I had a great time on a podcast with . We covered a lot of ground: my love and process for writing, my theory on Stoicism as a philosophy that can only arise in affluent societies, Epictetus as a thinker, a teacher, and a man, Ernst Jüngers epic combat philosophy, how Stoicism can be energetic as opposed to passive, and the company I cofounded with my brothers to stop mass shootings. Check it out here:
Now let’s get to it.
I rejoice in Savage Stoicism.
Savage is a term I use here at What then? with the deepest respect, a term that combines cold anthropological connotations with fiery what-it-is to face the world as our ancestors did. We can also call it Anthropological Stoicism. And why not? Neither Marcus Aurelius nor the Stoic he emulated, Epictetus, nor even Zeno before them invented Stoicism any more than we invented gravity.
My hunch is Stoicism simply put into words what nature once freely provided, hence its unerring focus on death. It has the potential — if we weaponize it wisely — to revolutionize modern lives increasingly cut off from nature. There exists at present a certain lack of now-ness, of gratitude, of I have lived so hard I can meet death at any moment without regret, all of which are solvable from a life in accordance with nature.
I believe this in my bones: we need a return to savagery, but an updated version for our time.
I attempt to do so in this essay.
Says Marcus Aurelius: “Do not despise death, but smile at it, as it is among the things that nature wills.”
What, then, is an anthropological example of this epic commandment that taps into my primal desire to exorcise every last trace of weakness from my soul? To lean into the unknown and say Yes Yes Yes?
It is true Marcus journaled those words to himself in his Meditations 1,700 years before the events I am about to describe. But it is also true that, in evolutionary time, these events occurred 10,000 years before he ever put ink to papyrus.
Let us place our boots on the ground with the Sioux and Crow to flesh this out.
The Sioux were hunting a Crow warrior and his wife. The Crow’s horse was faster than his wife’s, so during the pursuit he had to keep turning back to shoot at the Sioux as she rode ahead. At last, on his knee firing at the Sioux beside his horse, he bought her enough time to ride to safety. The Sioux warrior named The Sword rushed the Crow, shot him through the leg, and shattered his thigh as he was swinging up on his horse. The Crow fell and was still. The Sword rode above him to count coup. As he leaned over to strike the Crow’s skull, the latter rolled over and shot The Sword through his heart. The Crow sat up and stared at the remaining Sioux while the stunned and seething Sioux war party stared back at him.
Now what if our Crow had said the following: “If it were not for my wife, I might have lived. It is her fault, wretched woman that she is, and the fault of her slothful horse as well. Why, Great Spirit, did you do this to me? What did I do to deserve this? Yes, the sun is wretched. The moon — wretched. This day — wretched. Alas that I should die like this, a poor victim, when I was not even given the chance to live.”
But he did not fall into woe-is-me — he leaned into nature’s will.
He told the Sioux, “I am Spotted Horse, chief of the Crows,” and it is here he revealed the soul of the savage within us all: he then said “This is a nice day to die.”1
The Sioux, enraged at this godlike mastery of self and fate and life and death, rushed Spotted Horse and hacked him to pieces.
Our Crow chief demonstrates our ability to make each day a nice day to die is not a matter of circumstance, but a matter of choice.
So how do we make this day among all days a nice day to smile at death? And taking it one step further, making this day a nice day to die, if such is our fate?
It becomes clear the answer is to put a bullet in the fear of death. Or rather know it will be terrifying and train to meet this terror with command. To our savage kin, death is a strange new journey — not worth fear or terror because it is simply what nature wills. To our ancient Stoics, death is an “indifferent,” placed alongside illness, disgrace, poverty, pain, and ugliness — not worth fearing because it is, in the end, what nature wills. It is inevitable. It is neither good nor evil. It is merely an opportunity.
How so?
The day Spotted Horse referred to was like any other. The same sun. The same gravity. The same slothful horse. The significant point is this: he made it a good day to die because he made that day a good day to live. This points our question in a more pleasing direction: what, then, makes each day a good day to live?
