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Comment by tsunamifury | Hacker News Reader

Stoicism was a mentality created (popularized) by an emperor and adopted by a people who lived in a cruel and domineering world.

Life could be short and mean and you had to deal with that. To rule Rome you had to be ruthless and deadly, and feel little guilt about it.

These days stoicism is rebranded in a way I find very unhealthy. It’s a thinly veiled excuse for self centered sociopathy rather than an embrace of the natural rhythms of the world and what is in and not in your control. It has become either an excuse to give up one’s individuality in a system or to imagine it empowers you in some “sigma” way to conquer it.

I wish more people would study it in its context, a philosophy for a cruel and bitter world — something many of us do not live in today.

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> Stoicism was a mentality created by an emperor

No it wasn't. Stoicism was centuries old by the time of Aurelius.

"Stoicism originated as a Hellenistic philosophy, founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium (modern day Cyprus), c. 300 B.C.E. It was influenced by Socrates and the Cynics, "

https://iep.utm.edu/stoicism/

> a cruel and bitter world — something many of us do not live in today.

I really don't agree with that. We've solved many problems of the past, we've created many comforts, and we've created many accommodating structures, but we're mostly still at the mercy of forces greater than ourselves which can drive us into poverty/misery if we're not careful/able-bodied/lucky (and that's using "we" to mean middle+ class people in developed nations, which are a minority on Earth). We are also staring down numerous catastrophic futures, with hope for our children to live comfortably rapidly dwindling.

It’s been proven over and over that less people live in poverty and starvation than any other era of human history. To Claim otherwise is not supported by the data.

However we have excelled at amplifying our remaining narrative of misery, warranted or not.

> It’s been proven over and over that less people live in poverty and starvation than any other era of human history. To Claim otherwise is not supported by the data.

Great, but that's not a claim either of us made.

> However we have excelled at amplifying our remaining narrative of misery

This claim is not supported by the data. Ancient people wrote some miserable literature.

> something many of us do not live in today.

As a good portion of the US population is self-sorting into two warring tribes, both bent on screwing each other over by passing laws whose sole purpose is to harass the other tribe and obstruct their ability to live the life they choose. Not to mention folks in other countries caught in wars they didn't ask to be a part of.

There's plenty of "cruel and domineering" to go around these days, and plenty of people who probably feel they have little to no ability to stop someone else from forcing their preferences on them.

> both bent on screwing each other over by passing laws whose sole purpose is to harass the other tribe and obstruct their ability to live the life they choose.

both tribes are doing this? What laws are the Democrats passing that are specifically targeted at the Republican demographic? especially with the goal of harassing them?

Yes, and this is in painful contrast to their natural world, which broadly now takes care of their food, shelter and peaceful living needs. At least compared to previous eras.

This asks a harder new question I believe stocism is not helpful in addressing.

It is quite humorous that people have taken up a philosophy premised on resigning to yourself that no better world is possible, when the world devised by its adherents has been overthrown countless times over by people who did not believe that, resulting in the more just and equitable one we now inhabit.

That is not at all what Stoicism is about. I think Stoicism would be most succinctly described as the appreciation that you cannot control what happens to you, but you can control, with no mean effort, how you let it affect you. And that the greatest virtue in life is to be gained by living a life of ethics. There were metaphysical aspects to Stoicism as well, but I think few people adopt those now a days, and that's neither here nor there anyhow.

A couple of Stoics involved in politics you may be interested in are Cato the Younger [1] and, of course, Marcus Aurelius. [2] Suffice to say that if our political class today was comprised of men with even a fraction of either of these men's character, the world would be an exponentially better place for everybody.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_the_Younger

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius

> I think Stoicism would be most succinctly described as the appreciation that you cannot control what happens to you, but you can control, with no mean effort, how you let it affect you.

Which is why it was upheld by people administering the slave empires, and rejected by those who ultimately opposed and overthrew them. It justifies existing hierarchies and domination as natural vs. arising from systems which can be fundamentally changed.

