and what mistakes did we learn from? did we consider why it failed, or what they could have done differently? or did we just dismiss the entire concept because it was internet politics?
even if you think we can't learn from mistakes here, we can definitely agitate
mods please delete this post. this will either devolve into furry bashing or hornyposting
it is a terrible idea but a much better alternative, according to a CEO than their unpaid volunteers unionizing.
it's kind of sad to see hogs on this site regard this whole situation with such disdain. this is a prototype for mass internet action. this is extremely important. at worst, we can learn from their mistakes. the nihilism of internet politics was a mistake.
feels defeatist, i agree with the anti-secular sentiment
I want to open by saying that I misspoke in my earlier comments, quite significantly. Stoicism is, like all works of philosophy, an idea with a lot of things worth considering in it.
I don't know if I'm really :galaxy-brain: to give much more to this conversation, other than that this reminds me a lot of how, supposedly, an outside observer seeing Stoic and Epicurean philosophers argue would be confused, as they would be advocating for quite similar lifestyles. I don't know if this is actually true, but it's something I've seen mentioned in a few, admittedly shitty, philosophy books. Of course, I do think that Stoicism did a lot better of a job advocating for this lifestyle, because lots of people seem to have interpreted Epicureanism drastically incorrectly during the time period.
They're talking about making the "blackout" indefinite, like a real strike. I think there's a lot of agitated moderators who could be convinced to further organize there.
I feel like a lot of this stuff is either common sense, interesting but flawed, or correct but arrived to again through Marxism or a similar position
It's like mathematics from the same time period. They had a lot of correct ideas but anyone who calls themselves a Pythagoreanist and insists that everything Pythagoras wrote was correct and without flaw is going to be missing a couple hundred years of critique and philosophical development
And the fundamental assumption of Stoicism that all issues come from internal judgements about external things is false. It sounds true, because our perceptions of things are the reason why we care about these things at all, but there is a lot of stuff we can't change that's apparently internal, like our need for food or water. The greatest sage cannot ignore the feeling of thirst, it will still suck.
It's worth raising the concern that trying to subvert or ignore irrational emotions only makes sense when you have a different irrational goal that it serves. This is because all goals are inherently irrational, there is no inherent meaning to life. There is no god from on high who decides that collecting rocks is less important than engineering.
So, then, the Stoic "No" in response to the passivity problem just doesn't work? Or it does work, but relegates Stoicism to a kind of vibe rather than a lifestyle?
Yeah, but this doesn't seem that insightful. Not beating yourself up for things that you can't control is pretty much common sense. But when you view your emotions as these things you can just control at will (or rationalize yourself out of), it actually opens yourself up to a lot more hurt as you try to fight your brain, instead of working with it. It's like trying to fight a rock.
I don't see anyone in the present day actually following Stoicism (as in the original philosophy, not the generic and pop culture version of it). Acceptance of one's own emotions (but not necessarily acting on them) seems way more useful than trying to :galaxy-brain: your way out of sadness. Both are better than no regulation at all, of course.
I think it's far better than the baseline beliefs most people follow, but the actual philosophy (not the pop version) still has it's flaws. I wrote a whole thing in another comment chain.
What doesn't have flaws, though? I guess all we can do is hammer away at the philosophical anvil until we have something vaguely resembling what we want.
I think that might be what she was getting at anyways, in retrospect I feel kind of bad, this post from me feels a bit like a nitpick
I guess my criticisms are less about social issues (though I think that's a fair critique of the philosophy in some situations) and more about this idea of a perfect Sage figure. I don't think they'd actually be as resistant or universally happy as lots of Stoics make it out to be. I don't think anyone is just able to subvert or sublimate all of their desires for socialization, pleasure, etc. These are essential parts of human psychology. Not to mention physical things, like injury or pain or starvation, which the majority of people, no matter how hard they try, simply cannot ignore entirely.
So why is this important? Surely, since the philosophy is about accepting or ignoring things you can't change, all of what I'm saying here is just pedantic, because if someone's being stabbed or is cripplingly lonely, wouldn't the best case scenario be that they can ignore those things and adapt to them?
Well, yeah, I'd certainly agree, but the problem is that, when you begin thinking that someone can adapt to horrifying extremes like this, suddenly, at least some blame gets put on the person who fails to adapt! Of course, no one would really fault someone for failing to react optimally to conditions like the ones I'm mentioning here, but the most harmful blame isn't external, it's internal.
When you assume that it's possible for anyone to transcend all forms of mental and physical suffering through sheer brainpower, that creates a whole new form of suffering and anguish when they fail to live up to that. Even if they're perfect stoics and don't blame themselves in any way for failing to live up to it, this theoretical person in a terrible situation would still be spending inordinate amounts of time on pursuing an impossible goal. It, at best, does nothing for them, and at worst, gives them more mental stuff to work through!
Then, what I suggest is a kind of meta or post-stoicism. One of the things we have to learn to accept that we can't change is sometimes ourselves. This isn't free license to be a shitty person, or to do whatever you want without consequence, but it is an acknowledgement of your own needs as a person, and permission to simply let yourself be sad or angry when things suck. Paradoxically, I think that letting yourself suffer in those ways is essential to being happy. If you don't, you spend massive amounts of time trying to get rid of those emotions, often to no avail.
Also, the categorical belief that all irrational or non-reality-centered emotions are bad needs to go, too. I'm a filthy postmodernist, so I think that the majority of human desires in general are entirely made up. That doesn't make them invalid, though. This might sound like the romantic criticism that PhilosophyTube mentioned, but it's more nuanced than that. I'm not saying that cheating on your spouse or risk-taking or anything like that is necessary for a happy life, I'm saying that happiness itself is irrational. All positive emotions, including mere contentment, come from entirely subjective and irrational experience. Happiness is brain chemicals generated from arbitrary biological stuff. Meaning in general is entirely inferred and does not exist in objective reality. So, grounding oneself in reality and only reality is completely meaningless advice.
In short: First principle of stoicism good, it's generally better than epicureanism, especially given it's communist-y emphasis, but it actually didn't go far enough with the first principle's own logic.
Figure out what you can change, figure out what you can't, but sometimes the things that you can change are external from you, and sometimes the things that you can't change are internal.
This is not edited at all so if I did anything wrong such as use the wrong pronouns again, or said something that sounds confusing, please let me know. If I said something that sounds really reactionary I probably intended something else, but let me know so I can clarify
Edit: Oh no I'm a Buddhist, thank you Philosophy Tube
I'm not trying to argue they're doing or saying anything wrong, at worst I just disagree with them on an abstract moral plane. Because of the context I got the impression that "freedom" was being used as a stand-in for "happiness", implying that happiness can only be obtained "within", which is something I don't really agree with. People need to do work on themselves, yes, and individual coping mechanisms can help, yes, but you need both that and a change of environment for a fundamental change in attitude.
I think that someone who is liberated but misunderstands what that liberation is in reality is going to feel a lot freer than someone who is not liberated, even if they think they don't. Someone could be a conservative who despises living in a socialist country but their subconscious attitudes caused by having free healthcare are going to affect them positively nonetheless.
Yeah that's why I said it was technically true
I agree that it can help people cope, but IMO it's never going to be as good as actually being free physically. And, freedom is different from happiness. You can feel plenty free in prison but your conditions can still make you miserable in other ways.
Sorry it's an extremely bad habit of mine
I respect it, but I am far too stupid for it
can i be fem mario