The entire doctrine of stoicism hinges on the easily falsifiable idea that people can 'choose' the way they feel about...

Aulus Gellius, a man of extensive erudition, and gifted with an eloquent and graceful style, relates, in his work entitled Noctes Atticæ that he once made a voyage with an eminent Stoic philosopher; and he goes on to relate fully and with gusto what I shall barely state, that when the ship was tossed and in danger from a violent storm, the philosopher grew pale with terror.

I will refer you to

Yeah, and a man with a turbulent soul can still level a gun at his own head with a steady hand.

You're assuming that there is no difference between voluntary and involuntary suffering, and you have also failed to establish a relationship between your Asian Mystic Man and the goofy stoics.

You'll note that that monk is Asian. Having higher IQ than the Mediterranean "white" (a subrace due to their genetic distance from the Han), he is able to help logic and reason to commit mutiny on the ship of his emotional brain. Stoic thought is only useful in China and Japan for this reason.

>subrace
>genetic distance from the Han
>"white"

Are you being serious? Is this the famous Chinese racism I've been reading about? It looks like especially delicious bait indeed.

It's not racist if it's true. Someone has to be on top.

Cool! Sorry for the delayed response. I've been mulling this over.

Let me ask you this: you said, it can't be racist if it's true. Isn't the more serious problem that you don't want it to be both racist and true at the same time?

If it were true, then there would be no need for it to be racist. The implicit racism would simply disappear, because the truth-claim in that statement would be a fact. I think that racism is an inherently pleasurable phenomenon, which is why people take that stance, but I also think it's also a guilty pleasure. Proving or demonstrating the validity of racist perspectives is I think a kind of ideological or utopian idea. I don't have a lot of opportunity to speak with people who are unapologetically racist in their views, so I find this interesting.

Similarly, being racist purely for the sake of being racist wouldn't be as attractive unless you also thought there was a legitimate reason to be so. So nothing really prevents you from simply claiming that Mediterraneans are subraces or sub-people, it's just that I think you would prefer this to be a truth claim rather than a remark that could be perceived as racist (which it clearly is). Am I wrong?

I think this is where I'm at. What do you think?

wew I didnt know I had brain damage

Sorry your real response went unnoticed friendo

No worries, there's potentially a much more interesting conversation about Chinese racism percolating now.

This is like the fifth thread I've seen this week attacking Stoicism

How can someone be so terminally butthurt about such an inoffensive and useful philosophy?

James Bond Stockdale (1923 – 2005) was a United States Navy vice admiral and one of the most-highly decorated officers in the history of the U.S. Navy. His plane was shot down over Vietnam in 1965, and he was held as a prisoner of war for seven and a half years. During his captivity he spent more than four years in solitary confinement and was repeatedly tortured—his shoulders torn from their sockets, his back broken, his legs crushed. He walked with a limp and endured other pain for the rest of his life. Stockdale wrote multiple books about detailing how the philosophy of Epictetus was the key to his survival in captivity.

reasonandmeaning.com/2015/03/08/admiral-james-stockdale-and-epictetus/

Epictetus himself admits that even the best Stoic is subject to passionate emotional responses in intense situations, because his reason doesn't have time to intervene.

Your pic related should have thanked Plato instead, knowing that suffering up to death is no disadvantage to the man of wisdom.

I mean, he's probably implicitly defining "racism" to mean something like "attributing negative aspects to other races that they don't possess," not just "attributing negative aspects to other races" alone.

Could be. I'm not sure I can tell the difference.

The whole thing with racism - or ideology in general - is that it works just as you have said, by making itself implicit or veiling unfounded justifications as truth-claims. It doesn't mean that those truth-claims are not actually true, it is that making them *by implication* is what, I think, produces the phenomenon of racism itself: that is to say, it requires *the other* person to fill in the missing piece that implicates *them* in the statement. For lack of a better word, we get triggered. If I want to be racist, I have to bait a trap, because I need you, as the other person, to go that one little extra step and be offended by what I am saying in order for me to think that I have hit on something true. I need you to respond in the way that I want you to respond but, because I am setting the trap, I cannot simply force upon you. You can't tell someone else to Be Triggered. It doesn't work like that. And the harder you try, the more obvious it becomes.

Racist: Mediterraneans are subhuman, they have genetic deficiencies, "white" (and actually, that last one probably does deserve to be in question marks).

Not Racist: Chinese people are really smart, Han culture is glorious, Buddhism fuck yeah.

But being Not Racist is banal, because what are you doing? Just talking about yourself. Being Racist is more "fun" because now, of course, there's a conversation, even if it's a shitty one. Because it's now dialogical, it's *real.*

The racism of other people can actually be interesting to observe, because what you are seeing is desire - one person's desire to identify themselves with a positive virtue - and, even though it may be bunk, it still *works.* I can watch somebody else be racist and go, yeah, that's right, Chinese people are superior! I should be like them, and not like this shitty Mediterranean that I am!

We all want to understand who we are, but ultimately, I think, we are actually only capable of doing so by reference to something else which we are not. Whether it is through positive or negative identification. Racism gives you both: a sense of being associated with the positive, and distance from the negative. But generally speaking you need somebody else to get triggered, I think, in order to confirm that this is true, or else you might get lost in metaphysical speculation: "Hmm...am I really being racist *enough* now?" And so on. And then, of course, you might lose your sense of identity altogether. And then, you know, it's hard to enjoy the small things in life.

