Actually there because like you know whatever it is it is but if I don't have to deal with it now that I'm going to do something else I'm going to have lunch All right Nancy what about you well I'm going to pick from Epictetus as well because he's so approachable and this is a little bit more about how you manage all the input that comes into your life it's a bit of a method he says you're not really the thing he's talking to things out there you're not really the thing that you pretend to be so look at it says it by all the Yardsticks you've got your tool kit and decide whether it's up to you or it isn't up to you and if it's one of the things it isn't up to you be ready to say it's nothing to me and walk away from it essentially So leave the things behind that are not in your control and try to work hard on what you can control that's great what about you Donald Well it looks like Epictetus has got a hat trick because I've got a quote from happy to do this as well and my favorite one is question is do not seek for things to be as you desire but wish for them to be as they are and your life will go smoothly and I guess I should attach a little caveat that the story examined really talking about being passive doormats in life but learning to motional except things that are beyond our control of already happened well I think that's probably given everyone a little bit of a taste of what the stakes beliefs are let's look at the history as we've said Stone system was founded in the 3rd century b.c. By a man named Xeno city in Athens not see what do we know seen or himself from where he came from well we know that he came from Cypress from city him or kitty him and that he was a wealthy merchant and sort of in a Tempest Storm he found himself in Athens he got shipwrecked and he says this was the most prosperous trip of all so why was it prosper. It wasn't prosperous material it because he probably lost everything on the ship but it was prosperous because he made his way to Plato's Academy and saw what was happening in Athens and there he. Met up with the folks that were sort of after Plato and Aristotle a bit and you would say they were cynics and he kind of came to appreciate that there was a non material world out there that was more predictable or controllable in a way than the world he had as a merchant he went on to embrace some of those or earlier philosophers and really live a stripped down this that ik life and then he found that his own school Muslim of these early states developed a philosophy which did provide a unified account of the world in the place of man and it made up of logic physics and ethics Yes Can you just very briefly explain what each of these meant in this context how they fitted together yes the most important thing was to started yet x. The ethics in Times was understood as the study of how to live your life how to live a meaningful life and so that was that the crucial thing to do but the idea that the Stoics had was that you can't do down unless you're also dealing with the other 2 components one they called the physics it's actually equivalent to what we were today called the whole of the natural sciences metaphysics and theology that is basically an idea of how the world works how does the world hang together and then the logic which also had a more expansive meaning then then and then the word has today it meant anything to do with good reasoning not just logic per se but also including you know rhetoric including what we would today call psychology in the basic notion was that in order to live a good life you have to know how to world works and you have to be able to reason correctly about things that I was going to make mistakes I'm don't know they believed in living in accordance with nature didn't I Yes and the. Story exclaimed of me 3 different things by that they make a distinction between 3 levels that were actually attempted to live consistently and and harmony are one where things one was the relationship with themselves their own essential nature which they thought of as reason so living in harmony with their own capacity for reason or loving wisely and the other was living at one with the rest of mankind in harmony with the rest of humanity and then the 3rd was living at one or an agreement with the universe as a whole which because they were pantheists they saw the whole universe as divine in the story exceeded as being a form of piety. Respecting God Those of us living in harmony with the universes off and all the Stoics also talk a lot about virtue don't they what do they mean by that well the Greek word for virtue is are at a and sometimes it's actually translated as excellence that's considered a slightly better translation because it is kind of broader than what we normally think of as virtue virtue maybe seems a little bit of a stuffy term Ters today and it's very much got to do with reason for the story expect us are very much for Lost falls in the tradition of Socrates where reason is really the most important thing and living wisely in accord with reason so the story that if we can learn to live jaded by reason then we will flourish and Excel will fulfill our potential as human beings God has given as this capacity but it's up to us to actually use it properly Well we do know that stoicism thrived in ancient Greece for some 200 years and the philosophy later became popular in Rome in about 100 b.c. It's the writings and teachings from this late stirrer period that we still have today and one of the most well known think is from this time the Seneca the once advisor to the infamous Roman Emperor Nero here in the leisure of consul. Nation to his friendly silliest he underlines a key component a virtue the ability to make oneself impervious to Fortune Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life they are unwilling to live and yet they do not know how to die for this reason make life as a whole agreeable to yourself by banishing all the worry about it no good thing renders its possessor happy unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of loss nothing however is lost with less discomfort