This neomodern take where everything has to be distilled into some black and white political view is not very applicable to reality in general, and even less so here. Stoicism a philosophical and worldview, not a political one. There were, and are, Stoics in all walks of life.

Various individuals, in modern Western history, that have held Aurelius' meditations in extremely high esteem range from the person who coined the term collective bargaining, to Bill Clinton, to an Army general. [1] Among countless others. Of course holding that book in high esteem is not the same as being a Stoic, but on the other hand I don't think it's terribly far from it. The book would be quite a pointless source of inspiration for one who wasn't endeavoring to integrate Stoic ideals into their life. Stoicism is what one makes of it - it's not like you get a member card, and manuscript of dogma and taboo.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations#Reception

> Which is why it was upheld by people administering the slave empires, and rejected by those who ultimately opposed and overthrew them.

Stoicism was not rejected past Antiquity, it was a major influence on later Christian philosophy. Also one of our foremost sources on Greek Stoicism was literally a slave.

I think people are getting hung up on the wrong things.. stoicism advocates for either actually changing/controlling the thing, or not worrying about it.

More often than not, people are caught in the in-between where the spend absurd amount of time worrying about a specific problem but are unwilling/unable to take the action to resolve that issue.

The other side of that is that sometimes things happen to you for which you have no control. An inoperable brain tumor, the weight of the death of a friend, your company going under, etc. in those moments, all you can ask for is to handle those situations with grace, virtue, and reason. And how you handle those situations (those uncontrollable ones) is completely on you.

(Anecdotally, a friend of mine, who identifies as an adherent to stoic philosophy just organized his workplace and lead the unionization effort! He felt like he had the tools and power to help organize and make the changes in his work place! we told him that it was impossible/improbable and he's proved us all wrong.)

Be the change you want to see in the world.

> philosophy premised on resigning to yourself that no better world is possible.

I think this is a misunderstanding. Stoicism isn't about passivity or resignation but rather about proactive engagement with the world, guided by virtue and rationality.

If you have the means to change or shape the world, then do so...If you have the means to inspire people to change the world, then by god, do so....

There's plenty of examples throughout history of just that.

for example, Cato the Younger, a Stoic, vehemently opposed Caesar believing him to be a a threat to the then fragile Roman Republic. He stood against Caesar's rise to power, even to the point of his tragic end, and became a bit of a martyr in that regard.

Seneca the Younger, advised Emperor Nero (infamous madman) and tried to moderate Nero's rule with Stoic principles. Somewhat unsuccessfully, but he did try.

A more modern example in George Washington, whose infamous demeanor was key in guiding the United States during its formative years, including the U.S. Revolutionary War and as the First President of that fledgling republic.

Stoicism isn't a philosophy of resignation, Stoicism should be seen as a framework to navigate life's complexities with wisdom, reason, and virtue.

You seem to fundamentally misunderstand stoicism. The idea is not to be passive but to understand the difference between what is and isn’t in our control.

One of Marcus Aurelius’ most famous quotes actually encourages action:

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

This is itself a meaningless appeal that can be used to justify any behavior, absent a concrete example or definition of the good.

Yes, obviously. It's meant to be consumed in context of knowing what good is. If you're lacking that context, don't use that single quote to guide your life choices.

..or you could read Meditations where Aurelius does explain what it is to be a good man.

I’ve read it and found it to be sanctimonious apologia for the exercise of violent domination. Epictetus is more tolerable. The better example is the Buddhist tradition, where a figure of comparable authority to Aurelius abandoned power in pursuit of monasticism and universal respect for all life.

That more just and equitable world is mainly an illusion created by cheap fossil fuels. Soon enough it will collapse, and there's not much ordinary people can do about it. Stoicism can at least help with accepting the inevitable.

Cheap fossil fuels AND an economic environment where developing countries have a median standard of living an order of magnitude lower than developed countries. If 80% of the world lived in roughly the same tax bracket, then a pair of wool socks would be like $100, not $10.