Also, I was reading parts of this report, which was on Nick Land's blog today.

The amazing thing about this report is that even while the authors are talking about Chinese racism, they're doing so in an even *more* horrible way - that is, how to position themselves as apparently tolerant and open-minded Europeans for pure strategic advantage! The whole report seems to be on precisely this: how to use one culture's inherent sense of superiority against them, and so reference to being open-minded is purely a destabilizing tactic. Which, however not-racist that might be (and technically, it isn't), is actually infinitely worse, because it's total cynicism masquerading as enlightened tolerance for ruthless geopolitical advantage.

How about that? What the fuck does that do for international relations? The plain fact is that it's psychologically healthy for a culture to privilege itself, for the same reason that individual egos should have a healthy sense of themselves. But good luck trying to make that argument in the semiosphere today, where everybody's so thin-skinned and getting triggered by not denouncing all racism sufficiently enough.

Consider this: what if I wanted to say that I actually think certain aspects of Chinese racism are good? Because it is. It's right there in the report! Does this make me a racist myself, or an apologist for racism? It shouldn't, but it obviously could be read that way. So does that mean that I should 'universally condemn all bigotry?' Well, we argue in the master's language. Is it bigotry, or is it simply cultural pride? It depends, entirely, on whether you are inclined to take a positive or a negative view of things. But this shit will just go endlessly in circles if your'e talking to people who want to find offensive triggers in everything, when all they have to do is simply

a) not take the bait, or
b) ask, is this bait?

rather, the response is all too frequently

c) take the bait, have the trap snap on your hand, and then burst into tears.

It's so fucking sad. So this really was an eye-opener for me. Racism is obviously dumb, but strategic counter-racism is even worse than that, I think. The idea is just to be somewhere in the middle, of course. But it's interesting to think about.

gwern.net/docs/2013-anonymous-strategicconsequencesofchineseracism.pdf

this is such a non-issue

you privilege your own citizens, 'disallow' interracial marriage and don't privilege any children begotten thereby with citizenship, act kindly towards sojourners (legit refugees), refuse permanent migrants of all stripes, and refuse to pressure other countries by force be it military or economic.

You choose how you behave in all events.

Go ahead and falsify the idea that people can choose the way they feel then.

actually the basic premise of stoicism is that if things happen they happen in the same universe

nice shitpost though

If I jump out of the bushes and put a a knife to your throat I'll get arrested, so no.

Wise post. I agree. Apologies for running wild with it, was just something I was thinking about today.

>Tfw you will never be a brainwashed Japanese Shintoist fucking cutie tanned village Chinese

So what massacres did the Chinese perform against the Japanese exactly?

>implying I wouldn't be too doped out on opium if that happened, just like Aurelius, to give a single solitary feel

stoicism: 1000
you: 0

drugging yourself is an auto-fail

if you have to deaden yourself to the world, you obviously arent dead to the world.

Even if you did that and he didn't react in a way that implied he had mastery of his emotions, it could simply mean he wasn't a sufficiently accomplished practitioner of stoicism.

the burden of proof weighs heavily upon the stoics, so far they fail

[The] Stoics maintain that there are certain impressions made on the soul by external objects which they call phantasiæ, and that it is not in the power of the soul to determine whether or when it shall be invaded by these. When these impressions are made by alarming and formidable objects, it must needs be that they move the soul even of the wise man, so that for a little he trembles with fear, or is depressed by sadness, these impressions anticipating the work of reason and self-control; but this does not imply that the mind accepts these evil impressions, or approves or consents to them. For this consent is, they think, in a man’s power; there being this difference between the mind of the wise man and that of the fool, that the fool’s mind yields to these passions and consents to them, while that of the wise man, though it cannot help being invaded by them, yet retains with unshaken firmness a true and steady persuasion of those things which it ought rationally to desire or avoid. This account of what Aulus Gellius relates that he read in the book of Epictetus about the sentiments and doctrines of the Stoics

Dumb niggers

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, your thesis is that racists need to be 'called' racist in order for that ideology to be functional for them.

More abstractly: an ideology needs a critical audience outside that ideology for it to be maintained or functional

Even more abstractly: an object can only have function or be defined by a CONTRAST with another object; i.e., by its comparison with an object that is not itself.

This is essentially Saussurian structuralism, and your line of reasoning is nearly correct, except that you're misassigning that role of the contrastive, outside object: it is not the party which alleges me to be racist, but the party which I am racist towards.

For the phenomenon of racism to be produced, there requires two parties: I, and the people I'm racists towards. A third party which calls me a racist is not necessary to that strictly binary relationship.

I think the reason why you confused the two is because often they are conflated, but the key is that they are not necessarily so; that is, these two roles (the recipient of racism, and the accuser of racists) are not necessarily mutual.

Moreover, I think that the reason people are racist is much more simple than you have described: it's only to feel superior and thus of worth, just like a schoolyard bully.

>he didn't have time enough for reasoning x therefore he should thank reasoning y which he also wouldn't have had time for

Apply yourself, faggot.

The Platonist doesn't care if he feels, he just comes to terms with and masters his feelings rather than running away from them