than that which when lost cannot be missed therefore in courage and toughen your spirit against the mishaps that afflict even the most powerful No man has ever been so far advanced by fortune that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him do not trust her seeming calm in a moment the sea is moved to its depths the very day the ships have made a brave show in the games they are engulfed reflect that a high women or an enemy may cut your throat. And though he is not your master every slave wields the power of life and death over you an extract from want to send his moral letters to his friendly silliness Muslim of this is a sense here of not just preparing yourself to accept what the universe delivers but also to prepare for the worst yes that's part of the idea that the standard exercise even among modern story is precisely thinking about what might happen in a cultural situation that you're if you're about to face and start aware of the worst possible outcome and the idea there is twofold 1st of all if you think about worst outcomes you can prepare yourself better but the other one is because you're mine yourself that well I can deal with that even with the worst case scenario are these are going to be a way in which I can deal with it and you felt more after the not the worst case scenario is not going to be the one to actually materialize and dome of those also hinge in that reading we had about death not necessarily being a bad thing is that this lead you to the story that things you might think of as bad and good are necessarily in there's wealth isn't necessarily good death isn't necessarily bad can you explain that a bit for us yeah actually I think it's fairly easy to explain the for the story works Life in itself isn't a good it's just an opportunity it's you know it's the years that we make over there really matters so why is man a good man or woman may use their life well bad or foolish person may use their life badly and the same applies to anything that the story is considered to be an external something that's beyond the direct control such as health wealth reputation these are all advantages in life that 1st if they're not intrinsically good because a bad person could use wealth and reputation to do terrible things exploit those things whereas in the hands of a good person they might be turned to good use and not see this. It's to take a particular view on emotions didn't they which they referred to as the passions they were deeply cognitive this so they had this view that emotions such as fear or appetite we might say lust or just stress or pain really are judgments are beliefs about those external goods that we've been talking about about fear in the case of a threat that's out there a bad in the offing or appetite something desirable that's out there and they try to tell you that the emotion or the passion is what you make of those external goods they're not the external goods themselves do you that makes that judgment so they have this view that you can control your emotions not by the the external goods to which we attach how you gloss those sorts of things in terms of your own judgments and doesn't something to write about anger saying this is a particularly destructive and nations Yeah on anger is one of the wonder of most wonderful books there is it's an essay on how it can just ravage mankind do all sorts of things cause you to throw your servants into a pool of sharks you know that say if that for certain breaks a crystal goblet you lack control in the way to be able to control that anger is to realize that you have an impression a fleeting appearance of of a bad that's out there but you can change your belief about that that it wasn't so bad after all it was an accident the person didn't mean it or it's nothing to me what does it really matter if I have one fewer crystal goblets in my dining room set and you then rethink the motion through the read consider judgment Well this is a good opportunity 1st to introduce Epictetus a former slave who lived in the 1st century and he had a particular view of how negative emotions the because in the 1st place and the theory of how we might avoid having them managed to step not by things but by the views which they take on things. This death is nothing terrible as it would have appeared so to Socrates but the terror consists in our notion of death that is terrible when therefore we are hindered or disturbed or greed that is never imputed to others but to ourselves that is to our own views it is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes of one entering upon instruction to reproach himself and of one perfectly instructed to reproach neither others or himself. An extract from teachers and purity an or handbook don't know what you're trying to say with this you think well actually he's trying to say something very special and it's something that people have found to be a revelation Throughout the same tree for a don't to the present day he's saying that it's our opinions about situations that determine whether or not we're going to be upset about them in fact determine are our strong emotions in general and the stories we go about follow than not when they're being more specific and say it's actually our strongly held value judgments about external events that cause us to be upset about them that's really what he's driving out there and it's interesting that he mentions Socrates as his example because in fact this idea goes far back farther than stories all the way back to Socrates stoicism has been associated with the notion of the stiff upper lip doesn't it when emotions are played down but from what you're saying don't move this passage suggests something a bit different you know we should probably distinguish between what we sometimes call uppercase and lowercase to us as them so the word story when it's used in modern English with a lowercase s k means having a staff or power or being unemotional but ancients to us as in the school of philosophy with a capital s. Means something much more sophisticated it has a more complex psychological theory and part of that