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> If so, then why was the waitress not disturbed? It is not the cockroach, but the inability of those people to handle the disturbance caused by the cockroach,

by mqrs 6y ago

> If so, then why was the waitress not disturbed? It is not the cockroach, but the inability of those people to handle the disturbance caused by the cockroach, that disturbed the group. I realized that, it is not the shouting of my father or my boss or my wife that disturbs me, it’s my inability to manage my reaction to the words around me. This sounds like a reference to stoic philosophy (of which I am not a fan), but I mean, don’t phobias exist, and don’t degrees of intensity exist so that it’s actually impossible to resist a trigger? I personally used to be really scared of roaches, too, and I got over it not because I learned to control the fear itself, but because I thought about roaches differently (something along the lines of considering them weak). There is no controlling that fear because fear in this context is intense—I still get jerky sometimes when a cockroach shows up by surprise, or when there’s more than one of them, or worst of all, when they actually fly. I can usually avoid making a scene when there’s room to run somewhere else or if there’s an insect spray nearby, but stuck in a room with these triggers? I might go insane. The conclusion that the women screamed because they’re not in control is not only lazy and prejudiced, it’s also an arrogant epistemological claim on something that the author doesn’t actually know, which is whether the fear or disgust of roaches is simply more intense for other people.

praveenperera 6y ago
Sounds like you’re agreeing with Epictetus “It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters” In your case the cockroach didn’t change, you found a different way to frame the cockroach. In turn you react to it differently.
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  I agree with Epictetus purely because I can’t change what happened to me, but I can make decisions about how to respond to what happened. I originally had a hard time with this idea because people have used this “your response is your responsibility” excuse when being unkind to me, but the thing is, this mode of thinking doesn’t mean no one can hurt you and no one should be accountable for being unkind. It just means at the end of the day, you won’t benefit from dwelling on it and practicing seeking solutions instead is purely beneficial. Once I separated the idea from the strict context of responses to what people did to me but anything the world could throw at me, be it bad weather or getting a great sleep or being given a gift or tripping myself down stairs, I realized it’s quite easy to apply and think about. It made a lot more sense without the loaded emotional, interpersonal context overlaid. I figured I’d externalize this in case it helps anyone else, not trying to over-explain simple concepts to people :)
  - cjohnson318 6y ago
    This struck a chord with me. As a baseline, I irrationally feel like people can't stand me, but when I get pissed about something fall into what can only be described as resentment-spiral. The prospect of making up and moving on doesn't outweigh the resentment, and I just spiral down more. Rationally I understand that me feeling bad and being resentful only has a negative effect on the situation and other people, but it's hard to break out of the spiral. TL;DR What you wrote helped me out. Thanks.
    - steve_adams_86 6y ago
      > it's hard to break out of the spiral Don't ever doubt that, it's incredibly hard. But it's something that deserves the hard work it takes to get out of it, I think. I've been realizing a lot of these kinds of challenges in life demand a lot from us, and it can be so daunting, but the reward of taking on that challenge is really immense. Imagine learning to get out of the spiral early - that one day you can just say no and focus on better things. You absolutely could, I bet. > What you wrote helped me out. Thanks. Thanks for saying so, that really makes my day. I've had a similar experience and something that caught me by surprise was this technique called fear setting. I thought it was the cheesiest nonsense ever, but through some turn of events I ended up trying it. I applied it to a problem like what you're describing one day and ended up just writing, in the plainest, simplest, most honest terms