I used to think stoicism was great. But now I think that it’s not so great. In retrospect I should have focused on changing my situation in stead of learning to live with it. Compared to Aurelius - I am not living around 0 bc - in today’s world I can change a lot of things.
Accepting the things that you cannot change does not mean assume you cannot change things then accept it. It’s predicated on an accurate assessment of what you can and cannot change. In my view such acceptance is for optimizing application of effort by not wasting effort on things that actually cannot be changed. “Don’t go tilting at windmills”
The Serenity Prayer has been around for about 100 years now. I find myself repeating it fairly often, especially now that I've got young children.
This prayer bothers me because it punts the "hard part" to the Lord when it doesn't need to. The exact same sentiment which has been rediscovered over and over for at least 2000 years and is far more actionable is, "you can't control others*, you can only control your response to them."
It gives you a blueprint of what kinds of things you can expect to be able to change and the limitations you'll face in the attempt.
* Which more in the context of the 12 step program the other person can be yourself. You will have thoughts, impulses, emotions, urges that you can't control but you can control your reaction to them.
Fair enough, but I've always interpreted it differently. I don't view it as "punting" so much as acknowledging what the hard part is. But I agree that "you can't control others, you can only control your response to them" is certainly the rule.
I use the prayer as a framework when I have to take a mental break and find the discernment between a situation I truly can't change and one I can influence (or, like you pointed out, a response you can control).
> "you can't control others*, you can only control your response to them."
Like it or not, but you __can__ control others. This is what advertising is based on, for example.
I was thinking about the meaning of "acceptance" recently. It means you feel some injustice or frustration about something. Morally, you think the problem should be fixed, but strategically you think you shouldn't try.
Everything we do has limits and obstacles. If you don't feel frustrated, then that's a completely ordinary situation and there's no point in highlighting your "acceptance", is there?
I suppose in tech terms it could be equivalent to "won't fix", but such matters should be swiftly forgotten. If you're experiencing ongoing acceptance, consciously, that's suboptimal and implies you'd still be right to complain.
Thus recommending acceptance to somebody is recommending defeat. The term acceptance entails bottled-up frustration or injustice. It may still be strategically right, but it's a twisted, contingent choice.
No moral or injustice component needed.
I have genetic chronic fatigue and I’m limited in what I can do about it, there is a component of making peace with loss, a radical acceptance of one’s own situation. And there is a component of extreme experimentation, I have done just about all that can be done about it. I have to give up on my dreams of athleticism. Life isn’t fair, it’s life, but I wouldn’t call it an injustice. I think the modern conflation is part of making the personal political.
I put "frustration" in there for a reason. There are situations that are nobody's fault, which we shrug about. Then there are other situations that are nobody's fault, about which we think "something should be done", even though it's nobody's particular duty to fix the problem. That lingering frustration is a moral opinion. It's informed by expectations and realism, which it is often beyond our grasp to even determine accurately.
A good point is made at the end of the article:
> But preemptive surrender is no sign of wisdom. Any reality made by human beings can be remade by them. The price of this power is mutual obligation: we can never let ourselves off the hook. The things we can accomplish together are, by definition, within our sphere of control, even if we have to act through structures that are bigger than any of us alone to achieve them.
Stoicism doesn't answer the question "what can and can't we control" and doesn't claim to. I think the modern neostoicism trend is to make the reader believe that they have little control over daily life, encouraging an almost narcissistic-nihilist response to ongoing events.
That doesn't sound like stoicism to me.
At its core stoicism is about having the best possible judgement and taking the best possible actions. Sometimes acting makes a situation worse and so patience or restraint are what's best. It seems you've confused this situational wisdom with a universal principle.
Everything I've learned about stoicism has taught me to not waste energy on things I can't control so that I can spend it on making my life and the lives of people I care about continuously better.
This is why the OP calls pop-Stoicism vacuous. It isn't really helpful to know you should always take the best action, or not waste energy on things you can't control. The challenge is knowing what the best action is, or what is or isn't in your control.
What do you mean by OP?
The comment I responded to didn't refer to pop stoicism or use the word vacuous. The word vacuous also didn't appear in the article.
Stoicism is the study and reflection of what is and isn't in our control and what are virtues. It doesn't just stop at declaring the goal, it's literally the practice of pursuing the goal.
Both you and the comment I replied to seem like opinions based on a very shallow understanding of stoicism.
> In retrospect I should have focused on changing my situation in stead of learning to live with it.
