Why does Veeky Forums hate stoicism? Is it because reddit loves it?

so do you see something wrong with the outlook of stoicism or just it's application?

wtf I love stoicism now

> resist materialism
Wrong. Bad sheet

I think he means in the average individual who claims 'stoicism'. It's relatively entry level and accessible, and therefore easy for people with very little understanding of how it works to embrace it. Like nihilism, it also enables people to take their negative traits and pretend they are good, rather than branching out and improving themselves.
Like all philosophies, it also seems that people tend to base their entire life on it without actually exploring it themselves. I think it is the death of the soul to follow something without any intent to expand it for at least your self. It shows lack of confidence in yourself and the idolizing of people, which is silly in my opinion.

>I think things are stupid not for what they are but for some of the people who believe them thus meaning that any opinion I have on anything can be changed by meeting an asshole.

>It's relatively entry level and accessible, and therefore easy for people with very little understanding of how it works to embrace it
This is demonstrably false considering that outside of a university context very few of the people who claim to know anything about stoicism know either close to nothing, nothing or less than nothing about it. If it were entry level more people would actually understand it.

>it also enables people to take their negative traits and pretend they are good, rather than branching out and improving themselves.
How could anyone possible construe that from stoicism?

That somehow coldness and cruelty relates to stoic traits. People have a way of fooling themselves. It's the same way that people embrace hedonism to extreme extents and claims it's because of nihilism or some shit.
And that's my point. Stoicism is a well known philosophy, so people adopt it with little knowledge and pretend they understand it. It's not necessarily stoicism they dislike, but the crowd of 'stoics'

>Stoicism is a well known philosophy,
Is that what you meant when you said it was entry level?

>That somehow coldness and cruelty relates to stoic traits.
That I can understand.

>don't go to the doctor because your body is in the hands of the gods.

Stoicism is for pseuds. Real patricians adopt Pyrrhonism, Cratylism, or Thai Forest Buddhism.

>If it were entry level more people would actually understand it.
I don't understand what's so difficult about Stoicism that people constantly misunderstand and misrepresent it. I've read some Stoic literature but I found most of it very intuitive and all of it sensible. There's something about Stoicism and anti-natalism in particular that people just can't get a hold of, for whatever reason

people can bend any ideology towards justifying stupidity if they try hard enough. stoicism seems more protected from it than most because it's rooted in the individual.

Also, give an idiot a moral compass they think is infallible and watch them hold it over people's heads. It's not unique to stoicism but we're on Veeky Forums so of course all the loudest people are going to be misrepresenting it.

Yeah, I agree with you. It's just so strange though. Stoicism, at least to me, has teachings that I think quite literally everybody could profit from, regardless of their political or moral views. It strikes me as pushing away something that is so universally beneficial. For example, how could anyone not find mindfulness beneficial, or want to twist it into being a negative thing?

Anti-natalism, even though it makes perfect sense at its core, is seen as a sort of cuck philosophy in that blacks and browns and yellows are not going to be engaging in it so the cultivated young philosopher (as long as he is white) that elects to follow it is inadvertently dooming his race to extinction. In most places on the internet nowadays, if you don't devote yourself wholly to some worthless cause, you may as well be standing directly in the way of it. Stoicism is frowned upon because no stoic is going to be going on YouTube and calling people niggers because they think it's important to the progress of western civilization to put random blacks in their place. Stoicism favors the individual which is absolutely contrary to the agenda of leftists and right wingers alike who think that the most logical course to utopia is having everyone on the exact same wavelength and eliminating dissidents altogether.

You can't love stoicism. That defeats the entire purpose dumbass.

its pathetic, life isn't suffering at all or bliss or any kind of test or endurance, there is no afterlife and there is no reason to try to do anything including reading about stoicism. That's all retarded

That's an interesting answer, and I have noticed that a lot of people on here and even on Veeky Forums will bring up race when discussing Stoicism and anti-natalism. I'm not wholly sure if that accounts for the venom that some posters feel the need to spew when they feel contrary to Stoicism being useful, or anti-natalism being a valid view

> don't understand what's so difficult about Stoicism that people constantly misunderstand and misrepresent it
First of all you need an understanding of what virtue ethics is. Without this understanding stoicism is impossible. You won't find in any of the big Greek philosophic texts relating to stoicism giving explanations of what it is because it is considered such a basic element of Greek thought.
You need to understand that the Greeks' conception of things like emotions are extremely different from our own. Not understanding this will lead to enormous misunderstandings.

