Episode 549 William Spears The Power of Stoic Thinking Transcript
This transcript is from episode 549 with guest William Spears.
Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Down in the depths of a submarine. There’s no sunrise to mark time. There’s no wind, no sky, just silence, steel and focus. That’s where today’s guest Navy Officer William Spears, learned what pressure really feels like. Every sound matters, every decision. Has a weight to it, and the only thing that keeps chaos in check is your own discipline.
From that experience came his book Stoicism as a Warrior philosophy, built on the same principles that guided ancient thinkers for centuries. William talks about how those ideas still hold up in today’s world where mental strain and constant noise from social media and other places can wear down even the strongest people.
He shares how applying a clear, grounded mindset can quiet the inner turbulence that comes with leadership, family, and the weight of responsibility. But before we get into this episode, I want to take a moment to raise awareness for something that’s important to our community. The [00:01:00] Global War On Terrorism Memorial Foundation.
This organization is working to build a permanent national memorial in Washington DC to honor the service members, families, and civilians who are impacted by the global war on terrorism. This memorial will serve as both a tribute to those who served and as a way to ensure that their sacrifices are recognized and remembered for generations to come.
If you’d like to learn more or find out how you can support their mission, visit GWOT memorial foundation.org. Now, let’s get into today’s episode.
Scott DeLuzio: Hey, William, welcome to the show. Really glad to have you here. Looking forward to this conversation.
William Spears: Hey, Scott, really really appreciate it. Hey, before we get we get going
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah,
William Spears: say to your audience that I am active duty military, which means that it’s important that I say that [00:02:00] anything that I do say here is just in my own capacity as an, as an individual.
It doesn’t reflect a official position of the US government or Navy or anything like that. If I don’t say that, then I’ll inevitably say some dumb thing and, and it’ll be like the Navy says that Nickelback sucks, and all know that the Navy really loves Nickelback. But anyway,
Scott DeLuzio: Well, so that’s, we got that under the way underway there. So like you, you got no problem with
You know, just speaking your mind. Now you can say whatever you want, right?
William Spears: Now I get to say anything, right?
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Now you can sound like a complete fool if you want.
William Spears: I, I said, I said with all due respect. So it’s, it’s, I, I’m
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, so obviously that, that, that covers everything. So, no, that’s awesome. And and, you know, thanks for, you know, coming on the show. I, I know, you know, sometimes while you’re still in the service, sometimes there’s, there’s some issues with that. But, you know, I, I don’t think we’re gonna be talking about anything too controversial here, but, you know, I’m glad you got that out of the way.
William Spears: So
Scott DeLuzio: so tell us a little bit about your, yourself, your background. You, you serve on a nuclear submarine. Tell us a little bit about that [00:03:00] for anyone who maybe is not familiar with that world and, and what that’s all about.
William Spears: Okay, sure. So I’m, I’m a career submarine officer. I I started off as an enlisted guy back you know, joined the Navy right outta high school. Quickly applied to any, any kind of commissioning program I, I could get into. And the Naval Academy was the first thing that called back and then came, came into the submarine force from there. And I have served on. You know, I, I’ve spent plenty of time on different subs. I’ve, at this point served through full tours on three different submarines, two fast attack submarines as a, you know, division officer. And then as a, as a department head, I was the weapons officer of a attack submarine. And then I most recently served as the executive officer or second in command of a ballistic missile submarine. And and so that’s, that’s kind of been my career. And then, you know, in the, the navy rotation, you’ll spend a few years assigned to a ship that goes in and out. You know, it, it’s, spend some time in port it, spend some time at sea. [00:04:00] And then whenever you, you rotate off the ship, you’ll do a job on shore duty for a, a little while and kind of recover and recharge batteries and, and do some office job. And so at this moment, that office job is I’m assigned to the Pentagon. I, I do financial management stuff and look at spreadsheets of how expensive ships are and, know, you know, help inform decisions of what ships we should buy and, and everything. Of course, I, I tell everyone we want submarines, but
Scott DeLuzio: Sure, of course. I mean, who, who wouldn’t want that? I mean,
William Spears: Yeah,
Scott DeLuzio: you can, you can have a whole fleet of submarines and no one would know it if they’re all under the water. You know? So
William Spears: all we need is just, just submarines, just cancel everything else.
Scott DeLuzio: everything else, I mean, aircraft carriers, yeah, we don’t need those either.
William Spears: just submarines.
Scott DeLuzio: It’s, it’s a probably a good thing that you put that little disclaimer at the beginning of this episode.
William Spears: Yeah, absolutely.
Scott DeLuzio: Now the, you know, it you know, I, I know you’re, you’re, you know, that’s all tongue in cheek, but, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s cool that, you know, you, you kind of [00:05:00] can share some of that because you know, I know, I know some folks who have been in the Navy, you know, they serve on various ships and stuff, but you know, submarines I gotta imagine is a completely different world because, you know, you’re.
Basically in a tube, there’s no, there’s no windows, there’s no let’s, I, I wanna step outside for some fresh air and, you know, get,
William Spears: got
Scott DeLuzio: know.
William Spears: You can look out that
Scott DeLuzio: Right. Exactly.
William Spears: sometimes.
Scott DeLuzio: you know, so, so that’s gotta be, you know, that’s gotta be tough. I mean, there’s no, there’s no sun rise or sunset to let you know when the day starts, when the day ends, and, and you just kind of basically have to rely on your, your clocks and, and kind of go from there, right.
I mean, there’s,
William Spears: the the watch rotation is what keeps you on,
Scott DeLuzio: yeah.
William Spears: you on time. So the, I get asked a lot as, Hey, you know, do you ever get claustrophobic or, or do you have people that lose it due to, due to being cross claustrophobic? And, and I, what I can say is, you know, occasionally you do have people who, who don’t adapt. And, and you gotta, you gotta figure out what to do [00:06:00] with ’em,
Scott DeLuzio: Hmm.
William Spears: you gotta get ’em off the ship whenever you, whenever you get a chance. But most of the time if, if someone fails to adapt, it is, it is not due to claustrophobia, it’s just due to the stress level. And, and that kind of describes the, the, hey, what’s it like to be on a submarine?
It’s very, very busy. It doesn’t matter if you are, you know, a senior officer or if you’re, you’re a junior sailor, whatever it is, you’ve got a lot to do. And it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been on the, on the submarine because just, you know, if you’re, if you’re a junior guy, you’ve got a stack of books and qualifications and just stuff that you have to learn.
There’s this constant pressure to, to learn the systems and learn the ship so that you can pull your weight.
Scott DeLuzio: mm-hmm.
William Spears: And then as you move up in seniority, you’ve just got more and more responsibility. And it doesn’t matter if you’re enlisted or an officer, you know, you, you’ve got more and more responsibility and, and just every, every day, know, as soon as you wake up, you’re like, man, I got a lot to do.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Yeah.
William Spears: don’t have, you don’t have a lot of time to think about like, man, [00:07:00] I’d really like to go outside. It’s more like. Man, I’m behind. I need, I need to catch up on all this, all this work I gotta do. And
Scott DeLuzio: Sure,
William Spears: kind of is it, you know, as a coping mechanism, it, it keeps you busy. You know, it keeps you from you don’t have time to, to ruminate on, on all the places you’d rather be, you know,
Scott DeLuzio: sure.