why I fell into so much resentment. I'm sure it's different for both of us, but the experience was a revelation. Not all negative emotions are driven by fear, but the resentment certainly was in my case. So I wrote out why, what it does to me, what I can do to address that. The key discovery was a sort of nested fear. It was like the immediate issue wasn't the real fear, or the thing driving my resentment. This should have been obvious I guess, because the superficial problems never justified the amount of resentment. No, ultimately I was afraid of addressing the superficial problem; the broad implications, the confrontation, the unknowns. I kept those tucked away so well and used that resentment to distract and convince myself that the REAL problem was the superficial once. It was really bizarre to realize that once I stopped to dig, the real fear and discomfort was right under the surface all along. Out of sight and out of mind, I guess. Writing it out felt really stupid the first time. Like, I must know all of this already - why do I need to write it down? It's sort of like rubber ducking a problem though. You put it out there in plain sight and just go "OH... Oh.", and there it is. Now what do you do with it? Tim Ferris talks a lot about fear setting. I don't know much about him, but he makes some sense on this topic. https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/ https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/
- icefrakker 6y ago
  In their heart of hearts everyone knows that is just BS. It's garbage we say because we'd rather ignore how hard it is to be human and how lacking our search for answers is. In your heart of hearts, you know if something major happened to someone you care about you'd never bring up that tripe. If your daughter got raped, you would never say "sweety it's not the fact that you got raped, it's how you react to it that matters."
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mqrs 6y ago
  I haven’t read Epictetus and I can’t tell exactly what he meant by that proverb, but the nuance that I can only react to cockroaches differently under conditions perfect to me must not be lost. That nuance is what’s lacking in the article and his judgmental explanation for the causality of the women's reactions.
steve_adams_86 6y ago
Just curious, why aren’t you a fan of stoicism? If you don’t mind sharing some thoughts on it I’d appreciate it. I’ve been exploring it and I enjoy reading various takes on it. I’m not married to the philosophy and looking for a battle by any means.
- lmm 6y ago
  Not the person you replied to, but I started out liking stoicism and then realised it was pretty much just solipsism-lite. I think it's ok, even good, to actually care about real-world outcomes sometimes. The stoics say that you should care about whether you acted virtuously rather than whether your actions lead to a good outcome, but if you don't care about outcomes then the definition of virtuous actions must surely be baseless. If I really believe in stoicism, shouldn't I just take drugs that make me feel happy/satisfied/virtuous?
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    I don't think stoicism rules out using utilitarianism as a basis for virtue. It's not contrary to either utilitarianism nor stoicism to say that if you act in a way that good things are likely to happen, you shouldn't beat yourself up because a freak bad thing happened.
    - lmm 6y ago
      > It's not contrary to either utilitarianism nor stoicism to say that if you act in a way that good things are likely to happen, you shouldn't beat yourself up because a freak bad thing happened. I think that's very much contrary to utilitarianism, which says you should measure your actions by their consequences. If you did x and got a world with utility y where you could have done z and got a world with utility w, and y < w, that's the very definition (under utilitarianism) of a bad action.
      - aidenn0 6y ago
        I disagree. If you are playing poker, betting on an inside straight is a bad move, even if you happen to get lucky. Similarly you didn't make the wrong bet when you lose to a bad beat. Any non omniscient actor can at best act to maximize expected utility. If you ignore a pattern of bad outcomes that would lead you to improve your estimate of expected utility, then you are out of bounds, but my limited knowledge of stoicism does not make me think that it is opposed to such self reflection.

