Stoic experts are like tech geeks

Recently, I participated in a conversation about Stoicism. It brought to light something that was already sitting outside in the sun: people who know a lot about Stoicism (that is, those who know its most intricate details and obscure texts) often seem terrible at communicating it to everyday people.

Having spent nearly 20 years in IT, sometimes staff, I find this a familiar territory. The stereotype of a “Service Desk Analyst” or “the tech person” is well known: brilliant, but ornery. They seem often unable to communicate with non-tech people in plain language without coming off condescending. Any IT hiring manager will tell you, when hiring customer-facing staff, finding candidates who are both “brilliant” and “personable” is damn near impossible.

We all know what a great “tech support person” is though, right? Perhaps we can’t describe one in a snappy sentence, but we know them by encounter. They seem to know how to frame things in language we can understand, instead of tech-speak. They don’t ask us to “power-cycle the CPU”, instead they direct us to, “go to the start menu, select shut down, then select restart from the dropdown (if you’re on a Windows machine).”

We may never understand what a CPU is, what it means to power-cycle one, or why doing so seems to fix so many things. But, if we are to ever understand it, we will certainly understand it as the less technical navigation of a start menu. Only after that we understand it as the more complicated thing techies know it to be.

Is virtue knowledge?

Returning to the conversation: it was concerned with Virtue, specifically with whether or not Virtue is knowledge.

In Stoicism (not only in Stoicism, but in Stoicism certainly) knowledge means something different than it means in contemporary times. For example, if I were to say of my friend Kai Whiting that he was knowledgeable, one would be forgiven for thinking I meant Kai knew a lot of facts and that he would make a great barroom trivia partner (though he may well!). That’s because, in contemporary times, “knowledge” is intimately tied to one’s possession of facts and information. This contemporary understanding is central to everything that follows.

Factual knowledge plus practice

In Stoicism knowledge speaks to something more like a familiar practice of “classroom principles” such that our navigation of existence is virtuous. I might illustrate this with an example: we all know how to use a roller-brush to paint a wall, but we don’t know how to do it the same way a painter who has been painting for 30 years knows how to paint a wall. But why not? Don’t we both know the same facts?

Similarly, in Stoicism, knowledge is twopronged:

1. Familiarity with information
2. Practice, and the spoils of practice (which is somewhat hard to find a word for, but I think it’s something like “comfort” or “ease”)

Why is this important?

Imagine that we’re new to Stoicism. What risk does it pose when we are told that Virtue is knowledge without the understanding of knowledge as above? It is understanding that would not have because, remember, we are new to Stoicism.

The answer is that we might mistakenly believe Virtue is something we can learn in a book and not something we must, for lack of a better term, “live”. The potential negative outcome of this is exactly the unfortunate landscape we Stoics find ourselves in today: one in which not- Stoicism is more accessible than is- Stoicism, to the detriment of the entire cosmopolis.

An expert should also be a good communicator

What then is a Stoicism Communicator, such as myself, to do when elevated to the position of “influencer” or host of the second most listened to Stoicism podcast currently in production? What are my responsibilities with that kind of visibility? To be highly technical, or to be highly accessible?

Returning to my earlier IT analogizing: if I’m a prokoptôn-facing “Stoicism Support Analyst”, what makes me a worthwhile analyst? An explanation of Virtue (in this instance) that requires you to also be a Stoicism Support Analyst, or one that allows you to understand the actions you need to take at this stage in your understanding to make move forward?

For me, of course, the answer is obvious, but what about you? What do you think is the appropriate role of a Stoicism Support Analyst who wants to responsibly direct newcomers to Stoicism? Tag me on Twitter and let me know, @StoicismTanner.

Tanner is the host of the Practical Stoicism podcast, coauthor of the Daily Stoic Journaling program, and owner of PracticalPhilosophy. Heconsidershimself a"Stoicism Communicator" by trade and creates daily education content related to both Stoicism and philosophy in general.

---