William Spears: just more like I got, I got work to do.
So that,
Scott DeLuzio: Cool.
William Spears: that, and that is, that has been true at every, every level of my experience
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah,
William Spears: every ship.
Scott DeLuzio: yeah. I’m, I’m sure it’s nice when, when you finally get back to shore and you can, you can, you know, kind of get out, stretch your legs. You’re not, you’re not feeling like you’re in a tin can, but
William Spears: Yeah, when you first get a, a ashore, like immediately, you know, I come home and, and, and my wife’s like, all your, all your laundry in the, in the, put it all in the laundry now. ’cause you smell like boat, gonna make the whole, whole house smell like boat. And I’m, I’m immediately, I want fresh fruits and vegetables.
Scott DeLuzio: yeah.
William Spears: let’s gimme salad, gimme a fresh salad whenever I come home. ’cause you know, after, after you’ve been underway for, for a little while, the, the first thing to go is the, is the fruits and [00:08:00] vegetables and, and, and, and then you’re on, on frozen stuff. And then the,
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: pretty soon thereafter, you know, the eggs get replaced with powdered eggs.
And then you’re, eventually, everything’s either frozen or canned. And and then it, the food gets weirder from there, know. And then, don’t get me wrong, the food’s normally pretty good as long as you’ve got enough on board.
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: the first thing I want when I come back is fruits and vegetables.
Scott DeLuzio: That’s awesome. Yeah.
William Spears: Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: So I wanna talk about your, your book. So your book, stoicism as a Warrior philosophy. Right. And tell us about, first off, tell us about the book and tell us a little bit about kind of how you
William Spears: you
Scott DeLuzio: incorporated some of your experiences from your, your naval career and how that maybe influenced the book and, and kind of what the book’s all about.
William Spears: Yeah, so that’s probably what what I think your listeners will be most interested in is, is I guarantee you, you know, some of them have heard of stoicism because it, it’s trending right now.
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: but be, you know, if any, if anyone [00:09:00] ever. Tells you, you know, Hey, I was, I was into stoicism before it was cool, you know, step back a little bit ’cause that that person might be a vampire because it’s, it’s, it’s 2000 years old. You know, it’s a, it’s a philosophy that, that came from the same era of time as, you know, Aristotle and Plato and all those, all those old Greek, you know, Hellenistic schools like the cynics and the, you know, the Platonics and Epicureans, all those guys, you know, and the stoics were, were a very important school from that period of time.
And they, they kind of faded away the, you know, as the Athens like philosophical scene dissolved. And then they blew up again in Rome a few hundred years later. And it’s from that period that we have a lot of writings that, that we take away and can look back and say like, okay, those are, that, that was stoic thinking. The most famous of those is Marcus Aurelius, who was, you know, the emperor of Rome. in the, in the beginning of the movie Gladiator. He’s, he’s, he’s there and and then there’s a, there’s [00:10:00] another couple of ’em that, that I’m a big fan of, so. philosophy is kind of, kind of blown up right now for a variety of reasons we can get into. And, and so if you haven’t heard of it, you should just be aware of it. ’cause you’ll see it around and you’ll see, you know, blogs and, you know, booksellers and stuff like that promoting it. But the, the basic idea of the philosophy is it has to do a lot with how to think about things and how I receive information and how I should handle the situations and that, that I experience such that I have better control of my emotions and self and, and, and willpower and all, all those things.
And it’s all those things that are particularly valuable in a warrior or, you know, I, I use that word to mean in a military professional. so the basic contention of the book is that insofar as any discreet. Mode of thinking might be considered a warrior philosophy stoicism is it, [00:11:00] and it, and it basically is an optimal philosophy or an optimal way of thinking for a military person.
It’s the closest thing that you’re gonna find on planet earth in reality to like the Jedi religion or something like that, you know? Only the difference is it’s real,
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: And, and it’s not laser swords, you know, it, it, it’s, it’s the real thing and it’s genuine and effective mechanisms for emotional control and and self discipline that are a lot of people are finding very valuable today.
I think it’s blowing up mainly as a kind of reaction to the mental health crisis that we’re experiencing right now. Where basically the, the, the. External environment that we’re all in right now. The social media, the news, media, all those things, are they kind of militate against mental health?
Scott DeLuzio: Mm.
William Spears: a lot of pressures that weren’t necessarily as salient, you know, 10, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, as they are now that are, are basically acting [00:12:00] against mental health and requiring something different than what we’ve, what we’ve had before to, to cope with it. And and people find for very good reasons we can get into that stoicism is, is, is helping them to, to have more mental health or to be, know, healthier from a mental standpoint.
Scott DeLuzio: Well, and, and it’s one of those things that, like you said, it’s kinda lasted for thousands of years, you know, where, where this is something that has gone through different cultures, different civilizations, different groups of people who are experiencing their own set of unique circumstances that were maybe difficult new situations that they had to deal with.
And social media certainly is a relatively new phenomena that, I mean, it’s only within the last, you know,
William Spears: know,
Scott DeLuzio: 20 ish years that that social media even was really a thing. You know, the way that we experience it now. So yeah, we’re, we still have to kind of figure out how, how do [00:13:00] we.
William Spears: we
Scott DeLuzio: Live with this, how do we use this?
And you know, it has its purposes and stuff, but yeah, it, it doesn’t always contribute to the best overall mental health for the, the users of it. So, so it kind of makes sense that we would look back to something that’s thousands of years old to to say, Hey, you know, help me, help me work through this, this new, this new situation.
Right.
William Spears: Well, what’s, what’s, what’s very interesting about the, the, the stoicism thing that I think is kind of undersold and, and isn’t, isn’t, isn’t really talked about that much, is the interplay it has with therapy and psychotherapy and the degree to which it has been influential on what today we call psychotherapy.
So, you know, if I, if I have a sailor who’s not adapting and we have to send him, you know, to the, the medical system, he is gonna be assessed and, and it’s determined that he needs, he needs some kind of therapy. The, the regimen, and this is gonna be the case. If you go to any, any counselor, you [00:14:00] know, you’re going to.
B you’re gonna go through a, a regimen called cognitive behavioral therapy, and that that is the, what you think of is, you know, talk therapy where you’re talking through your problems and saying, you know, why did you think that? Okay, let’s, let’s get at the underlying belief that, that supports that emotion.
Let’s call out the emotion as what it is. Let’s identify it and let’s, let’s determine if that’s a rational thing or not. Well, the people who, like that mode of therapy was really developed in like the 1950s. It’s very young. there’s, you know, between cognitive behavioral therapy and rational emotive behavioral therapy.
