Stoicism as practiced by numales who read Meditations once and think Aurelius is a model Stoic is not. Every time I see someone start talking about being a "Stoic" and citing Marcus I'm reminded that even something so seemingly esoteric as Stoicism attracts more dilettantes and pretenders than actual practitioners.
Regardless, anyone who is serious about practicing Stoicism will eventually encounter Theravada Buddhism and realize that it's very similar but superior in every way.
"Stoicism" is very popular among Chads who want to pretend to be philosophers and numales who want to pretend to be emotionless hardasses. The numale stereotype, the liberal atheist who thinks he's really smart and always wants to impress people with how educated and worldly he is, will almost always cite Stoicism as his personal philosophy. He imagines that this provides him with a moral structure without the need to rely on religion (showing how little Stoic writing he's actually read) and he knows that the average person will know absolutely nothing about it, so that even his minimal knowledge will seem impressive.
I see this a lot and it's almost always the same kind of guys doing it. You can basically tell whether someone has a brain or is just a retarded dilettante based on which Stoics they mention by name. If someone cites Epictetus, they're probably ok. If someone cites Aurelius, there's an extremely high likelihood that they're a numale poser. That's just the facts, boys.
I guess I'm just naturally a stoic as masturbatory as it seems. There's no way to make that statement presentable. I haven't actually read any but it seems like the thing that falls in line with what I believe in.
Maybe I should read the official literatures at some point
Luke Peterson
Thanks for blogging your feelz on philosophical issues, without giving any actual insight into said philosophical issues whatsoever.
>Hurrr chadz numales soiboi
KYFAM then KYS.
Gavin Brown
Shitpost
Are you an ascetic person?
Robert Miller
Like the first fucking page of Meditations is Aurelius mentioning how thankful he is to the friend who loaned him a copy of Epictetus' discourses. Come on man, apply yourself.
Stoicism is a practical philosophy and Epictetus' discourses are intended to explain it so that readers can understand it in both theory and practice. It's intended to teach you.
Aurelius' writings are, again his own personal diary intended primarily to aid him in keeping certain things in mind which he had already learned. It offers very little in the way of explanation because, again, he was writing it for his own personal use. It's interesting from a historical and biographical standpoint but virtually useless from a philosophical one. More importantly, it offers absolutely nothing new. This is not necessarily a criticism, because it wasn't intended to. It is just Marcus writing down things he wants to remember from his readings of philosophy.
It's like we have a novel and a guy who wrote a book report on it and you're here saying that you don't see the difference between the two and that you actually prefer the book report to the original work. It's sad.
Luke Jones
I don't disagree the Discourses of Epictetus are a better material than the Meditations.
Brandon Harris
Holy shit you like to read your own words. You don't realize that nobody gives a fuck, and your blog is completely boring and without any point besides "I feelz this way."
