If you have searched for help with anxiety or overthinking, YouTube has probably offered you ten Stoic principles that will change your life, or Taoism explained as going with the flow, sometimes in an approximation of Alan Watts’s voice.
My guest for this episode is Frank P. Saunders Jr., a philosopher who works on Chinese thought and who has spent the past couple of years making videos about what that content leaves out. His critiques of AI-generated philosophy videos and of Alan Watts have reached more people than academic work usually does, which is informative of the state of public philosophy.
We began with a phrase from one of his videos, McStoicism, which he uses for the version of Stoicism made to go down easily and keep you coming back. Of the distortions he identifies, the one he thinks does the most damage is the promise that this is not difficult. There is no single habit that will change your life, and there are not ten of them either. When the ten tips do not work, people conclude that Stoicism does not work for them, or that they are the kind of person for whom nothing works. His formulation is that the results were overstated and the effort was understated.
The second thing that gets removed is God. Almost none of this content mentions that the Stoics believed the universe has a rational order, and that trusting fate makes sense only if such an order exists. Surrendering to a world that is indifferent to you is a different act from aligning yourself with a world that is going somewhere. Frank thinks the tips can be secularised and that people can get real value from them, and he does not want to legislate anyone’s spiritual life. What he objects to is selling something as Stoicism while quietly removing the part that made it coherent.
We spent some time on emotions. Epictetus on the death of a child sounds monstrous in isolation. Cicero calls grief selfish, Seneca allows no room for anger at all. As someone trained to respect emotions as messengers, and believe that they are all serving a function, I find these positions difficult. Frank made a distinction: the question of whether the Stoic view of emotion is attractive is separate from the question of how accurately that view is represented now, and most of what circulates is a caricature of a caricature. In the context of the whole system, giving up certain attachments was supposed to purchase something specific, a life of rational virtue that nothing external could touch. Removed from the system, it becomes an instruction to feel less, which is not the same thing and helps nobody.
Then there is virtue, which vanishes from popular Stoicism almost entirely. The tradition is about becoming courageous, just, honest, and good, and Marcus Aurelius writes constantly about doing this for the community rather than for your own tranquility. Frank’s explanation for the disappearance is that content designed to appeal to everyone cannot commit to a moral vision without alienating part of its audience. The result is a philosophy that asks nothing of you, which is also a philosophy that gives nothing back.
The second half turns to Alan Watts. Frank’s objection is not that Watts was a bad writer, and he grants that the lectures are a pleasure to listen to. What troubles him is the assumption underneath, that all traditions are saying the same thing in different clothing, something he calls perennialism. Watts himself, in his autobiography, described wanting to strip away the language and reach the core the traditions share. Frank’s response is that there may well be such a core, but it will be too general to be much use, and getting anything from it requires the interpretation and the tradition that have just been stripped away.
The passage I think will matter most to most of us on a practical level is about wu wei. It is usually translated as effortless action and paired with the flow state, the idea being that enough practice gets you to a place where things happen without strain. Frank rejects both. He translates it as non-action, points out that the phrase barely appears in the Zhuangzi and that where it does appear it functions mostly as a political ideal about rulers who do not interfere, and argues that nothing done at an expert level is effortless. Playing a guitar solo takes enormous effort. What changes with mastery is where the effort goes, because the expert knows what to attend to.
Frank then named the skill stories, Cook Ting and the ferryman and the swimmer in Zhuangzi; these tales offer most of what people want from wu wei without the mistranslation, and his practical takeaway from the Zhuangzi is: get a hobby, become genuinely good at something, and it will change how you see everything else. We also talked about wandering, walking with no destination, which lands differently in a culture where every activity is expected to justify itself.
I asked him where someone should start if they are not an academic but want something real from these traditions. His answer began with an admission that if people do not care about the Zhuangzi, that is a failure of the ivory tower rather than a failure of the reader. It is an old book, and there are many old books, so the burden is on him to show why this one.
About Frank:
Frank P. Saunders Jr. is Assistant Professor at Chu Hai College in Hong Kong. He holds an MPhil and PhD in philosophy from the University of Hong Kong, and his research focuses on early Chinese philosophy, particularly the Zhuangzi, Daoist ethics, and questions of fate and nature. He has published in journals including Philosophy East and West, Dao, and Philosophers’ Imprint. His YouTube channel, Frank Philosophy, is where the McStoicism and Alan Watts videos discussed in this episode can be found.
Website: franksaundersjr.com
YouTube: @FrankPhilosophy
Imi Lo is a psychotherapist and consultant who has dedicated her career to helping emotionally and intellectually intense people turn their depth into strength. She has written three books with Hachette: Emotional Sensitivity and Intensity, The Gift of Intensity, and The Gift of Empathy.
Imi has over fifteen years of clinical experience, including roles with Médecins Sans Frontières and the NHS (UK), and holds three master's degrees in Mental Health, Buddhist Studies, and Global Cultures. Her training includes art therapy, philosophical counselling, Jungian psychology, mentalization-based treatment, EMDR, Schema Therapy, mindfulness-based and trauma-informed modalities, and she works integratively with psychodynamic, philosophical, and creative methods.
You can contact Imi for a one-to-one session tailored to your specific needs.