The power of positive thinking (2).

Admiral James Stockdale may be best known as Ross Perot’s ill-fated running mate in the 1992 Presidential election. However, the retired Admiral, who unfortunately died this month, is one of America’s greatest heroes and one of the most decorated officers in the history of the U.S. Navy: 26 personal combat decorations, 4 Silver Star medals, and the Medal of Honor for his heroic leadership of American POWs in Hanoi during his nearly 8 years of captivity.

In Love and War, Stockdale describes his life in a Vietnamese prison camp, where he was in solitary confinement for more than four years, tortured and broken daily.

We recently read an article by Stockdale entitled MASTER OF MY FATE: A STOIC PHILOSOPHER IN A HANOI PRISON. Stockdale recounts his formative experience of studying philosophy in graduate school at Stanford University. One memorable course was taught by Philip Rhinelander and was entitled “The Problems Of Good And Evil”.

One of the greatest impacts in Stockdale’s life was reading Enchiridion by Epictetus. Epictetus was born a slave around 50 A.D., and studied under the Stoic teachers who were then the philosophers of Rome.

As Stockdale writes:

“Stoicism is a noble philosophy that has proven to be more practicable than a modern cynic would expect. The Stoic viewpoint is often misunderstood because the casual reader misses the point—that all talk is in reference to the ‘inner life’. Stoics belittle physical harm, but this is not braggadocio. They are speaking of it in comparison to the devastating agony of shame they fancied good men generating when they knew in their hearts that they had failed to do their duty vis-à-vis their fellow men or God…

“Epictetus explained that his curriculum was not about ‘revenues or income, or peace or war, but about happiness and unhappiness, success and failure, slavery and freedom…

“Epictetus was telling his students that there can be no such thing as being the ‘victim’ of another. You can only be a ‘victim’ of yourself. It’s all in how you discipline your mind. Who is your master? ‘He who has authority over any of the things on which you have set your heart…What is the result at which all virtue aims? Serenity…Show me a man who though sick is happy, who though in danger is happy, who though in prison is happy, and I’ll show you a Stoic.”