[HN Gopher] Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
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Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
Author : Tomte
Score : 163 points
Date : 2025-03-14 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
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| adamnemecek wrote:
| I wonder what caused the current obsession with stoicism. It
| seems vacant.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Interest in stoicism seems to be cyclical on HN. I've been
| following HN regularly since 2010, and I noticed that a couple
| of times per year there were/are spikes in stoicism-related
| submissions and discussions over a few weekends. My
| unsubstantiated theory is that someone gives a presentation/s
| touching on stoicism to new YC batches, or something like that.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Vanity.
| larrykubin wrote:
| I always traced this to Ryan Holiday marketing the philosophy
| and selling books on the topic and starting a YouTube channel
| "The Daily Stoic"
| accrual wrote:
| Ryan Holiday is a good guy. I've followed his content for a
| while. Yes, he is marketing essentially "free" philosophy,
| but he does a good job adapting it to modern life.
| aschobel wrote:
| Could you recommend another philosophy worth exploring? As
| someone who's relatively new to Stoicism, I've found the four
| virtues (wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance) to offer
| valuable guidance for living a balanced life. I'd genuinely
| appreciate hearing more about your perspective--why do you find
| Stoicism vacant?
| codexb wrote:
| It's a remarkably good set of strategies and mindset for
| dealing with conflict, anxiety, and having to make a large
| number of difficult decisions.
|
| The core of stoicism (stressed more by Epictetus, a former
| slave, than Marcus Aurelius) is that we should not focus or
| worry on things we can't control. We can't control other
| people, or societies, or the unforeseen tragic events we may
| experience, but we can control our own actions, our own
| thoughts, and the way we respond to them. We can't dictate our
| emotions, but we can handle how we express those emotions.
|
| In many ways, it's similar to what you might learn going
| through therapy. But the mental health and difficulties that
| men face are somewhat overlooked by society and not taken as
| seriously as maybe they should be. In that environment,
| literally any strategies at all for dealing with stress and
| anxiety that are tailored towards men are going to be popular.
| engels_gibs wrote:
| Thats patently false. Some people do control other people,
| some people do control whole societies. What stoicism does
| is: for the underclass, it tells them to accept such control.
| Lying that "you have no control" over working conditions,
| exploitation, misery, hunger, suffering, etc. Do nothing,
| because nothing you do will matter.
|
| And for the capitalists upper class what it does is to
| validate the atroicities they commit: "the universe is an
| eternal good entity, everything happens for a reason. Sixty
| thousand children killed in Gaza? Its just the universe
| changing colors, changing quantity, some people turned from
| alive to unalive, but in the grand scheme of things it doesnt
| matter. You are just doing your role".
| accrual wrote:
| If you're underclass and beat up on by society above you,
| stoicism is a very rational philosophy to adopt.
|
| If you're upper crust and controlling everyone beneath you,
| I think it's still worthwhile to consider stoicism. Or is
| there some kind of divide - if one is poor you should enact
| one set of philosophies, if you're rich and powerful one
| should enact different philosophies?
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I don't follow Tim Ferriss, but I heard him interviewed on a
| podcast I sometimes listen to (I forget which) and Ferris said
| he reads MA's writings at least yearly and has done so for
| decades, and credited it with helping him with his depression
| and other issues. I got the impression he mentions it and
| advocates that everyone should study them as well. The
| interviewer was equally enthusiastic about MA.
|
| Considering the popularity of Ferriss, he is probably part of
| the reason. I suspect the type of people who read his books (eg
| the 4 hour work week) probably are into it too as it is a macho
| stance to take. Who the hell thinks it is good to sleep on a
| stone floor in order to toughen your mind so you don't get too
| attached to comforts? My philosophy is I'll deal with suffering
| when it comes, and not practice before then to get good at it.
|
| It reminds me of an interview many years ago with Jim Rose, who
| put on a traveling sideshow circus. There were no tricks -- the
| performs just did strange, painful things for entertainment.
| One of his routines was his wife would throw darts, using
| Rose's back as the dartboard. The interviewer asked, "Do you
| practice this?" He replied something like, "Hell no! It hurts!
| I did it once to see if I could do it, but after that I only do
| it for the show, where I get paid!"
| qoez wrote:
| One perspective is that meditation and stoicism helps silence
| guilt about being so properous in an unequal society.
| bko wrote:
| Why should one feel guilt about being prosperous in an unequal
| society? Even if you accept that it's based entirely on luck
| rather than merits, I don't see why you should feel guilt.
|
| A few examples of things based entirely on luck that no one
| really argues we should feel guilty about:
|
| Being tall
|
| Having high innate level of intelligence
|
| Athletic
|
| Physical beauty
| Palomides wrote:
| height isn't fungible
|
| even if acquiring wealth is random, retaining wealth means
| choosing not to see and positively act on the state of the
| world
| wallawe wrote:
| > retaining wealth means choosing not to see and positively
| act on the state of the world
|
| This is just silly. Just because you retain wealth doesn't
| mean you aren't positively acting to improve the current
| state of the world.
| Palomides wrote:
| every dollar kept is a choice not to effect one dollar of
| change
| mjburgess wrote:
| Because you're a social animal in a social world, whose
| social action creates and modifies that world.
|
| Since you are a body, in an environment, with a psychology --
| your actions have an effect upon the world.
|
| The invitation to dissociate and mute your social emotions is
| an invitation to keep everything as-it-is.
| haswell wrote:
| This is not an invitation to mute your emotions.
|
| This is questioning why someone _should_ feel a particular
| emotion.
|
| > _is an invitation to keep everything as-it-is._
|
| I don't need to feel personal guilt about something outside
| of my control in order to 1) recognize problems in the
| world, 2) want the factors causing those problems to
| change, and 3) actively work to change them.
|
| And for many people, feeling guilt - especially for things
| outside of their control - is absolutely paralyzing and
| leads to the opposite of action.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I mean I'm more responding to Marcus Aurellius and other
| formalisations of historical stoicism, than the pretty
| widely understood idea that "somethings are important,
| some arent" and "care most about what you can change, and
| least about what you cant"
|
| These sort of bits of old wisdom also come in their
| opposites ("you never know when something is important",
| "your passions can define your life, and create
| opportunities") etc.
|
| So I'm taking stoicism as a particular prioritising of
| those "bits of old wisdom" that combine together in
| relevant historical texts, and add up, in my view, to
| being quite radically dissociative.
|
| Stoicism doesnt own, "keep calm under fire"
| antisthenes wrote:
| > These sort of bits of old wisdom also come in their
| opposites ("you never know when something is important",
| "your passions can define your life, and create
| opportunities") etc.
|
| But they don't. They're typically not used in such a way,
| because they're nonsense.
|
| > you never know when something is important
|
| This is just resigning yourself to ignorance and chance.
| It's an unfalsifiable truism, because you can point to
| instances where it was true (survivor bias) and say you
| applied this bit of wisdom, whereas in reality it was
| just chance.
|
| > your passions can define your life, and create
| opportunities
|
| Sure, that's one of the possibilities. But it's not
| wisdom. It's another random truism out of a horoscope
| that may or may not end up being true.
|
| > Stoicism doesnt own, "keep calm under fire"
|
| A philosophy doesn't need to own anything for it to be
| valid. One of its principles can be used by other
| philosophies. What a weird thing to write.
| mjburgess wrote:
| You're agreeing with me. Those are all my views.
| bko wrote:
| So if I'm fortunate and blessed with wealth, I should feel
| guilty and be vocal about my guilt. So I make my life worse
| off and that of the people around me. People with heavy
| burden of guilt are often insufferable. And this will
| somehow make the world better off?
|
| Notice these people making these arguments never argue for
| voluntary charitable giving which is actually encouraged by
| stoic philosophy as is promoting justice.
|
| But the most important thing to some people is the
| signaling and guilt associated with any gift.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > I don't see why you should feel guilt.
|
| You should feel guilty because you can do something about
| other people's suffering, instead of being a greedy hoarder
| who has far more than he could possibly use in multiple
| lifetimes while other people starve and live miserable lives
| due to the system you benefit from.
|
| I think Peter Singer makes the argument very well [1] but
| many others in the history of philosophy have done just as
| good a job. Even Rawls is an option.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVl5kMXz1vA&pp=ygUMcGV0ZXI
| gc...
| JoshTko wrote:
| Almost universally prosperity is gained through privilege,
| compounded over generations. Privilege being
| rules/customs/systems that favored your group over others.
| ryandrake wrote:
| To be fair, the traits OP mentioned are heritable, and so
| to a large extent come from the privilege of having [tall |
| intelligence | athletic | beautiful] parents. So
| _privilege_ doesn 't explain why you'd feel guilty about
| one and not about the rest.
| psychlops wrote:
| I'm guilty of all your examples. It pains me so.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| All those things are somewhat socially determined. Even
| height has gone up in the last century. Personally I think
| I'm tall for somebody my age but I see a lot of young men who
| are a lot taller than me.
|
| To look at that last one, in the solar economy up until 1920
| or so, the peak of beauty socially [1] was the debutante from
| a rich or noble family. As soon as there were cities there
| were entertainers and courtesans, but in the mass media age
| the likes of Marie Antoinette just can't compete with
| professionals.
|
| Standards of athleticism also involve an element of
| conformity. "Extreme sports" are frequently pioneered by
| older athletes who have no chance of making the NFL draft but
| get taken over by the young once a path is visible. (Early
| winners of the World Series of Poker were outright old, but
| it became a young man's game when it became mainstream in the
| 2000s.)
|
| Some societies have a use for people with high intelligence,
| others don't.
|
| [1] I'm sure there were beautiful peasants to my eye in Heian
| Japan but the text that survive from that period describe a
| very specific ideal including perfectly straight and rather
| coarse black hair that's about as rigid as the look of the
| kind of woman who, creepily, Instagram wants me to follow
| today.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| A lot of people don't know that guilt is an emotion and like
| all emotions needs to be managed. They feel it, assume it's
| appropriate and then seek a cause that fits.
|
| Sorry if this sounds dismissive, it's not meant to be. But I
| think it is the cold hard reason for a lot of feeling/stress
| among people who have otherwise nice lives with no explicit
| moral failings...
| smallnix wrote:
| > Why should one feel guilt about being prosperous in an
| unequal society?
|
| I can understand the idea of feeling guilty about wasted
| potential (wealth, time, strength, beauty, intelligence).
| That which could be used to help those who need help, not
| exactly novel: "If you have two coats, give one away"
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| You shouldn't. First, I reject the framing that one's success
| today is due to privilege. But even if that were true (and it
| isn't), so what? What previous generations did has nothing
| whatsoever to do with me, morally speaking. I'm responsible
| for my own actions alone; this collective guilt line of
| thinking some people follow is nonsense.
| nkassis wrote:
| The guilt isn't due to the simple fact of being prosperous
| it's more about the prioritization of self-interest over that
| of a win-win option that helps the broader good.
| bko wrote:
| I don't follow. If you're prosperous due to no reason of
| your own (eg rich parents, lottery, etc), you didn't
| prioritize self interest
|
| If it is self made you presumably made it by creating value
| for others, otherwise why would anyone pay you?
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| "Luck" is the wrong word w.r.t. your examples. It could not
| have been otherwise, as you are those features. You wouldn't
| be you if you didn't. There's no ghost in the machine that is
| the "real you" that is haunting a carcass where these
| features are like possessions that you _own_. You don 't own
| them. They _are_ (a part) of who and what you are. They are
| things you can, in the appropriate manner, share with others.
|
| You didn't earn them, but so what? Why is everyone obsessed
| with everything having to be earned? A gift also belongs to
| me, even if I didn't do anything to earn it, and no one is
| entitled to take it from me as such any more than they can
| take anything I have earned.
|
| Now, w.r.t. material prosperity, of course there is no reason
| to feel guilt. If you acquired your wealth morally, then all
| is well. This is distinct from the general obligation of
| those in our society with means that exceed their own needs
| to aid those in a state of poverty. Note that I said poverty,
| not having _less_. Having less is not an injustice.
|
| The framing of inequality as injustice in recently years is
| rather a symptom of envy or confusion rather than an impulse
| coming from an intelligent sensitivity to injustice.
| 9dev wrote:
| The problem is that the things you identified as being based
| on luck have cascading second-order effects. For example,
| people that are perceived as handsome have better chances in
| wage negotiations, and the same goes for people with a
| lighter skin tone. The most strongly connected trait to being
| financially successful: being born in a rich and educated
| family.
|
| These things are outside your control, but entirely in
| control of a society.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Guilty may be the wrong word but you should be aware that you
| got lucky. Like a lot of "self-made" men who got lucky and
| then tell others that they could achieve the same if only
| they worked as hard.
|
| I hate articles "I did X and so can you". No, people often
| can't do what you did.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Inequality is not bad, so we should stop speaking of inequality
| as if it were. There is nothing to be guilty about for having
| more that is acquired or received by licit and moral means.
| Indeed, the obsession with equality is often itself rooted in
| envy. The envious have an obvious reason to feel guilty, as
| envy is evil (whether overt, such as when we try to take what
| others have, or concealed, such as when we deny the good of
| something or play the game of sour grapes).
|
| However, a society does have an obligation to respond to
| poverty (poverty in the true sense, not "I can't afford an
| iPhone"). Those with more than they need (and this is subject
| to prudential judgement) have more means to contribute toward
| this end.
| accrual wrote:
| They're useful practices in general
| mjburgess wrote:
| It's no accident that a roman emperor (tyrant, mass murderer, and
| courtier) is the premier famous stoic. Nor is it an accident that
| the next most famous case is that of British empire public
| schooling, british "stiff upper lip" stocisim.
|
| (EDIT: Marcus Aurelius) himself was no stoic philosopher, he
| merely wrote diaries to himself in his late days -- diaries he
| wanted burned, not published. And these were rehresals of what
| his stoic teachers had taught him while he was being raised into
| the roman aristocracy. Without this context, its very easy to
| misread his diaries in the manner of some religious text, cherry
| picking "whatever sounds nice".
|
| Its clear, under this view, how bitter and resentful many of
| these reflections were. He retreated to his diaries to "practice
| stoical thoughts" on those occasions where he was emotionally
| distributed. They are, mostly, rants. Rants against the court
| (eg., ignore the schemes of others, etc.); rants against the
| public (no matter if one is whipped, beaten, etc.); rants against
| how his prestige means little as a leader. Stocism here serves as
| a recipie to smooth one's injuries faced as a member of the
| elite, surrounded by vipers and with meaningless prestige.
|
| Stoicism, under this light, is training for a ruthless sort of
| leadership. From the pov of The Leader, all adoration is fake,
| all prestige, and status. Your job is to pretend it matters
| because it matters to your followers. It's a deeply hollow,
| dissociative, nihilistic philosophy which dresses up the status
| quo as "God's plan" -- a rationalization of interest to the elite
| above all others.
| lonestar wrote:
| I believe you mean Marcus Aurelius
| mjburgess wrote:
| I have read his diaries, though carelessly writing Mark
| Antony over Marcus Aurelius does undermine the point. --
| Thanks, edited. I guess one shouldnt write HN comments while
| listening to corporate policy announcements.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| We all do what must to keep sane.
| sentimentscan wrote:
| Interesting, can you provide more sources, about the dictators
| and stoicism, also Marcus Aurelius was he a tyrant, mass
| murderer, and courtier?
| shagie wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius
|
| > He was a member of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty, the last of
| the rulers later known as the Five Good Emperors and the last
| emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace, calm,
| and stability for the Roman Empire lasting from 27 BC to 180
| AD. He served as Roman consul in 140, 145, and 161.