is that the story is think there are good bad and indifferent emotions to put it simply So I think there are unhealthy passions or emotions that we should learn to deal with but rather than simply trying to suppress those we should challenge the underlying beliefs that cause them and transform them into healthy emotions with so it's call those you pathy. And there are also thought class of emotions that they talk about or precursors of emotion because the proper thing and these are involuntary emotional reactions Seneca talks about the men on anger when you're fast reacting to us. A surprised by you make sure your blood pressure rising and that's not really a fully fledged passion is not entirely under your control so the story rather than struggling against that we should accept it is natural and inevitable and yet with indifference it's the aspect of emotion that's under our voluntary control that they think we should do something about it mostly I think Tejas is also famously known for what's referred to as the dichotomy of control making the distinction between what is in and what is beyond our control being key to a clear judgment which relates back us President to what Don's just been saying if it did as he made this is a pretty sharp distinction between things that are on there are controlling things that are not in their control and he makes a list of the things that fall into into either category the things that are under our control centrally are our judgment our opinions and the values that we choose to adopt and the things that are not on their control is pretty much everything else particularly everything that it's external and external includes things like my reputation my wealth even my own body in the 1st case in the 1st group the things that you control that you're responsible for whatever you think and therefore you should you have the duty to reflect on what it is that you adopt as your beliefs and what it is that your doctors your values everything else like Alyssa for instance and say let's take our body. It may seem strange to said our bodies not in their control because you can say but what do you mean I can go to the gym and exercise I can eat a healthy you know diet and that is on the my control yes but ultimately you can influence the state of the state of your body but not ultimately control it all it takes is a virus like the one that I got yesterday for instance and you're knocked out or or an accident can break your leg or something like that now what the arrives from this distinction Well the idea is that if you're fat the only things that are on the your control are your judgment your opinions and your values then that's where you where you should focus the raster should just take it as it comes not see we know that epic teaches was a former slave and the fact that he was once a slave and then became a philosopher is actually entirely in keeping with star system isn't it yeah the Stoics are fascinating in this regard they are really the authors going all the way back to Jr genies of cosmopolitanism were all equals in a certain way we all have a certain amount of that shared rationality shared reason that's in the in the universe so we have bits and pieces of that and enough to make us equals in a certain way so a slave in a certain way isn't equal to a rich man and a rich man a rich woman is equal to a slave and that becomes very important in the political philosophy that comes out of stoicism it's a kind of enlightenment in a funny way but we also know that epic Tejas was a key inspiration to another important story writer who is from an entirely different Roman class a general and a Roman emperor and no less Marcus Aurelius months you tell us briefly a little bit about him well it is a irony of history that a general should be inspired by a slave. True as you know a slave who was more we would call a hostage a slave of war but nonetheless Marcus Aurelius was very influenced by a picture. This and Marcus are realists Voe filled with Power Privilege and status and lead troops nonetheless felt that in order to be virtuous he needed to practice stoicism and did and so in a room I think a remarkable graphic picture of history he's leading troops in campaigns along the Danube and at night in a tent he writes literally meditations to himself he didn't expect them to be published or for anyone else to read them but they were self-improvement thoughts at the end of the day they're often about diminishing your sense of power and realizing that on are is just something outside yourself that you can't easily control as we've been saying that reputation depends on many things other than yourself so it's your judgments and opinions that matter and he too very much thought that my body and limbs are just one part of a larger whole and so to everyone and if we cut ourselves off one from another and so he's got a mean to a general from the most lowly infantry person then you're no longer really thinking of yourself as fully rational and as a part of that reason so he's writing all this while this huge golden statue gets marched out every day in a chariot to remind and inspire the troops of their the troops of this magnificent Emperor and general but he himself is writing about diminishing the sense of self in these meditations I think it's quite remarkable well as well as encouraging us to draw on the shortness of life Marcus Aurelius also believed in preparing oneself for others unpleasant as I'm using it with that famous story I can image he we were hearing about begin the morning by saying to the self I shall meet with the busybody the I'm grateful Arak and deceitful envious unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of the ignorance of what is good and evil but I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful and of the bad that it is ugly and the nature of him who does wrong that it is a kin to me not only of the same blood or seed but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity I could neither be injured by any of them for no one can fix on me what is ugly nor can I be angry with my kinsman nor hate