If you are reading one of the more famous ancient works (such as the Enchiridion etc) in a non-academic translation then in all probability the way it has been translated will lead to misunderstandings since you have no recourse to a side by side translation or extensive footnotes.
The major ancient works that people read are also not complete tellings of their philosophy. They either assume prior knowledge (as is the case with Epictetus), weren't actually works for publication (Aurelius) or were public letters for a more general audience (Seneca). This works in themselves do not provide anywhere enough information that by themselves a person can understand much about stoicism.

This is why almost everyone who has read a book by one of the ancient writers on stoicism not only get a lot wrong but get so much wrong it's hard to say they actually know anything accurate about it.

I certainly could be wrong, but I found Epictetus' Enchiridion very approachable without having much of a philosophical background in Greek philosophy beyond Plato, at the time. From what I remember, the whole book was pretty much just practical advice that was very straight forward, like this:
“What hurts this man is not this occurrence itself—for another man might not be hurt by it—but the view he chooses to take of it.”
Again, I could be wrong, but I find it hard to believe that people without some prejudice against Stoicism could interpret it the way some posters here have interpreted Stoicism (chiefly that it's a philosophy of passivity), and it seems like something just about everybody else could understand with ease. I know there's a lot more to Stoicism than just the practical life philosophy, but people seem to discuss and misinterpret that far more than, say, their metaphysics

Those "goals"

is it even possible for a modern man to understand what the stoics are trying to communicate in their texts? i would say that it isn't because we don't really have anyway to know what their overall world view even was. they were so different from us and all we have are some fragments. even if we had everything ever written i still don't know if it would be possible to find common ground. it is hard enough to reach a common understanding with people from my own time and place. yet OP claims to have an understanding. he doesn't even believe in the gods. stoicism is a dead philosophy from a dead culture as far as i am concerned.

>ITT: People who believe that they have nothing to learn from the past.

At a certain point if you find it so impossible to bridge the gap between yourself and other writers, why even read?

are you offended or something? why such an uncharitable reading of my comment?

would it offend you further for me to ask how widely read you are? have you given real consideration to the problem of communication? i really cannot believe you if you claim to have the same understanding as these men who lived in a completely different culture from you. you simply do not have the same foundational beliefs. what does it mean to you to live in accordance with nature? your view of nature is completely different from theirs. you might say that you follow some belief inspired by stoicism but you are not a stoic, you are a modern man.

>the whole book was pretty much just practical advice that was very straight forward
Imagine someone reading a book that contained some laws in it and what the punishments could include. This book is about a very old and very different society and the person is reading a translation of this book. This person could say it was a pretty straightforward book but this person has no idea whatsoever on why those laws exist, what they aim to do, how they are enforced etc. That person only has an element of understanding without any of the animating spirit.
If you don't know jack about stoicism or the Greeks or virtue ethics there is still some really good advice in the Enchiridion. However you aren't understanding stoicism (or if you are it's very poorly), you are understanding something different. The system you make in your mind from reading this book in this way could be very beneficial to you as a person, but it's not very stoic.

>we don't really have anyway to know what their overall world view even was
We have perhaps millions of works written in Greek with a philosophical tradition that went well into the late Roman Empire. We have more than enough material to have really good ideas about what they thought about a lot of things.

>even if we had everything ever written i still don't know if it would be possible to find common ground
Your pessimism is wholly unjustified. On this matter I'll side with academia.

>he doesn't even believe in the gods
And in all probability neither did many ancient stoics.

>stoicism is a dead philosophy
I don't really know what you mean by this. It ran all the way through the Roman empire before leaving a large influence on Christianity which was re infused with stoicism in the renaissance. We have neo-stoic philosophers at the same time as Descartes. Since the 1950's virtue ethics revival there has been a wealth of works on and about stoicism. Considering that works are still published in peer reviewed journals that are not just abstract works on some ancient stoic or stoic idea but actively endorse it as a good form of normative ethics should convince that it is alive.

>>...including the medicine god

What does anti-natalism have to do with Stoicism?
>First of all you need an understanding of what virtue ethics is.
>You need to understand that the Greeks' conception of things like emotions are extremely different from our own.
Which books on these subjects do you suggest?

