Bro Stoicism and self-reflection, or not.
Jan. 15th, 2019 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsMike Stuchberry's recent and insightful tweetstorm about "Bro Stocism" has me thinking about my own complex relationship with Stoicism. I've always been a meditative sort, and while I liked what Buddhism gave me I had trouble wrapping my head around the mystical accretions of Buddhism. Steven Batchelor's Buddhism Without Belief was my go-to for accessing the tradition of "Western Buddhism," and it served me well, but I still felt that something was... off. In 2010 I found William Irvine's A Guide To The Good Life, and decided that it was a better guide, but not the only guide.
People need rituals. Daily rituals. Without them, our lives and sense of self fall apart. Choosing those rituals, consciously working through them, and adapting them to our selves is part and parcel of being effective. Habits are one thing— eat the same thing every morning, or brush your teeth every night. Rituals, on the other hand, require both the habit of committing them, and the mindfulness of asking, daily, what those rituals mean and do for us.
I still do traditional, Buddhist-style meditation every day, but I have others that also have daily use, and one special one that's for times when my brain feels full.
Here's the thing, though: unless you're actually working hard to be self-aware, and working every day on it, Stoicism is just going to wedge you into a corner of thought-terminating clichés. The Stoic precept to "accept reality as it is" does not mean to believe you shouldn't try to change it; on the contrary, the point of accepting reality as it is is to believe that it can be changed. Like the Randian "A is A," the red-pillers have taken this precept and turned it into a barrier to critical thought: whites have more power and authority than minorities and that's the way it is becomes whites should maintain that power. No investigation into the historical reasons for the uneven distribution of wealth and power needs to proceed. They allow no sense of responsibility for the circumstances obtained, and they definitely don't see anything wrong with the circumstances obtained.
I've been working my way though Ryan Holliday's "A Stoic Question a Day" book, and while I've enjoyed the practice so far, I can easily see how answering these questions can seem like putting your ankles into concrete. "Now that I've written down the one thing in life I'm here for, it would be a betrayal to do anything else."
Among Stoicism's precepts are "Man is capable of rational thought" and "Man is a social animal." We are made, every day, to take on the world with the help of our fellow human beings. Stoicism is an urban, cosmopolitan, communal practice, and it's not an unhappy one; there's a reason we talk about Stoic joy, which is what we feel when after much reflection we embrace a way of life that's beneficial, rather than passion, which is a momentary and fleeting thing that can easily be destructive without that reflection. Bro Stoicism is basically a perversion of Zeno and Epictetus's work.
People need rituals. Daily rituals. Without them, our lives and sense of self fall apart. Choosing those rituals, consciously working through them, and adapting them to our selves is part and parcel of being effective. Habits are one thing— eat the same thing every morning, or brush your teeth every night. Rituals, on the other hand, require both the habit of committing them, and the mindfulness of asking, daily, what those rituals mean and do for us.
I still do traditional, Buddhist-style meditation every day, but I have others that also have daily use, and one special one that's for times when my brain feels full.
Here's the thing, though: unless you're actually working hard to be self-aware, and working every day on it, Stoicism is just going to wedge you into a corner of thought-terminating clichés. The Stoic precept to "accept reality as it is" does not mean to believe you shouldn't try to change it; on the contrary, the point of accepting reality as it is is to believe that it can be changed. Like the Randian "A is A," the red-pillers have taken this precept and turned it into a barrier to critical thought: whites have more power and authority than minorities and that's the way it is becomes whites should maintain that power. No investigation into the historical reasons for the uneven distribution of wealth and power needs to proceed. They allow no sense of responsibility for the circumstances obtained, and they definitely don't see anything wrong with the circumstances obtained.
I've been working my way though Ryan Holliday's "A Stoic Question a Day" book, and while I've enjoyed the practice so far, I can easily see how answering these questions can seem like putting your ankles into concrete. "Now that I've written down the one thing in life I'm here for, it would be a betrayal to do anything else."
Among Stoicism's precepts are "Man is capable of rational thought" and "Man is a social animal." We are made, every day, to take on the world with the help of our fellow human beings. Stoicism is an urban, cosmopolitan, communal practice, and it's not an unhappy one; there's a reason we talk about Stoic joy, which is what we feel when after much reflection we embrace a way of life that's beneficial, rather than passion, which is a momentary and fleeting thing that can easily be destructive without that reflection. Bro Stoicism is basically a perversion of Zeno and Epictetus's work.
