Going back to my Stoicism rant, I've done a little more research and thinking and I wanted to provide a better articulated follow up, since my original post was a bit heated and poorly articulated, and I wanted to do the topic better justice.
As many have pointed out, there are definitely parts of Stoicism that are clearly being distorted in the modern day by techbro types. Someone dubbed it "techbroicism" which is a hilarious name to me 😂. So I'm trying to wade through the mud and focus on the original Greek and Roman sources on Stoicism still remaining, but Stoicism to me reads as.. Privileged white fuckboys finding comfort in detachment and ignoring the obvious injustices of their society. And I don't mean techbros here, the Greek and Roman philosophers are the original privileged white fuckboys to me 😂
So, the central axiom of Stoicism is the dichotomy of control. Learn to distinguish what we can control, and stop worrying about the rest. On paper this is a perfectly valid principle and I can see many ways that this could be used to help people cope with difficult situations. I don't want to deny that there is merit to this philosophy in certain places, like in cognitive behavioural therapy.
My issues with stoicism in its original form stem from these two assumptions Stoicism makes:
1: All stoics are capable (or can become capable) of making reasonable judgements about the world.
2: The World (nature) is ordered, just, and good, as per Logos.
1/6
And I just... Don't agree with these two assumptions. Whether you're looking at Greek or Roman society with all the misogyny and slavery going on, or you're looking at the dumpster fire of modern civilisation, the world is kinda fucked and full of problems. It's one reason I relate more to the Gnostics, which came around a few centuries after the Stoics when none of those prior philosophies seemed to be making society better. But also, I just don't think people are capable of making purely rational judgements about the world. We are not omniscient machines, we are imperfect humans. Not to say I don't believe in humans capacity to do good; it's not my intent to deny the idea of Pneuma or that humans have a spark of the divine in them, but I believe we need to start with the admission that we will never be perfect decision making machines (or even that such a thing can't logically exist).
If these two assumptions were true, then I believe stoicism would indeed be a perfect ethical framework for everyone to follow. But since I don't agree with these assumptions, stoicism introduces a big problem: People will inevitably misuse the dichotomy of control to falsely assume that they have no control over things they do. It's a feedback loop which implicitly encourages people to accept helplessness.
2/6
It reminds me of that very common saying in Japanese vernacular "しょうがない", or "it can't be helped". The more people are conditioned to discard things they can't control, the more likely they are to stop trying to control things they actually can. And when we're dealing with such an unjust and dystopian world today where huge swaths of the population are starving because it serves the economy, or entire populations are being subject to genocide just for existing... When we all have the power to do something about it if we just work together, it feels extremely "convenient" to me that Stoicism is being pushed so hard right now from wealthy influencers from silicon Valley and the like. Almost like the corporate elite are wielding stoicism as a weapon to quell the growing global political unrest by conditioning people to stop worrying and just accept that they can't do anything about it and focus on themselves instead. I freely admit that's a pretty conspiratorial thought, but it doesn't really matter if that's the case or not. Regardless of whether it's intentional, that outcome seems to be the inevitable endpoint of the Stoic movement to me.
3/6
@Sophilautia
Yours are brilliantly astute observations, in my view, which is why I've been boosting each entry in your thread so far...but I'd like to jump in on 3/6, if I may, because the Japanese aren't the only people on the planet with equivalent sayings--the one in Afghanistan proved to be one of the reasons it fell to the Taliban.
Inshallah. Why fight if whatever happens is God's will, hm?
C'est la vie.
Que sera, sera.
Shit happens.
The list is long, and I got muted by a philosophy teacher on here who attempted to deny the fact that philosophy, after all, is personal opinion. When it's the personal opinion of every member of a ruling class, yeah--you get the Stoics as you described.
It boils down to collective attitude, which changes when an attitude adjustment is required.
@Sophilautia
Well put. As is the entirety of your thread.
@ClaraListensprechen4 Thanks for your kind words 💜
@ClaraListensprechen4 Oh absolutely. It was just the first one that came to mind because I study Japanese lol. There's a million different variants of this saying throughout all different languages. But I will note that it is a bit of a meme / cultural critique of Japan that shouganai gets thrown around so much in casual conversation. The country is pretty infamous for the amount of crimes that go unreported because people just accept too much and look the other way. But it absolutely isn't limited to Japan.