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That's so far away from what stoic practice is. Is that really what TikTok tells you?
by drcongo 9mo ago
That's so far away from what stoic practice is. Is that really what TikTok tells you?
- parpfish 9mo agoThe modern/online resurgence of stoicism isn’t driven by people that have studied actual books. It’s being driven by people that are making tiktoks after they learned about it by watching a five minute YouTube video. It’s a very lossy game of telephone.
- drcongo 9mo agoWell that's pretty depressing, I had no idea.
- alansaber 9mo agoPop philosophy being turned into AI audio transcribed by a cool video game character (also being mostly AI generated) is clearly the crowning jewel of our civilization.
- aquariusDue 9mo agoOnly because Freud and Jung fell out of fashion, these TikToks are the pop-psychology books of yesteryear.
- tclancy 9mo agoAs someone who has been interested in actual Stoicism for years, yes, there is a whole industry of people monetizing cherry-picked bullet points to serve up what people already want to hear. The fact it all comes with a less-than-subtle sheen of "Western Thought" widens the audience to not just men who don't think real good, but also racists. Happily, now that can be accelerated with AI as we simultaneously remove actual Greek philosophers from college entirely! I would love to sit back with some quotation from Marcus Aurelius about how it's not anything I have to worry about, but that's the part I never quite bought into with Stoicism I suppose. So ignore all of the above.
- drcongo 9mo agoI got interested a few years back thanks to Derren Brown's book "Happy" (recommended). I have found it helpful. I can't say I actually do any of the exercises, but it has slightly reframed how I think about my own wellbeing and happiness. edit: I've missed all this new bite sized version stuff though precisely because I avoid bite size stuff like the plague. TikTok and the TikTokification of everything else can fuck right off. I'm looking at you, YouTube.