Comment by Renaud | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Renaud | Hacker News Reader

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Stoicism is a personal philosophy. It doesn't concern itself with the whole of human kind but with you. That much is clear in that stoicism advise you against the temptation for fame, power, money, vice.

It's a philosophy that embraces fatalism and keep you on the path of finding your nature and then keeping on that path, just being yourself, without regards for external influences.

The notion of duty is however very strong in stoicism: social duty is part of your nature. You have to accept your obligations and perform them the best you can, without search for external rewards.

All in all, stoicism is a search for personal tranquillity, inner peace. It's not even a philosophy of efficiency, at least I've never seen it described as such.

Stoicism doesn't rely on "tools" either. You can be a milkman and still adopt stoicism as your personal philosophy of life.

Duty is a very big part of stoicism: it acknowledges that we live in a social world and that our nature, our role, requires that we perform our duties to the best of our abilities. This is the only way to achieve some sort of peace, by removing the fact that you need something eternal to yourself to find satisfaction about what you do.

So, you can be a janitor, collect rubbish, be a developer, a manager, an office worker, a CEO, it doesn't matter. You'll only achieve peace if you find your own way to derive satisfaction in whatever fortune you find yourself in at a given instant. In short: accept what fate threw at you, don't sweat what you can't control, and learn to make the best of it.

I'd say it's a perfect philosophy for today.

> accept what fate threw at you, don't sweat what you can't control, and learn to make the best of it.

Yes, that's what drew me in at first too. But the details seem sketchy.

> It's not even a philosophy of efficiency

I believe that ultimately it is.

What is the point of giving up on deriving happiness from external sources, if not to make the path to happiness a shorter and easier one? What is the point of not worrying about things outside your control, if not to help focus your efforts on the things you can actually impact? What is the point of tranquility, if not to allow for more concious rational thought? How is that not efficiency?

> you can be a janitor, collect rubbish, be a developer, a manager, an office worker, a CEO, it doesn't matter

By being a "tool" I didn't mean someone engaging in menial jobs. One can have a prestigeous well-paid job, and still be bored to death, because his heart isn't in it, or because tasks are perceived as too repetitive or too petty. (I hope I'm not offending anyone by saying this, but just think of e.g. divorce lawyers if you need an example.) Yet at the same time that individual might be, because fate saw fit that way, the perfect person for that particular job in a given society.

How can one both accept the fate (or duty?) he was dealt (or that his younger self chose for him), and at the same time still stop wasting his life? How can one find meaning in a process, that over the years has evolved to become devoid of meaning, because ultimately that's what is necessary for it to achieve peak efficiency? E.g. Like lawyers and doctors detaching themselves from their clients and patients, because they'll burn out otherwise. (Again, no offense intended, this is just the first thing to come to mind.)

> Stoicism is a personal philosophy. It doesn't concern itself with the whole of human kind but with you.

That doesn't invalidate any of my original points. The market economy benefits the majority of it's participants. I.e., someone feeling like a tool, wouldn't just quit because of some overall concern for society, but simply because he's still wasting less time this way.

Another concern also is that if we advocate to some broader public to adopt some "new" philosohpy, I think it's a prerequisite that that philosphy be one that ensures the wellbeing of a society as a whole. Otherwise it might prove difficult to engender support.

(By "new" I mean currently unknown/unpopular amongst that broader public.)

> I believe that ultimately it is.

Then we'll have to disagree. Being more "efficient" may be a by-product of stoicism, but it's not a measure of it and it's not a stated goal. At any rate, stoicism is not a shortcut to happiness. It's a arduous one because it takes practice and conscious effort.

Stoicism isn't about removing external pleasures either, the philosophers warn us about the dangers of seeking pleasure where it could trap us. They never said you shouldn't enjoy what surrounds you, on the contrary, they urge you to take pleasure in the things that are accessible to you instead of lusting for things that you believe will bring you pleasure.

You can call that efficiency if you wish, but that's a strange way of putting it.

>Another concern also is that if we advocate to some broader public to adopt some "new" philosohpy, I think it's a prerequisite that that philosphy be one that ensures the wellbeing of a society as a whole. Otherwise it might prove difficult to engender support.

I think this is a delusion: billions of people believe in mainstream religions that have encouraged bigotry, hatred and wars. Countless have died in the process.

Stoicism doesn't promote intolerance. It promotes reason, compassion, an awareness of our personal place in the world and our responsibilities to it. In terms of well being for the world, I'll take that over most other forms of philosophies. You are perfectly free to wait until something better (for you) comes along.

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