There, there are these different, different modes of, of psychotherapy. They kind of all emerged in that same period of time. Well, the guys from which they emerged, the guys who, who basically fought up these things and the, you know, therapy is a little bit older than that, but what we now know is cognitive behavioral therapy. guys were deeply read in philosophy, the stoics, and you can [00:15:00] you, you can find it in their, in their writings as they’re developing and that they say that they’re, they’re adapting practices that they took from, from specifically stoic philosophers. That, and the ways that the stoics would see the world and basically promote the. of thought and the habits of thought of you know, mental health, of identifying why. I think the thing, I think why I, I, I feel what I feel and and getting and isolating the underlying judgment that is causing that emotion and, and neutralizing it. And and that’s kind of why, and the stoics have a reputation and why the, the word stoic is often used as synonymous for unemotional, you
Scott DeLuzio: Hmm.
William Spears: and they didn’t, they didn’t believe in just suppressing all emotions, just the bad ones.
Just, and that’s not necessarily the negative or unpleasant ones, that’s just the ones that are any emotion that follows from and. Irrational judgment. And for them, they would consider almost anything anything that didn’t have some kind of [00:16:00] bearing on my duty or my virtue to be an irrational judgment, such as, you know, somebody insults me or, or cuts me off in traffic or whatever.
And my, you know, if I’m angry, it’s because I have this judgment that I’ve been harmed in some way. When, whenever I really look at the situation, I really understand it. I know that I, I have not been harmed. It’s not that person that has made me angry. It’s me that’s made me angry. It’s my judgment. It’s internal to me. And in that way it is a kind of radical view of personal responsibility. You know, I am, I, I’m not just responsible for, for what I do. I am also responsible for what’s going on in my head right now. And that, you know, that a lot of people don’t, don’t like that. But it turns out that it is, it is a very effective way of thinking about things.
Even if you don’t, if you, if you find it impossible to absolutely control what you can do or, or what you’re thinking recognizing that, you know, it is certainly more my responsibility than it is anyone else’s. That’s, that’s like the first step to, to getting over it and figuring it out [00:17:00] and that, that’s a healthy way of thinking. So tho those, those that will teach you as part of a, a regimen as mitigators as you know, interventions or whatever technical term they want to give them, the stoics, the ancient stoics. Consider those just how you should think about things.
Scott DeLuzio: Hmm,
William Spears: it was
Scott DeLuzio: sure.
William Spears: way of thinking.
And it’s not to say the old philosophers were really, like, they had just discovered cognitive behavioral therapy and all, you know, modern therapists are just doing stoicism. It’s not that, it’s more like. We understood wine making long before anyone had invented a microscope and understood what fermentation was actually doing, what was actually happening there.
You know, they just
Scott DeLuzio: Right.
William Spears: Or, you know, that, you know, old, old Indians figured out that you could chew on the bark of a willow tree and, and cure a headache before anyone understood that the active ingredient of that willow bark was salicylic acid, which can be isolated and synthesized as [00:18:00] aspirin, you know?
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: it’s like a natural thing that worked thousands of years ago before anyone really understood how it worked. It just applies to the mental space instead of the physical space.
Scott DeLuzio: Sure. Yeah. And that makes sense too, because a lot of things, I mean, you know, when the, the first caveman invented fire, you know, they, he didn’t understand the, the,
William Spears: the
Scott DeLuzio: the whole science behind the, the fire coming to be. It just
William Spears: I
Scott DeLuzio: was a, i i I don’t really care if, if I’m cold and I need fire or, or something, I, I know that it works and that’s, that’s all I really care about at that point.
Right.
William Spears: Right,
Scott DeLuzio: You know, it’s only, you know, kind of later on when, when people start to get curious, like, okay, why, why does this work? Or, you know, how does this work? And, you know, you start asking those types of questions. So,
William Spears: Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: so it’s, it’s interesting that, that, you know, thousands of years ago we, you know, people had these these philosophies that
William Spears: that
Scott DeLuzio: still apply today and, you know, you, you look at a lot of you know, kind of.
Old writings and stuff, and, and they [00:19:00] have just as much applicability to our daily lives today, as they did before the internet, before, you know, running water, before electricity and all these other modern conveniences that we, we might think, oh, we’re, we’re such an advanced, we’re not really
William Spears: really
Scott DeLuzio: any different than, than people were back then.
We just, technology has changed really. It’s kind of like the biggest difference I think, between us now and then.
William Spears: you nailed it. So like, this is, this is the same reason that we still read Shakespeare
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.
William Spears: Okay. It’s survivorship bias. The stuff that we are still reading from a long time ago. The reason we’re still reading it and still studying it is because it cuts to the core of what it means to be a human being on planet Earth. And that’s not necessarily true for everything from that time.
Scott DeLuzio: Mm-hmm.
William Spears: this is, this is called survivorship bias. It’s the same thing that applies. It’s the same reason that we still listen to. You know, classic rock and we say, man, the, you know, the old music is so much better than the crap that’s, you know, being put out today. It’s not that there wasn’t [00:20:00] crap back then, it’s that the stuff that we still listen to from back then is the best stuff. And
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: same thing can be said of, of literature from, you know, the mid middle ages. And the same thing can be said for philosophy from ancient times. There’s a lot of crappy philosophy today, and there was a lot of crappy philosophy back then.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah,
William Spears: about the crappy stuff, we’re talking about the very best ideas
Scott DeLuzio: sure.
William Spears: they’re always relevant. And that’s kind of part of the reason I, I, I don’t like to talk about like, current events because it’s not gonna be relevant tomorrow, you know, much less next year. But I like to talk about ideas that were relevant 2000 years ago and they’re gonna still be important 2000 years from now.
And true about what it means to be a human being on planet earth.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And so taking this, this mindset, the, this stoicism and the, the, the philosophy that, that goes along with it, the warrior philosophy that as, as your, your book. Title you know, kind of labels it. How do you think someone who might pick up this book and read it, how, how do you think that it can apply to [00:21:00] their, their daily life?
What, you know, especially the veterans who might be listening you know, what are some of the key lessons that you think that they can take from it and, and really apply to, to their lives?
William Spears: Okay, so the, the first thing I, I, I will say is that the book is like absolutely not for everyone. Alright. It’s kind of a, it’s a pretty nerdy book. It’s pretty, it’s pretty much, it’s for somebody who is already decently familiar with stoicism and is excited about it and wants to know more and wants to get
Scott DeLuzio: Okay.
William Spears: it, if you know, someone in your audience is like, oh, that philosophy sounds interesting, but I haven’t really read on it. What I would really recommend for them is the book, how to Think Like a Roman Emperor for by Donald Robertson. You know, he’s a friend of mine and, and his his writing is very good and very accessible and it’s a good introduction, you know, but it, and it’s just an excellent book. And, and, and from there, you know, you can read some, like, you can, you can read any of the ancient stoic stuff.
It’s all over the internet. The problem with it is that you’ve got a lot of yokels who will, you know, put out a blog every, every other day of, you [00:22:00] know, how stoicism leads you to, if you really read the STOs, you would agree with me about all these political things and, and, and, you know, you’ve just got that, that you’ve got all that kind of silliness that goes in every direction.
So I, I’d rather just read the, read the original guys and then think about like, well, do I agree with that or not? And that’s kind of how you should approach philosophy. You don’t approach it like a religion where you say, okay, I believe all these things. Now what do I believe? You know, you, you say you know, okay, well let me engage with this idea, and if I don’t agree with it, I’m like, well, I think he’s wrong about that, because he’s a, you know, he’s a human being.