him for we are made for corp like feet like hands like eyelids like the rows of the upper and lower teeth to act against one another than is contrary to nature and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away and extract from the meditations by the Roman emperor and stoic Marcus Aurelius and indeed after his death in $188.00 the little is heard about ancient stories and for many years you're listening to the forum on the b.b.c. World Service where we're discussing star system the practical Greek or Roman philosophy preoccupied with how to live a good life a virtue so far we've explored the flaws of his move from Ancient Greece to Rome where he inspired timeless teachings by figures such as Seneca Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and when we come back after the news we'll discuss the philosophies enduring appeal how it's influenced other religions gone on to inspire military thinking and modern psychology and a whole new school of modern stereo system we'll be back after the nice. This is the b.b.c. World Service looking at the lives of people around the world very young I want to contribute to the development of my country in some small ways cool we all share the same values and we support each other and we want to do something new and Kazakhstani that momentum is currently building up and there is a critical mass of people that are trying to change things in the city in hope of the population of Kazakhstan is under 30 how do they see their future we have so many talented young people here lots of them want to move but people want to come back and take that knowledge and put it in practice here in Kazakhstan. And I'll be meeting the young cousin driving change in their country to see if we achieve it the man these are all young kids and Kazakstan at b.b.c. World Service dot com. Still to come on the forum more on the philosophical school known as stereo system why after its heyday in the ancient world some of its ideas resurfaced in early Christianity and why modern times it's become popular with soldiers prisoners and business tycoons as a mental tool to increase in jurists under stress still with me a philosopher has Massimo pollute I'm Nancy Sherman and psychotherapist Donald Robertson will be back after the new summer. B.b.c. News with Jonathan Izod Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has denounced President Trump 2 days before the u.s. Re imposes sanctions on Iran's vital oil and banking sectors I had to have been a accuse Mr Trump of bring disgrace to what's left of his country's prestige and the notion of liberal democracy fighting has intensified around the key Yemeni Porter had data forces loyal to the government are mounting an assault to the north and east of the city in recent days there's been renewed pressure from the un and the United States on the Saudi led coalition to declare a cease fire a United Nations aid convoy has managed to reach a Syrian refugee camp holding more than 50000 people in the desert where the borders of Syria Jordan and Iraq converge the rock band camp has been left without aid deliveries for the past 9 months the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has warned that Britain's planned departure from the European Union has undermined the longstanding peace deal known as the Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland the brags that negotiations have stalled over how to avoid the return of a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland China Russia and Norway have been accused by environmental groups of blocking an agreement to create the world's largest ocean sanctuary in the Antarctic 3 separate ocean sanctuary proposals were rejected on Friday at a meeting of the Antarctic Ocean Commission in the Newseum prosecutors have called for jail terms for 5 youths accused of beating a rival football fan to death the attack took place on Sunday the youths are said to have admitted kicking and stamping on the victim's head their lawyer said they were influenced by others and an elaborate funeral ceremony is beginning in Thailand for which I see what an opera par the billionaire owner of the British football club Leicester City he was among 5 people killed in a helicopter crash at the team's Stadium last Saturday Mr wee child's body has been taken to the what tips are in Temple for the ceremony b.b.c. News. Welcome back to the forum where we're discussing the ancient origins of the modern practical application of the philosophy of story system we've explored some of its key concepts a virtue its belief in the natural equality of all human beings and how that affected its teaches who range from former slaves to Roman emperors Still to come it's enduring appeal through the ages and how it's going on to influence other religious philosophical and psychological approaches with me to discuss this are 3 stoicism experts modern day stoic Massimo p.u.g. Ancient philosopher and ethicist Nancy Sherman under an old Robertson a therapist writer and trainer now as we already know stoicism flourished in the Greek and Roman world up to the 3rd century after which Christianity became the dominant religion in that part of the world Massimo what do we know of the influence stoicism had on Christianity quite a bit actually and fact one of the reasons a lot of story ideas sound familiar to modern years is because they influence Christianity in one way or the other so with the rise of Christianity we actually have at the end of all the Greek Roman ancient philosophical schools the last one to close down was the academy that was originally established by Plato but pretty much all of them you know little by little visit here the Christians got of course mostly the ethics from the story it's not not so much the metaphysics although the Gospel of John for instance starts out with the famous phrase you know in the beginning was the word in the Word was God and the term word there is actually logos which is the same Greek word that they store x. Used to indicated that the universe itself is rational and I suppose all these ideas about believing in you are in a world and