Don't Be Stoic: Roman Stoicism’s origins show its perniciousness

Unattached action is the central message of epic Hindu text Bhagwad Gita.Two shlokas (verses) I find extremely comforting are [2.47] and [3.5].

Verse [2.47] says:

1) Only rightful action is in your control.

2) Fruits of your action is never in your control.

3) Give up the pride of doership .

4) Last but not the least do not get into inaction.

Verse 3.5 says:

No body can remain inactive even for a second. All living being have to act even to sustain their bodies.

Anyone interested in stoicism should also read it from a good translation.

I think the author makes a strong point insofar as completely detaching ourselves from outcomes out of our control can't be done without lessening in some way our humanity. But the common human propensity is to be over-invested in external things that we can't control and that will not give us ultimate satisfaction, which is why Stoicism and other wisdom philosophies can be so appealing.

The question I would have for the author is, with what framework do you determine what is worth attaching to, worth grieving over?

Many philosophies, even organized religions, can serve as a guide. If one is looking for a guide, that step of looking already reveals a desire to not just default to either a random walk or wherever you're taken by others; it's that desire more than any particular guide that will serve (or ruin) the individual most. But still, there are lots of alternative guides out there, and many empirically seem at least somewhat useful in various contexts for various people. For some like stoicism I think it's the coherence, or at least the attempt at making a harmonious gestalt of the pieces covering a large context, that makes them feel powerful and useful and not just a series of shallow and disjointed and contradictory thoughts like can be expected of the default civil existence with one trying to figure things out from the environment alone.

Christian tradition can serve even, but it requires quite a bit of study I think to approach seeming coherence, simply passively "being raised in it" isn't enough. Meanwhile things like stoicism, or one of my favorites taoism (see the short Tao Te Ching), can be grasped in a very short period of time, which is all the more attractive. Even if one ultimately doesn't get anything from them or explicitly rejects them, it doesn't take too long to evaluate them and figure that out, and then you'll at least have been exposed to something coherent and helpfully be armed against loving future systems you encounter too much on account of their seeming coherence no longer being novel. That happens I think to a lot of Objectivists for whom Atlas Shrugged (specifically its long philosophical monologues) was their first exposure. But it could also happen to someone reading Walden or the related essays of the time that form an interconnected worldview -- less likely on that one though since amusingly the modern education system's common practice of making snippets of those a bit of "required reading" and then analyzed as just literature or poetry is an amazing defense mechanism against anyone casually coming across them, reading them all, and extracting and applying some of their philosophical points.

There is also that when you are too enamored by the results of your action, it gets in the way of doing.

The Tao Te Ching also talks about not striving for things.

It is interesting that these three philosophies from three different civilizations at different times overlap in their outlook to life, which hints at something permanent. It would be great to map the migration of these ideas between them and how we arrived at the diverged modern day outlook.

The article, for all its virtues, doesn't seem to mention a famous modern Stoic, Vice Admiral James Stockdale[1].

Stockdale was tortured in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War and his writings are studied (or at least were 30 years ago) at USNA.

I find stoicism an intellectually useful set of concepts, in a tactical sense. IMO, it seems morally limited, strategically.

For example, taking care of the environment is sensible, but why do I care? If I'm just so many atoms, then the eventual effects of my folly are SEP[2]. The drive to be mature and responsible will _always_ succumb to rationalization.

Case in point: the national debt. Who in their right mond lives beyond their means? Only pretty much _every_ government.

The human flesh is always corrupt; the mind is prone to rationalizations; the only "hope", if one cares to go there, is through the soul. Finding a community of faith to offer moral feedback to the Stoic mind and the fallen flesh is left as an exercise for the reader.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stockdale

[2] Someone Else's Problem