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Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

Kind of a weird take. Marcus Aurelius' life, although that of an emperor, was filled with a lot of strife that he used philosophy to deal with. His stoic philosophies come from his early life, which saw the death of his father, and adoption by a series of people he didn't know, all the way to the death of both of his sons.

Marcus did achieve the title of emperor, but dismissing him because of his accomplishments, especially when stoicism was a key and integral part of his life along the way, is odd.

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Say, there are two types of people:

(1) a person who mostly experiences challenges at or just above their ability to solve them

(2) a person who mostly experiences challenges way above their ability to solve them (even plausibly so)

Stoicism, political conservatism, rugged individualists, etc. are just those in camp-1 unaware there's a camp-2.

(Likewise, social radicals are in camp-2, saying of 1, they're privileged as if that isnt desirable!. So both sides are superstitious about the other).

Just because one is an emperor does not mean they can suddenly solve any problem. This is precisely what Aurelius' writings [1] focus almost exclusively on. In spite of being the most powerful man in the world he found himself to be quite helpless in terms of actually improving the state of mankind which was his genuine motivation. As a peer comment mentioned, these writings were never meant to even be seen by anybody other than himself. They're effectively his diary.

He found himself not only largely unable to help better mankind, but could not even better his own son. Aurelius is generally regarded as one of the greatest leaders of humanity to have lived; his son (Commodus) - one of the worst. Father deified, son assassinated (to great celebration) and struck from all official record.

And it wasn't simply failure to achieve, but also failure of circumstance. He was surrounded by death which climaxed with a many years long plague that by some estimates killed more than 30% of the entire empire's population, including some of Aurelius' own immediate family.

[1] - http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.... # That book has a lengthy, and necessary, intro (well multiple actually) explaining stoicism and providing various historical context. Aurelius' writings themselves only begin on page 25 of the book, 59 of the PDF.

For much of Marcus' life he wasn't able to solve things though. In fact, that's what much of his philosophy talks about, and his (fairly open) history. Much of stoicism is focused around dealing with things you can't change, which also makes this take very odd.

That's not remotely true. Political conservatism and social radicalism demonstrably don't correlate with personal experience in that way: children adopt the beliefs of their parents (and/or peers).

Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

>Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

Can we put some numbers on this? A few offhand examples of "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" doesn't really support your claim.

You can easily put numbers on it, lots of polling data. But from your memory just look at how there are "red states" and "blue states" -- they clearly don't correspond to personal life trajectory in the way stated. Political attitudes very clearly reproduce as culture, like language.

I'm not giving examples just citing these popular phrases which exist to note the phenomenon.

This isn't my experience at all.

I think the main difference is disagreement on what constitutes a solvable problem and the value of trying.

Isnt it that most of the time you choose which camp you are in? If you study a subject you are apt for you are in camp 1, if you believe aptitude doesnt exist and you choose a different one you end up in camp 2.

If you just learned programming and apply to faang you are in camp 2, etc.

It is not a passive thing.

Viktor Frankl wrote _Man's Search for Meaning_ [0] about his experience in a Nazi concentration camp - something that he definitely didn't have the ability to 'solve on his own,' and developed a philosophy, logotherapy, that's pretty consistent with stoicism.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

Absurdly ignorant statement. One of the most potent inspirations for stoicism is mortality itself, which no one escapes.

Meditations is an important work to me, but it's absoltely valid critique to observe it was written by someone absolutely part of an elite, from birth. That does not diminish his setbacks, and it's an exercise for the reader to gain something from it, or not. But, like any pirce of advice, the scripture is biased and it's important to be aware of that.

So just like every other human being but without the power, money, social standing or connections. I love MA writings (Seneca too) but I dont take their personal lives as any example of fight against adversity. They are like boxing coaches who rarely if ever boxed, let alone being knocked down by a rival. Same with Mr Munger (his very real tragedies notwithstanding).

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