Why Is Silicon Valley So Obsessed with the Virtue of Suffering?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
* Kevin Rose, Jack Dorsey and a couple of others are into this subculture. From there the author makes the sweeping claim that "Silicon Valley" loves it. Sampling bias, much?
* "Rank-and-file tech workers frequently have more than one Stoic text on their bookshelves." [Citation needed].
* "Stoics believed that everything in the universe is already perfect and that things that seem bad or unjust are secretly good underneath. The philosophy is handy if you already believe that the rich are meant to be rich and the poor meant to be poor." Fuck no. Stoicism about personal responsibility, about changing what you can and accepting what you can't. Marcus Aurelius asks why you think the world should be fair, he doesn't claim that it is fair.
A newspaper that publishes BS like this degrades itself.
After reading a lot of mainstream media article like this I'm starting to wonder whether stuff like this is entirely intentional. There is no intent to stimulate intellectual disclosure, just to evoke a reaction and get more clicks.
Regarding the meaning of Stoicism, I would argue that your definition is no closer than the one given in this flippant conversational piece article. Diogenes is one of the most famous Stoics and was known to live without almost anything: He was influential and capable, but intentionally eschewed almost everything, living in a drain pipe and drinking from his hands. He forced "suffering" upon himself, as in many of the examples given. Intentionally pursuing suffering, or creating need, is a principal element of virtually every interpretation of Stoicism, rather than some AAA-sort of acceptance of what you cannot change.
And I totally subscribe to that philosophy (the convenient subset of Stoicism, which much like Buddhism we tend to pick and choose from), as an aside. Our psychological unpinnings make existence suffering, in a sense, because it will always tune to the baseline being mediocre. Intermix suffering, however, and suddenly the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Being cold and uncomfortable makes sitting by a fire and drinking a hot drink magical. Periods of fasting can make a meal, any meal, the best, most enjoyable meal you've ever had. Etc.
Christianity on the other hand is all about virtue in suffering, perhaps best communicated by the anecdote of Christ having the opportunity to avoid suffering on the cross, but refusing that opportunity. (There is a great deal to be said about how Christianity finds virtue in suffering, enough to fill books, but this singular example is perhaps the most vivid, and maybe even the root of it.)
The confusion may arise because Christians have often voiced some tentative respect for Stoicism, but they in fact have very different approaches to suffering.
Your comment made me imagine a parody article where suddenly Christianity is really popular in SV and the author lambasts techies for their love of suffering, their cynical beliefs that all people are born sinners, their belief in an all-mighty-all-powerful lord to whom you must submit to be saved, etc etc. It'd be pretty funny.
The purpose was virtuous, and consequently so was resisting the temptation to abandon it because of the suffering, but suffering in and of itself is not virtuous.
As a ex-christian it seems distasteful for me to start quoting scripture, but I can if you demand it. There is ample scriptural evidence for Christians believing there is virtue in suffering, and ample historic evidence of Christians acting in accordance to this belief.
It's a pretty straight forward element of Christianity: Christ suffered, therefore you can bring yourself closer to him by doing the same.
Some Christians took it even further and sought out martyrdom to get closer to Christ or ensure themselves a place in heaven.
Even now, there are people (in Brazil, if I'm not mistaken) who crucify themselves for similar reasons.
Not exactly stoic.
Determining what you can and can't change is an (almost) impossible task on its own. The way you describe Stoicism can be used to persuade a person that their status is unchangeable and that it should be accepted as "part of Nature's plan".
What? No it's not. You can't change the weather, you can't bring the dead back to life, you can't force other people to think a certain way.
You can control your own thoughts and actions. These things seem very obvious to me. What is difficult about this?
Clearly it's not that obvious, because all of your examples are wrong in some sense. Weather can be changed, medically dead people are brought back to life and people can most certainly be manipulated.
On the other hand, some people can't control their own thoughts and actions.
With that said, is it perhaps possible that stoicism when properly understood might encourage people to find what they can change and how they can change it? And might it also, perhaps, be possible that any philosophy can be abused by bad actors? Some might contend that these two points taken together argue for education.
Wot? I have absolutely no problem doing that.