|
| > ...
|
| > The historian Herodian wrote:
|
| > Alone of the emperors, he gave proof of his learning not by
| mere words or knowledge of philosophical doctrines but by his
| blameless character and temperate way of life.
|
| > ...
|
| > The number and severity of persecutions of Christians in
| various locations of the empire seemingly increased during
| the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The extent to which the emperor
| himself directed, encouraged, or was aware of these
| persecutions is unclear and much debated by historians. The
| early Christian apologist Justin Martyr includes within his
| First Apology (written between 140 and 150) a letter from
| Marcus Aurelius to the Roman Senate (prior to his reign)
| describing a battlefield incident in which Marcus believed
| Christian prayer had saved his army from thirst when "water
| poured from heaven" after which, "immediately we recognized
| the presence of God." Marcus goes on to request the Senate
| desist from earlier courses of Christian persecution by Rome.
|
| ----
|
| He was considered to be a good emperor.
| biomcgary wrote:
| Marcus Aurelius was the last of the Five Good Emperors
| because he did not adopt a competent, non-biological son to
| take his place like the previous four. Instead, he set up
| Commodus as Caesar and his heir, despite his mental
| instability. That decision alone calls into question his
| Stoic resolve.
| nindalf wrote:
| True, the other Good Emperors - Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian,
| Antoninus Pius didn't set up their children as their
| successors. They each adopted someone who would be good
| at the job. But there was one difference between them and
| Marcus Aurelius - none of them had biological sons. Their
| adopted son would be their only heir.
|
| Marcus Aurelius' decision can be criticised in hindsight
| because Commodus was terrible at his job. But I'm not
| sure I could have done differently in Marcus' shoes.
| Parents find it difficult to view their children
| objectively and feel the need to protect them. Even if he
| was aware of Commodus' faults he also knew this - if he
| adopted someone else and crowned him Emperor, then it
| would have led to civil war after his own death. Either
| Commodus and his other sons would kill the adopted son or
| vice versa. Having all of them alive and at large would
| be an unstable equilibrium that could only be solved with
| war.
|
| Come on man, this guy ran an Empire pretty well for a
| couple of decades despite challenges like war and plague.
| Maybe he knew what he was doing. Give him the benefit of
| the doubt.
| mjburgess wrote:
| There's a lot in just the wikipedia article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius
|
| But be aware that most writings about him are roman, and
| hence state propaganda which glorify his actions. In order to
| see more clearly what his actions were, just imagine being
| their victim. He perpetrated a genocide against Germanic
| tribes in retribution.
|
| It's very hard to be a morally good roman emperor -- you can
| be seen as good by either the plebs or the elite of roman
| society, but not by nearly anyone else, and almost never by
| both even in rome.
|
| I don't think its any accident the elite of concequering
| empires adopted this mentality. Though, no doubt, there were
| originally honest/moral/good stoic-philosophers they did
| create a kind of "retreat from the world dissociation" which
| isn't in my view, itself good. It's therapeutic in some
| situations, typically in cases of grief/loss/extreme-
| attachement --- but outside of these cases, you want to
| associate and attach.
|
| Perhaps there's some case for a little stocisim in the face
| of social media today, or in the kinds of "adversarial
| environments" which exploit your attachment -- such as
| leading an empire (cf. Machiavelli: leaders have to be
| rutheless). There's possibly an argument that twitter turns
| everyone into a viperous courterier looking to attack each
| other's reputation and attachemnt-bait.
| mdiesel wrote:
| On the scale of leaders: not being needlessly cruel, trying
| to consider the impacts of policies beyond the immediate,
| and dedicating your days to ruling rather than enjoying
| whatever pleasure you pick makes him one of the "good"
| ones. Maybe that's a low bar, but even today not all
| leaders clear it and certainly we can compare to Commodus
| who came immediately after and the sources for which are
| similarly patchy, to compare.
| mjburgess wrote:
| > not being needlessly cruel
|
| To whom?
| nradov wrote:
| Pretty much all Roman emperors would be considered tyrants
| and mass murderers by the standards of modern western liberal
| democracies. Marcus Aurelius was a product of his time and
| hardly a hero to emulate. But despite their flaws we can
| learn some universal lessons from their surviving writings
| that still apply to modern life -- including at least some
| elements of stoicism.
| goatlover wrote:
| Modern western liberal democracies aren't without faults
| either. They've been involved in a few conflicts
| themselves, like Iraq and Israel/Palestine (whatever your
| view the situation is an ongoing mess not really helped by
| foreign influence). Or propping up illiberal rulers.
| There's the values liberal democracies espouse, and then
| there are the geopolitical realities of how they act.
| skwee357 wrote:
| My guess why Aurelius is considered as the face of stoicism is
| due to the fact he was an emperor/powerful man. I doubt that
| the twisted way in which stoicism is viewed today would benefit
| from selling it as a philosophy of Zeno, who was a foreigner.
|
| What I mean by that is that stoicism in its modern iteration
| seems a brosphere/manosphere thing that will help you to become
| rich/powerful/successful/buy a lambo, while in reality, the
| stoics rejected material possessions and the entire philosophy
| was created by Zeno who lived an ascetic life, despite being
| wealthy.
| billfruit wrote:
| If you read Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy,
| he takes rather dim view of Marcus Aurelius, and specifically
| doubts the seriousness of his writings and ideas, considering
| them somewhat dubious.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Russell himself makes false and dubious claims in that book
| (for example, claims about Aristotle/Aristotelianism, which
| he hated). I don't regard him to be an especially reliable
| or objective expositor of philosophy or philosophical
| history, generally speaking.
| codexb wrote:
| I think it's just one of the few therapeutic skills that are
| generally offered to men and that genuinely considers the
| problems that men face.
|
| The problems and issues that men face are largely ignored or
| downplayed compared with women and there's little offered to
| men in dealing with it. The traditional outlets like men-only
| clubs and spaces have been torn down in the name of equality.
| In that environment, literally anything at all that attempts
| to address the problems men face will become popular among
| men.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I see nothing in Stoicism that has anything to do with
| gender (or sex) whatsoever.
|
| The fact that a particular demographic in the 21st century
| has declared some affinity for it doesn't change that in
| any way.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| You're right but the parent poster was responding to the
| question of why Stoicism is so popular with men in the
| modern era. He didn't say it was inherent to the
| philosophy.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Well, for that specific question, I'd skip all the bro-
| nonsense and just note that Stoicism is at least
| superficially quite like the implicit life philosophy
| that many men acquire from their families and the
| culture, but organizes that into something more coherent
| and with a fairly long past. It provides a positive
| explanation of why something vaguely close to what you
| already do could be a good thing. The appeal of that
| seems fairly obvious to me.
|
| Note that I don't seek to demean or reduce Stoicism to
| "what men do anyway". It is a much more carefully thought
| out philosophy of life than that would imply, and
| contains far more insight and potential than "keep doing
| what you already do". But the fact that it is somewhat
| adjacent to the pop-stoicism associated with masculinity
| doesn't hurt its accessibility.
| skwee357 wrote:
| Stoicism has nothing to do with men. It's not a male-
| exclusive philosophy. It's just a way to cope with life and
| the struggles in life. Stoicism is just being weaponized,
| often by misinterpretation, by "male-clubs".
|
| It kind of became like a cult. "You need to be a Stoic in
| order to be successful". It's the same story all over, and
| a similar thing happens with every -ism, like minimalism
| where it transformed from being a philosophy of being happy
| with the things you have, into a philosophy where you need
| to identify yourself as minimalist by buying a bunch of
| crap that is labeled as "minimalist [whatever]".
| rustyminnow wrote:
| > one of the few therapeutic skills that are generally
| offered to men and that genuinely considers the problems
| that men face.
|
| These things are not OFFERED to men, they are available for
| the taking if one is so inclined. Your options do not
| depend on your gender, but many will reject them as if they
| do. Therapy? It's not just for sissies. If men are so
| tough, why do they need society to OFFER solutions to their
| problems?
| EGreg wrote:
| Let's just be clear. It's not just that a roman emperor is the
| premier famous stoic.
|
| It's also that the Romans were instrumental in setting up
| Christianity and Judaism as exportable religions, after they
| completely destroyed Jerusalem in the Judaic wars.
|
| https://www.mayimachronim.com/the-caesar-who-saved-judaism/
|
| Marcus Aurelius was very close with Judah ha Nasi (the Prince)
| and the Gamaliel family. Subsequent Roman emperors also helped
| boost the churches and make Christianity a religion that wasn't
| just for Jews.
|
| Judaism and Christianity were based in Jerusalem. Afterwards,
| Judaism was based in Babylon (really old schools that had been
| established during the first exile of Jews, survived and became
| primary). Meanwhile, Christianity moved to Rome (which became
| primary over the main church in Jerusalem). It grew there until
| Constantine made it the official state religion 300 years
| later.
|
| The Judaic wars is probably the reason why Jesus' own direct
| students and the Church he set up in Jerusalem (with his
| brother James and "Peter" as the "Rock on which the Church
| would be built" and also the "Apostle to the Gentiles") were
| marginalized (probably regarded as ebionites / judaizers).
|
| Then Paul became the main "Apostle to the Gentiles" instead,
| even though he himself admits he never learned from Jesus'
| students, but argued with them instead (including Peter). He
| has a chip on his shoulder about these "super-apostles". In
| Acts 15 and 21, Paul is admonished by them and seems to relent,
| being given an official letter to distribute to gentile
| churches. But in his Galatians letter he claims that they added
| nothing to his message, except to remember the poor, something
| he was going to do anyway. Thomas Jefferson called Paul the
| "great corruptor of Christianity". Most of the New Testament is
| based on writings of Paul and his student Luke.
|
| So in fact, Roman emperors picked and chose winners in the
| global religions that became Orthodox Judaism and Christianity.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Constantine gave Christians reprieve from persecution in 313
| with the Edict of Milan.
|
| In 380 it was Theodosius who made Christianity the state
| religion with the Edict of Thessalonica.
|
| Negative assessment of Paul's influence on the development of
| Christianity predates Jefferson by many centuries, e.g. in
| the writings of [?]Abd al-Jabbar and Ibn Hazm. Muhammad
| himself believed that Christians had diverged from the truth
| about Jesus' identity and teachings, though he didn't
| criticize Paul specifically as far as I'm aware.
|
| It's something of a theme, really, that shows up, seemingly
| independently, in the writings of those who "want" the core
| teachings of Jesus but are determined to identify an
| irreformable corruption that invalidates orthodox
| Christianity as such. Some identify that corruption with the
| influence of Paul, others find their smoking guns within the
| pre Nicene church, or post Nicene, and so on.
| goatlover wrote:
| According to Paul's letters, the main disagreement Paul had
| was over whether Gentiles should become Jewish converts,
| including being circumcised, instead of just being God-
| fearers, a category already recognized in Judaism as long as
| they abided the Noahide covenant. Paul didn't think becoming
| Jewish mattered, because Jesus would return soon and
| everything would be transformed, including those in Christ.
|
| There isn't any indication as to whether James, Peter, John
| (the Three Pillars in Jerusalem) disagreed with Paul over his
| Christology or eschatological expectations (Jesus was
| probably an apocalyptic prophet like John the Baptist). Paul
| says Jesus first appeared to them, so they likely began
| believing God had raised him to heaven before Paul. Paul says
| he persecuted their movement at first, likely because he
| found it offensive. A risen crucified messiah would be
| offensive to a Pharisee.
|
| Paul further says they had their gospel (literally good news)
| for Jews and he was sent to Gentiles, but again there isn't
| any indication over whether there were substantive
| disagreements beyond whether Gentiles needed to become
| Jewish. That and some people clearly questioned Paul's claim
| to apostleship, particularly in relationship to other
| apostles, especially in Jerusalem.
|
| What developed after the destruction of the Temple with the
| proto-orthodox, Ebionites and Gnostic Christianity is not
| necessarily a reflection of Paul's conflict. Those were
| further developments.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| Your perceptions of stoicism are so detatched from mine, I have
| to ask, what does stoicism mean to you? The wikipedia entry
| describes it like this:
|
| "The Stoics believed that the practice of virtue is enough to
| achieve eudaimonia: a well-lived life. The Stoics identified
| the path to achieving it with a life spent practicing the four
| cardinal virtues in everyday life -- prudence, fortitude,
| temperance, and justice -- as well as living in accordance with
| nature"
|
| Which seems pretty close to how I understand it, and it seems a
| pretty reasonably approach to life.
|
| But this wikipeida version seems very far from your description
| of "a deeply hollow, dissociative, nihilistic philosophy which
| dresses up the status quo as 'God's plan' -- a rationalization
| of interest to the elite above all others."
| mjburgess wrote:
| > prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice
|
| I adopt rather the opposite virutes. Imprudence, risk,
| throwing-your-self-at-a-wall-until-you-cant, intemperance
| (conflict, debate, disagreement, competition) and pragmatism
| (address what is rather than what should be).
|
| Behind each of the stoic virutues is a psychological position
| to dettach, dissociate and live in a more abstracted
| conceptual space. This can be theraputic if you are in grief,
| etc.
|
| Outside of that, personally I think: attach too much, risk
| more than you ought, and participate in the world ("dirty
| your hands") by making the best of it, rather than anything
| more abstract.
|
| Professors of stocism like to make a virute of dying quiety
| -- this i think absurd. If the plane is falling from the sky,
| i envy the people screaming -- they have the right levels of
| attachemnt to their own lives.
| dmichulke wrote:
| > If the plane is falling from the sky, i envy the people
| screaming -- they have the right levels of attachemnt to
| their own lives.
|
| Are you saying that happier people scream more (shortly
| before dying)?
| mjburgess wrote:
| Happiness is only one meta-value, and at the level of
| "what the right meta" is, I'm somewhere between a
| nihilist and an aristotleian-sort-of-biologist:
|
| I only think that the people who are screaming when they
| are about to die are living like a healthy animal. And in
| the absence of any objective meta-values, it kinda seems
| like we might well just be what we are.
|
| Denying's one's instincts is an interesting exercise, and
| no doubt improves self-control -- but it isnt "above
| being an animal" -- its, at best, a different way of
| being an animal. One I think, taken to a stocial extreme,
| seems an injury.
|
| People who readily accept death (as, no doubt, I do) seem
| injured, and trying to get to this state seems like a
| kind of self-injury to me -- a means of poking out the
| eye because the brain doesnt like what it sees.
|
| People screaming when a plane is crashing seem to have
| their eyes open.
| andoando wrote:
| I think what youd ultimately agree with is that it's
| healthy to be aligned with your emotional, instinctual
| reactions.
|
| Though I am not totally sure one cannot fully accept snd
| fully align their being with the absurdity of life -
| celebrating their life/death rather than wallowing in it.
| volkl48 wrote:
| A crashing plane has roughly two possibilities, screaming
| wildly seems like the least useful and least pleasant
| option for either:
|
| - You are going down in a way that might be survivable -
| If you want to live, you want to shut up and prepare
| yourself and your peers as best you can. If you're
| completely prepared and have time to kill, see below as
| long as it doesn't impair being ready when the time
| comes.
|
| - You are going down in a way that obviously isn't going
| to be survivable - Your remaining lifespan has been
| suddenly reduced to minutes or seconds and there's no
| solving it. The only choice you have left is how to spend
| that time. Accepting the hand you've been dealt quickly
| and doing the best you can with the choices available to
| you rather than panicking or raging about things out of
| your control, is....sensible. Taking a last view of the
| world out the window, listening to a favorite song, a
| conversation with a loved one or even a stranger, etc,
| all seem like far more satisfying ways to spend your
| final moments than screaming like it's going to do
| anything.