not taking too much notice that the external world that's quite familiar isn't it that we shouldn't pay too much attention to the temporal world outside us it is in fact. It is manual was Jews there's a training manual for spiritual exercises by Christian monks throughout the Middle Ages The only difference is that every time they depicted as mentions of Santa they change it to Jesus several of the major leading figures of sort of Christian theology have been more or less the rightly influenced by by the story beginning where politics is arguably was responsible for putting Christianity on the map to begin with much later on in the Middle Ages we have Thomas Aquinas and Aquinas put together the modern list of 7 Christian virtues and 4 of those 7 are the same as the story verses the practical wisdom courage just isn't temperance to which he added 3 more Christian ones of hope faith in charity I'm told there appears to be in some overlap with Buddhism as well yes I'll show you there are similarities and differences between Stewart ism and Buddhism but I suppose some of the main similarities are that this concept of non-attachment is kind of similar to the story Acadia that we shouldn't invest too much value in external things and we should always view them as transition and beyond the direct control and also the this concept of my informed us has some parallels in story excite quality of the stories have this idea of pro so attention to your own mind so a kind of story it made fullness if you like I mean if we travel forward from the ancient world Nazi stoicism also saw revival in the European Renascence didn't it when it was known as NATO stoicism How did that happen absolutely so Montane you sometimes called the French stoic he wasn't that much of a stoic but he was very influenced by the idea of meditations that could be helpful to one's self improvement and he thought of virtue as more that you could develop the temperament to be able to deal with external. And things that happen beyond your control the most famous in some ways descendant of stoicism whose had really really lasting power was conned Emmanuel Constant I mean philosopher Yeah century Exactly so it's later than the Renaissance philosophers he very much viewed the idea of that reason is inherent in all of us this is part of the Enlightenment idea and that we were authors of our reason so he didn't accept the idea that we were parts of a larger pantheistic God but rather that we were none the less all Koshare ors of the same kind of reason and that we as a result could be authors of our moral lives legislator's of the moral kingdom of the kingdom of and so he very much secularized the stoic thought well it seems that throughout the ages stoicism has had its followers I'm not least those undergoing extreme hardship much more recently in 1965 James Stockdale then a senior u.s. Navy pilot was shot down over Vietnam during the u.s. War with Vietnam he would become a prisoner of war that for over 7 years and here he recounts how stereo system in particular the works of epic teaches helped him through some of those very dark days everything I know about Epictetus I've developed myself over the years it's been a one on one relationship he's been in combat with me like irons with me spent months long stretches in blindfolds with me has been in the ropes with me has taught me that my true business is maintaining control over my moral purpose in fact that my moral purpose is who I am. He taught me that I am totally responsible for everything I do and say and that it is I who decides and controls my own destruction and deliverance not even God will intercede if he sees me throwing my life away he wants me to be autonomous he put me in charge of me it matters not how straight the gate how charged with punishment the scroll I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul a reading from James Stockdale of stock toe On Star system i'm not see what we know of stopped relationship with Star system well stocked it was an amazing figure and I had the privilege of spending time with him interviewing him very long intervals he was shot down as a young Navy officer and he had been given Epictetus the little handbook as a parting gift by a fluffy professor at Stanford where he was doing a master's degree and he joked saying well what a martini drinking golf playing naval aviator needed with a book like this and he put it aside and when he was on board the carrier called the Ticonderoga in the straits of Mekong Delta in that area he memorized it and he said as he was shot down 5 years down here at least and I'm leaving behind the world of technology in a mentoring the world of Epictetus and true to form it became his salvation this idea as the quote We've just heard suggests of minimizing what's outside your control even in torture even in 2 and a half years of solitary confinement for him and he often said it was sort of being in prison was almost like a silver lining in the in the life that he learned the usefulness of stoicism even in moments as you could hear in that quote when he flirted very seriously with suicide don't know these lessons of resilience from people like I pick teachers. Would you go on to inspire a psychological approach which we might today associate with cognitive behavior therapy can you tell us about yes sure so still preempted modern psychotherapy remarkably so and in fact wasn't until the 19 $150.00 s. There Alber Ellis who is one of the pioneers of modern cognitive behavioral therapy he developed an approach that he called rational psychotherapy nowadays it's known as Rational Emotive behavior therapy or r e b t and Alice was a psychoanalyst like a lot of people at that time and he was becoming disillusioned with the Freud Ian push for approach and he decided to kind of start again from scratch and real invent psychotherapy he'd read Epictetus and Marcus are really s. And those were some of the things that he drew up points on the major influences in the development of this new rational cognitive approach he came up worth and the real importance of the connection between Allison