He’s immortal. Like, who, who cares? You know, he’s, there’s, they’re not magic,
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: So, but. With all that said to answer your question, so the, the how someone might apply my book, the kind of, the kind of people the book’s for is if, if you wanna know how the stoic philosophy, first of all, you know, like you wanna get deeply into it and see what did they actually say, especially how does that apply to the morality of a warrior?
You know, how does that get into you know, is it, would a good [00:23:00] person truly go to war and, and be willing to, you know, pick up a, a rifle and attack my fellow man? And I argue that under certain conditions, absolutely, that’s true. And, you know, under certain conditions it would be, it, it would be the wrong thing to refuse to do that.
Scott DeLuzio: Right. Sure.
William Spears: and, you know, exploring those, all the morality of that and that, that’s an ancient tradition of philosophy known as just war theory. You know, what are the conditions under which a. good country goes to war, and what are the conditions under which a good individual goes to war, and how does he conduct himself in that environment?
That’s all just war theory And basically some of the book looks at you know, the, the questions of just war through the lens of stoic morality. How would the stoics you know, look at these same questions? So, that, that is basically who might derive value from it if someone’s trying to think through the morality of perhaps something that they’ve experienced, something that they witnessed or something that they did or, or were a part of and [00:24:00] are interested in the questions of like, Hey, was that a really screwed up thing I was a part of?
And how responsible am I, am I for that? You know, I can’t, no, no human being can, can answer that question, but. You can possibly see a lot of different ways of looking at it and ways of thinking about it and arrive at a more developed and more mature answer. And that I think that that would, would be helpful to, to some people.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And so the kind of the, what I’m getting from this is, is sort of like the you know, kind of on a macro scale you know, the almost a justification for going to war and sending troops into, into battle and things like that can be kind of derived from some of the, these principles. Like I, I, is it is it the right thing to do in this circumstance to go and send troops off to war and like you, you said, in some cases absolutely.
Yes, that that’s going to be true. It, it is the right thing to do. In some cases, no, it’s not. [00:25:00] And and doing so might actually be,
William Spears: be,
Scott DeLuzio: you know, considered the, the maybe an immoral thing to do or, or just, you know, the, the not right thing to do.
William Spears: do.
Scott DeLuzio: But then when you kind of distill that down, you know, take that out of a military context and just, you know, look at your day-to-day life.
You, you had mentioned a, an example before of someone cutting you off in traffic or,
William Spears: or
Scott DeLuzio: you know, something like that.
William Spears: that.
Scott DeLuzio: Those are kind of,
William Spears: of,
Scott DeLuzio: You know, the, a smaller scale argument or you know, something like that.
William Spears: that.
Scott DeLuzio: You know, are you,
William Spears: You know, are you,
Scott DeLuzio: are you justified in taking you know, some action or responding, you know, harshly in, in a certain kind of way?
If.
William Spears: If
Scott DeLuzio: Some if this set of circumstances happen or, you know, a different c set of cir circumstances happen and,
William Spears: and
Scott DeLuzio: you know, maybe you’re not justified in, in responding in that same way. You know, you, you can’t act as if you know,
William Spears: know
Scott DeLuzio: Someone’s out to get you every second of the day. You, you kind of have to take, take each situation for what it is and its own unique set of [00:26:00] circumstances and facts and that surround it and use those to kind of, make a determination of, you know, what the right course of action is.
That, that kind of the, the gist of it.
William Spears: That’s definitely part of it. And
Scott DeLuzio: Okay.
William Spears: know, you, you talked about how I can’t go through life thinking people are out to get me. I, I’d say absolutely there’s nothing more antithetical to stoicism than victimhood.
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: it, you know, and, and you can, you can find people who, who read the stoics and say like, well, they would be completely, you know, if you really read the stoics like I have, you would see that they would be totally left wing.
And other people would say, well, if you, if you really read the stoics like I I do, you could see that it’d be totally right wing. And, and you know, so obviously there’s, there’s a lot of room for, for reasonable disagreement between, you know, reasonable people
Scott DeLuzio: Sure,
William Spears: But what both sides must agree on is that if you read the stoics and if you agree with them, then you’re not gonna be a victim. and if you take the most egregious [00:27:00] stuff that’s coming out on the left or they’re coming out on the right and you, you just filter it out and filter all grievance and, and victimhood out of it, left is a lot of just reasonable, reasonable discourse.
Scott DeLuzio: sure, sure.
William Spears: filtering, filtering out all that victimhood and all that grievance and all that anger that
Scott DeLuzio: I.
William Spears: with it, and righteous in indignation, indignation that comes with it. That is, that’s all the worst crap that is in politics right now, and that’s in, in disagreement. And what you have is just, you know, reasonable people with, you know, reasonable positions that can now negotiate. Okay. And so what I, I kind of say about stoicism, you know, as applied to like, you know, the social or political questions, is that it’s not necessarily left coded or right coded, but it is necessarily anti radicalizing.
Scott DeLuzio: Hmm.
William Spears: it is an anti radicalizing force. And so for that reason, I think it’s a very good thing and something that, you know, we can all [00:28:00] benefit from applying these ideas and just figuring out how to neutralize the, the grievance and the victim hood. I one of the, the concepts that I kind of introduce in the book is recognize kind of studying how the stoics, deal with these things that we can’t necessarily control even within ourselves. And I, I find that it analogizes to the responsibility that a military commander has and to act as if they have absolute control over things that in, in all rationality, they, they don’t. And so if I were to put a name to that, I would, I would call it the responsibility heuristic, which is, you know, heuristic is like a thumb rule or a simplifying assumption.
A way of, of way of dealing with something to quickly, you know, condense condense a concept to, to actionable results. And so the responsibility heuristic is basically capturing the idea that outcomes are gonna be better in whatever my situation, outcomes are gonna be improved if I act as if I have [00:29:00] absolute control over the situation, even knowing that I don’t.
So it’s like, you’ll, you’ll hear it. say, Hey, you know, life’s like a game of cards. It’s, it’s not the hand you’re dealt, it’s the, you know, it’s how you play the hand. And you know what responsibility heuristic does not. Mean is that you legitimately think that it absolutely, the hand that you’re dealt doesn’t matter. What the responsibility heuristic captures is that you know, you’re gonna get dealt a hand that’s gonna statistically affect your, your odds of winning or losing. But that doesn’t matter. There’s nothing you can do about that. What does matter is how you play the hand and you focus all of your energies and control on that and stop crying about what hand you were dealt. You focus completely on, on how you play it and and then play it well. And, and that that’s kind of what that captures. And it’s just, that’s similar to the way a ship captain, you know, or any other commander of any, any unit. But I, I use a ship captain as, [00:30:00] as just, that’s what’s readily on my mind. You know, I, I can. I can be if my, I can, you know, have no control over the fact that my TER operator just decides to gaff off on, on his watch and falls asleep and now my ship runs a ground and, and I’m absolutely fired for that. Be, and, you know, and, and we can say, well, in that case I fostered a culture of lack standards that allowed that to happen and all, all those things.