A lot of people are criticizing it here. There is a bit of condescension in the tone of the criticism. It was not hard to search for the author (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bowles) and find that she graduated magna cum laude from Columbia and was a Fulbright Fellow. That certainly doesn't mean she's correct about anything, but I think that casual dismissal of the article is a bit lazy.
On a personal basis, it seems worth looking at how certain intellectual trends propagate through certain SV populations. Neotrophics/microdosing, Burning Man, and Stoicism are examples off the top of my head. In particular, it feels like the general point of the "Why are they attracted to Stoicism" section isn't completely incorrect. It is definitely a topic worthy of a longer form exploration.
Not being from the US I don't fully grasp what these things are (is Columbia Ivy League?) but all knowing this does for me is make me conclude these qualifications don't seem to mean very much and may even be anti-correlated with intelligence - the author seems to be very sure she's making some deep social comment with this piece, but she isn't.
I'm not exactly an expert on Stoicism, but even I knew it's not about pointlessly imposing suffering on yourself: it's about caring about what you can change or improve and accepting the rest.
Please keep in mind the SV populations sensationalized in articles such as this represent maybe 1-2% of the people in SV. Everyone else is simply trying to support their families and raise their kids the best they know how - pretty much exactly what the rest of America does.
The early Stoics also opposed wealth inequality: they held that we should be "like a flock feeding together with equal right in one common pasture."
Sources: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/L... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Zeno)
The philosophy is handy if you already believe that the rich are meant to be rich and the poor meant to be poor.
Kind of how the "prosperity gospel" is a very convenient form of Christianity to have if you're wealthy, even though it seems in opposition to the general interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. You can't blame Jesus for people thinking their wealth is sanctioned by God just because people adhere to the prosperity gospel.
But if you want to really know what Stoicism is really about, here are some links
An introduction, Stoicism 101: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seLLJP3H1FU&t=201s
A pod cast https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations
> Many of us try to justify our privileges by pretending that our superb tastes and intellect prove we deserve them, reflecting our inner superiority. Those below us economically, the reasoning goes, don’t appreciate what we do; similarly, they couldn’t fill our jobs, handle our wealth or survive our difficulties. Of course this is a terrible lie.[1]
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/books/review/Greif-t.html
Recognize it for what it is, a pseudo intellectual means of control for a group that would be largely unmoved by more common religious, or social structures. It’s also a coping mechanism for people working jobs they hate in a place they can’t really afford, while surrounded by the lottery winners of their field.
The author must really hate walking if she thinks it's an example of stoicism.
Much, much more likely it's to give him thinking space outside the office (a.k.a. the place where deep thought goes to die).
I've often walked to work and back in my career, including in times when it's cold and slightly rainy. Typical walking commute: about an hour each way. I've done some of my best work during these walks. It had nothing to do with Stoicism or being some sort of Valley-esque "elite", it's simply too hard to spend time in an office staring in silence at the wall without being interrupted or feeling weird. Plus walking gets the blood moving through the brain.
[32] But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing of a pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
[33] On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse.
Many, if not most, Silicon Valley innovations over the past ten years have led directly to human suffering and misery. Facebook has inflicted widespread psychological damage to humanity's self-worth. Loot boxes introduced gambling to young children. YouTube recommendations promote racist and fascist content to adults and machine-generated content to children.
I don't agree that this is a correct implementation of Stoicism, but from the decade I lived in SFbay, the following accurately models how I have seen many tech founders warp Stoicism into a way to avoid confronting their immoral behavior:
Step 1: Have an idea that's profitable, at the cost of inflicting suffering on others.
Step 2: Inflict that suffering, while twisting Stoicism to make "suffering" seem a virtue.
Step 3: Profit from the results of your now-virtuous efforts, free of moral consequences from the 'virtue' you inflicted.
Interesting theory though, that a simplistic caricature of Stoicism is invoked to justify immoral behaviour. Pity the article didn't seriously investigate that.
As opposed to:
"I should try to change the outcome of self-worth destruction from my billion-dollar idea, even if I think I can't or it might cost me my wealth."
Again, I am not saying that this is Stoicism. This is the misuse of Stoic principles, by declaring that wealth-generating activities as "things that can't change" and then applying Stoicism to bear the burden of the resulting harm that they "can't change".