My sense is it is by turning death around. By being the end-of-everything, death makes each moment in time the beginning-of-everything. When we minimize a fear of death, a mere indifferent, we not only minimize all the lesser indifferents, but maximize our devotion to what actually matters.
So what matters?
Let us travel through time once again and drop into Fort Crèvecœur in the 1600’s in what is now modern day Illinois. A Frenchman stationed at this fort wrote “We are all savages”2 on a plank of wood. It is thought the Frenchmen mutinied to save themselves from the Iroquois who refused to break their bond with nature’s will—and refused to bend the knee to European overlords. This must have had an appeal, for the French, too, went savage and abandoned the fort. They may have cared less for historical truths and more for evolutionary truths; less for intellectual bullshit and more for anthropological reality.
I believe we, too, are savages. So let us now update the definition of savage for our era, particularly our version of Savage Stoicism. It calls for a posture, a way-of-being:
We are all savages is to live a life in accordance with God, Gaia, Zeus, Mother Earth, the Great Spirit, or Nature. We are all savages means maxing out the goodness of every second we have been given so that our last knows no regret. We are all savages means when it is our time to go out, we have decided long ago to go out like a savage, a Stoic, a Spotted Horse, an example to those we care for. We are all savages is to see each blood-red cherry, savor each smell of our musky mutts, and feel the sun on our skin with gratitude as if for the last time. We are all savages is to gaze upon wife, husband, son, daughter, mother, and father each and every moment as if the first time. We are savages is, in the end, a fateful decision to smile at death and make this day a nice day to die, for this is how we make each and every day the best day of our lives.
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Allen, Charles Wesley, et al. Autobiography of Red Cloud: War Leader of the Oglalas. Montana Historical Society Press, 1997.
Connell, Evan S. Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn. North Point Press, 1984.
The funny thing is, I was more fearful of death when I was young than I am now, with probably no more than fifteen years left to me. To some extent it's because I've already run the race, crossed the finish line, and am now catching my breath.
Spending your life just trying to prolong your existence is no excuse for not dying. I see so many people graduate from school, a school intended to teach how to seek comfort and security, and immediately retire from real life. No need to worry about the Sioux. We have people to fight those battles. No need to try to achieve greatness. We have people for that, too.
Greetings from Athens! I can't wait to listen to your podcast episode with The Stoa Letter to find out about your AI company and get your take on Jünger's combat philosophy!
Last week included two significant events, the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4th and the Anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto on October 7th, 1571 when the combined naval forces of Europe crushed the Turkish fleet in the Gulf of Corinth and delivered the first major setback to the Ottoman Empire.
I'm with an all-men group who spent a week on a Plutarch retreat, touring Greece and visiting significant sites, battlefields, and museums relevant to Plutarch and the great men about whom he wrote. We drove over the modern bridge that crosses the Gulf of Corinth and saw the site of Lepanto. Those European Christians sailors, led by Don Juan of Austria, invoked the aid of Lady Mary when they sailed into battle, and when they lept into what were a series of hand-to-hand combats on the wooden decks of their galleys--the last time naval battles were decided this way rather than cannons. Your Stoic mindset is fully harmonious with these Christians sailors and warriors.
St. Francis also smiles at death, as you can see in the text of his Canticle of the Sun, the first poem in a European language:
The Highest, all powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory, the honour, and all blessing.
To You alone, The Highest, do they belong,
and no man is worthy to mention Your name.
Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendour!
Of you, The Highest, he bears the likeness.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven you formed them clear and precious and beautiful.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather through which you give sustenance to Your creatures.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom you light the night and he is beautiful
and playful and robust and strong.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth,
who sustains us and governs us and who produces
varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.
Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love,
and bear infirmity and tribulation.
Blessed are those who endure in peace
for by You, The Highest, they shall be crowned.
Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no living man can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those who will find Your most holy will,
for the second death shall do them no harm.
Praise and bless my Lord, and give Him thanks and serve Him with great humility.
You would have admired St. Francis's balls, Sam--in Egypt he walked unarmed through enemy lines from the Crusader army to the Islamic army and met with the Muslim Commander, who gave him a respectful hearing and sent him peacefully back to his own lines.