Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Be a Stoic

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 241 posts

Re: How to Be a Stoic

#161

Post by jwdunne »

krylon wrote: post #139
jwdunne wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the same is true for Christianity too. The golden rule is an excellent way to be an awesome human being. I think that's a better motive than a good afterlife. I haven't studied other religions to much but I am dead sure there are timeless pieces of advice. My opinion, and I stress opinion, is that much of the world's religions offered a way of life that attempted to reduce violence, illness and suffering. Eve…

> The golden rule is an excellent way to be an awesome human being. The golden rule is not a specialty of Christianity. Some guy - I forgot the name - studied the ethical foundations of world's major religions and found variations of it across many different cultures and religions. But that kind of underlines your point. [Edit: Typo]

That's really interesting. If you do ever remember the name any time soon, let me know. I find anything like that fascinating.

Re: How to Be a Stoic

#162

Post by ishanr »

hartator wrote: post #62

I can't recommend enough "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" by Irvine, William B. I am 2/3 into it, maybe one of the best philosophy book I've ever read.

Also read Happy by Derren Brown. It's brilliant in a very different way.

Re: How to Be a Stoic

#163

Post by jwdunne »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #118
jwdunne wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the same is true for Christianity too. The golden rule is an excellent way to be an awesome human being. I think that's a better motive than a good afterlife. I haven't studied other religions to much but I am dead sure there are timeless pieces of advice. My opinion, and I stress opinion, is that much of the world's religions offered a way of life that attempted to reduce violence, illness and suffering. Eve…

Jesus (or whoever came up with the stuff attributed to him) was indeed a profoundly wise human being. His philosophy of love is probably one of the most important developments of ancient religion.

Well if everybody loved the human race such that they could bring no deliberate harm to it, the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, psychopathy, or rather Anti-Social Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, are real things.

Re: How to Be a Stoic

#164

Post by FabHK »

0x445442 wrote: post #147
FabHK wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really disturbed by that mindset. Surely, you are not saying that without belief in some sort of God, you personally would cease cooperation and rape and murder and steal? I'm an atheist, but I certainly have no desire or intention or plan to cease cooperation. Just the opposite, I think it's extremely important, and it is also extremely important that we cherish and enforce and cultivate it. As just a little exa…

> I'm really disturbed by that mindset. Surely, you are not saying that without belief in some sort of God, you personally would cease cooperation and rape and murder and steal? No I'm not saying a belief in God is necessary for what we would agree upon as moral behavior. However, I could easily see the case being made by individuals who might think that what we agree on as morally correct behavior being nothing more…

> what we agree on as morally correct behavior being nothing more than our arbitrary beliefs

Interesting. I am also concerned by moral arbitrariness and relativism, but fear it comes from somewhere else:

I fear that religion opens up the door to moral relativism, because you can go and say "don't eat shrimp" (Leviticus 11:10), or "don't eat pork", or "don't eat cows", or what have you, claiming "it says so right here, in this holy book full of true revelations".

That's a trivial example, but the same applies for more serious issues: morality based on (religious) revelation is hard to verify and discuss, and somewhat arbitrary.

But if we empirically agree on one real world, empiricism and evidence, we have at least a common basis and need very few, very basic moral principles (it really boils down to the golden rule, or somewhat more sophisticated versions of that, like the "veil of ignorance" in John Rawl's Theory of Justice.)

So, in purely practical terms, I think this notion of some psychopath running around claiming "there's no God, thus I can do what I want" is a non-issue.

If you furthermore seek a philosophical "Letztbegründung" (i.e. ultimate reason, where "the buck stops"), there are attempts e.g. in discourse ethics ("if we are talking, we are already implicitly subscribing to certain axioms, otherwise we would not need to talk"). But I don't think it'a a big problem.

The problem lies less in the foundation and more in certain topics, I think (think of abortion, contraception, war).

Re: How to Be a Stoic

#166

Post by clydethefrog »

RivieraKid wrote: post #42

What's up with all those submissions about stoicism on HN, is that some new SV fad?

Stoicism gives you the mental ability to deal with evil, futility and failure, since it makes you believe you are a non-entity in an inflexible, vast and nasty social structure.

It's a philosophy of inaction and accommodation to injustice and oppression. There is a reason it became popular for Roman soldiers under the Empire. Well, at least stoicism does not claim that you are changing the world for the better by creating all these data slurping algorithms. But I wish SV would embrace the Hellenistic philosophy of Cynicism instead.

Re: How to Be a Stoic

#168

Post by codr4life »

FabHK wrote: post #109
jwdunne wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the same is true for Christianity too. The golden rule is an excellent way to be an awesome human being. I think that's a better motive than a good afterlife. I haven't studied other religions to much but I am dead sure there are timeless pieces of advice. My opinion, and I stress opinion, is that much of the world's religions offered a way of life that attempted to reduce violence, illness and suffering. Eve…

Thanks for the thoughtful and respectful comments, I hope my answer manages to stay in that spirit, too. > I think the same is true for Christianity too Disagree, concerning the Abrahamic religions, as what is good is rarely original, and what is original is rarely good: 1. What is good (golden rule, some of the 10 commandments) is not very original. The golden rule has appeared in ancient Greece (Thales), China (Con…

The cannibalistic reenactment that the catholic church is pushing so hard has very little to do with Christianity; it's anti-Christian if anything; it's sole purpose is to paralyze the subconscious with shame, guilt and despair; conditioning by trauma is a very effective way to turn people into helpless victims.

Re: How to Be a Stoic

#169

Post by camdenlock »

Hmm. To be honest, this philosophy seems like a flowery and overstuffed version of secular mindfulness, like an earlier step along the evolutionary path to what would eventually be a really simple, straightforward strategy for learning about and being with one's own mind in a skillful way.

If it helps you suffer less: great. But before you dive in, know that you might be able to save a lot of time and avoid a lot of jargon by learning about mindfulness from a secular source.

Re: How to Be a Stoic

#170

Post by [deleted] »

lngnmn wrote: post #140

Not sure if a hipster's magazine could be an authoritative source. The first paragraph told me that I should stop reading and what kind of Stoicism I would find below.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN