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Indifference is a power (2015)

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Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#21

Post by s1mplicissimus »

everdrive wrote: post #13
SirFatty wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just suck it up and power through" I don't feel that is a "undesirable masculine trait", I live by that and still "feel things" and have emotions.

One thing that's worth noting is that Epictetus himself was a slave, and I think it's informed a lot of his thoughts. For him, true freedom is being able to overcome the events of the world. You may not be able to control whether or not you're a slave, but (to Epictetus) you can control how you feel about being a slave, and that is true freedom. ie, he saw the world as full of misery and difficulty, and saw modifying…

Huh, I never saw it that way but it makes sense. I guess the cruelest thing to do to Epictetus would then be to make him believe he could be anything other than a slave, if only he worked hard enough. Oh...

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#22

Post by everdrive »

throwaw12 wrote: post #14
everdrive wrote: post #11

Actual stoicism is kind of darkly funny. Here's a word-for-word (translated, of course) excerpt from Epictetus: "It's possible to understand what nature wants from situations where we're no different from other people. For example, when a slave breaks someone else's cup we're instantly ready to say 'These things happen.' So when it's a cup of yours that gets broken, appreciate that you have the same attitude as when…

IMO, its not dark. How I perceived it, Epictetus wants to say: things happen and you are on a spectrum of emotions based on the context (in case of death, how close you were to the person), try to minimize the length of the spectrum.

I agree in part. You could read Epictetus as saying "just try not caring about people," which I think is the incorrect reading. Instead, I think he's saying something like "take a step back and realize that your deep personal attachments don't look so important when you step outside your perspective. You can use this realization to help get past the deep emotional pain that is normal for people to feel."

However, the line about other's indifference I think can only be read as dark funny to a modern reader:

> has someone else's child or wife died? There's no one who wouldn't say 'So it goes.'

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#25

Post by sharkbird2 »

everdrive wrote: post #11

Actual stoicism is kind of darkly funny. Here's a word-for-word (translated, of course) excerpt from Epictetus: "It's possible to understand what nature wants from situations where we're no different from other people. For example, when a slave breaks someone else's cup we're instantly ready to say 'These things happen.' So when it's a cup of yours that gets broken, appreciate that you have the same attitude as when…

I see it more as being about acceptance. If your wife dies, at some point, you will have to accept that your wife died and move on. This doesn't mean that you are cold or insensitive to it, it just means that you have accepted and processed this sorrow fully and are now ready to move on.

Stoicism for me is about practicing a sort of pre-acceptance of such things. To understand that everything bad that can happen eventually will happen (if you live long enough) and to accept it even before it has happened.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#26

Post by dot_treo »

In the past I've been trying to adopt the stoic mindset, but always struggled. But I continued to read and learn about it.

Unrelatedly, I came across a recomendation for David Burns "Feeling Good" here on hackernews a couple of years ago.

Reading it with my interest in stoicism in mind, I honestly found it to be probably the best modern day handbook to actually adopting the stoic mindset - without ever mentioning it.

As far as I understand stoicism, it is all about seeing things as they are, and understanding that the only thing that we really control is our reaction / interpretation of events. And the CBT approach that is explained in Feeling Good/Feeling Great is exactly how you do this.

With this perspective Marcus Aurelius Meditations suddenly make a lot more sense. They are his therapy homework.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#27

Post by threethirtytwo »

parpfish wrote: post #4

I can’t help but think that the rise in stoicisms popularity among manosphere types because it lets them repackage a lot of more undesirable masculine traits under a legitimate label— You’re not allowed to feel things. Emotions make you weak. Just suck it up and power through. Bottle it up. Whether those traits a “real stoicism” or not doesn’t matter, because that’s the way it gets spread through TikTok length discou…

I’m tired of the whole “toxic masculinity” framing.

First, it’s sloppy. Plenty of genuinely harmful traits exist, but trying to pin them to “masculine” or “feminine” archetypes is more ideology than analysis. If the problem is bad behavior, just call it bad behavior. Adding a gender label doesn’t improve clarity, it just adds noise.

Second, it’s selectively applied. Many traits that are equally destructive are rarely labeled at all, usually because they’re expressed indirectly or through social maneuvering rather than overt force. That doesn’t make them less harmful, just harder to name without breaking the narrative.

More broadly, labeling a negative trait as inherently “masculine” is simply rude and unnecessary. “Undesirable traits” works fine and doesn’t require turning half the population into a rhetorical prop.

As a non-toxic and extremely moral male biological specimen, I’ll just note that attaching moral failure to the male gender category feels oddly out of step with modern norms around inclusivity. It’s as vile and disgusting as referring to a person by the wrong pronoun.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#28

Post by richardanaya »

Happiness only comes from the achievement of values. The greatest bamboozlement of stoicism is teaching people to be indifferent to achieving their values. It lobotomizes upside gains in a world that's full of opportunity to a mind of reason.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#29

Post by krzat »

everdrive wrote: post #11

Actual stoicism is kind of darkly funny. Here's a word-for-word (translated, of course) excerpt from Epictetus: "It's possible to understand what nature wants from situations where we're no different from other people. For example, when a slave breaks someone else's cup we're instantly ready to say 'These things happen.' So when it's a cup of yours that gets broken, appreciate that you have the same attitude as when…

Maybe it was intentionally funny, maybe not.

But imagining oneself from a third perspective has a therapeutic effect that you can't really explain in words. You just do it and it's deeply soothing somehow.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#30

Post by KellyCriterion »

webdevver wrote: post #23

[flagged]

really? are you sure?

Take a look into the illustration about Seneca on wasting your time, e.g. - from what Ive observed: Successful people know exactly when their time gets wasted and what could be done instead and not to waste time on irrelevant things.

There are lot of inspiring mind sets in there.

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