|
| > I only think that the people who are screaming when
| they are about to die are living like a healthy animal.
|
| I'm not much of a biologist, but there seem to be plenty
| of animals, especially more intelligent ones, that pretty
| much calm down and await death when they recognize they
| are not long for the world for reasons they can't control
| and have no hope of escaping. (age, illness, etc).
| andrewmutz wrote:
| That's all great and it sounds like stoicism isn't for you.
| But that doesn't mean that it's "a deeply hollow,
| dissociative, nihilistic philosophy which dresses up the
| status quo as 'God's plan' -- a rationalization of interest
| to the elite above all others."
|
| Virtues like prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice
| can improve the lives of people of any part of society, not
| just the elites.
| andoando wrote:
| I was a staunch Stoic, and a hollow disassociative mess
| is exactly what I became.
|
| Think of the end goal of the Stoic and what it takes to
| achieve it. At every misfortune, you rationalize and deny
| your natural emotions. If you do it well, you're an all
| understanding guru of life, sharing oneness with
| everything, and becoming nothing in particular.
|
| We have to accept that we too are a part of nature and
| flawed imperfect beings who can be unreasonable, hate
| unnecessarily, be selfish without ultimate good reason,
| etc. It makes us the individuals that we are, and gives
| us the will to care and have something we intrinsically
| want to live for.
| freedomben wrote:
| These are genuine questions, but please don't feel
| obligated to answer if you aren't comfortable. I'm
| fascinated to hear your story though.
|
| Are you generally a pretty gung-ho person? Do you feel
| drawn to strive toward perfection?
|
| Were you or are you previously religious with
| Christianity, Islam, or other world religion?
|
| Do you view stoicism as an all-or-nothing thing? I.e. do
| you think a person applying stoicism in a light-weight or
| even casual manner is useful, or would you still
| recommend avoiding it?
| andoando wrote:
| Growing up I was a pretty reserved, depressed kid.
| Culturally Christian background but I was a pretty
| staunch agnostic. I am not a perfectionist when it comes
| to work, but I did always strive to be as rational as I
| could in how I approached life. It was very much
| naturally my coping mechanism.
|
| If faced with being wronged, "They're just a biological
| machine, how could I be mad at a tree that grew the wrong
| way?", personal failures, "I am just a biological
| machine, this is just where I am at at the moment",
| "Whats it matter what I accomplish? Were all dead in the
| end anyway", faced with some accident, "Well something
| was bound to happen at some point. Its nothing unexpected
| that it happened now", a loss of love, "It happens to
| everybody, things just didn't coincide".
|
| Its all very calming, and can make you resilient to
| what's going on, but I came to realize that what I am
| really doing is disassociating from every aspect of my
| life. Instead of feeling/processing my emotions, I was
| simply just not caring about any of it. I read Nietzche's
| Genealogy of Morals, and it was such a derailment from my
| natural philosophy, and yet it felt he was saying
| everything that I wanted personally. You're human, be
| angry if you're angry, be sad if you're sad, do what you
| want to be doing, have and enforce YOUR will for life.
|
| Yes I agree this line of thinking is definitely needed
| and can be extremely helpful to someone with the opposite
| problems, but as with all things in life, its complicated
| and in truth there is a fine balance that's always
| difficult to know in advance.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Do you have any idea why stoicism (and rationalism) gets
| conflated with lack of passion and goals?
|
| In my experience, both are tools to get what one wants,
| but it seems like a lot of people miss out on the
| instrumentality. Goal orientation is necessary to
| determine when emotional repression is appropriate.
| andoando wrote:
| I suppose because people consider it as all encompassing
| guiding philosophy for life.
|
| At least to a philosopher, philosophy is the core basis
| which all your thoughts, and consequently goals
| originate.
|
| I think it depends if were talking about "how to live"
| versus "how to be successful and establish your business
| this year"
| somenameforme wrote:
| Perhaps as a peer comment is alluding to, this issue
| might simply be viewing things through an all-or-nothing
| lens.
|
| In some ways I think this is similar to Thomas Jefferson
| and Christianity. He was drawn to the soundness of the
| values of Christianity as a system of moral and ethical
| behavior, but found the supernatural aspects of it
| unbelievable, and words of third parties as less
| relevant. So he simply cut them out and actually
| literally cut and pasted his own 'Bible' together, the
| Jefferson Bible. [1]
|
| For self evident reasons he kept this as a personal
| project, but that was essentially 'his' Christianity.
| Beliefs and systems are what we make of them. Stoicism
| may shape one, but we can also shape it back in return,
| for otherwise it's certain to never truly fit.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
| andoando wrote:
| That is totally fair, and I'd say what me and the other
| commenter here are doing is precisely that, arguing that
| Stoicism by itself, is not something to live by.
| laserlight wrote:
| > deny your natural emotions.
|
| That is the opposite of Stoic practice. I have never
| heard Stoics denying things. What does it mean to deny
| things that happen? Emotions are not in one's control.
| Whenever they come up, one would observe and act
| according to Stoic virtues. If one has failed to observe,
| then they reflect on the failure and intend to observe in
| the future.
| andoando wrote:
| >Whenever they come up, one would observe and act
| according to Stoic virtues.
|
| I am talking about precisely this. If something happens
| that angers you or makes you sad, you can always stop and
| try to alter your natural reaction/thoughts to be more
| aligned with a more forgiving/serene/understanding
| nature.
|
| What I am saying is if you do this really well,
| everything in life just becomes "it just is", and in turn
| becomes nothing at all
| laserlight wrote:
| > everything in life just becomes "it just is", and in
| turn becomes nothing at all
|
| I've found that this liberates me. If this is not aligned
| with your values, though, I don't see anything wrong with
| that.
| andoando wrote:
| It does and it did in a world where I can actually be
| devoid and detatched from everything. But I got bored of
| being alone and it makes it hard to connect with anyone
| when youre living in your own world.
|
| But I dunno sometimes I think all this thinking is
| useless cause you never really know what caused what
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Behind each of the stoic virutues is a psychological
| position to dettach, dissociate and live in a more
| abstracted conceptual space. This can be theraputic if you
| are in grief, etc.
|
| This is also great during the best of times. Happiness is
| as ephemeral as grief. Accepting that in many ways the
| vicissitudes of life are beyond your control is a positive
| thing. Exercising temperance and prudence, among other
| things, is far from being merely therapeutical.
|
| > Outside of that, personally I think: attach too much,
| risk more than you ought, and participate in the world
| ("dirty your hands") by making the best of it, rather than
| anything more abstract.
|
| You are describing hell. I actively avoid in my life people
| like that, for good reason.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Stoicism is a powerful tool to achieving long term
| objectives that require planning, commitment, and control.
| Not all objectives fall into this category.
|
| What are your priorities? Would you consider yourself a
| hedonist?
| codexb wrote:
| I think your last example demonstrates the value of
| stoicism. In many cases, our untrained emotional response
| to life prevents us from achieving more or enjoying life.
| Instead of screaming, you could spend the time enjoying
| your loved ones for as long as possible. You could try to
| find a way to stop the plane from falling or work on
| bracing yourself to survive the impact.
|
| Stoicism is a realizing that many of our instinctual and
| emotional and responses and actions do more harm than good.
| It may _feel_ good to scream at someone we believe has
| wronged us, but it doesn 't help them or us and doesn't
| correct the perceived wrong.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I suspect that screaming at a person who has done you
| wrong, in the vast majority of cases, has both the
| intended effect and a desirable one.
|
| If you are in an elite position of leadership, and
| otherwise have more Machiavellian options, then you can
| always try to calculate revenge instead -- or forgive
| endlessly and be exploited.
|
| I'd say in the majority of cases, for most adult people
| with some life experience, shouting when you want to
| shout is probably a healthy thing.
|
| Though there are always cases of those who shout at the
| wrong people (displaced agression), or have to little
| life experience or no composure at all -- I dont think
| these are any where near the majority of cases. It's very
| rare. Though a perpetually (literally,) adolescent
| internet might make it seem so.
|
| Almost no one ever shouts at me, though I'm very
| shoutable-at.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > I'd say in the majority of cases, for most adult people
| with some life experience, shouting when you want to
| shout is probably a healthy thing.
|
| Sure, and that is totally fine.
|
| But Stoic philosophy disagrees with that. Just as with
| many other fundamental questions about how to live life,
| there are different answers/points of view. You don't
| agree with the Stoic one, and you even offer some reasons
| why you think it may be harmful. That's entirely fine.
| The only problem is in your implicit assumption that
| Stoicism has failed to consider the perspective you have,
| and if it did, Stoics would abandon their approach to
| life. That's not true. While there may be Stoics whose
| individual lives would be improved by adopting your
| approach, Stoicism as a philosophy is not blind to the
| perspective you're offering. It just rejects it.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I agree. But you'll note one of my professed virtues is
| conflict, so I'm "participating in the world" by
| expressing a social emotion (contempt) towards a value
| system I disagree with in order to change the social
| environment. This makes me a political animal.
|
| This is why I express my view in this way. If I wanted to
| be a stoic, or nearly equivalently a contemporary
| academic, I'd present some anemic "balanced view" in
| which you've no idea what my attitude is.
|
| But as I'm not a stoic, I take it to be important to
| communicate my attitude as an act of social participation
| in the creating-maintaining of social values. In other
| words, I think on HN my contempt towards stocism itself
| has value here, since it invites the person reflecting on
| stocism to be less automatically respectful of it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It took me a while to to figure out why I find your
| position so disgusting. I think a lot of people perceive
| this contempt as intentional distortion, dishonest,
| socially hostile.
|
| I dont think we need more stoking of conflict and
| contempt, but need more good faith and balanced
| information sharing. I don't think your have correctly
| modeled the effects of your approach.
| mjburgess wrote:
| The contents of people's replies (, votes) is a measure
| of my effect, so post-facto, no modelling is required.
|
| I'm clearly aware of the existence of people who want an
| "objective (unemotive) presentation", and clearly aware
| of what effect emoting has on those people. I haven't
| failed to model it. On many issues I'm quick to suspend
| this expression, and engage in a more dispassionate way
| with a person who wants me to, if I see some value in it.
| But I'm loathe to give up expressing my feelings, because
| that is part of the purpose of expression.
|
| I am only doing what you are here in this comment -- you
| express your contempt in much more extreme terms
| ("disgust") than I, in order that I may take your
| feelings into account.
|
| Likewise, when appraising stoicism, I think there's value
| in others taking my feelings on the matter into account.
| If only as a means of a kind of reflexive emotional
| equilibrium modulated by surprise: there's too little
| contempt towards stocisim in my view, and in its absense,
| has grown a cult around figures like aurelius.
|
| I've been to the cult meetings in which he is read in a
| religious manner, cherrypicked and deliberately
| misunderstood. I'm here out in the world you see,
| participating -- and I wish to reflect that in my
| thinking and feelings on the world.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Im not opposed to expressing ones feelings, or advocating
| for unemotive speech.
|
| Im opposed intentionally seeking heightened conflict via
| deceit and misrepresentation. It is the political
| metagaming for effect and attention, an intentional
| manipulation of the emotional equilibrium.
|
| If you are a true believer in what you say, that is one
| thing. If you are intentionally being hyperbolic,
| overexpressing emotion, or omitting facts you know to be
| true, then you are engaging in political rhetoric. This
| is adversarial, not collaborative.
|
| When the well is sufficiently poisoned, there is no point
| in outside discourse, or even truth-seeking.
|
| Rhetoric is a good way to make short term gains on a
| topic, if you have an edge. Long term it is negative sum,
| as your community falls apart.
|
| I see that your sibling comment explains your position,
| and was insightful. I have no problem with radical self
| expression, or radical transparency. What I have a
| problem with is placing conflict and effect above truth
| and transparency. This is how I interpreted your comments
| above.
| svnt wrote:
| I think you hit on it, but the total reason why is
| slightly different, and the key is in its trigger of your
| disgust mechanism:
|
| Conflict does not need philosophical reinforcement
| because it is a major biological default. Using our
| higher abilities to reinforce these prerequisite (but not
| higher/good) positions triggers disgust because it leads
| to traumatic outcomes. That is why disgust exists: to
| cause us to avoid actions that lead to traumatic
| outcomes. Sometimes the arm of perception of our disgust
| reaction reaches further than our comprehension.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I think cooperation is, by far, the most ordinary case.
| Oppressive, normative, cooperation. This may not seems so
| online, which is a very unusual environment -- but the
| vast majority of people are conflict-avoidant.
|
| You might say a war is conflict, but not really: the main
| mechanisms of war are cooperation.
|
| Very rarely are interpersonal situations prone to
| disagreement.
|
| The disgust here isn't about trauma, it's a healthy
| narcissm: the guy doesn't want to be deceived and thinks
| i'm being deceptive.
|
| I don't think I'm being deceptive, because my heart is on
| my sleeve -- if I were being deceptive, I'd present an
| apparently objective analysis and give away little of my
| apparent feelings on the matter (cf. seemingly all
| mainstream news today).
|
| I have a different ethic of transparency -- I want people
| to be emotionally and intellectually transparent.
| Pretending not to feel one way about an issue represses
| itself in a manupulated intellectual presentation of the
| matter -- the reader becomes mystified by the apparent
| disinterest of the speaker.
|
| If there's one thing I hate with a great passion its
| false dispassion and intellectual manipulation. So I opt
| for emotional honesty as part of the package.
| svnt wrote:
| I think your statement was compatible-with/implicit-in
| mine: that conflict, being fundamental in some regimes
| (as is cooperation) but also high-friction, does not need
| philosophical reinforcement. If it is philosophical then
| it is reasoned, and reasoned, whether deceptively so or
| not, is higher function submitting to reinforcing older,
| lower.
|
| I don't disagree it is better to be emotionally
| transparent in many cases, but there are many cases where
| it isn't, and where personal emotional responses can be
| counterproductive and/or misleading, producing their own
| sets of suboptimal outcomes.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How does your opinion matter than the parent's opinion?
|
| Even in an ideal scenario favorable to you it seems
| impossible for it to lead anywhere, after mutually
| negating each other, other than generating more noise on
| the internet.
| tome wrote:
| > I think on HN my contempt towards stocism itself has
| value here, since it invites the person reflecting on
| stocism to be less automatically respectful of it.
|
| In case it's helpful to you, I'll point out that your
| effect on me was entirely the opposite. I'm not too
| positively inclined to stoicism, and I feel the Epicurean
| and Nietzschean critiques of it hold a lot of water.
| However, the tone of your top-level post made me
| instinctively defensive of the qualities of stoicism! I
| think that's because I perceived the tone of your top-
| level post as demonstrating something akin to what
| Nietzsche called _ressentiment_.
| mjburgess wrote:
| That's one of the effects of being particular -- being a
| particular person, with particular feelings -- the
| effects are particular. That's part of the point, part of
| the aim.
|
| The received view of the tyrannical mass murderers of
| rome is hagiography, if a few "on my side in the debate"
| (or otherwise) think I'm being too harsh and want to
| undermine that a little: great! I would myself do the
| same if I heard myself speak, if my feelings on what was
| being said were that it needed moderating.
|
| This interplay I vastly prefer than trying to "be the
| universal" myself -- disavow all felling, and suppose i
| can in a disinterested way be unpartisan to a view. This
| asks vastly too much of any individual, and is in the
| larger part, extremely (self-) deceptive.
