An ancient Greek philosophy that seems to be resurging recently.
Stoicism is where you focus on what is in control, and accept that within the environment, there will inevitably be external influences, whether fair or unfair, ethical, moral, or not; such things are bound to happen, and you shouldn't let things that he or she cannot control affect you as far as possible. The Premeditation of Evil helps with that. Otherwise, detached, calm acceptance of things as they are without attempts to resist or change them can work.
Don't let things like other people or your mood influence actions or your feelings about life, to the best of your ability.
This might be the best philosophy for dealing with adversity just like its creator Marcus Aurelius... but this assumes you can actually practice this philosophy strongly. Of course it would be a survivorship bias where the creator is the most known due to him by definition doing it to his definition. It's... hard! Very hard! To do this!
For unknown things they may go really wrong or be so much boring than you expect.
Not like a zombie or anything. Having emotions is part of life. Trying to not have them is contradictory to reality..
It's not just the end you will feel happy. Just like when eating a meal, micro feedbacks do happen occur the way. The most interesting things occur if you expect very little but get quite a lot of good vibes in return!
On the way, you may meet some strong-willed people, immense suffering, and
other obstacles, but this teaches you to basically not let such things
impact your thinking and doing capacities, because though you cannot
control other people, you can control your reaction and future
(mitigating) actions.
A common misconception is having no reactions or emotions, like grey
rocking. However, you can absolutely have reactions (otherwise you
won't be able to communicate properly), it's just about reducing
the impact of your emotions on your internal state. Paradoxically, I think the education system itself is a big cause for
Stoicism for
the people who know it! Because (hopefully) they would be able to
realize:
Because they did not control the education system, and the
system itself is highly restrictive, it is not indicative of their
"real" or "unrestricted" virtue, so they can just detach! No
emotions!
The rational capacity to decide how we respond to external impressions. It represents the only thing truly under our control, distinguishing us as people who can choose virtue over passion, regardless of external circumstances!
Radical acceptance of the past, because this is the sure thing you cannot change (which would make it not recommended to focus on by the rules of Stoicism itself); and the future is also (mostly) uncontrollable right now by definition. So it's what now that can be controlled...
The next step can have some pragmatism, in fact, it's quite logical: the more control you have over something, the more agency exists, and the more positive change that can be done to the particular thing in your control, so do what you can!
In such a world, there is indeed little to no control over what people like authority figures do, like the ridiculousness of Donald Trump, or if you have little authority, like a student at school, it will inevitably be the case that there is a lot that is not in your control. It helps save your mental energy for things that you deem have more value. If done correctly, you will likely feel a sense of peace about what is happening around you. Stoicism can also help with emotional regulation if done well.
It's indeed tiring. Even though it sounds easy to not care at first glance, from my viewpoint, it actually takes so much practice that it makes me get mad at certain things and start reacting. The most unfair situations are like false accusations, for instance, when I am suspected by a teacher of having done something wrong, because they hold absolute power over me. And also, it might seem cold at first glance... but it's actually fine, you can pragmatically "fake" your emotions towards others because your internal state, by axiomatic definition, is hidden from others and can, and will be different from what you show "outside", which is what I would call a social mask. Still, take it with a pragmatic grain of salt.
I have little way of knowing what others do anymore because I have zero agency over others’ decision-making. The only thing left I can reasonably expect is that they don’t do intentional, targeted harm, like an aggravated assault towards me, as there usually isn’t enough motivation to break the law just to injure me physically and bring about anger.
Where you detach from the actual outcome, when it is up to fate, or luck. You can't control this, so the usual stoic practices of caring about only what is in your control applies here.
"Emotionalism" is basically having lots of emotions, like laughing,
crying, anger, happiness…
Being a stoic is basically not feeling much, not being impacted much by
external people and such. I prefer to be stoic, as emotions distort
logical thinking, and logic is usually a more reliable way of thinking than
emotional “reasoning”. However, not showing emotions can be socially
cold to people. And may be psychologically almost impossible. Yet I see
the benefits of being stable! So stoicism is great!
When you cannot change the past, which was shaped by determinism - the same applies to others, so how others are is due to their surrounding nature, nurturing, so they can't change the past of what they have done, their past of e.g. child abuse they suffered through; neither can they really control much! When this happens, you will accept people much more than before.
Sometimes it's not that clear - you can control some but not other
aspects of an activity; for instance, exam grades are affected
by your studies.
However, you can control your studies, even if you cannot
exactly control the exam result due to the chaotic reality of noise.
So it's not like "Help! I can't do ANYTHING to
help my grades!" because it's a bit of cause-and-effect.
When you think you are a Stoic yet still flinch from negativity, the first fallacy that I fell into TOO is that I am not stoic enough. Rather, it's most likely you are just a beginner, and by definition, the "used-to-ness" of detachment is the weakest. It's still a very valuable philosophy in the uncontrollable past and others' behaviors, so with most things, it needs some training to have its effects shown.
You do usually have to do something if the world is acting unjustly towards you. Others are technically not that much in your control - but still a little bit of power might exist. It ignores the fact that people facing bad things often have a less good life.
Most of the world is outside your control, but for instance, to get a job, you DO have to care - perhaps WAY TOO MUCH (contrary to stoicism)! This sacrifices other activities. And then they can care way too little and throw away your application anyway. The dissonance of literally society saying that everyone has value but only spending 7 seconds on reading a CV shows how Machiavellian the corporate world even is.
The moment u realize mega-politics or mega-schooling isn't your job nor your ability to fix them, you might just realize the illusion of importance in them (which is fine; they tend to be fleeting, unlike philosophical ideas!! Then you can decide what u really want to get from social media or learning - I think that humans overemphasize the chance that a near-impossible event would happen of fixing the world, which just makes them more mad because of the just-world fallacy again)
BEWARE! You might expect to feel nothing, or others to feel nothing. Still, the biological impulse that is sometimes encounterable is that you feel pain when you do! And this applies to most negative emotions in general... The truth is that if it hurts, it DOES hurt by definition.
Expects the brain to be totally logical -> Expect optimism
-> This disregards chaotic reality and emotions
This leads to self-blame and the idea "Stoicism doesn't work"
And then the idea is that "I perhaps need to be more strict about not
letting emotions affect me?" -> try even harder, leading to burnout and hatred
of daily life.
The trap -> likely to repeat if not broken. Forever!
The tricky thing here is that trying to feel no reaction while in the transition phase leads to self-blame and such for failing the practice when it is kind of normal, or doing so in adaptation to new philosophical ideas. Possibly one of the biggest reasons to quit a philosophy (not that I claim it to be illogical, ironically as the creator of wiki) is that it is too "extreme" or "absolute" - perhaps beyond basic human biological limits (which are more significant than what you THINK, because of heuristics).
Caring less about exams is not a good way to defeat exams. It's weird: having too much motivation or care leads to burnout while caring less, doing less revision, often leads to worse grades. The most NON-detachment might lie in extreme and long pains that undermines the mind without much ability to escape (due to the forcefulness of school itself)
It's bad! Suddenly. The dichotomy of control, does not mean the dichotomy of the brain, it still feel pain even if it can (but hard) or cannot control. Picturing a totally perfect neutral enlightened God-thingy against adversity further differences expectations and reality. Does it make it worse?
To be fair I admire those who are good at this - but maybe its those who though that it could work for normal humans!
Sounds quite achievable, sounds desirable, sounds like it fulfills the intrinsic human need of growth, but, the problem, when ACTUALLY doing it is it natural and actually enhancing life quality more than its costs? This is the question.
Category:Stoicism Category:School of thought Category:Philosophy