Self-help gets philosophical

Stoicism doesn't tell you to just learn to live with things that you can change. That's only for things that you cannot change.

This may be true to some extent, but what I dislike about this idea is that to many it implies that human flourishing is impossible without suffering exported elsewhere. The world in this view is a finite pie that can only be sliced up differently. Nothing is ever created. Wealth can only be redistributed.

This ignores the fact that the past 200 years have seen insane wealth creation that has enabled more people than have ever lived to live better than most people have ever lived. Look at how many have risen out of poverty globally in just the last 25 years.

Someone will inevitably bring up climate change, etc., and argue that it’s all bound to come crashing down. Maybe it will, but asserting that it must as some law of nature is a fatalistic ideology.

It’s a fatalistic ideology that some people seem to like and be emotionally attached to for reasons that aren’t clear to me. I tend to think it’s a big cop out. If everything is doomed, doomed, doomed, then there is no point in even trying. Eat, drink, and be merry while the ship sinks.

Robert: "I think you can be anything you want to be."

Teri: "Maybe in your World, Robert. Doesn't really happen that way in mine."

Robert: "Change your world."

I don't understand why so many people focus on Trump and Left and Right and all the theater of politics in general. Subtract the politics from TFA and it is really, really good.

The author and I agree on some "pop-stoicism" critiques and disagree on others. Well reasoned and articulate arguments to support or dismiss "teachings" from the neo-pop-stoic culture.

The we get to passages like this; "It is, I suppose, strictly speaking accurate that if the approximately 8.6 million people who die each year due to a lack of access to quality healthcare were to wish their fate, their desires would not be frustrated, but tautological truth does not make for philosophical profundity."

Yes it does. How does this person know the 8.6 million people that died did not live meaningful lives while they were able bodied and healthy? How does the author know what is "right" for them? Whether I agree/disagree with the aspects of the authors POV; any sober and/or objective reading of this just reeks of ego and "holier than thou" attitude.

I suspect this type of attitude is a large reason why people that devote large amounts of time to thinking about politics end up categorizing "justice" into politically ideological boxes.

Edit to add;

I am reading the comments and not many are talking about this point either which I think is profound.

I hit ctrl-f inside TFA and did not find a word used in Stoic literature that I have read; Virtue.

You would think a critique on Stoicism would at least cover the basics, no?

Here is a reminder for everyone that cares;

Stoic virtue is the highest good and the only true path to a flourishing life, encompassing four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance (or self-control), and justice.

How dare they.