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Self-help gets philosophical

thedriftmag.com

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Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#41

Post by forgetfulness »

diego_sandoval wrote: post #32
maCDzP wrote: post #10

I used to think stoicism was great. But now I think that it’s not so great. In retrospect I should have focused on changing my situation in stead of learning to live with it. Compared to Aurelius - I am not living around 0 bc - in today’s world I can change a lot of things.

> In retrospect I should have focused on changing my situation in stead of learning to live with it. 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.

Does it give you tools to change what you can change, though?

I’ll be reading “Meditations” soon enough, but emphasis on the means to accept things you are helpless about, and not the opposite, can lead to learned helplessness.

If young people take up on these ideas, they just can’t know better at their stage in life, one where they can be, for the most part, helpless.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#42

Post by unpopularopp »

HEmanZ wrote: post #40
zkmon wrote: post #35

Books are same as TV shows - more about sounding weird to catch the fish (audience). I don't read any of those self-help books or seemingly philosophical notes. The Western world has invented too much of self-awareness and social reflection. People smile too much, smile at strangers, worry about social acceptance, worry about self, go crazy about all thing cosmetic in life and at work. You don't need to think too muc…

“ People smile too much, smile at strangers…” How dare they.

If you are american you'll probably never notice how off-putting is the american niceness. And it's not natural if you ever traveled and seen the world a little bit.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#43

Post by sifar »

robot-wrangler wrote: post #14

> the idea that nothing matters has gained significant purchase An example of an increasingly popular trend that conflates what I'd call "value nihilism" with "action/effort nihilism". There's a huge difference. Value-nihilism is kind of soul-sickness that's probably super rare in the general population and usually comorbid with stuff like dark triad or clinical depression. Action/effort nihilism, or the POV that not…

I think people stop at nothing matters or there is no meaning. So either one can be depressed about it or if one takes a step further, if nothing matters/things don't have a meaning, great, then I can focus on stuff that matters to me, gives meaning to me and people around me at large.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#44

Post by zkmon »

digianarchist wrote: post #18

I have a particular disdain for the profanity-laden slop that is works penned by Mark Manson. He's not alone as most "self-help" books are trash reads that only serve as some form of cathartic release to their readers. That's not to say all books in the genre are useless. I have recommended Cal Newport's works before but they very much suffer from "this 300 page book could have been a blog post" levels of verbosity.

The need to sell, forces one to be as weird and vulgar as possible. Most books are selling focused. Selling has spoiled many art forms. The extreme antics you see on stage for a music show has nothing to do with music either.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#45

Post by Razengan »

maCDzP wrote: post #10

I used to think stoicism was great. But now I think that it’s not so great. In retrospect I should have focused on changing my situation in stead of learning to live with it. Compared to Aurelius - I am not living around 0 bc - in today’s world I can change a lot of things.

Yeah, after a lifetime of internal prompting I settled on "worry about shit you can do shit about"

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#46

Post by AaronAPU »

unpopularopp wrote: post #42
HEmanZ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ People smile too much, smile at strangers…” How dare they.

If you are american you'll probably never notice how off-putting is the american niceness. And it's not natural if you ever traveled and seen the world a little bit.

Cool, stay in your other country and I’ll keep smiling with my fellow Americans.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#47

Post by sifar »

api wrote: post #34
walleeee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The life possible in San Francisco is possible in large part because of the entropy it externalizes to "somewhere else", a place many in SF and the US more generally prefer to ignore, and which includes Bangladesh, alongside as much of the "global south" as can be coerced into lopsided agreements, and much more generally the possible futures available to humankind. Cell membranes externalize entropy in the same way,…

> The life possible in San Francisco is possible in large part because of the entropy it externalizes to "somewhere else" 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 redis…

>> The world in this view is a finite pie

But it is. The physical world is finite, with finite resources, human greed not so.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#48

Post by HEmanZ »

unpopularopp wrote: post #42
HEmanZ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ People smile too much, smile at strangers…” How dare they.

If you are american you'll probably never notice how off-putting is the american niceness. And it's not natural if you ever traveled and seen the world a little bit.

I’ve travelled and lived abroad extensively and I’d say American niceness goes over well in 90% of the world. And where it doesn’t, boo hoo, they can handle a smile.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#49

Post by Noumenon72 »

renewiltord wrote: post #17

Life’s pretty good, guys. It’s been good when I was a little child playing in the mud. It was good when I was on my one hour ride to school. It was good when I first cut my flesh to the bone and watched my dad sew it up. It was good when a girl I had a crush on didn’t feel that way about me. It was good when I nearly failed Algebraic Geometry because I didn’t have what it took. It was good when I almost didn’t get an…

It's nice of evolution to imbue some people with these false views. I hope your kids inherit the earth so people with more realistic outlooks don't have to be born and suffer through it.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#50

Post by zahlman »

monkmartinez wrote: post #38

Why so political? 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 i…

> Subtract the politics from TFA and it is really, really good.

I thought it was far too many words to express the core ideas, although perhaps there is value in taking that time to meditate on them. I suspect that an introduction like this is second nature to the author, though. The expressed views presumably play well to the author's intended audience, and among those who spend lots of time bashing the POTUS (whichever group, and whichever POTUS, at the time of bashing), it seems to be largely a form of socialization. In this specific case, the author clearly knows a lot of uncommon trivia about Trump, and was furthermore able to segue from that trivia into the main point, demonstrating linguistic skill.

Which creates at least two layers of irony:

1. (probably intentional, I think) Despite the distraction and effort, this shows a way in which the fact of Trump's political career has benefited the author.

2. (probably unintentional, I think) In a piece nominally about the virtue of apathy and the author's experience with that, the author comes across as compulsively seeking approval and commiseration.

(Once I'd gotten through the intro and understood the general topic, I ended up glossing over the rest, so on an initial read I completely missed the bit about healthcare. Another irony, perhaps, if the communication of that idea was actually a sincere and primary goal?)

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