Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Self-help gets philosophical

thedriftmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 112 posts

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#51

Post by samdoesnothing »

sifar wrote: post #47
api wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It doesn't matter because the capacity to increase efficiency is virtually endless and we have a free source of power just 9 light-minutes away.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#52

Post by Barrin92 »

The problem with self-help "philosophy" in particular in the case of Stoicism — but also when it borrows piecemeal from Eastern traditions — is that it's completely divorced from its metaphysics.

Stoic ethics of 'living according to nature' was underpinned by an idea of a natural, rational cosmos (the "Logos") to which living up to is worth it. Nietzsche fairly devastatingly (expressed well in this comic[1]) pointed out that in an irrational and chaotic cosmos it's not the stoics living with nature, it's that the Stoics desperately attempt to project their own philosophy on the cosmos. A kind of psychological self-delusion and neutering.

And while most people who are fed up with self-help Stoics likely haven't read Nietzsche directly, I think they can intuitively smell that. The hollowness of self help gurus comes from trying to practice the ethics of a philosophy of antiquity without the metaphysics of antiquity that underpinned it. If you find yourself in a Lovecraftian universe living in accordance with nature does not sound so good any more and the Stoic self help guy seems more like a shoddy salesman.

[1]https://existentialcomics.com/comic/69

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#53

Post by twodave »

I believe an answer to this is just temperance. Finding balance can be difficult if you have lost it for a long time, but in general not letting things outside your ability to influence impact your overall psyche is a healthy choice. How do I know if something is out of balance in my life? Usually I know this because it’s negatively affecting how I treat others or dominating all of my conversations. Hysteria doesn’t actually solve anything, and in fact it will usually cause problems of its own.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#54

Post by walleeee »

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…

> 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

To some degree this is true, in the sense that human flourishing implies some degree of suffering for e.g. the ants we accidentally step on, animals we eat, bacteria in our guts, etc. But Jains do their best not to step on the ants, many people refuse to eat flesh, and so on. Plants and bacteria will have to fend for themselves for now. We can certainly do better with each other.

I am proposing no version of fatalism, besides the fact that, at least in our living substrate, organisms have not all learned to do each other no harm, if this is even possible, and even if it isn't, fatalistic hedonism is not the inevitable response to this fact.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#55

Post by digianarchist »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #24
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.

Accepting the things that you cannot change does not mean assume you cannot change things then accept it. It’s predicated on an accurate assessment of what you can and cannot change. In my view such acceptance is for optimizing application of effort by not wasting effort on things that actually cannot be changed. “Don’t go tilting at windmills”

A good point is made at the end of the article:

> But preemptive surrender is no sign of wisdom. Any reality made by human beings can be remade by them. The price of this power is mutual obligation: we can never let ourselves off the hook. The things we can accomplish together are, by definition, within our sphere of control, even if we have to act through structures that are bigger than any of us alone to achieve them.

Stoicism doesn't answer the question "what can and can't we control" and doesn't claim to. I think the modern neostoicism trend is to make the reader believe that they have little control over daily life, encouraging an almost narcissistic-nihilist response to ongoing events.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#56

Post by xbar »

sifar wrote: post #47
api wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Finite, but sufficiently abundant for any human to be clothed, housed, fed, taught, married, and succeeded by offspring as well-protected as they.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#57

Post by toomanyrichies »

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.

Genuine question as an American- why would niceness be off-putting? What would you prefer? I'm guessing neutrality or formality, as opposed to outright rudeness... is it because it feels too familiar, and a bit of arms-length distance is more your custom?

Again, genuinely curious as an outsider.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#58

Post by mikestew »

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.

Man, are you going to hate Canadians.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#59

Post by scruple »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #24
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.

Accepting the things that you cannot change does not mean assume you cannot change things then accept it. It’s predicated on an accurate assessment of what you can and cannot change. In my view such acceptance is for optimizing application of effort by not wasting effort on things that actually cannot be changed. “Don’t go tilting at windmills”

The Serenity Prayer has been around for about 100 years now. I find myself repeating it fairly often, especially now that I've got young children.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#60

Post by billforsternz »

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 disagree. I'm not American but I've travelled extensively around the world and in America. Niceness is widespread, it's not a particularly American thing. And it's always appreciated and positive, the alternative is miserable.
Post reply on HN