subsequent quality of therapy and stores of them is that they share an underlying premise which we call the cognitive model of emotion actually we mentioned at the beginning of the show I think is the idea there are emotions are somehow you just completely separate from our thoughts and beliefs and value judgments but that whole logic stint are a strong emotions are determined by the taper value judgments that we make and those are beliefs that importantly could be true or false and therefore we can learn to evaluate them to question them and to change them so modern cognitive therapy from Alice on words uses an approach that they call Socratic questioning and the storks use this technique of Socratic questioning as well to help people reflect rationally in their beliefs as a way of transforming their emotions when indeed well stoicism might have been around for over 2000 years it does continue to inspire thinkers throughout the ages . We now have today the founding of the modern stoicism movement with its current popularity you can live like a steak for a week you can attend an annual conference you can become a Facebook member of a local group listen to podcasts from all over the world buy books on stoicism and see its application in sport in business and politics Henry man I'm peering is one of its converts and he spoke to us from Indonesia about how he 1st became interested in stereo system. I came across stories is some last year I was on my lowest point of my life I was just diagnosed with clinical depression so last year I went into a bookstore and I found my new book on study system where no I did it was a really open experience philosophy. That identified the source of the excite the stress and depression so we attach our happiness to things that actually are not our control so this philosophy reminds you to focus on things that are under your control but example to cut ties that body is porous traffic jam and I used to be very very it will and I felt stuck in traffic I would lose my temper become angry I banged on the base but after I learned stories in some way the lace was the point that I think is totally out of my control it is totally irrational to be angry about it and I tried to use my and the t. And my mind on something else that that what beneficial rather than cursing on the traffic Jakarta based Henry man I'm peering a more story says I'm convert a Muslim or you're a practicing wooden strick yourself when you've written a book called How to be a stoic using ancient philosophy to live a modern life so what are the sort of things that you do and what's been the effect of practicing wooden stoicism when you there are a number of things you can do someone might. Favorite ones include the even ing diary of the Memphis offical diary which is essentially I guess is fired by the medications of Marcus Aurelius although both addicted us and Seneca explicitly described this kind of exercise and what it is before you go to bat you write down you reflect and you write down on some major things that happened during the day things that are important to him as your own personal ethics and you ask yourself 3 questions 1st of all would I do wrong and 2nd what do I do right and 3rd what remains to be done so it's in trouble how do you decide what's right and what's wrong so I think of stoic philosophy is a moral compass the story give you certain ideas about what is right and what is wrong right so so that kind of control is a 1st entry into what is right and what is wrong the only things that are wrong are bad judgments and bad values and the only thing that are really good is good judgments and good values but also we mentioned the 4 virtues and one of the virtues is justice and justice the store x. Understand as you know treating other people as human beings you know fairly as you would like to be to be treated so any time during the day I don't treat somebody like that let's say a colleague or a student or a friend or something and that then that's one of those things that I did wrong you know how far do you take being in Morton steak I mean do you go for cold books for example yes I do actually call showers not every day but I do yeah the story is did in number of self the provision exercises such as taking a cold shower or going out in the cold weather you know without a coat or fasting for instance the notion is that if you actually deprive yourself then Priory of some things then you actually will appreciate the fact that you have to on a regular basis at the same time you want to remember you know want to remind yourself that not everybody on earth has. A hot shower and you know and a meal so it's a way to sympathize also with people who are deprived of this thing. Things and the 3rd reason to do it is because you're going to run yourself that you can in fact endure these kind of situations I mean there is a little bit of a component I mean Durance in stores is mostly what do you make how do you make sense of this resurgence of star system in a modern era I think there is a need to take more control of your life especially as were subject to so many more influences outside I do think that being more resilient in the face of what you can't control is certainly an aspiration we all have I worry a lot about the way in which the focus on an individual and an individual strain than an individual's in durance minimizes the contributions to our social well being and mental health of the societies we grow up in how you draw the borders of what's inside and outside your control when you realize how networked an individual you are and how dependent on things outside yourself you are is problematic well where running out of time I'm afraid so just one final question to you all very briefly having reviewed the ideas of stoicism Can you give us one concept from the philosophy that you think you'd be most useful to take away with this Donald. Yeah I'm going to go bag I'm going to go for the view from above the snow in which is a technique that we find mentioned quite a lot actually and the meditations of Marcus are really it really involves looking at