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Comment by silveroriole | Hacker News Reader

I don’t really subscribe to stoicism (and a lot, but not all, of mindfulness and CBT) for precisely this reason: it seems to me to be telling people that it doesn’t matter if their needs aren’t being met, the real problem is that they have any needs. If it helps you personally, that’s great! But to me stoicism texts often feel like they’re written by some dismissive parent, the kind who would just tell you “only the boring get bored” instead of playing with you when you were a kid :)

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To me stoicism is helpful in the sense of the advice one gets in jujitsu: If taking one grip on something isn't getting you the leverage you want, don't grip it harder, let go and take a different grip.

Stoicism can't help if you're just getting traumatized, but a lot of "I feel awful about the world generally" sentiment boils down to having a tense grip on one's worldview, a rigid set of norms leading to the judgment that it is all wrong and terrible and thus to a kind of flagellatory self-harm. Nature as a whole, on the other hand, is indifferent - the "is" instead of the "ought". We learn many oughts when we're young, but they all deserve examination.

Stoicism and the Art of Jiu Jitsu.

This is one of the best comments I’ve ever read on HN.

It's interesting that you say that. Bertrand Russell writes in "The History of Western Philosphy" that the backdrop against which Stoicism (and Epicureanism for that matter) first flourished was a Greek civilization in decline. Life was becoming harder and harder for a majority of people, so people sought refuge in these two philosophies.

Hmm I think I wasn't clear enough with "Stoicism and tangential philosophies". I didn't mean to imply any one philosophy is necessarily a definitive prescription. Rather, they include various good ideas that should be borrowed and amalgamated into a composite that best fits the individual.

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