I wish I had time to interegate this post a little :). I tend to agree with your criticisms of the Popular Stoic approaches ie Holiday/ Life Hack Crowd, Fitness Influencers and Broics. I do think the selfish, chest beating, I take cold showers, crowd are possibly not the best for democracy.
I’d only have an issue if those criticisms exten…
I wish I had time to interegate this post a little :). I tend to agree with your criticisms of the Popular Stoic approaches ie Holiday/ Life Hack Crowd, Fitness Influencers and Broics. I do think the selfish, chest beating, I take cold showers, crowd are possibly not the best for democracy.
I’d only have an issue if those criticisms extend to the Stoicism practiced as a philosophy of life. The two are chalk and cheese.
On Stoic emotional theory, have you read Margaret Graver? The theory of how emotions are constructed is about 2000 years ahead of its time. Only the passions (negative emotions) are considered errors in judgement, the Stoics were big fans of developing Good Emotions. So I find the questioning of my own reactions in emotional situations extremely valuable (if very hard). I find I communicate more with my loved ones, and am less angry.
I have issues with some of the value pairs too, but I think they may be applicable to the Popular iterations you’ve discussed.
Thanks for the comment, SB. I think we can all agree there's something missing in the life hack approach. I haven't read Graver. I will have to check her out. My thinking about stoic emotions has been influenced by Martha Nussbaum's two books, Therapy of Desire and Upheavals of Thought. That's really interesting Graver thinks stoics wanted to develop good emotions! I wouldn't have guessed that from reading Seneca or Aurelius. (I've read Epictetus but it's been a while.) William Irvine's book on stoic joy seems to suggest the joy is something that kind of emerges once you've cleared everything else out, not a directed joy but a general one--maybe not technically an emotion, more like a "vibe." :)
All that said, I still think that the central drama in stoicism is the interaction between one's soul and the external world. To practice stoicism is to spend a lot of time and energy contemplating and evaluating and observing that space. That may not make one selfish, but it certainly takes up room in one's mental life. I don't think that's a bro culture thing. I think that's part of stoicism itself.
I wish I had time to interegate this post a little :). I tend to agree with your criticisms of the Popular Stoic approaches ie Holiday/ Life Hack Crowd, Fitness Influencers and Broics. I do think the selfish, chest beating, I take cold showers, crowd are possibly not the best for democracy.
I’d only have an issue if those criticisms extend to the Stoicism practiced as a philosophy of life. The two are chalk and cheese.
On Stoic emotional theory, have you read Margaret Graver? The theory of how emotions are constructed is about 2000 years ahead of its time. Only the passions (negative emotions) are considered errors in judgement, the Stoics were big fans of developing Good Emotions. So I find the questioning of my own reactions in emotional situations extremely valuable (if very hard). I find I communicate more with my loved ones, and am less angry.
I have issues with some of the value pairs too, but I think they may be applicable to the Popular iterations you’ve discussed.
Thanks for the comment, SB. I think we can all agree there's something missing in the life hack approach. I haven't read Graver. I will have to check her out. My thinking about stoic emotions has been influenced by Martha Nussbaum's two books, Therapy of Desire and Upheavals of Thought. That's really interesting Graver thinks stoics wanted to develop good emotions! I wouldn't have guessed that from reading Seneca or Aurelius. (I've read Epictetus but it's been a while.) William Irvine's book on stoic joy seems to suggest the joy is something that kind of emerges once you've cleared everything else out, not a directed joy but a general one--maybe not technically an emotion, more like a "vibe." :)
All that said, I still think that the central drama in stoicism is the interaction between one's soul and the external world. To practice stoicism is to spend a lot of time and energy contemplating and evaluating and observing that space. That may not make one selfish, but it certainly takes up room in one's mental life. I don't think that's a bro culture thing. I think that's part of stoicism itself.