But ultimately, like no matter what, there’s gonna be things that are outside of my control that but I have, in either event, I have absolute responsibility over that situation, and outcomes are gonna be the better if I act as if I have absolute responsibility over that situation. And I, I assume responsibility for the fact that that odometer operator fell asleep. You know? And that’s, that’s kind of what that captures. And I, I, I find that, sense kind of running through the pH philosophy.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. So when you are kind of eliminating that, that whole victim [00:31:00] hood mindset and taking responsibility for things, even though you aren’t necessarily able to control it yourself, but you, you still take responsibility for those things, kind of like the, the ship captain that you just mentioned there.
But, but there are, are things that you can take responsibility for you know, just in a, a family situation. You know, if you, if you have kids is. Is it directly your fault if your, your kid goes and, and does something wrong? Like, no, but you can,
William Spears: example.
Scott DeLuzio: but you could teach ’em right from wrong beforehand and hopefully prevent that from happening, right?
They, they have free will. They can go do what they’re gonna do with that, but teaching them right from wrong and, and why doing the right thing is, is better than the wrong thing.
William Spears: thing?
Scott DeLuzio: That’s kind of on, on you as a parent to be your responsibility, right?
William Spears: Yeah.
And any, any parent knows that you can do everything right, and that kid can just still go off and do something completely ridiculous and, [00:32:00] and and develop in some way that you would not have chosen
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: Despite whatever, whatever you’ve done. And they, they’re, they’re the example of just little balls of chaos that you’re absolutely responsible for.
And yet, you know, you, I think you have to have more than one kid to really appreciate just how little control you have over it. ’cause, you know, whenever it was my first, I’m, I’m, I’m myself like, what am I doing wrong? Like, I, I’m doing everything right. Why is this baby not acting this way? You know?
And, and, and once I had more than one, I see how different the brothers are, even though they’re, they’re. Raised the same, they’re just completely different personalities from another, I’m like,
Scott DeLuzio: R
William Spears: you’re an individual.
Scott DeLuzio: Right, right. Yeah. You’re go, you’re gonna respond to different things differently. And, and so e even like you said, even if they’re raised in identical manners, you know, every, everything is, is the same. They may not respond to those things all the same way. And so, you know, you might have to adjust things and, and everything.
[00:33:00] But that’s, that’s taking that responsibility and saying, okay, what do I need to do differently to, you know, to lead this kid in the right direction? You know, and there’s, so, there, there’s, there’s that piece of it. But, but when you are.
William Spears: our
Scott DeLuzio: Taking responsibility, sorry. When you are understanding that not everything is under your control, you, you take responsibility for it, for the things that, that
William Spears: that
Scott DeLuzio: you should be taking responsibility, but,
William Spears: but,
Scott DeLuzio: understanding that
William Spears: that
Scott DeLuzio: you can’t control everything.
You can’t control all of the outcomes. No matter what you do, you, you can do everything, right. Like you can get all the parenting books and you can do all the, the right things and, and
Assuming that all the parenting books agree you know, it’s just
William Spears: just
Scott DeLuzio: put that, you know, out there for now.
But,
William Spears: But
Scott DeLuzio: you could do all the right things and your kids could still grow up and, and not be potentially a good person. You know, I’m not saying that in, in anyone’s particular case, but you know, it, that’s just their, maybe their personality or, or something that has kind of affected them in, in, in a certain way that they end up [00:34:00] being, you know, something that you kind of wish that they weren’t maybe.
And you know. That’s outta your control and kind of being okay with, with the things that are out of your control and not getting too bent outta shape about the things that you can’t control and, and focus on the things that you can control, but, you know, not, not worry too much about the things that are outside of your control.
Right?
William Spears: The, the, the truth is that almost nothing is truly within my control.
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: study for the test, and yet the schoolhouse might burn down with me inside of it,
Scott DeLuzio: Right. Yeah. Right.
William Spears: like the, the, there, there are so few things that you absolutely can control, and that is a, a huge piece of, of the stoic philosophy and the use of the word control triggers some, you know, philosophy nerds.
And they say, well, that’s not really the word they use. The, the real phrase they used is, you know, what is up to us? And what is not
Scott DeLuzio: Hmm.
William Spears: the, the, the key concept is that what, and, and really the, the, the key part, the keystone concept of the [00:35:00] stoic philosophy is that virtue is what matters. Virtue is the sole good is, is the phrase that they would use. And basically nothing else is truly good, but virtue. And then everything else follows from that idea of the, of the way that they view the world. And so the whole control thing comes into play in assessing what is truly related to virtue or not. So, you know, if I, if I get angry at, you know, the, the fact that someone. Did something that angers me. Whatever they did has no reflection on my virtue. I shouldn’t care about it. You know, it’s neutral. It’s an, it’s a indifferent matter. And, but how I react to that thing that does, that does reflect on my virtue, you know, that is a, an expression of my virtue as an, as an individual. And so that, that. Looking at everything through, through that lens. It, it’s not necessarily just focusing on what I can control and what I can’t, it’s using [00:36:00] that dividing line, recognizing what is up to me and what is not up to me as the dividing line between what is a moral factor and what is a non-moral factor.
And those non-moral factors are truly irrelevant. Even health and wealth and all those things, like I can do everything right and I can still get cancer.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Right.
William Spears: running and, and diet and still get sick. I can save all my money and still get wiped out, you know, and still become an unemployed whatever.
Like, I can do everything right And still, all these things can go against me, but they’re all ultimately material things that, you know, what it, what truly matters within the stoic worldview is my virtue and how I react to those things that are outside of my control. And that, that’s kind of how that plays into the philosophy.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And, and I think going back to the, the mental health stuff that we were talking about earlier that that can have a huge impact on somebody’s, you know, overall mental health because a lot of times again, [00:37:00] there, there’s that victim mindset, which doesn’t
William Spears: is toxic.
Scott DeLuzio: that’s toxic, that doesn’t help anything.
It doesn’t help anyone or anything. And, and it’s, it’s just not gonna benefit you in any way. But,
William Spears: But
Scott DeLuzio: But also like, not.
William Spears: but not
Scott DeLuzio: Being so concerned with the things that are outside of your control. Of course, you, you care about certain things like you know, what your kids do and, and, and how they are, are, are growing up and, and all that kind of stuff.
You, you care about that, that stuff. But you know, ultimately, like you said, they’re individuals and they’re going to go off and do the things that they’re gonna do. And I’m not saying just completely be negligent and don’t care about them at all, but you know, at some point you, you kind of have to
William Spears: to
Scott DeLuzio: not get
William Spears: get
Scott DeLuzio: too bad on a shape when there’s, there’s those things that are outside of your control and, and trying to be too controlling might actually have the opposite effect where it kind of pushes them in a,
William Spears: in
Scott DeLuzio: You know, different direction kind of in, in spite of what you’re, you’re trying to do.
Right?
William Spears: right? Yeah. There’s, there’s something appropriate that I should do as, as a [00:38:00] father, you know, a, a attendant to my role as a father. There are appropriate actions
Scott DeLuzio: Right.