| jajko wrote:
| Not everybody is as emotional as you based on your
| description, some of us naturally have more control over
| our state of mind, emotions generally, and don't live so
| reactively.
|
| This allows us not only avoid those typical massive
| mistakes in life (addictions, bad but attractive
| partners, cheating, being miserable parents, generally
| bad emotional big-consequence choices and so on) but also
| steer us to more successful life paths than most of our
| peers, whatever that may mean in each case.
|
| Your system works for you and makes you happy and content
| with your life and its direction? Great for you, but that
| path is yours only, no need to broaden it to all
| humanity.
| svnt wrote:
| If I can speculate: your perspective seems to be at least
| a second, maybe third-order perspective, of someone in an
| atypical environment surrounded by would-be stoics, who
| are all participating in order to succeed in e.g. middle
| management. This corporate stoicism produces suboptimal
| product results because while stoicism is perhaps
| necessary and valuable to hold a position, as you noted
| it is fundamentally detached and dishonest.
|
| But until someone lives in your version of the social
| environment, they cannot see the relative value of a
| return to "radical candor" and so you get rejections,
| both from people behind you in their profession into
| stoic corporatism and from those who make their living
| from behaving in accord with it and believe they are
| superior for it.
| overgard wrote:
| > I suspect that screaming at a person who has done you
| wrong, in the vast majority of cases, has both the
| intended effect and a desirable one.
|
| Not usually. Just some examples:
|
| Customer service people tend to be trained to de-escalate
| and send things up a level. Sometimes they call it
| "killing with kindness"; basically you repeat your stance
| with a smile on your face until the person going wild
| either calms down on their own or leaves. Either way, the
| person yelling does not get what they want. On the other
| hand, if you're charming to customer service people, a
| lot of times they'll bend the rules for you if they can,
| and if they can't -- well, you don't have to have on your
| conscience: "ruined the day of someone making minimum
| wage"
|
| In long term relationships (say, work relationships or
| family relationships) this sort of excessive emotionality
| doesn't work either. In a job, you'll probably just get
| fired, or if you're the boss, people will avoid telling
| you things. Your family can't fire you, but they can set
| a boundary and stop dealing with you.
|
| Basically, what I'm trying to get across is that uncorked
| rage is very rarely effective. It may work once or twice
| but it's a bad overall strategy.
|
| If you don't want to be exploited, a _controlled_ show of
| mild anger is a lot more effective. People who are not in
| control of their emotions can be easily exploited, but
| those who are in control of their emotions are not. I
| think you think there 's this axis of Rage-a-holic
| <--------> Door-Mat, but the problem is both ends of
| those axes have people that aren't in control of their
| feelings. The door mat lacks control also, but in their
| case it presents as withdrawing from the world.
|
| > If you are in an elite position of leadership, and
| otherwise have more Machiavellian options, then you can
| always try to calculate revenge instead -- or forgive
| endlessly and be exploited.
|
| Yikes dude.
| mjburgess wrote:
| You're assuming that in most cases when people shout,
| they're being excessive.
|
| I don't think that's true, at least "per capita". Maybe
| most shouting is done by the emotionally unstable, but
| most people arent emotionally unstable (as adults).
|
| If an adult were shouting at me, I'd be greatful of it. I
| was slapped once, and I said thank you to the person who
| slapped me -- it told me I was being careless.
|
| For people who arent evilly trying to manipulate you,
| like customer service -- expressing how you feel helps
| others know how you feel. I am, in many cases, grateful
| to know.
|
| If I saw someone getting angry at a person in the
| customer-service-way, my instinct as an adult with life
| experience, is to treat that anger as symptomatic -- not
| evil. This is the danger in saying you shouldnt get angy:
| blaming the victim.
|
| > Yikes dude
|
| I wasnt endorsing that, I was saying, that's less healthy
| than just being angry.
| overgard wrote:
| There's definitely a cultural aspect, but at least among
| the people I tend to interact with, shouting is very much
| a last resort.
|
| If you're at the point where the only way to make your
| point is by being louder than the other guy, then you're
| really just winning on intimidation rather than
| persuasiveness. If both people, or multiple people, are
| shouting, is anyone actually listening? And if not,
| what's the point of being so loud?
|
| I see your example of being slapped and I mean, I guess
| it's good that you took that act in a positive way, but,
| to me if I'm being so closed off that I need to be
| slapped, I really need to evaluate how I'm acting.
|
| > I wasnt endorsing that, I was saying, that's less
| healthy than just being angry.
|
| Fair enough, I'm mostly saying yikes to the implied
| spectrum of [ scary powerful sociopath bent on revenge
| <------> complete doormat ]. I don't think anyone needs
| to concoct weird revenge fantasies to be taken seriously
| unless you work for the cartel or something, and in that
| case I'd recommend a career change.
| jabits wrote:
| Well now it sounds like you are disagreeing for it's own
| sake. There may be a name for what you describe, but it's
| not what is commonly understood as Stoicism.
|
| And in my many years, I have never found shouting at
| another person to be a healthy thing.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Behind each of the stoic virutues is a psychological
| position to dettach, dissociate and live in a more
| abstracted conceptual space.
|
| Many proponents of Stoicism would disagree with this in
| rather strong terms, FWIW. If you go back to our earliest
| sources, Stoicism seems to be very much about living in the
| present moment and engaging with the world; it's just very
| careful about avoiding dysfunctional behaviors and the
| attitudes that would promote them.
|
| The oft-referenced Stoic notion of avoiding the harmful
| "passions" is not so much about becoming completely
| detached from the world, and more about not _acting_
| outwardly in ways that turn out to be materially bad or
| dysfunctional. It 's just that achieving this is harder
| than we might expect: the Stoics were well aware that our
| acting-out is often driven by inner attitudes and stances
| that can only be controlled effectively after quite a bit
| of time and inward effort, and _complete_ control is more
| of an abstract ideal than something readily achievable.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Professors of stocism like to make a virute of dying
| quiety -- this i think absurd. If the plane is falling from
| the sky, i envy the people screaming -- they have the right
| levels of attachemnt to their own lives.
|
| Not to sound flippant, but that strikes _me_ as absurd. You
| don 't gain anything by that. You're going to be just as
| dead, but with a lot of suffering in your final moments
| that didn't need to happen. It's a pure negative thing, not
| a virtue.
| overgard wrote:
| I'm guessing you're young. Those are all behaviors you can
| get away with < 40 that catch up with you in a hurry.
| trescenzi wrote:
| This is a very interesting comment for me. I really dislike
| your virtues but agree with everything else and your
| general dislike of stoicism.
|
| I think there might be a more middle way which doesn't
| include impertinence, for example, as a value but still
| celebrates screaming as your plane is falling from the sky.
|
| The reason I dislike your values is because at face value
| they imply a disregard for others. I think there is a way
| to deeply value both yourself and others. It's possible you
| don't imply that disregard for others that I get from the
| values you listed though.
| FredPret wrote:
| Here's an interesting write-up on this. Nietzsche said
| essentially the same as you:
|
| https://theconversation.com/3-reasons-not-to-be-a-stoic-
| but-...
| exe34 wrote:
| > they have the right levels of attachemnt to their own
| lives.
|
| they waste their last seconds on something that will not
| make them feel better.
|
| as a hypochondriac, last time I thought I was dying, I
| thought about my loved ones and it helped me calm down.
| goatlover wrote:
| So you don't like Buddhism either. Question for you though,
| if the opposite virtues are so much healthier, why did
| practices like Stoicism and Buddhism develop to help people
| cope with the difficult realities of life?
| lukan wrote:
| "If the plane is falling from the sky, i envy the people
| screaming -- they have the right levels of attachemnt to
| their own lives."
|
| Instead of screaming, I would rather stoicly prepare and
| brace myself for the impact of the rough landing. I might
| die anyway, or I might survive because I managed to put the
| seat belt on and hard things away from my torso and head.
| But screaming will not increase my chances, rather the
| opposite.
| zx10rse wrote:
| What you adopt are not virtues.
|
| It is absurd in the face of death by plane falling from the
| sky to not smile at it.
| rayiner wrote:
| Sounds like a recipe for mindless, incomplete people
| creating dysfunctional societies.
| ctrlp wrote:
| You must be quite young to hold such beliefs. Whether you
| approve of stoicism or not, we all will die one day.
| Someone once said that to philosophize is to learn how to
| die. I hope you don't spend the last moments of your life
| screaming in anguish and fear.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| One of my favorite comments on HN. Thank you for this.
| johnisgood wrote:
| > Professors of stocism like to make a virute of dying
| quiety -- this i think absurd. If the plane is falling from
| the sky, i envy the people screaming -- they have the right
| levels of attachemnt to their own lives.
|
| Stoicism does not say that you should not have an
| attachment to your life, i.e. will to live.
| apex_sloth wrote:
| There seems to be the notion in a lot of comments that
| Stoicism is about acting against one's nature or
| surpressing ones emotions.
|
| For me, on the other hand, it was very freeing to encounter
| Stoicism, because I felt like it was okay that I didn't
| feel or react as strongly as people around me expected me
| to.
| sifar wrote:
| >> Behind each of the stoic virutues is a psychological
| position to dettach, dissociate and live in a more
| abstracted conceptual space.
|
| You and I have a very different understanding of stoicism.
| Stoicism's concept of attachment is much more closer to a
| Daoist/Buddhist one. They don't advocate renouncing the
| world in fact the opposite - how to live fully. Just that
| don't cling to things - especially the results as a lot of
| factors that affect it are not under our control and when
| things don't happen the way we were forcing them to happen,
| resentment and anger follows. This can be applied to work,
| relationship, parenting. It is quite practical.
|
| It is fascinating that these two different cultures
| developed similar philosophies around the same time in
| history.
|
| One needs to let go of the medieval/modern interpretation
| of stoicism which creates such resentment and approach it
| from a more eastern perspective.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice_
|
| So Aristotle then:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Philosophies are frameworks that help us make sense of the
| world. We can adopt them in ways that are maladjusted.
|
| People with power often adopt stoic thinking as the nature of
| power comes with stresses that are difficult to manage. I've
| wielded power at a scale that was nothing like a president or
| ceo, but way beyond what the typical person experiences. It's
| hard, and whatever you do, someone has a bad outcome in many
| cases.
|
| Most people would characterize Marcus Aurelius or George
| Washington as wise rulers. They embraced stoicism. Yet
| Mussolini and Robespierre also identified as stoic-ish as
| well, and most people would objectively look at them with a
| harsher light.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I think a gap between wikipedia and a polemic by somebody
| clearly fired up about a topic is not just reasonable, but
| productive. Wikipedia, by nature, gives the sense that all
| philosophical viewpoints are equally dispassionate and it
| minimizes the degree to which reasonable people can
| substantially disagree about the rightness or wrongness of
| various worldviews. That usually gets dumped in the
| Controversy section. This is fine for an encyclopedia, but
| not for a debate.
|
| Of course, I also think that OP is being polemical and that
| means they're not interested in being charitable. I think
| their criticisms are interesting, but the original post
| linked here does a far better job at balancing a charitable
| read of stoicism with a critique of why it is appealing to
| the rich and powerful.
| HillRat wrote:
| Roman Stoicism, of the sort practiced by Marcus Aurelius or
| Seneca, is vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy and tendentious
| sanctimony; Seneca's insistence that virtue is detached from
| worldly goods is somewhat undermined by his corrupt
| exploitation of his station, for example. Stoicism _qua_
| stoicism was, like all Roman intellectual pursuits,
| originally Greek, and was based on an entire metaphysics of
| free-will determinism that the Romans pretty much ignored in
| favor of being able to pretend that they were upholding the
| supposed virtues of an imagined past (a favored pastime, see
| Tacitus and Cicero), even as they let their society slide
| ever further into corruption and tyranny. To be honest,
| Stoicism tells us a lot about the psychological and social
| character of the Romans, but didn't really come into its own
| as an influential philosophy until its early modern
| rediscovery and the development of neo-Stoicist thought.
| shagie wrote:
| The next most famous stoic would then be Epictetus who
| influenced Marcus Aurelius and is cited in the Meditations.
|
| > Epictetus (/,epIk'ti:t@s/, EH-pick-TEE-t@ss; Ancient Greek:
| Epiktetos, Epiktetos; c. 50 - c. 135 AD) was a Greek Stoic
| philosopher. He was born into slavery at Hierapolis, Phrygia
| (present-day Pamukkale, in western Turkey) and lived in Rome
| until his banishment, when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern
| Greece, where he spent the rest of his life.
|
| > Epictetus studied Stoic philosophy under Musonius Rufus and
| after manumission, his formal emancipation from slavery, he
| began to teach philosophy. Subject to the banishment of all
| philosophers from Rome by Emperor Domitian toward the end of
| the first century, Epictetus founded a school of philosophy in
| Nicopolis. Epictetus taught that philosophy is a way of life
| and not simply a theoretical discipline. To Epictetus, all
| external events are beyond our control; he argues that we
| should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately.
| However, he held that individuals are responsible for their own
| actions, which they can examine and control through rigorous
| self-discipline.
|
| Stoicism was a philosophy that spanned slave to emperor in
| Rome.
| timeon wrote:
| > Stoicism was a philosophy that spanned slave to emperor in
| Rome.
|
| As is addressed in the article.
| broof wrote:
| I have no idea how you can read his meditations and come away
| with this conclusion. Where are you getting that "Your job is
| to pretend it matters because it matters to your followers"
| scantis wrote:
| After it is written out it appears to be an inherent truth.
|
| Seems to be a practitioner of stoism, to shift ones inner
| outlook, non obvious takes are strong.
| photonthug wrote:
| Your take on this is wild to me, and while TFA as whole is
| somewhat more balanced, I'm pretty surprised at this whole
| train of thought. An emperor was a stoic, and so was a slave.
| Epictetus is only mentioned twice in passing in the article,
| but it does say that
|
| > Some stoic authors were slaves themselves, like Epictetus
| author of the beautiful stoic handbook Enchiridion, and many
| stoic writings focus on providing therapies for armoring one's
| inner self against such evils as physical pain, illness, losing
| friends, disgrace, and exile.
|
| Seems like people from all walks of life thought maybe it was a
| useful point of view, and that it's universal because people
| from all walks of life have their own suffering to deal with.
|
| I get that in an inevitably political world that's increasingly
| polarized, philosophy always becomes a sort of fashion show
| where it's not about what's being worn but who is wearing it
| lately. But this is really pretty silly. Stoicism predates
| silicon valley and will still be around after it's gone, and
| there is substance that goes far beyond "deeply hollow,
| dissociative, nihilistic".
|
| If it sounds that way to you, I assume maybe you are just in a
| situation where you have someone that you kind of hate
| preaching it at you.. in which case adding some distance makes
| sense no matter what they are evangelizing. Quoting TFA again
|
| > [stoicism] reminds me of the profession of wealth therapists
| who help the uber-wealthy stop feeling guilty about spending
| $2,000 on bed sheets or millions on a megayacht.
|
| So there it is, that's what's really bothering the guy.
| nindalf wrote:
| I'm glad they wrote several more comments. The first comment
| was intriguing, but the more the wrote the more wild it got.
| Especially the part about being connected to life like a
| person in a fall airplane.
|
| I think they've mixed up Stoicism with some other philosophy
| entirely. They think Stoicism means feeling nothing, doing
| nothing. Almost like the Hindu concept of _sanyasi_.
