Rationally Speaking - Stoicism

Fleeting

• External reference: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3vh9S5cgYgSpk9CHAq3kAm
• External reference:

Rationally Speaking - stoicism

Art of living rather than moral stuff

dichotomy of control for better mastering one’s feeling

understand the world to better accept it

stoic week

inherited from éthique de la vertu, like épicursime

paradoxe of the dichotomy of control . you better realize on what you really have control and therefore you feel more in control

“my mother in law doesn’t upset me, but my thoughts about her do” (métaphore de la boite d’allumettes)

• stoic routines
  • morning meditation
    • visualize possible challenges for the day ahead so that you realize what kind of virtue you might need to deal with those
    • view from above
      • you
      • your family
      • your friends
      • people of your town
      • …
      • the world
      • …
      • the galaxies
      • it help realizing how relative your issues actually are
    • visualize something that might become wrong, so that you can prepare for it. Alledgedly not the same as negative visualization, but I’m not sure how.
      • might be the death of a son, the loss of you job etc
      • might be emotionaly hard to visualize
      • disprefered indifferences : stuff that you don’t like but that are indifferent with regards to your values
      • it reminds yourself that “shit may happen” and help dealing with it
      • you can be a virtuous person regardless whether you are ugly or sick
      • there are things that are worth pursuing and things that are preferred but not crucial to your life, or not as important as people might first think
      • it is discussed whether the emotional cost of preparing feeling is worth the emotional cost of not anticipating it.
        • experimenting self and remembering self :
    • take a famous stoic quote and read it three times to think about it
  • during the day, feel the present time (stoic mindfulness). Be conscious of what happens around you. Don’t use headphones or stuff like that to flee from what happens
    • remember that things happen (not in your control) and you can decide how you react (in your control) -> métaphore de la boite d’allumettes
  • evening, note in a journal
    • what did I do right? -> tap yourself in the back for that
    • what could I do better? -> learn from that
    • what didn’t I do and should have done?
    • your are not perfect. tomorrow will be another day and you will be more equipped because you will have learned from today

Most of those seems to be historical stoic concept that have been merged into common wisdom.

At the time when the church competed with philosophies as major though system, they decided to ridiculed epicurism (making it the synonym of drug sex food and rock’n’roll) and absorbed stoicism.

This make sense, because epicurism metaphysics suppose that things happen randomly while the stoic one suppose that things happen for a reason and this is compatible with the idea of God. Yet, modern stoicism can rationalize this idea of things that happen for some reason with the idea of the laws of the universe and still keep God out of this.

epicurism is deist, but assumes that gods don’t care about us while stoicism is theist and suppose that gods care about us.

dichotomy of control may lead to some form of fatalism. You can say, well I don’t have the control, so why bother? This is a common misconception of stoicism, along with thinking that stoicism are emotionless people.

On the contrary, stoicism is guided by love of other beings (therefore, it also encourages vegetarianism). If something bothers you and you can do something about it, you have the moral obligation to do whatever you can do to make it right. Focus on what you have control on and don’t bother with what is out of your control like the outcome (métaphore de l’archer).

Therefore, it has a fine model of emotion. There are reactive emotions that are out of your control and active emotion that you decide to have afterwards. It suggest to accept the former and focus on the latter to make things right, according to your values (intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second).

It is reminded that most famous stoicist where people known for their power to change things.

Stoicism is about stopping to have émotion => moteur and focus on valeurs => moteur.

dichotomy of control is not about feeling good about stuff not in your control but rather accepting it and moving forward.

Some quotes, out of the context, might lead to think that stoicist sometimes disagree. It looks like they globally agree (interprétation la plus charitable), but because this is an idea that thrived for almost 500 years and a lot of stuff got from there, it is almost obvious that some quotes will contradict in there.

Don’t focus on the past because you cannot change it. Don’t focus in the far future because it is too uncertain. Focus on now and the near future because this is your horizon of control (fail fast and often, Rapid Application Development)

Permalink