William Spears: should take and, and ways I should interact, but I shouldn’t anguish about things going away that I, I would not have chosen for them to go.
I, you know, I shouldn’t wail about it or, or, or rage about it, you know, unless I, unless I reasonably say like I should, I should express anger in this situation because that’s gonna be the most effective way to communicate the lesson. I need to communicate
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: That you could, you could argue that point, you know, the stoics, the ancient stoics basically denied that.
But, you know, we’re reasonable people and we could say like, well, no, you know, I, there, there are times where maybe it would be appropriate to express anger just as long as I’m not internally actually losing control. You know?
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Right. Sure.
William Spears: And then that’s just a reasonable way you can approach things because, you know, we think like philosophers, we engage with the ideas and we’re willing to say that our teachers are wrong.
Like, that’s an important, important piece. But, you know, back to the, the parenting thing. I’ve got [00:39:00] responsibilities as a father and and that’s a role, that’s a, that’s a, a key role that I have to play. And I have responsibilities as a naval officer, and that’s a different key role I’ve gotta play where I’m really gonna find alignment and, and find peace is being able to.
You know, select the roles that I can and attend to the roles that I can’t in such a way that they are in alignment and in harmony to the extent that I, I can. And I, I do, I find that, I find that my role as an naval officer, if I do that, if I’m doing that right, it supports my role as a father. It doesn’t contradict it. Likewise, my role as a father, if I do that role well, it supports my, my, my my responsibilities to being a naval officer. You know, now if I had the job of being that guy that, you know, calls little old ladies and cons them out of their life insurance or whatever, you know, like that, I’m probably not gonna be able to harmonize that role with, with any of the other roles that I play.
So maybe I should just cut that [00:40:00] role loose and, and find a better job,
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And yeah, those, those people should definitely find a better job because those are, those are kind of like the scum of the earth
William Spears: of kind of, kind of my point there is that by looking at it through that view of saying like, okay, how does this role harmonize with this other one? And does it is it is kind of a test for like, is this a legitimate role I should even accept?
Scott DeLuzio: yeah. Right,
William Spears: that I should reject and walk away from?
Scott DeLuzio: right. And I guess going back to what you were talking about and, and kind of understanding, you know, your, your own virtues and, and your own kind of makeup and like who you are,
William Spears: Mm-hmm.
Scott DeLuzio: you know, does that fit with your values and your beliefs and, and you know, what makes you, you you know, if, if you’re kind of.
William Spears: kind of
Scott DeLuzio: Contradicting yourself. And it’s like, no, I would never do those kind of bad things to little old ladies. But then you have a job that you’re calling ’em up and con ’em out, out of their, their life [00:41:00] insurance money. Well, they
William Spears: well.
Scott DeLuzio: you’re gonna have some internal conflict there. Right. You, you’re not going to be too happy with yourself.
You, you know when,
William Spears: yourself if you’re, if you’re not, if you’re
Scott DeLuzio: right.
William Spears: I, no, I, I feel good about this. Like, okay, you’re, you’re lying to yourself, you
Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
William Spears: you’re
As a human. That appeal to coherence is kind of a, an, an ancient test that is is a, I find applications for it every day in the, the. old philosophers back in, in the, in the age of when the stoics and, and, and all these guys were arguing in Athens, what they would do is try to attack each other’s philosophies and say, you know, you see your philosophy’s wrong ’cause it’s incoherent in this way. You say this, but you also say this.
And those two, those two things can’t be true at the same time. Those two things that you say, those two claims are in disagreement. They’re in misalignment. And so that appeal to coherency is like a test of the validity of a [00:42:00] worldview, but it’s best expressed in the the coherency of thought deed. And like does do the things that you say and the things that you do and the things that you think all agree with one another.
That’s living with integrity. That’s what integrity is. And if you are not. Living with integrity, you’re gonna be internally screwed up. You know, you’re gonna be uncomfortable. You’re gonna, you’re gonna contain some kind of internal dissonance.
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: kind of the, the way I like to express stoicism you know, if I’m, if I’m trying to, you know, say, what, what the heck is it really fast?
I say it’s an intersection point between hyper rationality and virtue ethics of, you know, it, it basically brings rationality and virtue into alignment because, you know, some people might think, well, well, I am totally rational, and that, you know, gives me the ability to be a total Machiavellian bastard and just go around and take advantage of people and, [00:43:00] and con them out of, out of things because I, you know, with my rational mind, I see that they’re just worms and not worth my, my time, you know, or my consideration.
And, you know, that’s. Mm. You know, a philosophical worldview says like, okay, you’re kidding yourself there,
Scott DeLuzio: Right.
William Spears: know, you’re, you’re in complete misalignment with all these other values that, that you purport to have. And if, if you look at it hard enough, if you look at it from a wide enough view, you will see that you are, you’re that view misaligns with a hundred other views that I guarantee you, that you claim to hold.
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: and, and so that appeal to coherency is a, is a good way of kind of testing am I living my life like I should? And am I thinking like I should? And if I am doing those things, then I’m gonna be a happier person and a more effective person, which are in alignment.
Scott DeLuzio: Right. And I think that’s ultimately the goal with, especially a lot of the stuff that we were talking about with the mental health stuff and, and all the, the things that, that people are going [00:44:00] through. You, you wanna end up living a, a happier, you know, more well-rounded kind of life. And ultimately you know, from some of the stuff that you’re, you’re talking about, to me it, it’s like, you can take.
Some of the things that you’re going through
Just take that example of someone cutting you off in traffic. Take
William Spears: takes
Scott DeLuzio: your, your goal for being in that car at, at that moment in, in that place on the highway or wherever you are. You know what, what is your goal? Is, is your goal getting to work, getting to, you know, your kid’s soccer practice or, you know, whatever it is that you’re, you’re trying to do, you’re, that’s your goal.
And, you know, does the anger at that person who is going to drive away and go about their day anyways, and you’re never gonna see that person again, is getting angry at that person gonna help you achieve that goal. And, and if it’s not, then why do it?
William Spears: do it?
Scott DeLuzio: You know, it, like, who cares? Let it go and move on. You know, not, not to be a doormat and just walk, be walked all over and, and things like that.
That’s not what I’m, I’m saying, but, you know, at, at some point you have to look at it and [00:45:00] say, you know, is, is any of this stuff helping me achieve. What I’m trying to achieve here. And, and if it’s not,
William Spears: not,
Scott DeLuzio: and also it’s, you know, in congruence with your, your values and beliefs and, and things, you know, will, will just assume that everything here is you know, if, if it’s, if it’s not, then it’s almost like just let it go and, and move on and don’t devote any more mental energy to it, right?
William Spears: Yeah, if, if, if, if you can, if you can isolate what the, what the belief is that’s leading you to, to, to become angry. Some people will say, you know, one of the things I’ll get is like, Hey, isn’t anger helpful to you know, like maybe motivate, motivate action,
Scott DeLuzio: Mm-hmm.