| overgard wrote:
| I don't see how the fact that his most famous work is his diary
| makes Marcus Aurelius _not_ a philosopher. Is there some magic
| credential you need to be a philosopher? As far as I can tell,
| philosophers come from all over the place; slaves, clergy,
| clerks, etc. Since there wasn 't an institution to get his
| philosophy degree in, I think we can give him a pass?
|
| With regard to the other criticism that there are rough bits in
| his not-intended-to-be-published diary and not all of it holds
| up.. so what? You've never said something bitter and resentful
| in private that you wouldn't want broadcast to the world? If
| you have a diary, do you think it'd stand intense scrutiny 2000
| years later? Being a stoic means embracing your imperfections,
| so, the fact that Marcus Aurelius was an imperfect man tells us
| nothing about stoicism.
|
| FWIW Marcus Aurelius is considered one of the greatest (maybe
| the greatest?) Roman Emperors ever, and he was plucked from
| relative obscurity, so, while you can certainly criticize the
| institution you're picking on someone that navigated that level
| of power better than his peers.
| philwelch wrote:
| I don't know anyone who would say Marcus Aurelius was the
| greatest emperor. He was the last of the "Five Good
| Emperors", which correctly implies that he was the one who
| dropped the ball on succession planning. He was a good
| emperor aside from that, but even out of the Five Good
| Emperors you could make a case for any of the other four
| ahead of him. And none of those guys come close to Augustus,
| Domitian, or Constantine.
|
| That having been said, Marcus Aurelius was definitely one of
| the better emperors. Leagues ahead of guys like Nero or
| Caligula or Elagabalus or uh, Commodus (who was his son).
| It's been said that the reign of Marcus Aurelius was the high
| point of the Roman Empire as a whole, but that's a double
| edged statement about the emperor himself.
| lupusreal wrote:
| In my personal life, work and home, I am surrounded by people
| who are constantly in a state of distress, ranging from
| frustration to simmering rage, about things which are
| completely beyond their ability to change. I never see it do
| them any good, nor cause any constructive change for society.
| My personal understanding of stoicism is focus on changing the
| things I can change, and not spend my time being miserable
| about things I'm powerless to change. This gives me peace. My
| younger brothers spend all day ranting about the state of
| society, one from the right and the other from the left, and it
| has never done either of them any good. They have twice as much
| gray hair than me despite being years younger.
|
| Then I go on the internet and read commentary like yours,
| making stoicism out to be some sort of rich conspiracy against
| the eternal revolution or something. I find this baffling. Of
| all the things to get yourself worked up about, people choosing
| a stoic mindset is definitely up there in fruitlessness.
| Nothing you can tell me would ever convince me to adopt the
| methods of my brothers, so what is the point of what you're
| doing?
|
| (I confess I've never read any Marcus Aurelius, it seems like
| it would be very dry. Maybe I'm wrong, but my reading list is
| already very long and philosophy all gets bumped far down the
| list.)
| brushfoot wrote:
| I've read the Meditations -- in the Emperor's Handbook
| translation -- and they're nothing like GP is making them out
| to be.
|
| In their original, unedited comment, they didn't even get
| Marcus Aurelius's name right, attributing the Meditations to
| Mark Antony.
|
| Their take is such a wild and inaccurate mischaracterization
| of Stoicism that it's frankly not worth engaging with --
| written absentmindedly while "listening to corporate policy
| announcements." Take it with a grain of salt.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _My personal understanding of stoicism is focus on changing
| the things I can change, and not spend my time being
| miserable about things I 'm powerless to change._
|
| This is the overriding principle I've come away with as well,
| and it has felt to me like one of the most simple and wise
| things I've heard.
| btilly wrote:
| I have read _Meditations_ by Marcus Aurelius. Your description
| of how bitter and resentful they are is utterly bizarre, and
| bears no relation to the book that I read.
| mjburgess wrote:
| It would depend on the translation, and what you understood
| him to be doing. One of the ones I read recently was
| incredibly bastardized to seem more stoical, completely
| removing in cases his own asides.
|
| These are diaries he wanted burned -- they were just
| exercises in writing for himself to clam himself down. He is
| writing to _himself_.
|
| Go back and read a few sections and ask: "what happened to
| Marcus on this evening for him to go to his study and rebuke
| himself with this lesson?"
|
| There's clearly a lot of bitterness there, and depression.
|
| Opening a translation at random, to a random book:
| https://vreeman.com/meditations/#book10
|
| > # 10.1 To my soul:
|
| Are you ever going to achieve goodness? Ever going to be
| simple, whole, and naked--as plain to see as the body that
| contains you? Know what an affectionate and loving
| disposition would feel like? Ever be fulfilled, ever stop
| desiring--lusting and longing for people and things to enjoy?
| Or for more time to enjoy them? Or for some other place or
| country--"a more temperate clime"? Or for people easier to
| get along with? And instead be satisfied with what you have,
| and accept the present--all of it. And convince yourself that
| everything is the gift of the gods, ....
|
| I mean this is a deeply mournful person with an excess of
| self-admonishment.
|
| Why is he, somewhere alone in his room, writing these
| thoughts to himself? Why does he go on and on to admonish his
| failure to "Know what an affectionate and loving disposition
| would feel like" ?
|
| Whatever the cause that evening, he's in great pain with it.
| He sees his life as a failure. Its harder to tell the
| inciding incident in this particular passage -- but for some,
| its clearly been some betrayl or insult or similar which
| makes him rail against people.
|
| ----
|
| Consider, just a little ways down:
|
| > # 10.13 When you wake up, ask yourself:
|
| Does it make any difference to you if other people blame you
| for doing what's right?
|
| It makes no difference.
|
| Have you forgotten what the people who are so vociferous in
| praise or blame of others are like as they sleep and eat?
|
| Forgotten their behavior, their fears, their desires, their
| thefts and depredations--not physical ones, but those
| committed by what should be highest in them? What creates,
| when it chooses, loyalty, humility, truth, order, well-being.
|
| ------
|
| Reading this I say to myself, "OK. Marcus, dear me. What
| cross are you matrying yourself on this time? What gossip has
| upset you this evening. Why now, each morning, do you have to
| remember that you're above the gossiping crowds "
|
| All this suppression of the particular by talking about the
| abstract is all very telling. No one rants like this in their
| diaries without a provocation, he's too self-righteously
| high-minded to do anything other than rail against all
| humanity. A normal person would air their particular
| grievances -- and be much better for it.
|
| I'm rewatching House MD. at the moment, it's very housian in
| its own way. Its not that _he_ has been lied to, its that
| Lying is the Metaphyiscal Necessity of Life, and o woe is me,
| what suffering! Etc. All just a cheap misdirection for being
| hurt by someone.
| overgard wrote:
| I disagree with your characterization of these passages.
| These seem like questions a person reflects on, not self
| admonishment. For instance:
|
| > > Are you ever going to achieve goodness? Ever going to
| be simple, whole, and naked--as plain to see as the body
| that contains you? Know what an affectionate and loving
| disposition would feel like? Ever be fulfilled, ever stop
| desiring--lusting and longing for people and things to
| enjoy? Or for more time to enjoy them? Or for some other
| place or country--"a more temperate clime"? Or for people
| easier to get along with? And instead be satisfied with
| what you have, and accept the present--all of it. And
| convince yourself that everything is the gift of the gods,
| ....
|
| > I mean this is a deeply mournful person with an excess of
| self-admonishment.
|
| To me this is just a person that's reflecting on how the
| state he desires is somewhat unobtainable. You could read
| it as admonishment if you really want to, but to me it's
| more noting that he has a goal he'll never obtain. It's a
| lot like buddhists reflecting on nirvana.
|
| I think you're being unfair because these are translations,
| and a different culture. What he's writing doesn't
| particularly seem casual, but it doesn't reflect a person
| in deep despair as you seem to think. And even if he was
| like that inwardly, his outward actions were generally well
| regarded, so it's not like what he was doing was terrible.
| I just don't see how any of this reflects badly on stoicism
| or Marcus.
|
| No offense, but given how you originally confused him for
| Mark Antony, I get the impression you're just trying to
| find any evidence that would characterize him in the way
| you want him to be characterized. I just don't think your
| summary of his personality really matches who the man
| actually was. He wasn't a tyrant, or someone deeply
| depressed. He was depressed occasionally, because he was
| human. And he probably had more downer entries than a
| normal person, because as an emperor he frequently had to
| make life and death decisions. I think he reflects a pretty
| healthy psyche.
| mjburgess wrote:
| The view that Aurelius was depressed is very widespread.
| I've read the whole meditations, in several translations,
| and parts in the original. I've translated part of the
| original in anger at what deceitful translations are
| being put out today, which delete half of what he says to
| make him sound more stoical.
|
| Go read more of it. I just chose two parts at random to
| narrate my thinking in reading these passages again to
| provide some background here. I'm obviously not making my
| case on these quotes.
|
| > It's a lot like buddhists reflecting on nirvana.
|
| This is how its bastardized, but that's not there in the
| text. This is the emperor of rome, at the end of his
| life, in a state of depression writing a journal to
| himself. He's an old tyrant, a self-confessed self-
| righteous "schoolmaster" who goes around admonishing
| people, including himself.
|
| He's not writing religious literature; this is not
| scripture -- he isnt starting or continuning a religion
| or a philosophy. He wanted the whole thing burned. This
| is a ahistorical cultish reinterpretation to fit an
| agenda.
|
| Listen to the man himself (2 mins of scrolling through):
|
| NB. Recall _you_ means the man himself. He is talking to
| himself. This is not a published work of philosophy,
| there is no audience. He 's admonishing himself.
|
| ------
|
| # 8.1 Another encouragement to humility: you can't claim
| to have lived your life as a philosopher--not even your
| whole adulthood. You can see for yourself how far you are
| from philosophy. And so can many others. You're tainted.
| It's not so easy now--to have a reputation as a
| philosopher. And your position is an obstacle as well.
|
| -----
|
| # 8.9 Don't be overheard complaining about life at court.
| Not even to yourself.
|
| ----
|
| # 8.21 Turn it inside out: What is it like? What is it
| like old? Or sick? Or selling itself on the streets?
|
| They all die soon--praiser and praised, rememberer and
| remembered. Remembered in these parts or in a corner of
| them. Even there they don't all agree with each other (or
| even with themselves).
|
| And the whole earth a mere point in space.
|
| ----
|
| # 8.53 You want praise from people who kick themselves
| every fifteen minutes, the approval of people who despise
| themselves. (Is it a sign of self-respect to regret
| nearly everything you do?)
|
| ----
|
| # 9.33 All that you see will soon have vanished, and
| those who see it vanish will vanish themselves, and the
| ones who reached old age have no advantage over the
| untimely dead.
|
| ----
|
| # 9.3
|
| Or perhaps you need some tidy aphorism to tuck away in
| the back of your mind. Well, consider two things that
| should reconcile you to death: the nature of the things
| you'll leave behind you, and the kind of people you'll no
| longer be mixed up with. There's no need to feel
| resentment toward them--in fact, you should look out for
| their well-being, and be gentle with them--but keep in
| mind that everything you believe is meaningless to those
| you leave behind. Because that's all that could restrain
| us (if anything could)--the only thing that could make us
| want to stay here: the chance to live with those who
| share our vision. But now? Look how tiring it is--this
| cacophony we live in. Enough to make you say to death,
| "Come quickly. Before I start to forget myself, like
| them."
|
| ---
|
| ----
|
| # 10.3 Everything that happens is either endurable or
| not.
|
| If it's endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.
|
| If it's unendurable ... then stop complaining. Your
| destruction will mean its end as well.
|
| ---
|
| I know the man well enough. The idea that he's there a
| monk writing scripture is an absurdity. Just read what he
| says to himself. These are his private thoughts, he
| writes out to himself.
|
| In 9.3 there he basically says, "i'll be glad to be dead
| and rid of these degenerates" ginned up with his usual
| self-righteousness -- an emperor of rome indeed.
|
| They are phrased by his teachings as a child, by
| professional stoic philosophers. These were the manners
| and habits of thinking he was taught. And he here
| rehearses them alongside a vast amount of bitterness, and
| disappointment.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| This is a fair take at all. Have you actually read about
| stoicism from the true philosophers?
|
| Epictetus, Zeno of Citium, and Seneca? Not to mention the many
| modern philosophers.
| exe34 wrote:
| it's like you can see the shadows, but you can't see the
| solids. nothing you have said is wrong, it's just so....
| misguided.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Real question, did you have GPT write this for you with some
| kind of anti-intellectual prompt, or did you actually type this
| out by hand?
|
| Otherwise, it's a nice fan-fiction about the worst possible
| interpretation of stoicism, but has really not much to do with
| what the philosophy is about or what it can be positively
| applied for.
|
| I'm surprised to see this at the top of the thread, because
| it's mostly utter nonsense, but it does sound emotionally
| appealing to a certain social group that believes it's trendy
| to invent new negative definitions for things they don't like
| or understand.
| stared wrote:
| > Marcus Aurelius himself was no stoic philosopher, he merely
| wrote diaries to himself in his late days - diaries he wanted
| burned, not published.
|
| This is how I read "Meditations" - not as writings of a sage
| (as far as I know, he didn't consider himself one), but as
| "shower thoughts". Ironically, since these were private notes,
| they were likely more genuine than if they had been intended
| for publication. And more approachable, precisely because he
| was not a philosopher.
|
| Roman emperors were, without exception, autocrats. Yet, he is
| considered one of the better ones. Even if he didn't always
| live up to stoic ideals, he strived for them. This doesn't
| excuse his wrongdoings, but it suggests his writings can have
| value despite his flawed actions.
|
| One thing that struck me, though, is how a philosophy promoting
| ideas like "things are good as they are" or "ignore spiteful
| people" works well when you're at the top. If you're a slave or
| poor, things might look quite different. Especially when
| spiteful people cannot be ignored - be it your master, your
| centurion, or an unfair competitor trying to frame you.
| zx10rse wrote:
| You completely misunderstood everything about Stoicism. It has
| nothing to do with God his plan or elites.
|
| Stoicism in its essence is about living with accordance with
| nature by seeking virtue.
|
| It is funny that you call Marcus Aurelius a tyrant while he is
| considered one of the five great emperors. During the Pax
| Romana golden age the empire lived in relative peace prosperity
| and progress. After the death of Aurelius the empire descended
| into chaos.
|
| His reflections are profound not bitter or resentful. Majority
| of them are relatable today some 2000 years after...
| FredPret wrote:
| > a roman emperor (tyrant, mass murderer, and courtier)
|
| It's interesting to read up on the lives of famous ancients
| like Julius Caesar and Alexander. I know it was a different
| time, but the regular and casual war crimes and mass murders
| sticks in one's craw.
| rexpop wrote:
| > the regular and casual war crimes and mass murders
|
| It's phenomenal to read about these revered historical
| figures! They turn out be privileged thugs. We should be
| extremely reluctant to extol their virtues.
| FredPret wrote:
| The best thing about the arc of history so far is that by
| and large it decentralized power (with some horrific
| exceptions)
|
| God-kings / pharaohs / caesars -> a handful of feudalists
| -> millions of millionaires vs voters vs large governments
| all competing in a much less violent and more stable
| balance of power
| Gud wrote:
| Say what you will about Julius Caesar, at least he fought in
| the trenches. Many times were the battle was the toughest.
|
| My reptile brain can appreciate that, at least!
| FredPret wrote:
| He also ordered a decimation on his own troops. Utterly
| barbaric.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Not saying you're wrong, Julius Caesar committed more
| than his fair share of atrocities, but do you have a
| source?
