Hacker News Reader

Comment by Robotbeat | Hacker News Reader

See, this is why Stoicism just isn’t for me. This curbing of the positive (emotional attachment to friends and family) to make the negative less bad and more tolerable. Stoicism strikes me as a(n effective!) defense mechanism for folks with excruciatingly terrible lives, but honestly seems to take too much of the spice out of life for my tastes. I’m a very emotional person, and I’ve learned to embrace that.

View on HN

The point of stoicism is not curbing of positive emotions, rather accepting negative emotions as fundamental, unavoidable part of life. From personal experience, stoicism is what worked for me. It helped me deal with anxiety.

Reminding yourself that something negative can happen might strengthen your control over your emotions.

Stoicism has never stopped me at enjoying my life, in fact it made me enjoy my life more.

I have a situation with my girlfriend, she is always worried that she might lose me. I tell her I'm not afraid of losing her and she might think it is because she loves me more. But to me losing her was always a possibility due to my stoic mindset. It is not because I don't love her or appreciate time with her. I'm just at peace with possibility of something bad happening to me.

> “I’m just at peace with the possibility of something bad happening to me.”

I think this is the key thing to understand, as well as not worrying about things which are outside of your own control. If your own personal actions did not or will not be a factor in the outcome of something, whatever that something is, then it is pointless to worry or fret about it. Be concerned and happy about what is in your control!

The ancient stoics like Aurelius definitely seemed to be talking about curbing both the positive AND the negative emotions. I was surprised by this when I listened to the words of Aurelius.

Newer stoic philosophy may be different.

> Aurelius definitely seemed to be talking about curbing both the positive AND the negative emotions

I think you're right about this. But there's nothing to say you couldn't take the useful aspects of a particular philosophy and discard the rest. For example, Cato the Younger adopted the fortitude of stoic principles to filibuster the senate, though I believe he didn't behave in the manner of the stoics during his lifetime.

But, as you say, Aurelius was particularly proud of his ability to forgo pleasure, especially when it was readily available to him. I don't think this is at-all necessary to forgo pleasure in order to reduce one's own suffering. That a buddhist monk can sit still while being set alight seems to be strong evidence that pain can be assuaged by mind training alone.

Edit: I looked up self-immolation, and it turns out 'self-mummification' is a thing too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu

To remind yourself of your mortality when being embraced by a loved one serves to amplify the love and gratitude you experience, not to diminish it so that you’re less likely to be bummed when something bad happens. I'm afraid you have misunderstood Stoicism.

> they should remind themselves that they are mortal, curbing their pleasure

I dunno, your “amplify love” interpretation seems diametrically opposed to the “curb pleasure” writing of the stoic philosophers

Their idea of pleasure might've been drastically different from what is being proposed here.

The idea is that if you accept the fact that your loved ones may disappear at any time, you’ll appreciate them and love them more in the present. And when they do disappear, feeling that sadness is part of being human. The important thing is to accept that they’re gone, and not wallow in despair, as it’s something you can’t change.

> This curbing of the positive (emotional attachment to friends and family) to make the negative less bad and more tolerable.

I don't know enough about stoicism to defend it fully here, but it is similar to Buddhism in it's prescription of asceticism and tempering of emotions. So taking the Buddhist angle to 'attachments', the idea is not that you do not enjoy the pleasure of others, but you don't burden yourself with the attachment itself. That is, spend time with your loved ones and enjoy their company, but if they leave you tomorrow, avail yourself of your attachment to their presence, so that you can better live in their absence.

I think with stoicism, also, it's not about living a joyless existence, in order to dampen the painful moments, but to steel yourself to the reality that all things are impermanent. Keep in mind that many stoics, including Epictetus, Aurelius, and later, Seneca, lived in a bloody times. In particular, Nero ordered Seneca to kill himself, and by most accounts, he did so dispassionately. It's perhaps the character of these times that suicide is thought about differently between stoicism and Buddhism.

I think the idea is not to give up on your emotions and be an inanimate machine-like creature, but indeed to embrace your emotions, to be in a deeper cohesion with them.

"The power of attachment should be as strong as the power of detachment", which is of course a much harder task than just detaching from everything.

The ancient stoics definitely seem to be talking about tempering the positive as well as the negative emotions. I listened to Aurelius, and it seemed pretty clear that this is what he was referring to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com