7 ms·

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 Stoic

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 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        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.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      > 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.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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-try-nietzsche-instead-198307 https://theconversation.com/3-reasons-not-to-be-a-stoic-but-...
- exe34 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  "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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  [flagged]
- ctrlp 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  One of my favorite comments on HN. Thank you for this.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  >> 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.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  >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). Pragmatism is a form of prudence. A lot of the other stuff you mention could vaguely be called fortitude. >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. This is a recipe for unhappiness. By definition, attaching too much will ultimately (and perhaps immediately) cause you grief. Risking more than what is prudent could lead you to disaster. (Quit your job, for example, and you could end up homeless! That might be a good time to start thinking stoically but a better one would be prior to making such a mistake.) Participating in the world and making the best of it is what stoicism calls for, but it questions what is worth your energy and how you should react to failure. >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. The classical Stoic discussion of death is more of a rhetorical device than a prescription for how to live. Nobody is out here saying you should treat your life as unimportant. But extreme fear of death is a thing that gives people anxiety, and sometimes interferes with them doing things that they ought to do. I've read many Stoic quotes about making the most of life and not wasting time. That kind of stuff isn't suggestive of laying down to rot. I've never seen a Stoic praise excessive laziness.
throw0101c 2y ago
> prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice So Aristotle then: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues
Spooky23 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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.
harimau777 2y ago
FWIW: My experience with stoicism has been that it's mostly espoused by conservatives as justification for ignoring social justice or by people who perceive themselves to be "tough love" types as a way to dismiss other's suffering. For that reason, although in theory I think that stoicism could be a useful philosophy, in practice I see it as a cudgel for those who benefit from the status quo.
- dev_by_day 2y ago
  This is sad because its thats not what Stoicism is actually about. The most prominent Stoic author today is Ryan Holiday and the guy is a staunch liberal. He's worth checking out if you want to see a sincere modern day interpretation of stoicism. They despised material wealth and comfort. They also talked alot about Justice and doing what is inside your control to correct injustice was seen as a high virtue.

mjburgess 2y ago

> 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 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
surgical_fire 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    > 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.
zozbot234 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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-try-nietzsche-instead-198307 https://theconversation.com/3-reasons-not-to-be-a-stoic-but-...
exe34 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
"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 2y ago
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 2y ago
[flagged]
ctrlp 2y ago
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 2y ago
One of my favorite comments on HN. Thank you for this.
johnisgood 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
>> 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.
wakawaka28 2y ago
>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). Pragmatism is a form of prudence. A lot of the other stuff you mention could vaguely be called fortitude. >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. This is a recipe for unhappiness. By definition, attaching too much will ultimately (and perhaps immediately) cause you grief. Risking more than what is prudent could lead you to disaster. (Quit your job, for example, and you could end up homeless! That might be a good time to start thinking stoically but a better one would be prior to making such a mistake.) Participating in the world and making the best of it is what stoicism calls for, but it questions what is worth your energy and how you should react to failure. >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. The classical Stoic discussion of death is more of a rhetorical device than a prescription for how to live. Nobody is out here saying you should treat your life as unimportant. But extreme fear of death is a thing that gives people anxiety, and sometimes interferes with them doing things that they ought to do. I've read many Stoic quotes about making the most of life and not wasting time. That kind of stuff isn't suggestive of laying down to rot. I've never seen a Stoic praise excessive laziness.

throw0101c 2y ago

> prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice So Aristotle then: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues

Spooky23 2y ago

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 2y ago

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 2y ago

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.

harimau777 2y ago

FWIW: My experience with stoicism has been that it's mostly espoused by conservatives as justification for ignoring social justice or by people who perceive themselves to be "tough love" types as a way to dismiss other's suffering. For that reason, although in theory I think that stoicism could be a useful philosophy, in practice I see it as a cudgel for those who benefit from the status quo.

dev_by_day 2y ago
This is sad because its thats not what Stoicism is actually about. The most prominent Stoic author today is Ryan Holiday and the guy is a staunch liberal. He's worth checking out if you want to see a sincere modern day interpretation of stoicism. They despised material wealth and comfort. They also talked alot about Justice and doing what is inside your control to correct injustice was seen as a high virtue.