|
| Wikipedia says that Julius Caesar threatened his troops
| with decimation but didn't carry it out. I asked chatgpt
| about it and it said that Julius Caesar did order one,
| but then said no contemporary sources for this exist. It
| then claimed that Plutarch wrote that Julius Caesar made
| his troops draw lots, which certainly suggests he ordered
| a decimation, but I checked two English translations of
| Parallel Lives and neither of them contain any mention of
| this. I also asked the not to translate the original
| Greek, and that also doesn't mention it. The chatbot
| thinking it happened suggests that _somebody_ has written
| that it did, but I can 't figure out who and where.
| FredPret wrote:
| You've done much more research into this than I have. I
| read about it in a biography of him (Caesar: life of a
| colossus by Goldsworthy), but you're probably right.
| lupusreal wrote:
| From what I understand, the Roman Senate accused Julius
| Caesar of war crimes or the contemporary equivalent for his
| Gallic wars.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Your view of stoicism is off. Nihilism (existential, moral,
| etc.) are not compatible with stoicism.
|
| Read https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-
| Stoic/dp/0195....
|
| Marcus Aurelius is a stoic, just look at some of his quotes,
| that is stoicism.
|
| "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your
| thoughts."
|
| "Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be
| one."
|
| "If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not
| due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this
| you have the power to revoke at any moment."
|
| "When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is
| to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ..."
| philwelch wrote:
| It's always funny to read people's hot takes about stoicism
| because they seem to polarize into two mutually exclusive
| camps. In one camp, stoicism is a "hollow, dissociative,
| nihilist philosophy" for sociopathic emperors and in the other,
| it's just cope for people without the power or agency to change
| anything in the world around them. If anything the bipolar
| nature of this criticism itself validates the broad
| applicability of Stoicism.
|
| And actually it is an accident that Marcus Aurelius is the
| "premier famous stoic", largely because, as you point out, his
| personal journal wasn't actually burned as he requested. If you
| actually engage at even a marginally deeper level than social
| media slop--e.g. by taking an undergraduate survey course in
| ancient philosophy--you'll learn that the premier Stoic was
| Epictetus, who was born into slavery.
|
| It's also a glib misreading of Marcus Aurelius to characterize
| his writings as "bitter rants". Much of "Meditations" takes the
| form of an internal dialogue between the emperor's base
| feelings (which are sometimes bitter and sometimes as simple as
| not being a morning person) and his intellect as it works to
| apply Stoic philosophy to his own life. If you're not an
| emperor you might not relate to having to deal with surly and
| ungrateful supplicants or the need to remind yourself that you
| aren't actually a living god, and if you're also a morning
| person, Marcus Aurelius is probably completely wasted on you.
| But that's not what Marcus Aurelius is for. If you want a
| practical Stoic handbook, read the Enchiridion.
| atlantic wrote:
| Calling Plato a dualist seriously calls into question the
| author's philosophical credentials.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Plato is generally considered to be the archetype of early
| dualism. What are your credentials?
| n4r9 wrote:
| > Please don't post shallow dismissals
|
| > Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or
| post to complain about
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pphysch wrote:
| We can squabble over definitions, but a primary characteristic
| of Platonism for many people is the belief in a (separate)
| domain of ideals/concepts. That e.g. mathematical objects exist
| outside of our individual cognition. That's more dualistic than
| monistic.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| "stoicism's Providential claim that everything in the universe is
| already perfect and that things which seem bad or unjust are
| secretly good underneath (a claim Christianity borrowed from
| Stoicism) can be used to justify the idea that the rich and
| powerful are meant to be rich and powerful"
|
| What did I miss? Does Stoicism claim everything in the universe
| is already perfect? That seems like a bold (counter-intuitive)
| claim.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Stoicism does not claim that at all. Not sure what the author
| means...
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| It's wrong on the same level of "The central message of
| Buddhism is _not_ 'every man for himself', Otto!"
| betenoire wrote:
| "perfect" is a weird word to use in stoicism, but I do think it
| can be used to justify that things "are the way they are" and
| shrug it off with some visualization.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| I always saw Stoicism as "things around you are going to be
| really screwed up and panicking about it will make it worse"
|
| The first part of that sentence is opposite to what the
| author here suggests.
| betenoire wrote:
| both "screwed up" and "perfect" are judgements
| calls/perspectives, and panicking isn't going to change
| things (panic doesn't necessarily make something worse
| either)
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I think panic almost always makes things worse. There's a
| reason that in an emergency, the first piece of advice to
| people is "don't panic".
| betenoire wrote:
| almost is the key term here, yes, it depends on the
| situation causing the panic.
| tekla wrote:
| Panic always makes things worse
| betenoire wrote:
| you can't think of an example where it doesn't? I can.
| I'm not saying there is any virtue to it, but panic can
| subside without having had negative side effects on
| anything other than your mood
| kolanos wrote:
| The serenity Prayer always have a stoic quality to me.
|
| "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot
| change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know
| the difference."
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Stoicism has 2 main advantages over other philosophies:
|
| * it's practical. It involves doing things that work and will
| improve you life, make it clearer what you want and make it
| easier to do things and generally not waste your time or money
|
| * it's true in a trial and error, scientific sense. Stoicism
| concentrates on what works and is applicable. Beleifs come from
| life experience. Most other philosophies START with arbitrary
| beliefs and then expect you to live according to them whether
| they work or not.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I'm certainly not rich or powerful, but I have found Stoicism to
| be extremely helpful. It is hard to always bear it in mind when
| in times of stress, but when I can, it really does help to focus
| on the idea that what matters is not my external circumstances,
| but my own actions and thoughts. It reframes things and helps me
| to feel better about unpleasant situations I might find myself
| in.
|
| I also would say that I disagree with the author in his
| assessment of Stoic thought. He asserts that with millennia of
| experience, we have learned that we can effect change on the
| world. I believe that if anything the exact opposite is true.
| Some men have more power to change the world than others, but for
| most of us we can't do a damn thing. For example, if I'm unhappy
| with the actions of the US government, I can write to my
| representatives asking them to change things, and I can vote for
| someone else next election (or possibly participate in a recall
| effort). But that's all I can do, and (speaking from experience)
| those don't accomplish anything. I still _do_ those things
| because they are my duty, but I 'm realistic about the fact that
| they aren't going to change a thing and I don't stress out.
| droideqa wrote:
| "You want to live 'according to nature'? Oh, you noble Stoics,
| what deceptive words! Think of a being like nature, prodigal
| beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purpose or
| consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and
| barren and uncertain--do you want to live according to such
| indifference?" - Nietzsche
| prophesi wrote:
| It's unfortunate that the elite's interest in stoicism (along
| with the sigma male crowd) has tainted its perception. It's
| essentially the basis of CBT and logotherapy that has changed my
| life for the better. But we also saw this with Buddhist
| meditation and other various practices divorced from the
| worldview that spawned them.
| nis0s wrote:
| > Because I think it's important that we mingle some Voltaire in
| with our Seneca, and remember that stoicism's invaluable advice
| for taking better care of ourselves inside can-if we fail to mix
| it with other ideas-come with a big blind spot regarding the
| world outside ourselves, and whether we should change it.
|
| Ideally the answer is no, there's no need to actively change
| systems if the system proponents are not interested in that
| change. In case of majority rules, the minority has to seek
| compromise. Such rules assume that different systems will create
| their own conditions for long term stability, and there will not
| be any interference from outside forces.
|
| Under these ideal conditions, agents have freedom of movement to
| other places, where they exercise free will and actualize because
| determinism by random events (like being born into a specific
| system in which an agent is unfulfilled or unwelcome) does not
| promote long term stability for any system.
|
| In reality, however, agents compete to dominate, and every system
| then has to mirror each other in some way, or face
| destabilization.
|
| There's no such thing as resource scarcity in an endless universe
| --the problem of different systems is that the existence of
| another presents an existential threat. Stoicism helps manage
| this existential threat while acknowledging the caveat that
| aggressively defending the existence of a system is justified
| when faced with a direct threat.
|
| A note on social inequality in a given state: if everyone has the
| same rights, and those rights are applied equally, then that
| ensures long term cultural stability. If you create second class
| citizens, or justly aggrieved minorities, then that's asking for
| trouble as any interfering force can use that minority to create
| destabilization. The only things which makes sense is letting
| people have their own places, and not be interfered with;
| practically, for a country like the U.S., it means that all
| states should be free to determine their own set of rules
| governing rights outside of the purview of the Constitution. In
| that case, maybe it's more humane for blue states to accept
| refugees from red states, and vice versa. Like people mad about
| Trans rights in CA should move to TX. Extending this logic
| dictates that blue cities in red states can have their own rules
| for governance. I think, then, the smallest unit which can have
| its own set of governing powers should be any which has the
| resources to implement them, in a self-sufficient and independent
| manner. I don't know practical that might be, but it's an
| interesting thought experiment.
| shw1n wrote:
| I can't speak for the rich and powerful (as I'm neither), nor do
| I subscribe to stoicism necessarily.
|
| But I do work in tech and enjoyed (and periodically re-read)
| Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations"
|
| I originally read it out of curiosity, not often you get to see a
| leader's supposedly unedited, personal diary.
|
| But I keep coming back because of the calming prose and (imo)
| useful lessons about dealing with a stressful world.
|
| Eg Epictetus' quote "don't hand your mind over to every passerby"
|
| and "don't be upset by disrespect from people you don't respect"
|
| were good reminders on not getting mentally derailed from
| rudeness or slights by the minority of interactions throughout a
| day.
|
| "we all come from nature" is a nice reminder on forgiveness
|
| Perhaps the first two could be seen as elitist, but it was
| helpful to me in a customer-facing role in dealing with the 10%
| of rude clients.
|
| Overall it reads like a secular proverbs, with that much more
| weight due to the size and non-publishing intent of the author.
| sdsd wrote:
| I love Meditations but everytime I think about Aurelius I laugh
| so hard thinking about this random Reddit post:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoic/comments/1823mip/how_do_you_g...
|
| Here's the text:
|
| ## How do you get over the fact Marcus Aurelius wife cheated on
| him with a gladiator?
|
| I have been into stoicism for a while and have been using it to
| cope with life but learning this info has made me second guess
| the entire philosophy. Now whenever I try to be stoic I think
| about Marcus sitting in the corner writing meditations while
| his wife gets brutalized by a gigachad gladiator. Now whenever
| I think about stoicism it seems like a cuck philosophy. Was
| Marcus really the adam22 of his time? How can I get over this?
|
| ---
|
| Idk why this was the funniest thing to me, and now I just think
| of Marcus in the other room, hearing his wife getting ploughed,
| writing about how happiness doesn't depend on external
| circumstance so it's nbd
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| I saw a post a while ago from a guy who had read the 48 laws
| of power and tried to mirror the girl he liked but ended up
| making her think he was gay instead. Same energy.
| shw1n wrote:
| lmao -- reddit is undefeated
|
| for opponents of stoicism "cuck philosophy" might be the goat
| of slogans
|
| or an insane testament to the monk-like philosophy
| Rendello wrote:
| For years my HN profile has had the Meditations quote:
|
| _A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away. There are briars in the
| road. Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, "And
| why were such things made in the world?"_
|
| Perhaps someday I'll try putting it into practice.
| julianeon wrote:
| Great quote; I'll reuse this.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It seems to be a philosophy about being a good little productive
| serf and continuing to be productive while taking your
| powerlessness on the nose? Why would anybody in a modern free
| society follow this philosophy?
| broof wrote:
| I found it to be way more empowering. There truly are many
| things in life that we don't control, but there are many that
| we do. Would you agree it's wise to reduce stress about the
| stuff we don't have control over?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Why would anybody in a modern free society follow this
| philosophy?
|
| If I don't accept the absurd stupidity of others, and exercise
| temperance and prudence in my dealings with my fellow men, life
| in modern society would be nearly impossible.
|
| As an example, this very post.
| bee_rider wrote:
| > As an example, this very post.
|
| Ah, don't be too hard on yourself.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| That is not remotely what the philosophy is about. It's about
| not letting your external circumstances trouble your internal
| emotions, because they aren't what truly matters. It isn't
| passive acceptance - Stoics can, and should, try to improve the
| world around them. They just don't attach their happiness to
| whether those attempts succeed or fail.
|
| As to why someone would follow the philosophy, it's simple: we
| all face stressful situations in life (some more stressful than
| others of course). Why should you let those things rule your
| emotions? It doesn't help anything to get upset. It just makes
| you feel worse. It is a pure negative thing in your life. So,
| you work to try to gain mastery over those feelings so that
| even when life is hard you can face it more effectively and
| with greater peace of mind.
| timeon wrote:
| > They just don't attach their happiness to whether those
| attempts succeed or fail.
|
| Doesn't that seems bit pointless?
| zen928 wrote:
| What if your successes and failures were due to an external
| force entirely outside of your control? Would you feel
| accomplished if things you considered personal achievements
| were knowingly received due to e.g. influence of being in a
| higher social and economic class despite lacking the same
| level of merit as your other colleagues? Should you feel
| personally defeated if you created a professional project
| that you couldn't bring to financial viability?
|
| Attaching positive sentiment to the process of personal
| growth over percentage of success attempts allows you to
| build a framework of understanding to see where your sphere
| of influence extends to and where you can focus and
| continue attempting next to overcome your hurdles. You can
| obviously be disappointed something bad happens in relation
| to your efforts, but stepping back without attaching
| emotions to the situation allows a glimpse at the true
| impact of your contributions. That's part of my
| understanding, atleast.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| No, not at all. Why would it be pointless? Obviously
| success is preferred to failure, but ultimately the outcome
| isn't something I control so I shouldn't rely on it to be
| happy. The important questions for my own peace of mind are
| "did I try" and "could I have done better", not "did I
| succeed".
| timeon wrote:
| No matter of era, age or social status, people do seek ways to
| cope. That is why stoicism seems to be so popular.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| It's a philosophy that is a lot easier to adhere to when you have
| some amount of power or agency and your basic needs are met.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| On the contrary, it's a philosophy that is perfect for the
| powerless and destitute. One of the most famous Stoics
| (Epictetus) was a slave. People have used the philosophy to
| help get them through stints in POW camps. It is by no means a
| philosophy that is primarily for those with power or agency.
| accrual wrote:
| They're useful practices even when you have nothing. They
| emphasize having no power over anything but your own mind and
| reaction to external events. You cannot control being carried
| away by the government or forced to be a slave or torture
| victim. You can still control your mind in those circumstances,
| and that is what stoicism emphasizes.
| oramit wrote:
| It's been interesting to watch and experience Techbros jump on
| different philosophical/religious trends over the years. Post
| 9/11 through the Great Financial Crisis New Atheism was all the
| rage. Once the tech boom was in full swing Stoicism became the
| dominant ideology.
|
| Now, post Covid I see a hard pivot towards Christianity, but
| importantly, "traditional" forms of it. Protestant sects are
| being ignored and Catholicism, or if you are really intense,
| Orthodoxy seems to be in vogue.
| kolanos wrote:
| > Now, post Covid I see a hard pivot towards Christianity, but
| importantly, "traditional" forms of it. Protestant sects are
| being ignored and Catholicism, or if you are really intense,
| Orthodoxy seems to be in vogue.
|
| I have seen these trends as well, especially Orthodoxy of late.
| My assumption is this is a response to rampant moral relativism
| that has become the dominant culture in the west.
| oramit wrote:
| I think you're being too kind in assuming there is some sort
| of real philosophy or faith here. I laid out what I have
| observed the tech elite doing precisely to show that they are
| rootless and will join with whatever bandwagon is popular in
| their techbro circle.