events in terms of the bigger picture and I like it because modern psychological research tends to show that when we are angry or anxious our attention narrows down and I think it becomes biased and very selective service can be seen as the opposite a broadening of a perspective that views things in relation to a much wider context I find that very profound very rich exercises to us as I'm not sure what about you. Well I think of the idea that Marcus Aurelius had that he got from an earlier writer named Hercules and that is that we're in the middle of a sort of a series of concentric circles and I our job as members of the largest community we can imagine is to keep bringing one circle closer to us and then the next outer circle and then the next outer circle in the circle after that so that in a way you reduce the distance between the circles and I think that's a lesson for me about fighting tribalism because those psychological mechanism by which should bring those increasingly more distant circles to your center is a kind of empathy a kind of way of trading places and time and space and I think the Stoics cosmopolitanism we are citizens of the universe they said that's the lesson for me I'd like to remember Massimo I think a very important lesson is these idea that our lives have worth living regardless of external circumstances as so long as we do our best so it doesn't matter if you are wealthy or poor or I do get it or are ignorant those things don't have anything to do with your moral fiber so long as you try to do your best helping others and being a good human being that's all it matters at the end of your life you you can then look back and say yeah that was a life worth living many thanks to all 3 of you must see more people Nancy Sherman and Donald Robertson amounts all from me Bridget Kendall and the rest of us on the forum team for this week goodbye. B.b.c. B.b.c. . Hello and welcome to sporting witness from the b.b.c. World Service with me. Today we're taking you back to 1995 and the moment when the world of Formula one came close to being mobbed by tragedy I've been speaking to finish f one star Mika Hakkinen about surviving a crash that horrified the sports. Is the 10th of November $995.00 the build up to the final race of the Formula One season the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide. Maxima motivation full concentration maximizing to lock time and of course not making any mistakes as the drivers prepare for the 1st qualifying session of the day in and us high hopes for his last race of the season but fate as other ideas just before us in that industry will drop them straight 5 reacquire exploded. And the resulting crash would shake the world a Formula One. Born in France of Finland in 1968 making how can you knew that from a young age you wanted to be a racing driver when I was about 6 years old my dad was working very close by to a race track called a line in fiddle and. Of course little boy was excited to but the chorus and I went to have a look and they had these little go carts with the color. To test drive a little bit with them and that's how it started his career as a driver was almost over as quickly as it began when I went to go kart very 1st on I had a massive accident almost straight away upside down and my parents were running there and of course over Terry fought but I wasn't hurt but the. Accident make me to be careful many racing through I was went through a thriving corn far too much of a limit so that was a good learning curve for me but I just love driving a lot of speed so how long was it before you decided to go professional. Driving License 18 assault I moved to bigger got the curricle Formula Ford was very fortunate I was winning their European Championship after that I went to from what 3 of us and from what 3 couple of couple of years of wonder also also automatically the Formula One was getting closer and closer and then 10 year 91 of Formula One and with the team lot was how can we move from Lotus to McLaren in 1993 and it was here that he started to rip shoulders with some of the biggest names in the sports I was very fortunate to work with many create prior acts like Nigel Mansell Prost. David called Hart Johnny Herbert Martin Brundle list is long by 995 Hakkinen and become a regular Dr of McLaren but it seemed didn't have a good car I felt that the car properly gotten performing simply because our dynamic package what we had gotten good enough compared to competitors and definitely struck live with a lot of it the dark force when we were heading to high speed corners the car was not balanced aerodynamically that was one of the top biggest struggles What was your season like in 1995 well it was definitely really really challenging like I mentioned that with the balance of the car wasn't very good and in problem one very often when you are not winning and your position 678 people are really some task wondering is distraught over quickly enough why he stopped winning but what was great for me the whole team McClaren came it opportunity to learn and to get better and better obviously young guy still not experienced enough and I think the team deliver really for. Last night well I want to learn and I want to be number one so so they were happy with me basically but it was a constant analyzing hopefully compete better. That the last drop off the season in Australia or less definite that was you know it's been a heavy season so happy to finish the season but that's Graeme for a didn't really end up Sol nice end of day because I had a really really bad accident. A bad accident is quite an understatement what happened in the next few minutes horrified the world I delayed circuit was very challenging because the Kirks when you coming out of the corners were very high so when I retire explorers like that even in Formula One driver people of color like a passenger you kind of you kind of do nothing when I lost the back end of the car felt like there's going to be a big one but then exit off that corner there was some massive curve we launched a car in the air Harkins car bounced off the track and hit