Is there an interpretation of stoicism which advocates for social justice? At its core that's my issue with the philosophy: it seems like it inevitably ends up serving the status quo by dismissing any complaints about circumstances.
Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
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Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
#312Earlier 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…
FWIW: My experience with stoicism has been that it's mostly espoused by conservatives as justification for ignoring social justice or by people who perceive themselves to be "tough love" types as a way to dismiss other's suffering. For that reason, although in theory I think that stoicism could be a useful philosophy, in practice I see it as a cudgel for those who benefit from the status quo.
This is sad because its thats not what Stoicism is actually about. The most prominent Stoic author today is Ryan Holiday and the guy is a staunch liberal. He's worth checking out if you want to see a sincere modern day interpretation of stoicism.
They despised material wealth and comfort. They also talked alot about Justice and doing what is inside your control to correct injustice was seen as a high virtue.
Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
#313Is there an interpretation of stoicism which advocates for social justice? At its core that's my issue with the philosophy: it seems like it inevitably ends up serving the status quo by dismissing any complaints about circumstances.
Yes, if your interested checkout Ryan Holiday, he writes pretty extensively about this.
Cato is a good example of a stoic who stood for justice, he sacrificed his life leading a resistance against the tyranny of Caesar and fighting injustice.
Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
#314It'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…
Looks like classical stoicism is competing with Nietzsche in "how much modern people can distort and/or misinterpret it". Not saying it's winning, but it's up there.
Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
#315ITT is alot of people that don't seem to understand Stoicism.
For the people making weird claims that its a philosophy specifically for conservatives, its not. Try checkout stoics like Ryan Holiday or Cato if your interested in seeing the emphasis on justice and being good to others as a virtue.
Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
#316One perspective is that meditation and stoicism helps silence guilt about being so properous in an unequal society.
Why should one feel guilt about being prosperous in an unequal society? Even if you accept that it's based entirely on luck rather than merits, I don't see why you should feel guilt. A few examples of things based entirely on luck that no one really argues we should feel guilty about: Being tall Having high innate level of intelligence Athletic Physical beauty
I think that the guilt comes from not working to make society more equal and/or doing things that promote inequality.
Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost universally prosperity is gained through privilege, compounded over generations. Privilege being rules/customs/systems that favored your group over others.
To be fair, the traits OP mentioned are heritable, and so to a large extent come from the privilege of having [tall | intelligence | athletic | beautiful] parents. So privilege doesn't explain why you'd feel guilty about one and not about the rest.
If one was aware that the prosperity disparity is predominantly due to circumstance and if one had empathy for other fellow human beings. Then I think it would be a natural response to want to alleviate other's suffering by sharing some of their prosperity. You can call it guilt, or perhaps just empathy. The other heritable attributes can't be easily be shared.
Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you're a social animal in a social world, whose social action creates and modifies that world. Since you are a body, in an environment, with a psychology -- your actions have an effect upon the world. The invitation to dissociate and mute your social emotions is an invitation to keep everything as-it-is.
So if I'm fortunate and blessed with wealth, I should feel guilty and be vocal about my guilt. So I make my life worse off and that of the people around me. People with heavy burden of guilt are often insufferable. And this will somehow make the world better off? Notice these people making these arguments never argue for voluntary charitable giving which is actually encouraged by stoic philosophy as is promoting just…
If someone is blessed with wealth, they should only feel guilty if they don't use their blessing to fight for societal change to make things more just, if they achieved their wealth at the expense of others, or if their actions promote inequality.
Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you accept to be said? What would be good enough for you? Words are not magical, they are just sounds. In the most important situations in life and in death, words are simply lacking. We as humans haven't been gifted with neither a spoken nor a written language which can encompass all our feelings and meanings. Words cannot even come close. So people have to do with what they have. And you are in no positi…
> What would you accept to be said? What would be good enough for you? Words are not magical, they are just sounds. In the most important situations in life and in death, words are simply lacking. It's ok not to say anything. > And you are in no position to judge against somebody who means well. Oh yes I am. Having good intentions is not enough. I'm sure - in their own worldview - Hitler and Stalin and Mao had good i…
> it's said to comfort the one saying it
True.
Such utterances are offensive. But what of it?
My culture (WASP in USA) sucks when it comes to death and grieving. Denial of Death, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, blah blah blah.
The only advice that's helped me cope with other people is "It's not about you."
When someone tells me "They're in a better place" (or whatever), I just try to remember your point: they're trying to comfort themselves, process their own experience.
Re: Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
#320At the risk of blogposting, it's been truly shocking to me over the years to see the reaction people have to stoicism. I naturally found myself stumbling into stoic/CBT-adjacent mental practices after many years of a hard upbringing and it felt like such a natural and helpful truth to me. As someone else in the thread mentioned, the Serenity Prayer encapsulates this mentality well. Then I see the comments here and elsewhere about it being a slave mentality or somehow simultaneously a privilege of the wealthy! I've puzzled over how to square this circle for a long time, and I suspect it's related to some invisible but complex nuance between how different people interpret these experiences.
For me personally I find anger, anguish, lamentation, spite, etc. to be exhausting. I have let these feelings flow freely within myself during some parts of my life and it left me feeling like a husk. I could never relate to the way people say they let anger or spite fuel them, for whatever reason inside my heart they do nothing but siphon my fuel for their own ends. In this way I find stoicism extremely useful for keeping those fuel thieves away from my tank. If something happens that I did not expect, rather than raging at the circumstances, I consider what factors led them to occur and whether or not I could have prevented them. In the vast majority of cases it's never something I could have controlled and I pretty much instantly feel soothed, and if it was then I take it as a lesson to remember and move forward.
What I've gathered is that this approach does nothing for a lot of people and (to put it lightly) comes off as arrogant or dismissive. I assume that the step inbetween there that I mentioned, the part where I feel soothed, does not occur in some others. I can only guess why this is. Conversely my assumption is that those others don't experience that soothing moment and so they imagine I'm just stuffing my feelings down into a pit or that I'm preforming some fantastical Vulcan mindgame with myself where I erase my emotional response entirely.
I wish I had better insight into this difference. It seems to speak to some kind of interesting detail in the way humans interpret our experiences differently, but I feel like I don't even have the language to describe it.