William Spears: and I, I, I can, I can argue it either way, but I can say, well, what the stoics would say, what these particular philosophers that I write about would say is that it would be better to be motivated to do those things without the emotional, know,
Scott DeLuzio: Okay.
William Spears: Without the, without the contribution of this [00:46:00] thing that’s likely to, you know, this kind of drug that’s gonna likely to make me do something that’s, otherwise other from what I should absolutely do. A good way to think about it is if I’m a prize fighter, you know, same a, a boxer, you know, would I rather be the guy that gets pissed off, like that’s gonna make me fight better? Or would I, or I’d rather be the, the, the, the cold and calculating robot that gets the other guy pissed off so that I can crush him. You know, like, which one of those guys do I want to be?
Scott DeLuzio: Hmm.
William Spears: then that as a war fighter, I’m a, you know, I’m a submarine guy. And so if I’m in a tactical engagement, you know, is, is being pissed off, gonna make it easier for me to, you know, you know, isolate the guy’s, you know, frequency vulnerabilities and, you know, triangulate a firing solution on this guy.
Like, no, that’s, that’s not going to help,
Scott DeLuzio: exactly. I. I, I think you should probably talk to some of my my drill sergeants that I had and, and
William Spears: so, so you make a good point. Alright. So like, especially like a leadership
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: Like if I [00:47:00] have, say I have a sailor that you know, says something racist,
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: or, or cuts a corner in electrical safety and something risks his life or the life of his shipmate, you know, that’s a situation where I better light this person up like right now. But what would be best is if I, you know, and, and that’s, let’s be very clear, that’s a very, very rare situation and, you know, you know, being, going around yelling and stuff like that, like that’s grotesquely informal usually should not be done around people operating dangerous machines, you know, like warships, you
Scott DeLuzio: Mm-hmm.
William Spears: but if, you know, if I need to communicate. If I need to express this emotion to communicate most effectively in a, in a moment, then okay maybe that is the most efficient and effective way to do it, but it would be better if I can do that without internally internalizing those emotions. You know, if I can do
Scott DeLuzio: Okay.
William Spears: thinking rationally, internally of like, okay, this is the right thing to do at this time for this [00:48:00] reason, and I will, you know, I will immediately go back to, you know, go back to my state room and, and I’ll be cool and calm and collected and not bite the head off of the next person that comes and talks to me.
You know, like that that would be the ideal scenario that an ideal human would, would be able to do. Now, as, am I gonna be able to do that as a limited human being? Probably not, but recognizing the ideal is gonna be helpful to get me quickly back up to speed of where I should be and how I should be operating.
Scott DeLuzio: Right, right there. This is a. Rather complex topic. I mean, it’s, it’s got a lot of, of meat to it. You even said, you know, that
William Spears: know,
Scott DeLuzio: your, your book stoicism as a Warrior philosophy is it’s a deep book. It, and, you know, you kind of need to have,
William Spears: have,
Scott DeLuzio: you know, some basis in stoicism, some general understanding of it before diving into that.
You know, you don’t, you don’t want to jump into the deep end without knowing how to swim, right? So, [00:49:00] so
William Spears: so
Scott DeLuzio: it, it, it is a, a complicated topic and,
William Spears: end.
Scott DeLuzio: you know, but just from the, this, this conversation, I can, I can already see the ways that people can start applying some of these philosophies to their, their day-to-day life things you know, reacting in a rational.
I don’t wanna say unemotional way, but, you know, in a, in a rational way, given the, the set of circumstances not
William Spears: not
Scott DeLuzio: up at every little thing. You know, I know a lot of, a lot of times people you know, especially veterans who have, you know, maybe it’s PTSD or they’re, they’re dealing with you know, certain types of issues.
They, they may just blow up at the, the smallest things. And,
William Spears: and
Scott DeLuzio: you know, it again, does that serve what, whatever your, your goal is? No, probably not.
William Spears: not.
Scott DeLuzio: and, and so, you know, using some of these, these philosophies and really
William Spears: really thinking
Scott DeLuzio: about what it is that you’re doing and,
William Spears: and
Scott DeLuzio: And why you’re doing it and
William Spears: and
Scott DeLuzio: how that’s affecting you and the people around you, and you know, it [00:50:00] all kind of comes together when you really slow down and, and start to think about
William Spears: about
Scott DeLuzio: what’s going on.
And,
William Spears: And,
Scott DeLuzio: so I, I, I feel like
William Spears: like
Scott DeLuzio: is, you know, while, while it is a extremely con, complex subject
It can kind of be boiled down to, to something as, as simple as that, but, but I’m, I’m sure there’s a lot of nuance to it as well. Right?
William Spears: Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people will complain about all the, the popularizer and the guys that, that write a lot on this, that write kind of shallow stuff and like, oh, they, they, you’re, you’re dumbing it down to a bumper sticker version. Well, like, maybe there, there’s some value in that bumper sticker version,
Scott DeLuzio: Right.
William Spears: there’s more meat on the bone if you want to, you want to get to it, know?
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: I, so, yeah, I, so the. A practice that I would recommend for, for the veterans that are listening to this, if they’re just like, not philosophical at all and they’re like, I don’t know what this, you know, nerd’s talking about over here, just try this try journaling. And that is a, that is a, a[00:51:00]
Scott DeLuzio: I.
William Spears: that it’s ancient and it’s in fact the reason that we have the meditations of Marcus Aurelius and the reason that most of us even, you know, that he’s famous enough that, that he’s a household name is because those were. A philosophical exercise for him that he was performing as part of his, his drills, his routines of just like, let me write down my thoughts, write down what’s bothering me and, and, you know, criticize, you know, this is how I reacted to this situation, and I wish I hadn’t.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, sure.
William Spears: and, and that’s or, or this is happening.
You know, he, he’s, he’s often he’s pretty hard on himself, but that exercise of just thinking through. How your day went, what you did and, and why you think the things that you think. Try to try to write it down and you will find out that you, you often think things that you didn’t necessarily realize you thought or you will uncover ways in which you’re being incoherent of like, oh, I think [00:52:00] this, but I also think that, and that is obviously incompatible.
One of those, one of those ideas is wrong,
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.
William Spears: And there are a lot of things that you will think, you think until you try to write it down and then you realize it’s just a jumble of feelings. And, and, and there’s not really a, a coherent thought there, because you can’t, you can’t put it on paper. It’s just, it’s just a jumble of emotions.
And that exercise is ancient and it’s, it’s what any therapist will tell you to do. And it’s free. It costs, it costs a, you know, as much as a little notebook down at the drugstore and, you know, no one has to read it. You just, just get in the routine of doing it every night or every morning or whatever and, and that spend 30 minutes doing that can work wonders for mental health, I think.
And that is an ancient philosophical practice.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And that, that’s actually great advice. And I, I think one of the, the benefits to writing something down as opposed to, oh, I’ll just use my phone. I’ll, I’ll record a voice note or, or something like that. The, one of the benefits of
William Spears: of
Scott DeLuzio: physically writing it down, [00:53:00] pen to paper type of writing it down even better than typing it on a, you know, keyboard or, or whatever.
