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Indifference is a power (2015)

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Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#141

Post by parpfish »

Aurornis wrote: post #66

I find classic Stoicism interesting, but these modern social media and influencer versions of Stoicism feel like something else entirely. The heading and subheading of this article invoke ideas of indifference and warriors and prisoners. This appeals to frustrated people, more often men, who are struggling with emotional regulation and want a solution that feels like a tough response. Maybe there’s something useful i…

this thread seems to be filled with a lot of folks that have read and understood actual stoicism but are unaware of the fact that a "pop stoicism" exists out in the world.

this leads to a lot of people talking past each other.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#142

Post by GenerocUsername »

empiricus wrote: post #86
alansaber wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our environment is simply far less brutal. This is closely aligned to the mentality of people in war torn countries, to the present day.

Actually when one is old enough, the lethality around becomes much more visible.

This is true and no one thinks about it until they reach 50-70

Either everyone you know dies 1 by 1, or you do.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#143

Post by mrweasel »

speak_plainly wrote: post #92

If Socratic philosophy is the greatest threat to state power, Stoicism is the framework for mass compliance. It's a psychological strategy for emotional management that replaces the traditional goals of inquiry. This system encourages individuals to obey authority and limit their emotional range to reach a state of internal comfort. This objective discourages the act of questioning. In this regard, it functions as an…

In some sense I agree, there is a level of defeatism in at least part of the wisdom of the stoics and very little questioning of authority. You do have the "If it's not right don't do it, if it's not true don't say it", and you are suppose to act on things if they are within your control. There's just no encouragement that you're more capable than you think or that you should do anything beyond "The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury." That doesn't really topple oppressive regimes.

It's a bit of a interesting take, you should act with virtue, but there is no encouragement to act against oppression and question authority. It seems very much like something to ignore and hope there's not a clash.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#144

Post by s1mplicissimus »

nathan_compton wrote: post #101
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 don't see this as particularly dark or particularly funny. Seems like good advice. Most of our negative emotions are a waste of time and energy. I always try to see things in the greater context of the world: all things are brief, beautiful, and utterly without meaning in the greater scheme of things. If I spend a ton of time wailing and grinding my teeth about shit then I'm just wasting time I could be using to en…

> Most of our negative emotions are a waste of time and energy.

In a different frame, most of our negative emotions are there to help us - by signifying that something is wrong. You could be thankful for having them so that you are prompted to investigate what's wrong. It's only when we forget that feelings are only a part of our experience and start to identify with feelings (positive and negative) that trouble arises.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#145

Post by zozbot234 »

komali2 wrote: post #139
Aurornis wrote: post #66

I find classic Stoicism interesting, but these modern social media and influencer versions of Stoicism feel like something else entirely. The heading and subheading of this article invoke ideas of indifference and warriors and prisoners. This appeals to frustrated people, more often men, who are struggling with emotional regulation and want a solution that feels like a tough response. Maybe there’s something useful i…

Yes, exactly what I've been thinking about. I remember a conversation I had here a few years back where a few of us were sharing how growing up on forums like 4chan had implanted in us a deep nihilism and cynicism, and how that was being mistaken for stoicism, when really it's just being emotionally stunted. I've been thinking about this modern idea of stoicism along the same lines you've written here. Basically it s…

> I think stoicism still has its place in attempting to prevent e.g. self harming behavior ...

Stoic sources actually state explicitly that Stoic ethics is all about preventing "self-harming behavior" arising from our emotions. They just have a much more expansive definition of what's "self-harming" than modern society does! Raw emotional responses are seen as mere facts of nature that cannot be meaningfully avoided and repressed, but they can still be subjected to reasonable judgment, and then accepted or critiqued. The common modern idea that Stoicism is merely about emotional repression and a totally "unemotional" stance is quite a misconception.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#146

Post by oooyay »

Aurornis wrote: post #66

I find classic Stoicism interesting, but these modern social media and influencer versions of Stoicism feel like something else entirely. The heading and subheading of this article invoke ideas of indifference and warriors and prisoners. This appeals to frustrated people, more often men, who are struggling with emotional regulation and want a solution that feels like a tough response. Maybe there’s something useful i…

I'm not even sure you've nailed "classic" stoicism. More than a few stoics have related stoicism to normalizing your reaction to something that happens to you as if it happened to someone else. It implies maintaining a perspective that the world just does and that it's largely impersonal.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#147

Post by matwood »

Aurornis wrote: post #81
jvanderbot wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of the "tough warrior philosopher" messaging as the installation medium for this hack. All hacks need an attractive bait/installer. Once the hack sets in, you start reading more b/c you identify partially as "philosopher", and you start to see more of the genuine, peaceful, forgiving side, like in Meditations. The "we are all flawed men" kind of thing.

> I think of the "tough warrior philosopher" messaging as the installation medium for this hack. All hacks need an attractive bait/installer. The average young person who discovers stoicism via articles like this or via an influencer isn’t going to do a deep dive into classic literature as the next step. They’re going to seek out more influencer slop that delivers more of what drew them to it: The prisoner/warrior ba…

The average young person probably does nothing at all. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Some percentage of people will come to Stoicism via an influencer and continue to dig.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#148

Post by stodor89 »

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…

It's about accepting the bad things that will inevitably happen to us. "Loving your wife" and "grieving when she dies" are two separate things. We need mental framing that does not connect them, even though our default settings are to do so. Or at least that's how I'm reading it.

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#149

Post by maxbond »

flatline wrote: post #60
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 find stoicism to be Taoism's spiritual sibling in the West. From the Dao De Jing, passage 5, Red Pine's translation: "Heaven and Earth are heartless / treating creatures like straw dogs / heartless is the sage / treating people like straw dogs..." and his translation of one commentary: "Heaven and Earth aren't partial. They don't kill living things out of cruelty or give them birth out of kindness. We do the same w…

There's some passages in the Zhuangzi (another of the 3 central ancient Taoist texts, along with the Tao Te Ching and Liehzi) that feel very analogous. I'm too lazy to find actual translations right now so bear in mind my recollection may be flawed.

There's a part where it talks any how, if you're sailing on a river and an unoccupied boat comes down the river towards you, you simply avoid it. But if that boat were occupied, you might holler at the person to get out of your way, and it might be upsetting.

There's also a passage where Zhuangzi's wife has died, and his friend find him merrily beating a drum. He asks if this is the proper way to mourn his wife. Zhuangzi replies that he had initially cried and lamented when his wife passed, until he realized that she had become what she was before she had lived, and that to everything there was a season. (There's definitely more here than I remember off the top of my head.)

Tangentially, if one has only read the Tao Te Ching, the Zhuangzi and Liehzi are also great and worth reading. The Liehzi is very short, and the Zhuangzi can be abridged to the first 7 chapters if desired. (Chapter 17 slaps but is mostly a reiteration of chapter 1.) You could read all 3 in a weekend (if you abridge Zhuangzi).

Some free audiobooks:

Tao Te Ching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCLpgXmK3cg [1hr]

Liehzi: https://librivox.org/the-book-of-lieh-tzu-by-lieh-tzu-transl... [3hr]

Zhuangzi abridged: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCQYEeHlXOY [2hr]

Re: Indifference is a power (2015)

#150

Post by emaro »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #27
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…

I use the term not for traits and behaviours I think are masculine, but are sold as being masculine, which are toxic. An example would be that it's masculine to not cry or show emotions (whereas woman are labeled as "emotional"). Suppressing emotions is nothing gender specific of course, but when certain groups promote that as "masculine", calling that "toxic masculinity" makes sense IMO.
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