This is an excellent point that people seem to constantly ignore. Stoicism, for all its helpful disciplines, has been countered by a reality where changes have taken place by people who dared to think otherwise and hold on to romantic ideals.

Some would say the 4 stoic virtues are romantic ideals ;)

Can you provide an example ?

Christianity’s impact on the Roman Empire, quite famously and for starters.

Did Christianity usher in a more just and equitable world? After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, Europe trudged through the middle ages until the Renaissance in the 15th century.

Yes, by eroding the archaic notions of heroism and virtue, premised on destruction of the weak and the other. See Rene Girard.

I think that millions of non-Christians over the centuries would have a different perspective than Rene Girard.

Your comment was about the impact of Christianity on the Roman Empire and in Europe, so that’s irrelevant, but Girard’s argument is also not about individual adherence to the ideology. Instead, it’s about the destruction of archaic virtue, premised on scapegoating and mythologized violence, as a result of Christianity. Modernity was premised on this, as identified by Nietzsche and others.

Oh sure, the experience of millions of non-Christians is irrelevant, of course.

Is Girard saying that Christianity destroyed scapegoating and mythologized violence? Or simply archaic virtue? Because I can think of loads of scapegoating all over the Eurasian landmass, from 300 years of the Spanish Inquisition, to pogroms ordered by the Tsars, the Bolsheviks, the Cossacks, and the White Army.

Since you’re arguing from a very dishonest place and intentionally misrepresenting what I said, I really shouldn’t bother engaging with you, but:

Despite his later religious appeals, Girard’s original argument is more anthropological with regard to the emergence of various monotheistic traditions. Archaic virtues and religions were about hiding the nature of sacrilized violence, specifically the fact that the victim/scapegoat had no real power to dispel whatever crisis predicated their victimization. This becomes fully exposed for the first time in the Christian mythos, but had orthodox and heterodox precedents in almost every world religion,and especially Judaism, as Girard’s work itself engages with. Overtime, the effect of this mythos is to undermine the efficacy of sacrificial logics, such that we now, in modern society, more often than not, identify with the victims vs. the victimizers. This is a complete inversion of the archaic social order, as Nietzsche railed against in his notion of Dionysus vs. the Crucified. The impact of the Christian mythos obviously also extends into other world religions (e.g. Islam and its two billion adherents, where the Christ figure also holds special status) as well as into various secular moral philosophies that derive their origins from Abrahamic traditions.

I'm not arguing from a dishonest place. I'm asking how this philosophy of history relates to actual historical events. We live in a world where modern governments routinely use concentration camps and genocide to consolidate power, and erase ethnic and racial minorities. I'm trying to square what you're saying with all of that. It doesn't seem to me like we're identifying with victims vs. victimizers any better than Marcus Aurelius would have.

The fact that you see things through the lens of the persecuted and not the persecutor, recoil at the injustice of violence done to those without power, is precisely the change I’m describing. This was not Aurelius’ view, nor one that would have much purchase in the ancient world.

Christianity gave us a world without heroism and virtue?

Christianity stopped us from destroying the weak and the other?

It's weird then how the western Christian world has retained all of those negative traits for almost two millennia.

>Christianity gave us a world without heroism and virtue?

Without archaic notions of heroism and virtue, as Nietzsche railed against in the concept of “slave morality” overtaking this cultural order.

>Christianity stopped us from destroying the weak and the other? It's weird then how the western Christian world has retained all of those negative traits for almost two millennia.

Relatively speaking, yes. Historically, all of Europe was murderously at each others throats, or more recently, the idea of colonialism being morally repugnant would’ve been laughable (as was true in its archaic, imperial analogues). Of course, we have not entirely shed ourselves of these notions, but their power is much diminished to centuries past.

> It’s a thinly veiled excuse for self centered sociopathy

Can you expand on or support this claim? This was not my takeaway at all.

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