freezing in every piece of clothing you have with you.”1
What’s his point? That the body and inner discourse of the pre-state man and woman was ancient and hardened through habituation, while the body and inner discourse of the modern man is softened by ease. It is for this reason that we see the heartening trend of adopting ancient practices to cure some of the physiological and psychological ills of modern softness.
Thus I find myself sitting in my ice bath. I feel the stinging of my skin and my heart rate plummeting. I’m building my “brown fat” and “increasing my metabolism.”
It is, however, what is happening within my skull that matters from a Stoic perspective. Cold water can make us do nothing. It’s inanimate. It’s not the cold that bothers us – it’s our thoughts about the cold that bother us.
What follows? I argue that we ought to use the cold to improve our seat of command for greater difficulties ahead.
While my exterior displays a rigid calm, my interior is a legion of voices. Each voice vies for my mind’s attention and for supremacy over my body’s next move. It is within my power to rewrite my internal script by using cold as a means to call forth the voices of the inner discourse: do I choose the savage struggle of overcoming these voices, or do I retreat before the barely intelligible reptilian babble? It becomes a matter of freedom or slavery, understanding or ignorance.
But there are some voices within us that will have none of it. The Modern Voice stands in opposition to the Pre-state Voice. Before our toe even breaks the surface of the icy water, the Modern Voice is already distorting our judgment. Instead of our mind registering “ice tub”, it now registers “ice tub = terror + panic + excuses”; instead of registering “cold water”, it now registers “cold water = terror + panic + excuses”. The Modern Voice puts us in a bad way; it breaks and blurs our grasp of reality.
Our pre-state ancestors were hardcore. I keep images of pre-state ascetics imprinted on my brain as a reminder of what we are and where we came from. A pre-state man’s smile stands in stark contrast to his concave stomach, veins crawling like vines across his rib bones, and his posture is perfectly erect despite old age, old injuries, and the presence of death like an old dog that follows him around like a shadow.
What would a pre-state man say to us? “I am so deprived of sustenance that one less calorie means death, and yet I am calm. I sit on the edge of human endurance, and yet I am calm. I am so in command of my inner discourse that I smile as death sits within my palm, at my call, and at my command, and yet I am calm. And you tremble and moan at a bit of cold? Sit in that water and hear those voices sing. Can you not amuse yourself with this discomfort? Can you not smile?”
That depends on who wins command over the Inner Discourse: the Modern Voice which is a betrayal of Stoicism, or the Pre-state Voice which is the raw, unedited, unrefined foundation of Stoicism. What would such a duel look like?
The Modern Voice says, “I don’t need to do this.” Just get in the water and suffer beautifully.
“But I can't do this.” This is irrelevant - just get in the water and suffer beautifully.
“Ok, I’m in. No, no, no, no, no, this is terrible. I want to get out.” When you disconnect your trembling jaw from your thoughts, your burning skin from your thoughts, and your jackhammering limbs from your thoughts, what is left to be afraid of? There is a primal joy to be found here in these physical reactions once we can view them from on high. We can compartmentalize mere physical sensation from reality or we can tyrannize ourselves with it. Your call.
“But I live in the modern world and I don’t need to train for discomfort.” Do you think electricity is a God given right? Do you think plumbing is as old as our species? Do you think the extraordinary peace you have known in your blink of a lifetime was normal for 99.999% of human history? No. This is delusion. Hard times are not over. Given how soft we have become, they may be just beginning. This is a beautiful enemy for which we can sharpen our Stoic spears for.
“But I’m amazing just the way I am. I can strut around like a peacock and never suffer the consequences.” If you’re amazing, then get in that water, suffer beautifully, and don’t panic breath with unseeing eyes. If you refuse, and if you choose not to practice worst case scenarios, then you choose to risk falling victim to future trials. If you choose not to recon the outermost limits of human experience, then when times are truly hard, you will bend, fold, fall, and fail. The peacock is gorgeous, but give it a bit of trench warfare or a little hurricane, and let's see how pretty it still looks and how calmly it still struts.
“I've had enough of your hypothetical syllogisms.” Forget hypotheticals then, and let’s look at concretes. If you take Cold as your teacher, and devote yourself to her, she will teach you how to minimize external stimuli. Would you rather lay on a board of nails or be cold? Would you rather be dead or cold? It’s neither breaking your leg, nor getting cancer, nor becoming a thief. It’s cold, nothing more. Sensation, nothing more. Mere external stimulus, nothing more.
The choice was binary for our pre-state ancestors: either endure the cold or commit collective suicide; either be weak and die or be strong and live. How easy the choice is when looked at in this way. Our choice is, in a sense, more difficult, and it is here that we strike Stoic gold: we have to be harder than our pre-state forebears, because we have the option to quit and live while they had to suffer to live. They had to earn the right to exist, and in doing so they understood what it is to be a human animal. We, however, can drift through life like the living dead by regulating our environment down to the degree, until actual death forever terminates this divine opportunity to fully investigate and breathe and relish what it is to exist on this glowing blue orb and explore its physical extremes that molded every facet of our brains and bodies.
We are wise apes. We have control over which inner voices we choose to listen to: the ancient or the modern. What is cold water when we have these ancient mentors, these counselors, these examples of human serenity to look up to?
A seat of command lies within us, and it requires instruction or it self-sabotages. As Epictetus teaches, it is made up of desire, action, and judgment.
Cold is a means to train desire: either I can learn to love this beautiful agony or I can cower from it.
Cold is a means to train action: either I can nasal breath my mind into command of my body or mouth breath my body into command of my mind.
Cold is a means to train judgment: either I can put my shoulders back, raise my chin, and step calmly into this pool of liquid, this revealer of self-command, or I can bury the only thing that makes me a man – my reason.
Tonkinson, Robert, 1938-. The Mardudjara Aborigines : living the dream in Australia's desert / by Robert Tonkinson Holt, Rinehart and Winston New York 1978
I once had a leader who would calmly remind us during harsh weather conditions that being cold was simply a mindset. Makes me think of your formula of how the brain reacts when we think of being cold, completely makes sense.
Thanks for sharing, Sam.
You wrote that we are wise apes. When was the last time you saw an ape in the wild put themselves in ice cold water? When was the last time you saw a chimpanzee or a monkey purposely put themselves in ice cold water. I would prefer to follow their example then yours. While I certainly agree with the principle of preparing ourselves For hard times I do not think that immersing ourselves in ice cold water is the way to do it. we have a brain with which we can think, and therefore prepare ourselves for adversity that may lie before us. I don’t think we need an ice cold bath, which might precipitate pneumonia, to do it. Just one man’s humble opinion.