The Philosophy of Everything

“When you’re thus practiced and prepared to discriminate between what belongs to you and what doesn’t, what is subject to hindrance and what is not, and are ready to regard the latter as important to you and the former as irrelevant, then is there anyone, any more, you need be frightened of?” -Epictetus

Legal definitions of criminal recklessness across countries and decades have shared the common premise that in order for one to be considered reckless, one must acknowledge their behavior as such. In other words, the actor must actively recognize and consider their act to have been reckless, knowingly endangering themselves or others. Remaining less defined is that of what leads an individual to conscious personal or interpersonal endangerment. Among a range of influencers, one culprit in conscious endangerment, or uncalculated risk, could be the belief that a certain action will compensate for whatever is perceived as lacking. Demonstrated in both the major and the trivial, recklessness, or willful indulgence in non-beneficial acts is, of course, not limited to criminal contexts; binge consumption and shortsighted, spite-driven decisions are broadly-accessible examples. Unchecked desire invites rashness; prolonged unchecked desire invites risk.

The most basic instinct being survival, one could see recklessness as an extreme response to seeing another circumstance as unsurvivable (emotionally or otherwise, and accuracy of judgement notwithstanding), even if the reckless act invites a different or more severe danger. We'd much prefer the danger we create than that which we perceive as inescapable. While the animal's chief aim is survival, it is especially to do so on his or her own terms.

“Be not angry with outward events, for they care nothing for it.” -Euripedes

Natural to the human experience inside a big, indiscriminate world is the sense of feeling out of control—of feeling that the reality of present circumstances is at direct odds with our desires. Our atomic existence on the grand scale makes us highly susceptible to such a feeling. Difficult as it can be to accept at times, life often dictates us—more specifically, the bounds within which we can operate (though not the degree to which we can operate within them), and is wholly uninterested in our plans or preferences. Living well in a brutally objective world requires acutely developed, routinely-evaluated clarity in two things: that which lies within our control, and that which lies outside of it. Once identified, the work then becomes to direct our energy accordingly.

For the person who’s been exposed to any amount of self-development material, the concept of focusing on what’s within one’s control is not a novel one. In fact, overexposure to a superficial version of the concept may desensitize us to it entirely, as it's not merely a matter of focusing on what you can control, but of actively choosing to not emotionally attach yourself to anything you can’t.

A high-functioning understanding of control looks as follows: emotionally aligning yourself only to that which directly relates to your own actions.