Stoicism doesn't tell you to just learn to live with things that you can change. That's only for things that you cannot change.
Does it give you tools to change what you can change, though?
I’ll be reading “Meditations” soon enough, but emphasis on the means to accept things you are helpless about, and not the opposite, can lead to learned helplessness.
If young people take up on these ideas, they just can’t know better at their stage in life, one where they can be, for the most part, helpless.
I always thought that instead of learning to meditate in the snow and brave the cold, or learning to be zen despite a punishing heatwave, is helpful but still greatly inferior to inventing fur jackets, insulation, heating, and air conditioning.
One needs mental toughness. However it's better to solve problems for good and then have a higher technology base for the next generation to build on.
You will never have as much power as Aurelius.
Why was he nevertheless a stoic?
He studied the greek classics with a mentor before he became Emperor. His Meditations reflect his study. He didn’t want to become Emperor because he viewed it as a life of strict duty and tasks that he didn’t want to do, like going on military campaigns.
His stoicism was mostly turned outward. He believed that the powerless man should accept his place below the powerful man. That submission was not shameful for the man born to submit, and that he ought to submit willingly. Stoicism does not bind the powerful, only the powerless.
I didn't even get 2 pages I to meditations before I could tell it was the philosophy of a very powerful man.
> His stoicism was mostly turned outward.
Huh? How so? In most of his writings, he's introspecting. They're basically reflections about himself and his own thoughts about things. I don't recall a passage where he's focused on anything other than internal dialogue (not saying they don't exist, but none are coming to mind).
> He believed that the powerless man should accept his place below the powerful man.
Maybe, but so did everyone else. Although, we do have Diogenes the Cynic, who heavily inspired the founding of Stoicism. Diogenes... The stories about him are quite intense. Feel free to look them up. In short, he mocked social conventions, wealth, and so-called "power".
> I didn't even get 2 pages[...]
In the first two pages, Marcus wrote about the good qualities of people throughout his life e.g. his teachers, parents, etc. Did you actually read it?
What about "no single mindset works all the time" instead? Sometimes you need to bite the bullet and just learn to live with something, sometimes you need not to, and instead fight until you can't, to get out of the situation. Different moments call for different ways of seeing situations, and maybe learning to identify what moment calls for what mindset is something we need to focus on more, rather than digging into one position that should always work.
Ideology belongs in the trash.
But yea you can pick and choose parts of some ideologies as they are useful in the moment.
Not to split hairs but isn't the phrase "ideology belongs in the trash" itself somewhat ideological?
Definitely. In a way ideology is what shapes our reality so you can never be fully free of it.
It’s like saying “I’m not political”, it’s also a political statement/stance.
Personally I came up with my own flavour of practical Taoism as ideology; something like Konrad from the bridge trilogy
Yes I agree with all that and for the record, I was being a bit cheeky.
Personally, I think it's dogma that belongs in the bin, rather than ideology.
I can't really say it's based on anything empirical, but to me, ideology is almost meant to be critically analyzed where as dogma is based on strict acceptance.
I'd summarize my feelings by saying ideology is presented whereas dogma is dictated, if that makes any sense.
I love that and it does make sense to me, thanks for sharing.
Dogma is what you follow blindly and don’t question, whereas ideology while still rigid you can examine and shape according to your own personal values.
“All models are wrong but some models are useful.”
Stoicism doesn’t mean accepting one’s situation as unchangeable.
Totally agreed. There's a great "Philosophize This!" episode I recently listened to precisely about this topic [0].
[0]: "Episode #237 ... The Stoics Are Wrong - Nietzche, Schopenhauer" <https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/h48mld6lelcfrts-c55...>
Reminds me of that one scene in Equalizer. It's cheesy and I will never admit to liking the movie in real life. But it's one of those scenes that's really stuck with me over the years.
Robert: "I think you can be anything you want to be."
Teri: "Maybe in your World, Robert. Doesn't really happen that way in mine."
Robert: "Change your world."
Spoilers ahead
“Change your world” said retired elite corps officer, and all-around badass Denzel Washington, to a young trafficked sex-worker without passport.
Marcus Aurelius was an emperor. Presumably you have less control over your life and other people than he did.
Yeah, after a lifetime of internal prompting I settled on "worry about shit you can do shit about"
Yes but the psyop was a stalwart success and continues to be. This is just the latest revision.
Imagine how you’ll feel about things tomorrow.