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Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

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Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

#241

Post by johnisgood »

mjburgess wrote: post #38
andrewmutz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your perceptions of stoicism are so detatched from mine, I have to ask, what does stoicism mean to you? The wikipedia entry describes it like this: "The Stoics believed that the practice of virtue is enough to achieve eudaimonia: a well-lived life. The Stoics identified the path to achieving it with a life spent practicing the four cardinal virtues in everyday life — prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice — as…

> prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice I adopt rather the opposite virutes. Imprudence, risk, throwing-your-self-at-a-wall-until-you-cant, intemperance (conflict, debate, disagreement, competition) and pragmatism (address what is rather than what should be). Behind each of the stoic virutues is a psychological position to dettach, dissociate and live in a more abstracted conceptual space. This can be theraput…

> Professors of stocism like to make a virute of dying quiety -- this i think absurd. If the plane is falling from the sky, i envy the people screaming -- they have the right levels of attachemnt to their own lives.

Stoicism does not say that you should not have an attachment to your life, i.e. will to live.

Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

#242

Post by philwelch »

mjburgess wrote: post #4

It's no accident that a roman emperor (tyrant, mass murderer, and courtier) is the premier famous stoic. Nor is it an accident that the next most famous case is that of British empire public schooling, british "stiff upper lip" stocisim. (EDIT: Marcus Aurelius) himself was no stoic philosopher, he merely wrote diaries to himself in his late days -- diaries he wanted burned, not published. And these were rehresals of…

It’s always funny to read people’s hot takes about stoicism because they seem to polarize into two mutually exclusive camps. In one camp, stoicism is a “hollow, dissociative, nihilist philosophy” for sociopathic emperors and in the other, it’s just cope for people without the power or agency to change anything in the world around them. If anything the bipolar nature of this criticism itself validates the broad applicability of Stoicism.

And actually it is an accident that Marcus Aurelius is the “premier famous stoic”, largely because, as you point out, his personal journal wasn’t actually burned as he requested. If you actually engage at even a marginally deeper level than social media slop—e.g. by taking an undergraduate survey course in ancient philosophy—you’ll learn that the premier Stoic was Epictetus, who was born into slavery.

It’s also a glib misreading of Marcus Aurelius to characterize his writings as “bitter rants”. Much of “Meditations” takes the form of an internal dialogue between the emperor’s base feelings (which are sometimes bitter and sometimes as simple as not being a morning person) and his intellect as it works to apply Stoic philosophy to his own life. If you’re not an emperor you might not relate to having to deal with surly and ungrateful supplicants or the need to remind yourself that you aren’t actually a living god, and if you’re also a morning person, Marcus Aurelius is probably completely wasted on you. But that’s not what Marcus Aurelius is for. If you want a practical Stoic handbook, read the Enchiridion.

Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

#243

Post by bigstrat2003 »

timeon wrote: post #126
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not remotely what the philosophy is about. It's about not letting your external circumstances trouble your internal emotions, because they aren't what truly matters. It isn't passive acceptance - Stoics can, and should, try to improve the world around them. They just don't attach their happiness to whether those attempts succeed or fail. As to why someone would follow the philosophy, it's simple: we all face…

> They just don't attach their happiness to whether those attempts succeed or fail. Doesn't that seems bit pointless?

No, not at all. Why would it be pointless? Obviously success is preferred to failure, but ultimately the outcome isn't something I control so I shouldn't rely on it to be happy. The important questions for my own peace of mind are "did I try" and "could I have done better", not "did I succeed".

Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

#244

Post by apex_sloth »

mjburgess wrote: post #38
andrewmutz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your perceptions of stoicism are so detatched from mine, I have to ask, what does stoicism mean to you? The wikipedia entry describes it like this: "The Stoics believed that the practice of virtue is enough to achieve eudaimonia: a well-lived life. The Stoics identified the path to achieving it with a life spent practicing the four cardinal virtues in everyday life — prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice — as…

> prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice I adopt rather the opposite virutes. Imprudence, risk, throwing-your-self-at-a-wall-until-you-cant, intemperance (conflict, debate, disagreement, competition) and pragmatism (address what is rather than what should be). Behind each of the stoic virutues is a psychological position to dettach, dissociate and live in a more abstracted conceptual space. This can be theraput…

There seems to be the notion in a lot of comments that Stoicism is about acting against one's nature or surpressing ones emotions.

