Everyday philosophy

This year, the predictably unpredictable British weather has lived up to pessimists’ expectations. Through much of July and August, the barbecue summer augured by weather forecasters proved much soggier than anticipated, complete with Test match draws and delays. How should we respond? The Stoic philosophers believed that getting worked up about events that are outside our control is simply wasted energy. For the Roman Stoic and dramatist Seneca, anger was a useless emotion to be eradicated or converted to inner calm—a sentiment traditionally echoed by the cricket-playing English gentleman. And, as the Greek Stoic Epictetus argued, the only worthwhile good comes from those aspects of our character we can consciously control. “Man,” he taught, “is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them.”

Is this wisdom, or a recipe for inhuman indifference to what is going on around us? In our age of genetic knowledge and technological prowess, it can be hard to know where the bounds of human control end. In August, the sprinter Usain Bolt demolished his own world 100 metres record, clocking a stunning 9.58 seconds. Genetic gifts and focused training have produced a quite exceptional athlete, and a man so much better than the rest that it seems almost unfair. Yet—as David Edmonds explores in his essay on human enhancement in this issue (p42)—scientists are probably already working on a biomedically enhanced Wunderkind who will grow to topple even Bolt’s records. Why be Stoical about your nature, or Nature itself, when the means to perfect these exist?

It’s a question that we may soon have to face from a practical as well as a philosophical perspective. Yet, if this summer has a message, it’s that for the moment we should enjoy the sunny days when they come, and celebrate sporting achievement where we find it, even if both include large elements of luck. In the future, after all, we may find that we have to blame our seasonal woes not only on underperforming forecasters and athletes, but on less-than-perfect weather-makers and geneticists too.