Stoic Week #3

Note: This is posted in observance of Stoic Week 2023. I observed Stoic Week in 2015. I suffered a health ordeal in early 2020 even though I had been eating sensibly, exercising daily, and regulating my emotions better. Suffice to say, genetics laid me low. Per the four cardinal virtues (a.k.a. psychological strengths), I knew that my recovery was in my control in terms of diet, movement, sleep, and 'capital S' Stoicism. And reading and thinking about the good sense (wisdom), resourcefulness (wisdom), fair dealing (justice), confidence (courage), and cheerfulness (temperance) of the Stoic role model created by author Erle Stanley Gardner.

My Blog Posts: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3| Day 4  | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

Perry Mason as Stoic Role Model

On the NPR show Fresh Air, TV critic David Bainculli described fictional lawyer Perry Mason as “stern, stoic and unflappable.” Bainculli uses “stoic” in the popular sense of “unemotional.” However, it’s worth examining the character of Perry Mason in the wider sense of “Stoic.” A 'capital S' Stoic has an orientation toward life and resilience based on ancient conceptions of wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.

One of the many facets of wisdom is the ability to employ logic in order to collect and examine evidence and come up with objective interpretations and creative solutions. Mason exercises reason as he questions persons of interest and analyzes data gathered in crime scenes and technical tests.

It's a question of doing justice to a client. Once you become convinced your client is guilty, you interpret all of the evidence in a false light and weigh it by false standards. When you once get the correct master pattern, every single event fits into that pattern. It dovetails with every other event which impinges upon it. When you get a master pattern which seems to accommodate all of the events except one, and you can't make that event fit in, it's pretty apt to mean that your master pattern is wrong. (TCOT Drowning Duck 

We've been talking quite a bit about becoming hypnotized by circumstantial evidence. After a person once gets a fixed belief, he interprets everything which happens in the light of that belief. It's a dangerous habit to get into and I'm afraid I haven't been entirely innocent, myself. (TCOT Perjured Parrot)

But Perry also possesses common sense and good calculation. He assumes that people in trouble with the law have made poor decisions based on the incomplete information they had at the time crazy shit was going down.

You don't need to see a man, look in his face, shake his hand, and hear him talk, in order to know him. You can watch the things he does. You can see him through the eyes of others. You make allowances for [ ] prejudice when you know the others. You can then judge the extent of their distortion. That's the only way you can solve cases, Della. You must learn to know the characters involved. You must learn to see things through their eyes, and that means you must have sympathy and tolerance for crime. (TCOT Silent Partner)

Be realistic without being callous and cynical. Mason expects people to make mistakes and commit crimes out of greed, lust, hatred, and love.

People have their strong points and their weak points. The true philosopher sees them as they are, and is never disappointed, because he doesn’t expect too much. The cynic is one who starts out with a false pattern and becomes disappointed because people don’t conform to that pattern. Most of the little chiseling practices come from trying to cope with our economic conventions. When it comes right down to fundamentals, people are fairly dependable. The neighbor who would cheat you out of a pound of sugar would risk her life to save you from drowning. (TCOT  Shoplifter’s Shoe)

Fairness, or the virtue called justice, is cutting yourself, other people, and the world slack. Perry Mason believes that everybody in trouble deep with the authorities deserves a good defense because the criminal justice system is stacked against us, The Little Guy. A lawyer can’t decide she will defend only parties she regards as innocent because that would be setting herself up as the jury, which deprives the defendant of a fair trial.

What right have I got to sit back with that 'holier than thou' attitude and expect [clients] to come clean with a total stranger? They come here when they're in trouble. They're worried and frightened. They come to me for consultations. I'm a total stranger to them. They need help. Poor fools, you can't blame them for resorting to subterfuges. (TCOT Curious Bride)

This conception of fairness is closely related to wisdom above in that it takes imagination to envision how and why another person came to a decision.

… I think imaginative people sympathize with the sufferings of others because they're able to visualize those sufferings more keenly in their own minds. An unimaginative person, on the other hand, can't visualize himself in the shoes of another. Therefore, he sees life only from his own selfish angle. Killers are frequently cunning, but they're rarely original. They're selfish, and usually determined. Of course, I'm not talking now about a murder which is the results of some sudden overpowering emotion. (TCOT Lame Canary)

Mason is dealing with ordinary people in the deepest legal trouble they could possibly face. Mason frequently has to urge them to stand firm to beat back the anxiety and despondency that clients are liable to slip into. Courage will fuel optimism or help us steel ourselves for the ordeal to come.

My experience has always been that these things look much worse than they actually are. In fact, I tell my clients that nine times out of ten they can say to themselves, 'Things are never as bad as they seem.' I admit things look black, but we're going to keep fighting, and don't you get discouraged. (TCOT Beautiful Beggar)

Related to courage, the virtue of moderation (temperance) means that a person has self-command. Irrational emotions like anger, contempt, defiance, spite, and impatience don’t influence them when making decisions. Like Buddhists and cognitive behavioral therapists, Mason urges worried clients to be here, now:

Make up your mind to one thing, Mrs. Warren. After water has run downstream and over the dam, you can't find any way on earth of getting it back upstream and over the dam a second time. Take things as they come. Concentrate on the present, forget the past. (TCOT Phantom Fortune)

Being brave also involves taking risks. We have no control over what other people are going to do. But we do have control over our thoughts and actions. Focus on what you can do, what is in your power. Know your limitations but give yourself credit for your strengths too.

Whoever got anything in life by being careful? Every time you stop to figure what the other fellow's going to do, you unconsciously figure what you'd do in his place. The result is that you're not fighting him, but yourself. You always come to a stalemate. Every time you think of a move, you think of a perfect defense. The best fighters don't worry about what the other man may do. And if they keep things moving fast enough, the other man is too busy to do much thinking. (TCOT Baited Hook)

As he weaves his way through convoluted plots, Perry Mason uses the capital skills to exonerate people who say the cozily familiar phrase, “Please, Mr. Mason, you gotta believe me. He was dead when I got there!” For readers who sniff at black and white morality and virtue ethics, Gardner wrote Cool and Lam novels such as The Bigger They Come, about a PI partnership that was not averse to lying to the cops and their clients or removing evidence from a crime scene.

For most of the quotations, I leaned on a great article by Kirk Woodward