Latest news with #GreekStoic
Irish Examiner
21-07-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Open victor Scottie Scheffler is latest sporting star to explore space beyond wins and losses
The world's top athletes can seem a confused bunch. Scottie Scheffler described in a press conference before the Open how he keeps asking himself why he wants to win golf tournaments and can't find any answers. The world No 3 men's tennis player Alexander Zverev confessed to feelings of emptiness and a lack of joy in his tennis regardless of whether he wins or loses matches. The Wimbledon women's singles runner-up Amanda Anisimova took a long break from tennis to preserve her mental health, was written off by many and unsure what to expect on return, yet ended up in the SW19 final. What's going on? As the world's top athletes naturally push the boundaries of what's possible physically, so they also have to push the limits mentally, and these questions and experiences are a vital part of that process. We're seeing more and more athletes explore the space beyond winning and losing, a concept many in sport have yet to understand actually exists. But as most athletes find out, some sooner than others, to get caught up with winning and losing is to lose the point, both on the court and in life. Finding a purpose behind the pursuit of trophies now forms a key part of an athlete's mental journey to reach and sustain their highest levels of performance. And, typical of elite performance, it's not an easy path. Scheffler explained before and after triumphing at Royal Portrush that winning tournaments brought a positive sense of achievement but that this shouldn't be mistaken for deep, lasting fulfilment. In many ways, it's a healthy questioning attitude. Scheffler is largely in a good place: he still enjoys playing, while keenly aware that winning a golf tournament can never be the be all and end all. But he is aware he doesn't yet have a good enough answer to the question: 'Why do I want to win this championship so badly?' Anisimova was facing burnout two years ago and knew she had to step away. This time off allowed her to reconnect with herself and redefine why she wanted to play tennis again. She said many people told her she would never make it back if she took time out – one wonders whose interests they were looking after or whether they understood the need to nurture an athlete's mental and emotional health as much as the physical and physiological side. Zverev seems to sense he must find a different route and knows the answer isn't about winning or losing. Scheffler, Anisimova and Zverev each prove age‑old findings of biology, psychology and philosophy that humans need meaning in our lives beyond immediate, material gains. Whether you look at the top level of the psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, return to the Greek Stoic philosophers, or open up the psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl's classic work Man's Search for Meaning, the prime motivating force in humans is to find meaning and purpose in life. Trophies are fun, and we all enjoy them. But as Scheffler reminds us, those celebrations last only a few minutes and won't ever 'fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart'. It's important to note these athletes are not saying winning doesn't matter. It's just not the only thing and, as winning is by its nature temporary and shallow, it's insufficient to sustain the highest levels of performance. Asking 'what's the point of sport?' can feel dangerous, almost heretical, but it's clearly a powerful thought process to sustain any athlete wanting to explore their full potential. Scottie Scheffler celebrates with the Claret Jug after winning The Open at Royal Portrush. Photo: INPHO/Ben Brady Finding reasons why sport matters can look different for different athletes but typically involves the awareness of the person that you are becoming through the pursuit of sporting excellence, the depth of connection that you have with friends, family and wider communities that you belong to, and, over time, the lasting positive impact or legacy you might leave. Giving athletes space and support to explore how they find meaning from their sporting journey is becoming a critical quality for coaches to support and facilitate. But it's a world away from many coaching development routes which have for decades emphasised technical and tactical excellence. Even in the world of sports psychology where there is greatest skill in this area, it's not what is often requested from coaches or performance directors. Organisations including Switch the Play, the True Athlete Project, ACT and the Jacobs Futura Foundation have woken up to the need to help athletes transition out of sport at the end of their careers, alongside various companies that offer athlete transition programmes. What is becoming clear is that those conversations about purpose, identity and social impact need to come much earlier in an athlete's career, long before they retire. An interesting consequence that follows when athletes do have a strong sense of meaning, purpose and connection is less difference between the emotional states of winners and losers. Both winning and losing prove useful in the pursuit of connection with others and the process of self-discovery and character development, reinforcing values and virtues such as resilience, courage, gratitude, and humility. We saw this demonstrated by the Wimbledon men's singles finalists and top two players in the world, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, whose speeches were remarkably similar and based largely on gratitude, humility and accepting loss. Alcaraz clarified that losses hurt but were 'not failures' and Sinner emphasised how important it had been to 'accept' his loss a few weeks earlier at the French Open. They had given everything to win Wimbledon but were both immediately grounded that who they are isn't changed by the result and that they are playing a bigger game. Performance sport shows us contenders at the top of their game whose incredible feats of human possibility now go beyond the field of play. As Sinner said just after holding the Wimbledon trophy for the first time: 'We just keep pushing and trying to become a better tennis player, but mostly a better person.' That's the way to find the mental edge, whatever game you're playing. Guardian
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Empathy can take a toll – but 2 philosophers explain why we should see it as a strength