|
| It's the great irony of our tech elite. They all believe they
| are independent thinkers who are changing the world but like
| any clique they follow what the group says and found another
| Sass App or become another VC investor.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I was recently listening to a podcast about Silicon Valley
| thought which theorized that at its root it is a justificatory
| mechanism and not a coherent worldview. Whatever the current
| problems facing Silicon Valley, its leadership will find some
| new theoretical underpinning that happens to justify whatever
| is in their naked self-interest. It's "move fast break things"
| but with philosophy. Their example was Marc Andreessen who once
| had coherent ideas that could be agreed with or disagreed with,
| but saw the writing on the wall and has aligned his "thinking"
| with the political movement he thinks will most protect his
| interests.
| oramit wrote:
| Yes. The founding mythos of Silicon Valley is of plucky
| upstarts destroying all the middle men and dis-empowering the
| establishment.
|
| But now tech is the establishment and has all the power so
| that story isn't useful anymore. Instead they are justified
| in their control because they were so successful and are so
| wealthy. To fight against them is to fight against "progress"
| and "the market has decided".
|
| Put another way: "The tyrant will always find a pretext for
| his tyranny"
| bambax wrote:
| > _But for all Seneca's powerful advice about the big picture and
| the meaninglessness of wealth, he was also a slave-owner who,
| when alerted that his male slaves were sexually abusing his
| female slaves, set up a brothel in his estate so he could make
| his male slaves pay him for the privilege of abusing his female
| slaves-not quite the behavior we imagine when Seneca says money
| is meaningless and all living beings are sacred._
|
| It could be argued that this policy was simply reasonable: the
| only alternatives being to either do nothing, or set up a police
| force to prevent and/or punish abuse.
|
| Also, not sure if Seneca really believed "all living beings
| [were] sacred"; he despised games of gladiators because he
| thought the spectacles were vulgar and appealed to lower
| instincts, but he never expressed any form of compassion for the
| gladiators themselves.
|
| Anyway, I knew that Seneca was the richest Roman in his time (and
| perhaps, of all times), but didn't hear that story before. Would
| like to know more. (Did slaves have money to spend?)
| samspot wrote:
| "But on the negative side, stoicism's Providential claim that
| everything in the universe is already perfect and that things
| which seem bad or unjust are secretly good underneath (a claim
| Christianity borrowed from Stoicism) can be used to justify the
| idea that the rich and powerful are meant to be rich and
| powerful, that the poor and downtrodden are meant to be poor and
| downtrodden, and that even the worst actions are actually good in
| an ineffable and eternal way"
|
| I didn't understand these repeated digs at Christianity as having
| been borrowed from the Stoics. For one, that all bad things are
| actually good is not a tenet of Christianity and is not in the
| Bible. Perhaps some Christians taught this, but you can find a
| person claiming Christ who teaches absolutely anything you can
| think of. Such is the nature of things that are popular.
|
| I can only assume the author is referring to this section from
| Romans 8:28 (NIV) "And we know that in all things God works for
| the good of those who love him, who have been called according to
| his purpose."
|
| If you fly through too quickly you could reach the Stoic claim,
| but there are a few key differences.
|
| 1. It says "God works for the good" in all things, but not that
| all those things are good in essence.
|
| 2. This is a promise only to those who love God, not
| automatically extended to all people or things.
|
| Finally, I'll note that the entire Old Testament predates the
| Stoics, and is the foundation for Christian thinking about God's
| will and plan for the universe.
| scantis wrote:
| In the story oh Hiob/Job,he is unaffected in his behavior and
| the trust instilled in him from others, which clearly discouble
| his person from his misfortune.
|
| In the original there is no word for faith, believe or trust
| only for character. Job is of good character despite his
| misfortune, that makes him a man of God.
| taylorlapeyre wrote:
| Technically correct, but quite misleading. The idea of "trust
| in God" or "faithfulness" is completely central to Job. The
| story doesn't concern itself with "doctrinal faith", but it
| implicitly discusses "faith" in the general sense of trust in
| the providence of God in the face of challenges that might
| make one abandon Him.
| scantis wrote:
| The word used was "aemuna" or "aemunato". The most basic
| translation is reliability. The other word much later was
| pisteos with loyalty in its most basic translation.
|
| The concept of faith as you describe it is a late
| interpretation, morphing both concepts together. Jobs
| "faith" is his reliability of character, neither his
| believe nor faith, yet axiomatically the definition behind
| those words. That if you choose to believe in God and have
| faith your reliability of character will come or strive to
| have it.
|
| Without being misleading, you may have it without any
| believe or faith in God.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| > For one, that all bad things are actually good is not a tenet
| of Christianity and is not in the Bible
|
| Just for my own learning, if it's not considered a tenet, why
| do I see this line of thought so often portrayed: "This <bad
| thing> is not bad. God made is so to test my faith."
| taylorlapeyre wrote:
| This is one of three major answers to the problem of Theodicy
| (justifying God in the face of evil) in Christian theology.
| They are:
|
| 1. Pedagogical (the one you mentioned) - Evil exists so that
| we may grow and learn. All evil will be used to create even
| greater good. Quintessential example would be the story of
| Job in the Old Testament.
|
| 2. Eschatological -- Evil is a by-product of having any
| creation in time whatsoever, and will be fully restored at
| the end of all things. Another way of thinking of this one is
| that evil is "non-being", the absence of the good. A lack, a
| privation. Espoused by Augustine (and before him,
| Neoplatonism in general), and Aquinas.
|
| 3. Freedom-oriented -- Evil (even natural evil) is a broken
| state of affairs caused by the freedom of people, who use
| that freedom against God. God nonetheless allows this because
| he allows us the dignity to choose. The official teaching of
| the Catholic Church. The straightforward reading of Genesis
| 2.
|
| None of these say that "This <bad thing> is not bad" -
| Christianity acknowledges the existence of evil "as evil".
| However, with God's grace, evil may be healed or made to
| serve higher purposes.
| Cantinflas wrote:
| Imo 1) and 3) make little sense, e.g. no one learns
| anything from a toddler dying from cancer, and no "freedom"
| caused it. 2) looks more interesting, although I'm not sure
| I understand it
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| A toddler dying from cancer is horrible. It's not evil.
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| Them be some deep theological waters you're wading into.
|
| It's not a tenet, because it's not presented as a teaching
| that "bad things are good things".
|
| However, we often label things as "good" and "bad," which are
| overly simplistic for many things in life. A child dying is
| unequivocally a bad thing. But if your faith deepens through
| the course of grieving, then a good thing happens from that
| bad thing. It doesn't nullify the bad thing. It doesn't
| magically transform it into a good thing. But your faith
| being made stronger is a good thing, while your child dying
| is a bad thing.
|
| My understanding is this is the Biblical principle of
| redemption. Not to be confused with salvation. It's used to
| refer to God's ability to make good happen from a bad thing,
| or to "redeem" a bad thing. In this way, redemption can also
| refer to salvation because man is inherently bad, but through
| Jesus's death on the cross, man can be redeemed. Once again,
| bad things happen, but good things can come from them.
|
| Again, it's important to note that the Bible does not teach
| BAD == GOOD. It teaches that bad things can be redeemed for
| good outcomes.
|
| I am not a theologian, but that's my understanding of it.
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| Came here to write this. Relieved to see someone already wrote
| this.
|
| Only someone who has never actually taken the time to study the
| Bible could possibly claim that it teaches "things are secretly
| good underneath"
|
| The Bible teaches that things are so broken, so bad, and so
| irredeemable that God himself had to humble himself into the
| form of man, dying a physical death, to redeem it.
|
| It's only pop-Christianity that teaches that people are mostly
| good and make mistakes. The Bible teaches that man is a wretch,
| incapable of redemption within his own power, and deserving of
| damnation.
| timeon wrote:
| So what is your answer for Epicurean paradox?
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| Free will.
|
| If people are allowed to make choices, evil is a
| possibility. You can argue that free will isn't good, but
| I'm not sure what evidence supports that argument.
|
| So if God allows free will, then evil can happen. Just
| because he doesn't immediately stop it (read: eliminate
| free will) doesn't make God not-good.
|
| I think part of this is man's hubris in assuming we can
| know what is perfectly good. The Epicurean paradox is
| hinged on the description of "all-good," which is far too
| simple in most people's minds.
|
| A metaphor:
|
| If I shove my child to the ground to teach them the
| consequences of falling, I am a bad father. If I warn them
| to tie their shoes, or they will fall, but do not
| explicitly force them to, I am a father willing to let my
| child learn, but I am not a "bad father" because of this.
|
| Another aspect I think the Epicurean paradox misses is the
| concept of justice and eternity. If this physical life is
| all there is, then yeah, allowing people to suffer and die
| is an injustice. But if we are eternal beings in a
| temporary, physical body, suffering and dying in this world
| is a small blip on the timeline. What comes after has to be
| factored into the equation of "What is justice?" But that's
| where non-theistic reasoning can no longer come with us.
| The Bible is fairly clear about what comes after, and there
| is justice when viewed in that light.
|
| If you believe this life is all there is, then yeah it's
| not hard to argue that God isn't just. But again, the
| Bible, upon which the Judeo-Christian belief system is
| built, is very explicit that this life is NOT all there is.
|
| So the Epicurean paradox takes a small slice of the Bible
| out of context and points at it, without considering all
| the other context and argues, "Ha! See? Logical
| inconsistency!" when in reality it's just out of context.
| timeon wrote:
| How does free will explains children with cancer or is
| that good thing?
| halyconWays wrote:
| You should put more effort into addressing the very
| detailed and thoughtful reply you got (at your request)
| and which you're currently ignoring with just another
| challenge (with a grammatical mistake). You're currently
| a troll in the technical definition of the term: baiting
| for replies and then just mocking what you catch.
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| Free will -> original sin -> all manner of diseases,
| suffering tyat are part of the human condition.
|
| Even without the theology, a person suffering due to a
| forebear's poor decision is well-understood: a decent
| percentage if people think it's the natural order for a
| child to go hungry if their parents are drug-addicts or
| imprisoned.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Yeah, it's an especially odd claim because early Christianity
| was apocalyptic. The Second Coming was imminent. The world
| would be radically remade.
|
| I think the author is confusing early Christianity with
| Calvinism.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| The author's claims are not generally true of Calvinism,
| either.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Fair. I guess I was thinking of a certain kind of
| prosperity theology which people blame on Calvinism, but
| that isn't fair. That's not how unconditional election
| actually works.
| munificent wrote:
| _> For one, that all bad things are actually good is not a
| tenet of Christianity and is not in the Bible._
|
| Surely you in your life you have met many Christians who said
| "God works in mysterious ways", "there is a purpose for
| everything", "trust in the Lord", etc.?
|
| In the Christian communities I grew up around, it was a
| pervasive idea that misfortune was explained away by our
| limited understanding. These cliches were always trotted out
| when something horrible had happened which needed to be
| explained away.
|
| It's arguably a _necessary_ tenet for Christianity to hold
| together as a coherent belief system. If you believe in an
| omnipotent, benevolent God, you need some way to explain why
| bad things still happen[1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil
| achierius wrote:
| > Surely you in your life you have met many Christians who
| said "God works in mysterious ways", "there is a purpose for
| everything", "trust in the Lord", etc.?
|
| Yes, but this is something people say in times of grief, for
| the comfort of the grieving -- it's not a consistent moral
| philosophy that they hold to in other parts of their life,
| nor is it meant to be. There are better answers than this,
| but they are oftentimes much harder to process, and much more
| likely to accidentally pain the one who is grieving.
|
| > It's arguably a necessary tenet for Christianity to hold
| together as a coherent belief system.
|
| No, it's not. You're correct in that "you need some way to
| explain why bad things still happen", but we've come a long,
| long way from "stuff just happens". For example, the Catholic
| view is that suffering is A) not committed by, but permitted
| by, God; B) necessary for salvation and free will to coexist.
| In this view, evil is in essence a deviation from the will of
| God -- but free will must, in this conception, at the very
| least include the free will to choose to follow _or choose to
| oppose_ God 's own will. To quote St. Aquinas, paraphrasing
| St. Augustine: "Since God is the supremely highest good, he
| would not allow evil to exist in his creation unless he were
| so all powerful that he could even make good out of evil".
| More broadly, suffering is seen as having not only a
| redemptive but an edifying nature that can ultimately bring
| us closer to God.
|
| I understand that this might sound repulsive on first glance,
| but frankly I do not think there is an answer to "why is
| there evil?" which would not be at initial examination --
| certainly, it's no worse than the idea that we are simply
| here to suffer by random caprice, and that that suffering is
| itself meaningless, nothing but a failure on your own
| (meaningless) value function. Yes, one might hope that things
| 'could have been a different way' -- but what would a world
| without _any_ grief, _any_ suffering even be like? This is
| the point of the whole pleasure-machine /experience-machine
| thought experiment: many people would very much rather live
| in this world, with all its suffering, than one totally
| blank, devoid of depth and complexity. One might even go as
| far as to assert that no 'good' God could permit such
| terrible depths of suffering -- congenital illness, rape,
| torture, child slavery, so on and so forth. But so many
| times, in exploring theories of computational complexity or
| abstract mathematics or informatics, we see that what might
| have seemed to be simple assumptions can have enormous,
| essential effects: deciding whether all programs written for
| a FSM with one stack is simple, but for one with two stacks
| the problem becomes impossible. Perhaps it _is_ impossible to
| have a world "with matter, with living things made from
| matter, with free will for those living beings, but without
| the ability of one living thing to enslave another". We
| cannot know -- but if there is a truly transcendent,
| omniscient God, then He certainly would.
|
| For a more modern (more philosophically-flavored) take, I'd
| suggest reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: he explores
| the binding of Isaac with the idea being to address this very
| question. In particular, he strongly disagrees with Kant's
| idea that God would simply choose to follow the categorical
| imperative, and emphasizes instead the transcendence of God
| and divine morality. But as an existentialist I think his
| writing is much closer to how we as members of the modern
| world can feel than philosophers/theologians who came before
| him.
| tasuki wrote:
| >> Surely you in your life you have met many Christians who
| said "God works in mysterious ways", "there is a purpose
| for everything", "trust in the Lord", etc.?
|
| > Yes, but this is something people say in times of grief,
| for the comfort of the grieving
|
| It is the stupidest thing to say to someone who is
| grieving.
| estarkio wrote:
| God had a dozen billion years or so of lead time, but he
| couldn't piece the plan together without giving your
| toddler glioblastoma.
|
| Trust the process!
| carlosjobim wrote:
| What would you accept to be said? What would be good
| enough for you? Words are not magical, they are just
| sounds. In the most important situations in life and in
| death, words are simply lacking. We as humans haven't
| been gifted with neither a spoken nor a written language
| which can encompass all our feelings and meanings. Words
| cannot even come close. So people have to do with what
| they have. And you are in no position to judge against
| somebody who means well.
| scandox wrote:
| I think the Cromwellian dictum "Trust in God but keep your
| powder dry" is the intelligent Christian's attitude to
| this...
| taeric wrote:
| You are seeing the literal downside of strawman criticism, I
| think? You see the same in most criticisms of "capitalism." If
| you get to build up the representative as only the negatives of
| that which you are criticizing, than it is usually a bright
| flame.
|
| Is extra devious when coupled with what is basically the
| opposite for all of the supposed "enemies" of that which is
| being straw manned. Where they are represented by only the best
| attributes.
|
| And a lot of the deviousness comes from how this makes supposed
| centrists feel superior in pointing out neither is "true."
