The Varieties of Bad Stoicism

It's definitely the case these days that Stoicism is being adopted in a consumer self-help context, and shorthanded to "masculine virtue", i.e. tough guys and winners are Stoics. And this favors putting Meditations on your shelf for show and ignoring the other Stoic writers, so as to center Stoicism as a "philosophy of kings." The last time I visited a Barnes and Noble, they had six different printings of Meditations, and one of Enchiridion.

But that's not really a bad thing. The point isn't to read all the writers and think "now I am a Stoic". To actually apply virtue ethics you always have to do some meditations of your own and construct a right way of acting for the time and place. Simply saying to others "I followed the book" like it's a homework assignment doesn't cause that kind of change, and that's going to be the majority of people anywhere, anytime in history.

In this post and the comic it links to there is an awful lot of beating around the bush about who precisely the people are that are grifting stoicism in the variety of ways presented. Why not name names? Does anyone know who they are talking about?

I looked up the "bomber pilot in Vietnam who kept a copy of Epictetus in the plane" and it appears to be James Stockdale who was apparently a prisoner of war on Vietnam for many years -- which actually does sound like a situation Stoic philosophy would be useful in. Very different than the strawman presented in the comic: "I always carry a copy of Epictetus's work while I'm bombing villages, so I can use his wisdom to make their screams not affect me".

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control." -- Epictetus

In 2023, I think we can achieve a level of control that's incomprehensible to Epictetus. The goal is to maximize equanimity, freedom, and control over one's time/destiny. Money can get you quite far on that path. I sometimes feel that Massimo's just bitter at the success of people like Ryan Holiday (who just took Massimo's work and "packaged" it).

P.S. Warmly recommend this lecture about Marcus Aurelius (a classic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auuk1y4DRgk

The “bad stoicism “ examples are indeed “bad”. They are in fact completely antithetical to the stoic ethos.

The “bad” in actual stoicism lies in a common misinterpretation of classical stoic works as a result of missing context.

The context is that Epictetus et al wrote those works in a time when people were normally ruled by “passions” and did not live under the same expectation of self control and rational action that is expected (rightly or not) of the average person in the modern day.

This contextual disparity leads some people to think that stoicism means to completely abandon emotion and emotional self care. This is not only untrue, it can be deeply harmful.

Classical stoic works need to be read within the passionate context within which they were written to be properly understood.

This too shall pass. It’s the latest diet. Won’t work with everyone and critical thinking is still king. You shouldn’t believe everything you read/see/hear, even this very comment.

OK, but somebody kindly help me with some resources that teach me 'Good Stoicism'?

Stoicism is very different to what became Christian machoism in the Euro Atlantic