Second, I see the necessity for concerted (political) action to right societal ills; I wonder what Stoicism has to say about that. Many Stoics were in politics or academia, so it does not strike me as an isolationist position.
Is this really true? Were Epicureanism or middle Platonism really adverse to being wealthy and powerful? I haven't gotten that impression.
[1] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/epictetus/the-enchiridion/...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus#cite_note-simpl1-11
NYT reading level keeps plummeting every year to new bottoms.
That said, I am not sure that Stoicism was particularly rich-friendly, nor that it was necessarily more successful than its competitors.
I do feel like the walls are starting to fall. The friendly attitude is dropping and we're starting to see through the fake promises and platitudes.
We have startups that claim they are housing the poor or cleaning drinking water for people in Africa, and time and again someone investigates the truth and things fall apart. In the end we find out those were all sales tactics. Maybe even believed by the people selling them, but in the end it HAS to somewhat fit into some exact money making puzzle. It doesn't matter if the REST of the corporation they are building is robotizing jobs and getting rid of employees (hey they are freeing the burdens of people - who cares if they can't afford the house anymore).
Then comes in Basic Income. And there is no effort from Google or Facebook to foot the bill either - they're merely doing the cheap thing - lobbying - to have our taxes pay for it. These are all showmanship efforts to justify the rest.
What is worse is that each of these companies is like a magnet with Good [ --- ] Bad poles. ALL of the Bad on the right is justified by some platitude connected to the Good. The goal is to simply hide the bad.
So if stoicism is part of all of it, I think that's just another self-lie. I do think that people are good, in general, but in modern society we have made justification part of the mental process. The first step in creating your company is to convince yourself that you're doing good. Then you can turn on the steam roller.
I guess see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19492813
"Stoics believed that everything in the universe is already perfect and that things that seem bad or unjust are secretly good underneath. The philosophy is handy if you already believe that the rich are meant to be rich and the poor meant to be poor."
But here are some of the things Seneca, one of the greatest of Stoics, said on the matter of wealth:
"Would you rather have much, or enough? He who has much desires more - a proof that he has not yet acquired enough; but he who has enough has attained that which never fell to the rich man's lot - a stopping-point."
"Money never made a man rich; on the contrary, it always smites men with a greater craving for itself."
"we must spurn wealth: wealth is the diploma of slavery"
"Why of your own accord postpone your real life to the distant future? Shall you wait for some interest to fall due, or for some income on your merchandise, or for a place in the will of some wealthy old man, when you can be rich here and now. Wisdom offers wealth in ready money, and pays it over to those in whose eyes she has made wealth superfluous."
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
"What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbour's property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come? Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough."
Quoting Epicurus:
"Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the whole world."
Though I suppose "Why [is this non-representative subset of] Silicon Valley So Obsessed with the Virtue of Suffering?" is less catchy.
Stoicism- is to have the dignity of not beeing a slave of ones own emotions, in happiness as in suffering.
The idea that stoicism calls on people to ignore all the social wrongs of the world is a malignment of the philosophy. It's not fatalistic, nor is it isolationist. Somebody who is a stoic acts to improve the world when it's possible.
I do think there is something to the article. What do you do when you've been raised with progressive liberal values that rail against inequality but then find yourself wildly rich? How do you feel good about yourself while knowing you have access to power and privilege almost no one else does?
One option is to plow a lot of that money back into programs to help increase the prosperity of everyone. But then you end up poorer and who wants that?
A simpler approach is to find some symbolic hair shirt you can wear, a little token suffering, as a way to assuage your guilt without making any real sacrifices. Of course, the irony is that the only reason these people do any of this "opt-in suffering" is because they are secure in the knowledge that they can stop it whenever they want.
Dorsey's contemplative long walk is a lot less fun when it's your only way to get to work, and Rose's cold shower loses some of its charm when it's because the power's been cut off.
Other HN commenters have suggested that the discrepancies between the behaviors described in the article and Stoicism are the result of techies corrupting Stoicism, but I think an alternative hypothesis should be considered: that the author has corrupted Stoicism in order to create a palatable narrative.
I don't think the author is off-base for claiming it's a thing in SV.
generally when I find myself on the NYT website getting a sense of general annoyance, I look up and see that I'm reading a Style article, and then just relax and don't take it too seriously.