But physically writing it is you slow down when you write. You can’t write as fast as you can think or speak. And so when, when you do that,
William Spears: that
Scott DeLuzio: your, your brain gets to kind of jump ahead and think of that next thing as you’re writing down the current thing and
William Spears: and
Scott DeLuzio: kind of process some of the other stuff that you’re,
William Spears: you’re
Scott DeLuzio: through
William Spears: through.
Scott DeLuzio: You get a little bit deeper thoughts on whatever it is that you’re journaling about than, and, and I’ve experienced this myself through, you know, various therapies that, that I’ve gone through. And that was one of the, like you said, that was one of the things that they suggested that I do. And I, so I started writing things down and I started
William Spears: I started
Scott DeLuzio: thinking about things and remembering things, feelings, emotions, all these things that, that were taking place that completely forgot about.
But
William Spears: but,
Scott DeLuzio: just ’cause I usually would just think about it real quick and, and then I’d be onto the next thing. Whereas this, I, I slowed down and it took me a lot longer [00:54:00] to think through something when I was physically writing it down and, and that to me,
William Spears: that point is a really good one. And I,
Scott DeLuzio: yeah.
William Spears: I hadn’t thought of that.
Scott DeLuzio: Okay.
William Spears: and it’s, it’s very useful to me that you say that, you know, like, ’cause I’ve gotten in the habit of typing journaling and, and, and I’m like, man, I can get through a lot more, a lot stuff, a lot faster.
But maybe that’s kind of beside the
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: the being forced to slow down and engage with it differently.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.
William Spears: that’s a really good point.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And, and that’s something that I, I noticed it was, it was like a strange phenomenon that happened when, when, when I was doing this, I was, I was physically writing you know, on, on a piece of paper. And it, to me, I was, I was just like,
William Spears: like,
Scott DeLuzio: I, I can’t believe that it worked in that, that way just, just by slowing down and,
William Spears: and
Scott DeLuzio: writing.
And so, you know, for, for folks out there who are maybe just, I dunno, struggling with whatever it is that they’re, they’re going through, write it down and, and just, you know, journal it and maybe that’ll [00:55:00] help you kind of think through it and, and. Work, work your way through it. You know, it may not be for everybody, but you know, it’s, Hey, you know, if you’ve tried everything and you haven’t tried this, you, you haven’t tried it all yet.
So, so, you know, give it a shot and, and see if it, it maybe works and it’s maybe helpful for you. And it may be in combination with something else too. But you know, that might be, like you said, that might be beneficial you know, just to start journaling and, and make it a, make it a habit, not just a I’ll, I’ll just do it tonight.
And that didn’t do anything for me, so whatever, I’m never gonna do it again. Like, you know, give, give it a real shot, you know?
William Spears: you need the routine.
Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Suck it up and do it, you know, go, go get the notebook and, and some pens and, and just actually do it, you know? Well this, this has been a, a, a great conversation.
Tell us again, like the, the book where people can find it and, and all all that kinda stuff and, and where they can go to find out more information if there’s, there’s any place that you want to send ’em to.
William Spears: Yeah, sure. The book is called Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy. I am the author of William C. Spears. It’s [00:56:00] the first book I’ve ever written. I hope that it’s not the last, but, I make my money being a active duty Navy officer, so it might be a while before I can, I can get to another one. You can find the book.
It’s, it’s sold at, you know, Barnes and Noble. It’s on Amazon, you know, wherever you get books. The, I also have a website, William c spears.com. I just use that as a place to hang essays and stuff like that. So if you’re really, if you really wanna like, read my thoughts on, you know, why we should build nuclear powered surface ships, or, you know, why the Navy should have the B one bomber, something like, you know, boring military stuff like that.
Then you can go to my website and read some of my, my war nerd articles.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know how boring that sounds. That that actually sounds pretty cool. So I, I might, might be checking that out. So,
William Spears: out.
Scott DeLuzio: And I’ll have links to all this in the show notes for folks as well because you know, I, I know, you know, folks listening, they, they may not be able to write everything down you know, in, in the moment.
So they’ll, they’ll have all the links to your website. I’ll, I’ll put a link to the [00:57:00] book. And you know, anything else that we might have mentioned in this episode you know, I’ll try to drop some links in, into the show notes for the listeners.
William Spears: Okay,
Scott DeLuzio: Excellent.
William Spears: me lemme leave your listeners with one last
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, sure.
William Spears: kind of kind of the point that get back to the appeal to coherency. So kind of the, the original philosopher that’s kind of like the granddaddy of stoicism is, is this little guy named Socrates, you know, you might have heard of so Socrates do, doing the Socrates thing of asking, asking these just impossible questions that, that he would, you know, one of the things that he tried to get at was what is good, you know, what, what makes an act good? And he, he concluded that a, an act is good if it is both honorable and useful
Scott DeLuzio: Mm-hmm.
William Spears: and. Hundreds of years later, this guy named Cicero, who, Cicero is probably one of my favorite philosophers. He’s not, he’s actually not a stoic, but he is adjacent to the stoics. And, you know, he admires them. And a lot of the stuff, a lot of his personal philosophy reflects, reflects the [00:58:00] stoics that he was, he was writing.
And he’s kind of our source for a lot of stuff. He’s also, incidentally, a very important political philosopher, very influential on the founding fathers of the United States. But anyway, Cicero took that idea from Socrates and said, okay, well, Socrates said that that which is honorable and useful is good, but we can infer from that that that which is truly honorable be useful, and that which is truly useful must be honorable. And conversely, if it is not. Truly honorable than it is not truly useful, no matter how much, how expedient it may seem to be in the moment. and that to me most beautifully out of kind of any other quote that I can find it, you know, that wasn’t the actual quote, but you got the sentiment of
Scott DeLuzio: Sure.
William Spears: there, you know, captures that appeal to coherency.
And the idea that if I am, you know, getting, getting ahead in some superficial way by something that is not [00:59:00] then I recognize immediately that is not truly useful. That’s gonna bite me in the ass in some, some way. I’m going to regret that decision in some way. Whatever I am getting out of that, it is not truly good.
It is something other than good. And that I think is just a very useful way of looking at life and and capturing, capturing all that in, in a pithy statement. So I, I’ll leave you with that.
Scott DeLuzio: Excellent. Well, I, I do appreciate you coming on sharing you know, first off, your, your your service and, you know, kind of your background on, on the, the submarines and everything. I, I think that’s pretty cool. I, I don’t usually get to talk to folks who serve on submarines, so, so it’s kind of cool to hear a little bit about that.
But, but also all the,
William Spears: all
Scott DeLuzio: You know, the, the work that you’ve done with your book and, and stoicism and, and everything you know, it’s, it’s an interesting philosophy and I, I think you know, as, as people kind of get turned onto it a little bit more, they will you know, hopefully. Make some improvements in their lives, whether it’s their mental health or, or other areas of their lives that, that they are, are kind of working on.
I, I think it just in general, [01:00:00] it’ll, it’ll help them just make those improvements that they’ve been looking to make. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing what you did with us and you know, yeah. Thanks for, for coming on.
William Spears: Yeah, Scott, I really appreciate it. It has been great.