In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, billionaire and Trump megadonor Elon Musk offered his thoughts about what motivates political progressives to support immigration. In his view, the culprit was empathy, which he called 'the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.' As shocking as Musk's views are, however, they are far from unique. On the one hand, there is the familiar and widespread conservative critique of 'bleeding heart' liberals as naive or overly emotional. But there is also a broader philosophical critique that raises worries about empathy on quite different and less political grounds, including findings in social science. Empathy can make people weaker – both physically and practically, according to social scientists. Consider the phenomenon known as 'empathy fatigue,' a major source of burnout among counselors, nurses and even neurosurgeons. These professionals devote their lives to helping others, yet the empathy they feel for their clients and patients wears them down, making it harder to do their jobs. As philosophers, we agree that empathy can take a toll on both individuals and society. However, we believe that, at its core, empathy is a form of mental strength that enables us to better understand the impact of our actions on others, and to make informed choices. The term 'empathy' only entered the English language in the 1890s. But the general idea of being moved by others' suffering has been a subject of philosophical attention for millennia, under labels such as 'pity,' 'sympathy' and 'compassion.' One of the earliest warnings about pity in Western philosophy comes from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus. In his 'Discourses,' he offers general advice about how to live a good life, centered on inner tranquility and freedom. When it comes to emotions and feelings, he writes: 'He is free who lives as he wishes to live … And who chooses to live in sorrow, fear, envy, pity, desiring and failing in his desires, attempting to avoid something and falling into it? Not one.' Feeling sorry for another person or feeling pity for them compromises our freedom, in Epictetus's view. Those negative feelings are unpleasant, and nobody would choose them for themselves. Empathy would clearly fall into this same category, keeping us from living the good life. A similar objection emerged much later from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche framed his discussion in terms of 'Mitleid' – a German term that can be translated as either 'pity' or 'compassion.' Like Epictetus, Nietzsche worried that pity or compassion was a burden on the individual, preventing them from living the good life. In his book 'Daybreak,' Nietzsche warns that such feelings could impair the very people who try to help others. Epictetus's and Nietzsche's worries about pity or compassion carry over to empathy. Recall, the phenomenon of empathy fatigue. One psychological explanation for why empathic people experience fatigue and even burnout is that empathy involves a kind of mirroring of other people's mental life, a mirroring that can be physically unpleasant. When someone you love is in pain, you don't just believe that they are in pain; you may feel it as if it is actually happening to you. Results from neuroscience and cognitive psychology research indicate that there are different brain mechanisms involved in merely observing another's pain versus empathizing with it. The latter involves unpleasant sensations of the type we experience when we are in pain. Empathy is thus difficult to bear precisely because being in pain is difficult to bear. And this sharpens the Stoic and Nietzschean worries: Why bother empathizing when it is unpleasant and, perhaps, not even necessary for helping others? The answer for why one should see empathy as a strength starts with a key insight from 20th century philosophy about the nature of knowledge. That insight is based on a famous thought experiment by the Australian philosopher Frank Jackson. Jackson invites us to imagine a scientist named Mary who has studied colors despite having lived her entire life in a black and white room. She knows all the facts about the spectrum distribution of light sources and vision science. She's read descriptions of the redness of roses and azaleas. But she's never seen color herself. Does Mary know everything about redness? Many epistemologists – people who study the nature of knowledge – argue that she does not. What Mary learns when she sees red for the first time is elusive. If she returns to her black and white room, never to see any colored objects again, her knowledge of the colors will likely diminish over time. To have a full, rich understanding of colors, one needs to experience them. Thoughts like these led the philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell to argue that experience delivers a special kind of knowledge of things that can't be reduced to knowledge of facts. Seeing, hearing, tasting and even feeling delivers what he called 'knowledge by acquaintance.' We have argued in a book and recent articles that Jackson's and Russell's conclusions apply to pain. Consider a variation on Jackson's thought experiment: Suppose Mary knows the facts about pain but hasn't experienced it. As before, it would seem like her understanding of pain is incomplete. In fact, though Mary is a fictional character, there are real people who report having never experienced pain as an unpleasant sensation – a condition known as 'pain asymbolia'. In Russell's terminology, such people haven't personally experienced how unpleasant pain can be. But even people without pain asymbolia can become less familiar with pain and hardship during times when things are going well for them. All of us can temporarily lose the rich experiential grasp of what it is like to be distressed. So, when we consider the pain and suffering of others in the abstract and without directly feeling it, it is very much like trying to grasp the nature of redness while being personally acquainted only with a field of black and white. That, we argue, is where empathy comes in. Through experiential simulation of another's feelings, empathy affords us a rich grasp of the distress that others feel. The upshot is that empathy isn't just a subjective sensation. It affords us a more accurate understanding of others' experiences and emotions. Empathy is thus a form of knowledge that can be hard to bear, just as pain can be hard to bear. But that's precisely why empathy, properly cultivated, is a strength. As one of us has argued, it takes courage to empathically engage with others, just as it takes courage to see and recognize problems around us. Conversely, an unwillingness to empathize can stem from a familiar weakness: a fear of knowledge. So, when deciding complex policy questions, say, about immigration, resisting empathy impairs our decision-making. It keeps us from understanding what's at stake. That is why it is vital to ask ourselves what policies we would favor if we were empathically acquainted with, and so fully informed of, the plight of others. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Emad H. Atiq, Cornell University and Colin Marshall, University of Washington Read more: Too many people with back pain call ambulances or visit the ED. Here's why that's a problem Empathy is the secret ingredient that makes cooperation – and civilization – possible The morality of feeling equal empathy for strangers and family alike The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