the barrier that's 120 miles per hour resulting in a fractured skull and so you know bleeding and a potentially fatal blockage through that way I remember I tried to get out of the car and I just grew more and then I just I remember when I thought that knob like I just don't look don't do nothing Look I can in there was a medical team at the brewery bend where he had crushed intensive care specialist or on caulking performed a roadside truckie officemate that would save Huckins life the gentleman's game and I remember him and of course to have to put the whole of your whole of your troll thing sounds horrible and what were you thinking when someone was trying to call home when you throw. Well know I can laugh about it that daily but it wasn't funny out there it of course you feel the pain and then after that the lights went off basically but the medical team what what they had to Australia was absolutely fantastic great people he is now off of the respirator he is able to do all lucid from. Sitting up. New member about being in hospital I had a good very big support of course from my girlfriend my parents came over there from Dennis came to see me but I was in a such a pain you know because when you having an accident what I have to you put such a headaches and the doctors are testing you constantly that all your senses have back because too you got such a big damage in your in your nervous if I was going to sleep that put the tape in laws because they didn't close so the people who were there they have a different a quite shocked but again thanks for the great team both with Australian hospital data you know that if the fantastic were to put me back in action Incredibly it was only a matter of months before Mick how can it was but behind the wheel we did the testing for recaught in in southern France and it looks so good because hospital they have to shave part of my hair I lost a lot of what of weight so when I saw my make old mechanics and pull recut them up there were pretty shocked but when I sat in a car and went out of the fleet lane I just felt like wow this car is incredible the noise tailor made for me and I felt so confident and I went flat out straight away with. No fear when we stopped running that I said Ok let's go let's go for it let's go attack and let's get to work jumping ship. Huckins accident happened just a year after 2 of the drivers died in the 1994 season the Finn says it made Formula One Take a good look at their safety precautions one year before Russian diety Mala one year before the Senate dart wending are part accident in monochrome Prix then I had a bad accident so people will really start looking at the tape we have to do something about safety issues at the racetrack and of course the course need to be different but with the progress they survive if they have a pot accident and if we look at the form of on today you know it's incredible hot at being able to prove different type of safety element they don't want to see people die and their. Macaque in would go on to win the Formula One world driver's championship in 190-8999 he retired from the sport in 2001 but the memory of how his life could have been cut so tragically shelves has never left him I don't think the day when I told Think about it I think of our so young guy and Russia a lot and tried to be successful and I think that that accident really prioritize importance of life slow me down positively after that I was pretty recent rather not I believe that way fun if I never would have to tax it out of the kind of appeal World Championship to us so you Times Formula One world champion mc I can in was speaking to me Brooks for this edition of sporting witness it was a made in Manchester production for the b.b.c. World Service. This is the b.b.c. World Service where a new series recalls a significant moment on the 14th of August 941 the president of the United faith and the prime minister met for 30 on the Atlantic Charter laid out the basis for a new world court that is that system now unraveling i.m.f. a Hash and I'll be looking at how international human rights have come under pressure the Great Unraveling at b.b.c. World Service dot com. You're listening to the b.b.c. World Service Washington Post Antony So as more our South America correspondent Katie Watson reports from Brazil Well our Europe regional editor Mike Sullivan is here in the studio America's editor Countess peered began by telling me about on air online on smartphones and on smart Speaker this is the b.b.c. World Service the world's media station. Hello and welcome to the history hour with me Max Pearson the past brought to life by those who were there this week a leader of America's Black Panther movement in exile in Algeria in the 1970 s. He came into my office he sat down he took off his glasses which he called shades and said very clearly I killed him last night also one of the most significant k.g.b. Defectors of the 20th century and the treasure trove of sleeper agent names he handed over when I saw the full thing it did absolutely take my breath away they refer to every country in the world represented plus a princess in distress and Kristallnacht spontaneous demonstrations called not be avoided during the course of yesterday morning a large group of Jews were arrested and taken to the police station 1st here's a bulletin of today's world news. Hello I'm Aaron Marshall with the b.b.c. News Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has launched a new attack on President Trump just 2 days before the u.s. Re imposes sanctions on Iran's vital oil and banking sectors Ayatollah Khomeini accused Mr Trump of bringing disgrace to what's left of his country's prestige and the notion of liberal democracy Sebastian Usher reports fierce anti u.s. Rhetoric from Iran's leaders has never been in short supply in his latest comments Ayatollah Khomeini has denounced President Trump as bringing disgrace to u.s. Prestige and the very notion of liberal democracy he said that in 40 years of confrontation the u.s. Has never managed to impose its will on Iran and he stressed what may turn out to be the trump.