I love Ryan Holiday’s Ego is the Enemy. In it, I came across a powerful Frederick Douglass story and quote. Douglass, having been born into slavery, would go on to become one of the most prolific abolitionists of all time. Extraordinary people like Douglass truly inspire us with the idea of soul agency:
“Booker T. Washington tells an anecdote told to him by Frederick Douglass, about a time he was traveling and was asked to move and ride in the baggage car because of his race. A white supporter rushed up to apologize for this horrible offense. “I am sorry, Mr. Douglass, that you have been degraded in this manner,” the person said. Douglass would have none of that. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t hurt. He replied with great fervor: “They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.”
This seems to be a shared sentiment amongst the exceptional. I wrote an earlier post on Gandhi and Mind Consent and his similar sentiments of “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet” and “nobody can hurt me without my permission”. I also wrote on Marcus Aurelius on Disturbance from Within which also touches on this idea of soul agency and his timeless quote that “things have no hold on the soul” and that “disturbance comes only from within – from our own perceptions.”
As I wrote in Stoic Principles in Invictus, soul agency is a core theme in Stoic philosophy and lived through exceptional world changers in the most extraordinary circumstances – people like Nelson Mandela after 27 years of imprisonment and Victor Frankl after 4 concentration camps. With their example, we’re reminded that our character – and our response to adversity – is always ours. In Frankl’s words, “man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress”. Even in the midst of losing everything, the last of human freedom remains: “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Douglass’ quote keeps with this theme. Nothing can degrade our character but ourselves; those that attempt to degrade us simply degrade themselves. Soul agency is a powerful realization that imparts upon us a radical responsibility. When we think we’re in hell, we can draw inspiration from exceptional world changers before us for perspective. With our hardships, we always are in control of our own attitudes and response to the situation. We always have a choice. Our souls are ours.
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