For me, on the other hand, it was very freeing to encounter Stoicism, because I felt like it was okay that I didn't feel or react as strongly as people around me expected me to.

Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

#245

Post by sourtrident »

Funny how Silicon Valley and ancient Rome both use Stoicism to justify ambition rather than avoid it. Sort of reminds me of yoga retreats for CEOs - I mean, mastering inner peace while negotiating billion-dollar deals feels suspiciously like having your philosophical cake and eating it too.

Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

#246

Post by Cantinflas »

taylorlapeyre wrote: post #131
thanhhaimai wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For one, that all bad things are actually good is not a tenet of Christianity and is not in the Bible Just for my own learning, if it's not considered a tenet, why do I see this line of thought so often portrayed: "This is not bad. God made is so to test my faith."

This is one of three major answers to the problem of Theodicy (justifying God in the face of evil) in Christian theology. They are: 1. Pedagogical (the one you mentioned) - Evil exists so that we may grow and learn. All evil will be used to create even greater good. Quintessential example would be the story of Job in the Old Testament. 2. Eschatological — Evil is a by-product of having any creation in time whatsoever…

Imo 1) and 3) make little sense, e.g. no one learns anything from a toddler dying from cancer, and no "freedom" caused it. 2) looks more interesting, although I'm not sure I understand it

Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

#247

Post by nine_k »

sourtrident wrote: post #245

Funny how Silicon Valley and ancient Rome both use Stoicism to justify ambition rather than avoid it. Sort of reminds me of yoga retreats for CEOs - I mean, mastering inner peace while negotiating billion-dollar deals feels suspiciously like having your philosophical cake and eating it too.

Japanese medieval samurai studied zen for the same reason: it gives you the peace of mind, the skill of concentration, and the contact with yourself that help noticeably when you don't have time to contemplate, as in a sword fight. (May have other benefits, too, but this seemed to be the evolutionary selection driver.)

Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

#248

Post by sdwr »

sourtrident wrote: post #245

Funny how Silicon Valley and ancient Rome both use Stoicism to justify ambition rather than avoid it. Sort of reminds me of yoga retreats for CEOs - I mean, mastering inner peace while negotiating billion-dollar deals feels suspiciously like having your philosophical cake and eating it too.

If you are average, your thinking and emotional processing are basically done for you - you have tons of examples of people dealing with every challenge you face (in media, in your immediate surroundings).

The people who need those internal resources are the people on the edges of the bell curve - those with no control, and those with (ostensibly) tons of control.

Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

#249

Post by tasuki »

achierius wrote: post #226
munificent wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For one, that all bad things are actually good is not a tenet of Christianity and is not in the Bible. Surely you in your life you have met many Christians who said "God works in mysterious ways", "there is a purpose for everything", "trust in the Lord", etc.? In the Christian communities I grew up around, it was a pervasive idea that misfortune was explained away by our limited understanding. These cliches were al…

> Surely you in your life you have met many Christians who said "God works in mysterious ways", "there is a purpose for everything", "trust in the Lord", etc.? Yes, but this is something people say in times of grief, for the comfort of the grieving -- it's not a consistent moral philosophy that they hold to in other parts of their life, nor is it meant to be. There are better answers than this, but they are oftentime…

>> Surely you in your life you have met many Christians who said "God works in mysterious ways", "there is a purpose for everything", "trust in the Lord", etc.?

> Yes, but this is something people say in times of grief, for the comfort of the grieving

It is the stupidest thing to say to someone who is grieving.

Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)

#250

Post by taeric »

samspot wrote: post #81

"But on the negative side, stoicism’s Providential claim that everything in the universe is already perfect and that things which seem bad or unjust are secretly good underneath (a claim Christianity borrowed from Stoicism) can be used to justify the idea that the rich and powerful are meant to be rich and powerful, that the poor and downtrodden are meant to be poor and downtrodden, and that even the worst actions ar…

You are seeing the literal downside of strawman criticism, I think? You see the same in most criticisms of "capitalism." If you get to build up the representative as only the negatives of that which you are criticizing, than it is usually a bright flame.

Is extra devious when coupled with what is basically the opposite for all of the supposed "enemies" of that which is being straw manned. Where they are represented by only the best attributes.

And a lot of the deviousness comes from how this makes supposed centrists feel superior in pointing out neither is "true." Which, fair, but where does that take the conversation? It gets dominated by people that rally around the representation they feel invested in and nobody even remembers why it may have first come up in the first place.

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