211–220 of 241 posts
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I think you should understand the terms as "toxic masculinity" as opposed to "positive masculinity". It's not saying masculinity is toxic. Or if you want, as opposed to "true masculinity" - reframing masculinity as a positive thing when expressed correctly.
Toxic masculinity doesn’t mean men are poisonous. It means men are being poisoned.
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The world does not lack terms to describe any feminine behavior, toxic or otherwise, so I don't think this is a real problem.
Can you use those terms in polite company though? It's strange. Clearly at some point society at large came to believe that the current crop of terms at the time was undesirable. Yet various modern analogues are treated differently.
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…
Yeah, none of that is "real stoicism", but just the hydroponic TikTok version of it, as you say.
This can happen to anything if TikTok is your main source of information; everything becomes life hacks, "tricks", and "did you know that " types of knowledge bites. Philosophy is unfortunately not the only victim of short-length "edutainment".
I think that Stoicism might be particularly vulnerable to this because of its built in flexibility, which makes it easy for people to divulge their interpretations of it with little pushback. If you haven't read much of it, and without a clear rirgid "rule set" for what Stoicism is (other than its tenets in the cardinal virtues and dichotomy of control), you might believe me if I tell you that it is a Philosophy that encourages suicide and tells you that being sad because a family member passed is stupid.
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Can you use those terms in polite company though? It's strange. Clearly at some point society at large came to believe that the current crop of terms at the time was undesirable. Yet various modern analogues are treated differently.
Depends on what you mean by polite company, I think. I'm sure there are a lot of conversations among men, who are polite to each other, talking about women being on their periods or hysterical or whatever. Is that no longer the norm? My friend group doesn't do it but given the rhetoric we've seen on HN and elsewhere "locker room talk" is still a thing.
Of course it's also possible that I live in a slightly different bubble than you do.
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understanding, examining and choosing are all thinking based. and that's why stoicism isn't really working well for humans. emotions are neuropsychologically lower level than thoughts/logic/ratio. having said that, lectures about stoicism might well be excellent instructions for language models on how to handle communication with humans.
Part of practicing Stoicism is to bring emotions up to the understanding, examining, and choosing level. You still have emotions, but you don't let them control you. I love JiuJitsu because many parts of it are like microcosms of life. The first time someone lays on you and you feel like you can't breath, you panic. That's an emotion. After a few times you realize you can breath and eventually you will feel the panic…
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understanding, examining and choosing are all thinking based. and that's why stoicism isn't really working well for humans. emotions are neuropsychologically lower level than thoughts/logic/ratio. having said that, lectures about stoicism might well be excellent instructions for language models on how to handle communication with humans.
It's more to separate the feeling from the reaction to the feeling by a layer of understanding & examination. Feel first, understand the feeling, examine whether the feeling is appropriate for the situation that caused it, determine how to react, react. It's an OODA loop applied to one's own emotions: Observe the feeling, Orient on the situation, Decide on a response, Act as decided. If you pre-decide to always suppr…
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…
Here are some other translations of that passage (Enchiridion 26): https://enchiridion.tasuki.org/display:Code:e,ec,twh,twr,gl,... - The first part says: if you shrug off someone else's cup being broken as just an accident, you should also do the same when yours gets broken. - Then he clearly says “Apply now the same principle to the matters of greater importance.” - The last part says that if you respond to someone…
I see you included all the translations except Stephen Walton's. Yes he took some liberties, but I like it anyway :)
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 is one of those rare cases where I believe young men would benefit from reading more Nietzsche. "Do you want to live 'according to nature'? O you noble Stoics, what a verbal swindle! Imagine a being like nature - extravagant without limit, indifferent without limit, without purposes and consideration, without pity and justice, simultaneously fruitful, desolate, and unknown - imagine this indifference itself as a…
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ISTM that improving one's emotional self-regulation is an excellent first-line response to being in what seems to be a toxic job. It may be that leaving that job and applying for another is still the right thing to do, all things considered, but we cannot know for sure unless we are in that situation ourselves and can de-stress enough to do a proper evaluation of it.
I agree that improving emotional regulation is a first step to building up the energy to change a situation. My issue with modern internet style pseudo-stoicism is that it's fixated on becoming indifferent (the title of this article, even) and breeds a sort of learned helplessness. The article's sub-heading is about prisoners and warriors, but using techniques optimized for being a prisoner or stuck in a war isn't qu…
Indifference is the best emotion to stay in a situation.