| Which, fair, but where does that take the conversation? It gets
| dominated by people that rally around the representation they
| feel invested in and nobody even remembers why it may have
| first come up in the first place.
| goosedragons wrote:
| It's the idea of predestination.
| mothax wrote:
| Epictetus, anyone?
| trgn wrote:
| how quickly things change. the aspirational tech ethos today is
| one of a will to dominion, of incessant action over
| introspection, of gut over mind.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I find that the tools of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a
| re-embodiment of many of elements of stoicism. It is interesting
| to think of the 50 million Americans going to therapy as paying
| for a personal philosophy mentor. You can use this as a jumping
| off point for all kinds of societal speculation and armchair
| observations on culture.
| ViktorRay wrote:
| If anyone is interested in stoicism then this classic lecture by
| Dr Sugrue is excellent.
|
| www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auuk1y4DRgk
|
| I have watched this lecture multiple times (each time I was going
| through some bad things in my life) and it helped me
| tremendously.
|
| Stoicism in general has many excellent philosophical ideas that
| you can apply to your life. Maybe this lecture and stoic ideals
| will help you if you are in times of despair and sadness the way
| this lecture and those ideals helped me.
| morning-coffee wrote:
| Is it a bit ironic that the author, a stoic herself, seems
| bothered by rich people using stoicism to advance themselves?
|
| edit: corrected pronoun
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| I don't think she is a stoic or particularly bothered by rich
| people using it. She is a historian and this is a topic that
| overlaps with her area of study.
| morning-coffee wrote:
| Apologies for the assumption. (Edited).
|
| She said: "I personally love stoicism. It's gorgeous. It's
| brilliant." Maybe that doesn't make her a stoic, but it still
| struck me as ironic that she seemed wary of rich people using
| it, that's all.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Life isn't fair but you also have agency. That's my favourite
| take.
| overgard wrote:
| You know, I think people will read the headline and have an eat-
| the-rich-mindset and lump stoicism in with obnoxious tech bros.
| However, I would posit that if tech-bro's internalize the
| teachings of stoicism we'd all be better off. It's worth
| mentioning that Epictetus was a slave, so just because the rich
| and powerful are finding stoicism doesn't mean that stoicism is a
| philosophy for only the rich and powerful. Just as an example,
| stoicism is also very popular in recovery communities (along with
| Buddhism). As far as pragmatic philosophies go that you can apply
| easily and have quick benefits, stoicism is a great one.
| stereolambda wrote:
| Not a bad article, all things considered. Interesting, given the
| overall message, that the author manages to spin the worldly
| engagement that is still present in stoicism (as opposed to
| Epicureanism etc.) as somehow a suspicious thing. In Republican
| times the dominance of stoicism in Rome wasn't so pronounced, I
| think, and the elite followed all kinds of philosophies. And
| soon, under the Empire, the political engagement became more of a
| theatre anyways. Patrician families declined. So the whole idea
| of having an excuse to stay in politics is weaker that one might
| think. There was more of an incentive to shut off in your villa
| as much as you can, and just try to avoid displeasing the
| emperor.
|
| Graeco-Roman world also created more patterns of radical
| political engagement than people tend to give it credit for
| (regardless of what you think of its legitimacy). Plato with his
| speculatively constructed vision of ideal republic. Ideologically
| motivated coups, like one of the Spartan king Cleomenes.
| Generations of social radicalism had looked at Gracchi. We are
| just too far removed from classical education to see and
| appreciate it.
|
| The idea that you somehow have to pursue universal salvation as a
| part of and precondition of your personal happiness, I think this
| is extremely wrong-headed. Maybe not OP, but many people think
| you are morally obliged to be permanently depressed and want to
| ideologically control your every waking thought. In actuality,
| I'd say it is better to have internal calm and contentment to be
| able to achieve whatever you are able to achieve for the world.
|
| As for popularity of ancient philosophy, I think some of this is
| it having more practical outlook and being less complicated, in a
| way, than most modern (meaning post-medieval) thought. Note that
| wide popularity of Enlightenment in 1700s also stemmed from it
| being more accessible to the masses in many ways. While also
| ancient stuff has enough of a "base lore" to be somewhat
| insulated from completely freewheeling "philosophical" crankery.
| That being said, I would encourage anyone to also look into
| Epicurean, skeptic etc. thought alongside stoicism. Cicero was
| somewhat right in trying to peruse and combine all this stuff.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Cultivating stoicism probably increases one's power and riches on
| the margin, because it emphasizes emotional stability which is
| correlated with higher incomes. Hedonism probably works in the
| opposite direction on net, even though hedonists would probably
| get more direct pleasure out of the extra cash.
| engels_gibs wrote:
| The first, true and only philosophy for the working class, the
| exploited, the proletarians and the dispossessed is marxism.
| Teaching "stoicism" to people who barely can afford food, to
| slaves in the Congo, to overworked uber eats cyclists that work
| 12 hours a day for pennies, is not only ridiculous, it's
| criminal.
|
| Standing silent or content in the face of exploitation, injustice
| and the threat of destruction of humanity is indeed an ethics
| that benefit the rich and powerful. "Be content, stay quiet, dont
| make noise, dont revolt, dont organize, accept your place in the
| universe.".
|
| Marx was the first philosopher that recognized that philosophy is
| a product of material conditions, and that it servers the
| interests of the economic system that contains it. That's why
| marxism would have been impossible in ancient greece and there
| was never a greek philosopher that advocated revolution or
| seizing political power.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Every Marxism-derived political system has been terrible for
| the proletariat. I lived under communism for the first 6 years
| of my life. What I remember is a tiny apartment, an elevator
| that reeked of piss, having to store water in buckets because
| you never knew when it would stop working, and wiping my ass
| with yesterday's newspaper (which you obviously couldn't
| flush).
|
| Even at my poorest in Canada, I've never known such terrible
| conditions. _If_ there is some value to Marxism, we have not
| yet found a government system that can actually implement it.
|
| Edit: What's even funnier is that my parents _were well-
| educated professionals_. My dad a mechanical engineer and my
| mom a lab tech. When my mom and I moved to Canada, my step-dad
| was a janitor. Technically he owned a janitorial company, but
| he was the only employee - basically a contractor. And yet,
| under capitalism, he was able to afford a life far more lavish
| than anything Communism would allow.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It appeals to them because it's everything they aren't.
| Temperance and virtue? Please.
| kittikitti wrote:
| I absolutely hate Stoicism. It's used by people as a way to shut
| me up when I'm expressing negativity about something "I can't
| control". Almost everything about our lives, especially as we
| transition to this rent based economy, is out of our control.
| Stoicism just creates lonely people who are obsessed with
| controlling things and others.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| This is nonsense though. How are people using stoicism to shut
| you up? I've never seen anyone do that. If they are, they are
| misunderstanding the intention.
|
| Doing what you can control and focusing on that, doesn't mean
| that you also don't speak up for change, because that is
| entirely something you can still control. In fact it's
| encouraged, because of stoic 'virtue', "That which you do the
| right thing, that is all that matters"
|
| If others are using it to shut up up, that is what is outside
| of your control, you ignore it and do the right thing anyway.
|
| Under stoicism, you would still push and advocate for change as
| an individual, but you would understand that if the world
| doesn't change or doesn't respond, that is out of your control,
| but you can and should still excuse your right to do that,
| because that is within your control.
|
| The entire argument here seems to be missing the point.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > I absolutely hate Stoicism.
|
| You should exercise nore temperance. It is futile to hate
| things you can't control.
| cantrecallmypwd wrote:
| Forget all -ists and -isms.
|
| There is are discontinuous, spectrum of limits to locus-of-
| control. It's important not to fall into either trap of
| absolutist internal or external LoC. I think there are
| generally too many people in wider humanity who adopt
| defeatist, learned helplessness, external local-of-control
| attitudes through sayings like "it's God's will" or "you can't
| fight city hall".
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| "stoicism's Providential claim that everything in the universe is
| already perfect and that things which seem bad or unjust are
| secretly good underneath (a claim Christianity borrowed from
| Stoicism)"
|
| This is obviously and patently false. Christianity recognizes
| that God has both an active and permissive will. So, while God
| actively wills the good, He does not actively will evil. This
| would make God evil, which is incoherent. Rather, God _permits_
| evil, but only to bring about some greater good. So, it isn 't
| that the evil isn't really evil, and it isn't that God wills the
| evil, but rather that the evil is permitted to occur to allow a
| good to come out of it. We do not deny the evil or the suffering
| it causes, but we embrace it and allow it to become an instrument
| of the good. To refuse to suffer the inevitable and inescapable
| evil that will be inflicted on us only produces more suffering,
| but a fruitless kind (though potentially instrumentally fruitful
| in that it may be instructive on this point). The Crucifixion is
| the paradigmatic example of fruitful suffering and self-
| sacrifice. The Crucifixion is tremendously evil, and according to
| Christian theology, the greatest evil ever committed. But by
| permitting this greatest of evils, God created the greatest of
| sacrifices, so cosmically great, in fact, that it could pay the
| price for all sin ever committed.
|
| So, there's no complacency in Christianity, but it is cool-headed
| and subjects the emotional to reason and moves by the authentic
| love reason enables.
|
| "stoicism predates the concept of human-generated progress by
| more than a millennium. It doesn't teach us how to change the
| terrible aspects of the world, it teaches us how to adapt
| ourselves to them, and to accept them, presuming that they
| fundamentally cannot be fixed."
|
| Another divergence is that Christianity encourages the humble
| discernment of what should be changed, what can be changed, and
| what cannot be changed and what should not be changed. In
| retrospect, this is common sense, and that is a good sign and to
| its credit, but ideologically-possessed people can become
| enraptured by a spirited and blind pursuit of some real or
| perceived good and cause a good deal of destruction as a result.
| There is a big difference between authentic zeal, which remains
| firmly rooted in reason, and becoming blinded by one's passions.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's interesting, as well, to consider how much of "human
| generated progress" is just technological progress. The core
| flaws of human nature like greed or pride stubbornly refuse to
| change. If you rolled back the industrial revolution I don't
| think we'd be living in an equally free society where everyone
| is just materially worse off but in something that probably
| resembles the political and social climate of the time before
| this technological leap occurred.
| stared wrote:
| If Stoicism appeals to the rich, I wonder if the same can be said
| about Western Buddhism a la Alan Watts and other "everything is
| love" spiritual philosophies?
|
| From my anecdotal observations, these philosophies particularly
| appeal to successful people - especially those recovering from
| burnout or seeking balance in their careers. Think Burning Man's
| tech hippies. And let's be honest: not every working-class person
| can afford to take time off for a spiritual retreat. This dynamic
| was brilliantly portrayed in the Black Mirror episode
| "Smithereens".
|
| To be clear - I am just as guilty as charged.
| Melatonic wrote:
| My interpretation was always that the Stoics were the more type-A
| people while the people following Epicureanism were a bit more
| hippie. Still lots of overlap
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Half the comment section seems to be entirely missing the point
| of Stoicism.
|
| Stoicism is not merely just accepting everything and allowing it
| to happen, without pushing for advancement. That is absurd.
|
| Under Stoicism, you would still push for that advancement and
| speak up for it, as doing so is not living according to virtue or
| nature (which Stoics defined our nature as our ability to
| reason). It's just that you will focus within that on the things
| that you can control, such as your own personal activism.
|
| If anything it pushes people to do more in this area, not less.
| Because often people feel helpless so don't do anything, Stoicism
| would teach to do it anyway, because that is the part you can
| control and the only way to live a life of virtue, what the world
| does in reaction to that, is up to the world.
|
| People that have a problem with this way of thinking/being seem
| to have taken a reductionist version of the philosophy to argue
| against it.
| cantrecallmypwd wrote:
| There are no rational arguments or pathos appeals to assuage the
| greed and lust for power by the rich. They're too far gone and
| immovable, especially when they have the personality defects
| similar to malignant narcissism. They only respect strength.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| What do you think is the causative factor? Is it that the
| greedy and narcissistic are able to amass wealth or that wealth
| often changes you to be more greedy and narcissistic?
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I feel stoicism works reasonably well when your life goes
| generally well. If your life is going very badly, I think it ends
| up like a lot of positive thinking where you have to live in an
| almost delusional world where you pretend things are good while
| they really aren't
| loughnane wrote:
| My experience is the opposite. Stoicism (and those they
| influenced like Plutarch, Emerson, Thoreau) helped me in hard
| times.
|
| It's divine getting to a point where you can at once care
| deeply about something and yet realize it's fate is out of your
| control---and so not break when that thing dies. Even
| approaching that state by degrees is worthwhile, and I found
| stoic thinking to help with it.
| accrual wrote:
| It's not able pretending things are good when they aren't. It's
| about exercising your will against your mind and controlling
| your thoughts and behaviors even when you cannot control your
| external environment. Rich or poor - stoicism is about self
| mastery.
|
| If I lost everything and was in some terrible situation, I'd
| rather be a stoic.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Stoicism and Protestantism are closely linked, and in my opinion
| the former served as inspiration for the latter.
|
| So given the historic dominance of the Protestant culture in
| large parts of "the west", it should not be a surprise that rich
| and powerful men find Stoicism appealing.
| sourtrident wrote:
| Funny how Silicon Valley and ancient Rome both use Stoicism to
| justify ambition rather than avoid it. Sort of reminds me of yoga
| retreats for CEOs - I mean, mastering inner peace while
| negotiating billion-dollar deals feels suspiciously like having
| your philosophical cake and eating it too.
| nine_k wrote:
| Japanese medieval samurai studied zen for the same reason: it
| gives you the peace of mind, the skill of concentration, and
| the contact with yourself that help noticeably when you don't
| have time to contemplate, as in a sword fight. (May have other
| benefits, too, but this seemed to be the evolutionary selection
| driver.)
| sdwr wrote:
| If you are average, your thinking and emotional processing are
| basically done for you - you have tons of examples of people
| dealing with every challenge you face (in media, in your
| immediate surroundings).
|
| The people who need those internal resources are the people on
| the edges of the bell curve - those with no control, and those
| with (ostensibly) tons of control.
| voidhorse wrote:
| In theory stoicism's precepts are not bad, in practice, however,
| I've rarely seen them amount to little more than an excuse for
| obstinacy and ignorance toward legitimate problems and one's own
| inadequacies. The modern day capitalist tech-bro peddled variant
| of "stoicism" especially is often just used to justify a retreat
| inward, and a failure to recognize one's own relationships to
| others and one's own responsibility. Worse, it is a wholly
| uncritical "philosophy" that encourages people to accept the
| status quo rather than endeavor to make it better and change it.
| missinglugnut wrote:
| It's one of those traps where the people who need the
| philosophy the least are most drawn to it.
|
| If you're really emotionally disconnected, stoicism has an
| intuitive appeal because it justifies what you already do.
| Although, there a distinction people miss here, observing an
| emotion and letting it pass is far different from denying the
| emotion in the first place.
|
| On the opposite side, people who go through life dumping and
| blaming their emotions on others are very quick to label
| stoicism as toxic, when it's the philosophy that could help
| them the most.
|
| It's just one of those things, by definition we can't see our
| own blindspots.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| As I type this there are 239 comments on a piece that's 6 years
| old, and also pretty poor to begin with.
|
| So, stuff happens, and you just put up with it? That's anti-
| human. What are you? A leaf in a stream? Dammit, you have agency.
|
| Nothing good would _ever_ have happened were we all so passive.
| No wonder the rich and powerful like it, nothing they want to
| work actually works unless you have a bunch of passive, stoical,
| individuals. Sheep, basically.
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