I think the main reason that stoicism is looked down upon here (only a little) is because of how straightforward and easily understandable it is - which of course means it is embraced by younger/ less intelligent people who Veeky Forums users are likely to avoid association with.

>inb4 reddit
reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/3hdidw/week_6_the_virtues_and_virtue_ethics/?st=iwvusmvb&sh=05037cd4
I've recommended it a couple of times before because it is an amazing 101 into virtue ethics.

I can't recommend any book in particular for the second. It's been a long time since I've read and have had access to those kinds of texts. Of the more constructive advise I can give would be to either read a modern book describing what stoicism is about or read a really solid translation of an ancient one which stick close to the original and provides a translation on the other page (or baring that one which doesn't translate key Greek words). The idea with the second is you can then look up words like prohairesis or praxis and have a much better understanding then having a substituted and quite different English word. I shit you not that for a long time eudaimonia was simply translated as happiness.

>Reddit loves stoicism
Source?

why the fuck would an antinatalist care about blacks or yellows pumping children

Veeky Forums:
>Hates Stoicism
>Loves Gregory B. Sadler

Because being aware of the fact that other people are miserable detracts from his own misery.

Because that just continues the human race in a presumably more negative way than it would have otherwise.

stoicism is alright

"stoicism" is fucking horrible dogshit

Reddit is likely the most diverse on the internet besides facebook, only on a Nuragic Civilization Destroying Potteryhouse would reddit mean fucking anything. I subscribed to a lot of the core tenets of stoicism before I ever knew what it entailed btw and I still don't call myself a stoic(philosophically) because I genuinely do not care about tags and any non-meme autistic human being is a tad more complex than that.

>Veeky Forums
>holding a coherent position on anything

It's just a meme infused contrarian circlejerk

>implying contrarianism isn't a coherent opinion

>when you're so contrarian you have a contrarian position on being contrarian

don't mind me I'm just developing a global error theory for the entirety of human belief

*tips fedora

Yes, denying yourself everything except the self-satisfaction of denial; why didn't I see it before? It is the ultimate indulgence...

Is what I would say if I were completely retarded, like you seem to be.

If it doesn't begin and end with, "People aren't skeptical enough of their own thoughts," go ahead and start over until you get to, "People aren't skeptical enough of their own thoughts." When you get there, enjoy realizing what is likely the very first criticism of rationality, probably millions of years old.

And then learn to be skeptical.

It's because you guys like the fucking Dandy Warhols.

>Well, would you say you ENJOY observing the categorical imperative?...

THis...nobody in these threads has done more reading than the wiki or perhaps a penguin classic

I don't see in what way is stoicism reddit. There are veritable insights inside stoicism that may make life easier for some people, specially those who tend to worry too much.

this is true. it helped me think about things in a different way and made me way happier than i was before

Yes

Stoicism appeals to them because it reminds them of strong and silent type protagonists in the action and crime themed movies they constantly consume. The silence has a huge appeal because the redditors' rightfully low self esteem and extreme compulsion to be correct (politically and otherwise) condemns all of their conversations to awkwardness. They wish that they could just not talk and that everyone would still worship them like a wiseman just like Wolverine or Ryan Gosling, but they are not the strong and silent type because they are not the strong type so they complain and whine and constantly yak out platitudes, ignorance, retardation online and offline in a desperate gambit for attention, as if they are trying to gain disciples. Once they have said disciples, then, only then will they even make an attempt to shut their fucking traps and be *stoic* and strong and silent.

>americans are hum-

It's literally cuck the philosophy.

>DUDE, who cares if I'm in Chinese jail getting knifed in my balls for 80 years?! All in my head bro, I'll stop feeling sad!

I happen to agree, but it mainly shows you have suffer from acute self-loathing. Go on, embrace it, have a cry and move on user.

the fuck are you going to do? mope all day? pussy ass bitch

you havent read a word have you?

>>I think things are stupid not for what they are but for some of the people who believe them thus meaning that any opinion I have on anything can be changed by meeting an asshole.
beautiful, i'm gonna pasta this in the future since it applies to so many people on this site.

thats how i form all my opinions lol, i just see who annoys me the most then i think the opposite haha

>there is no afterlife
there's no life in the first place, you can take your post to it's logical conclusion and say nothing exists outside of what's happening this very moment.

Aren't maximise positive emotions and have nothing you are not prepared to lose contradictory? Are you saying that loss of something you love is worse than never having it?