by mqrs 6y ago

praveenperera 6y ago

Sounds like you’re agreeing with Epictetus “It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters” In your case the cockroach didn’t change, you found a different way to frame the cockroach. In turn you react to it differently.

steve_adams_86 6y ago
I agree with Epictetus purely because I can’t change what happened to me, but I can make decisions about how to respond to what happened. I originally had a hard time with this idea because people have used this “your response is your responsibility” excuse when being unkind to me, but the thing is, this mode of thinking doesn’t mean no one can hurt you and no one should be accountable for being unkind. It just means at the end of the day, you won’t benefit from dwelling on it and practicing seeking solutions instead is purely beneficial. Once I separated the idea from the strict context of responses to what people did to me but anything the world could throw at me, be it bad weather or getting a great sleep or being given a gift or tripping myself down stairs, I realized it’s quite easy to apply and think about. It made a lot more sense without the loaded emotional, interpersonal context overlaid. I figured I’d externalize this in case it helps anyone else, not trying to over-explain simple concepts to people :)
- cjohnson318 6y ago
  This struck a chord with me. As a baseline, I irrationally feel like people can't stand me, but when I get pissed about something fall into what can only be described as resentment-spiral. The prospect of making up and moving on doesn't outweigh the resentment, and I just spiral down more. Rationally I understand that me feeling bad and being resentful only has a negative effect on the situation and other people, but it's hard to break out of the spiral. TL;DR What you wrote helped me out. Thanks.
  - steve_adams_86 6y ago
    > it's hard to break out of the spiral Don't ever doubt that, it's incredibly hard. But it's something that deserves the hard work it takes to get out of it, I think. I've been realizing a lot of these kinds of challenges in life demand a lot from us, and it can be so daunting, but the reward of taking on that challenge is really immense. Imagine learning to get out of the spiral early - that one day you can just say no and focus on better things. You absolutely could, I bet. > What you wrote helped me out. Thanks. Thanks for saying so, that really makes my day. I've had a similar experience and something that caught me by surprise was this technique called fear setting. I thought it was the cheesiest nonsense ever, but through some turn of events I ended up trying it. I applied it to a problem like what you're describing one day and ended up just writing, in the plainest, simplest, most honest terms why I fell into so much resentment. I'm sure it's different for both of us, but the experience was a revelation. Not all negative emotions are driven by fear, but the resentment certainly was in my case. So I wrote out why, what it does to me, what I can do to address that. The key discovery was a sort of nested fear. It was like the immediate issue wasn't the real fear, or the thing driving my resentment. This should have been obvious I guess, because the superficial problems never justified the amount of resentment. No, ultimately I was afraid of addressing the superficial problem; the broad implications, the confrontation, the unknowns. I kept those tucked away so well and used that resentment to distract and convince myself that the REAL problem was the superficial once. It was really bizarre to realize that once I stopped to dig, the real fear and discomfort was right under the surface all along. Out of sight and out of mind, I guess. Writing it out felt really stupid the first time. Like, I must know all of this already - why do I need to write it down? It's sort of like rubber ducking a problem though. You put it out there in plain sight and just go "OH... Oh.", and there it is. Now what do you do with it? Tim Ferris talks a lot about fear setting. I don't know much about him, but he makes some sense on this topic. https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/ https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/
icefrakker 6y ago
In their heart of hearts everyone knows that is just BS. It's garbage we say because we'd rather ignore how hard it is to be human and how lacking our search for answers is. In your heart of hearts, you know if something major happened to someone you care about you'd never bring up that tripe. If your daughter got raped, you would never say "sweety it's not the fact that you got raped, it's how you react to it that matters."
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mqrs 6y ago
I haven’t read Epictetus and I can’t tell exactly what he meant by that proverb, but the nuance that I can only react to cockroaches differently under conditions perfect to me must not be lost. That nuance is what’s lacking in the article and his judgmental explanation for the causality of the women's reactions.

steve_adams_86 6y ago

Just curious, why aren’t you a fan of stoicism? If you don’t mind sharing some thoughts on it I’d appreciate it. I’ve been exploring it and I enjoy reading various takes on it. I’m not married to the philosophy and looking for a battle by any means.

lmm 6y ago
Not the person you replied to, but I started out liking stoicism and then realised it was pretty much just solipsism-lite. I think it's ok, even good, to actually care about real-world outcomes sometimes. The stoics say that you should care about whether you acted virtuously rather than whether your actions lead to a good outcome, but if you don't care about outcomes then the definition of virtuous actions must surely be baseless. If I really believe in stoicism, shouldn't I just take drugs that make me feel happy/satisfied/virtuous?
- aidenn0 6y ago
  I don't think stoicism rules out using utilitarianism as a basis for virtue. It's not contrary to either utilitarianism nor stoicism to say that if you act in a way that good things are likely to happen, you shouldn't beat yourself up because a freak bad thing happened.
  - lmm 6y ago
    > It's not contrary to either utilitarianism nor stoicism to say that if you act in a way that good things are likely to happen, you shouldn't beat yourself up because a freak bad thing happened. I think that's very much contrary to utilitarianism, which says you should measure your actions by their consequences. If you did x and got a world with utility y where you could have done z and got a world with utility w, and y < w, that's the very definition (under utilitarianism) of a bad action.
    - aidenn0 6y ago
      I disagree. If you are playing poker, betting on an inside straight is a bad move, even if you happen to get lucky. Similarly you didn't make the wrong bet when you lose to a bad beat. Any non omniscient actor can at best act to maximize expected utility. If you ignore a pattern of bad outcomes that would lead you to improve your estimate of expected utility, then you are out of bounds, but my limited knowledge of stoicism does not make me think that it is opposed to such self reflection.