Stoicism

[chenda]

@Alphaville

I didn't read the full article but it is funny how 'ancient wisdom' often has much more credibility in modern spirituality than modern wisdom. Ancient Roman emperors have more marketing appeal than a postgrad from Nuneaton Polytechnic.

[Cam]

My all-time favourite book on Stoicism is The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth. I think the author is into law, so he's very good at organizing things. The book pulls from primary sources from most of the big stoics, and is divided into several sections. The sections are: judgment, externals, perspective, death, desire, wealth and pleasure, what others think, valuation, emotion, adversity, virtue, and learning. I recently did a big book purge and got rid of a bunch of my books as I semi-moved out, and this book was one of the few I kept. I keep coming back to it. It's my favourite because 1) it is so organized and 2) it pulls from primary sources, with only commentary at the beginning of each section and comments to explain unclear stuff such as the mention of old names that a modern reader might not recognize.

I agree with the point to learn and then focus on putting the ideas into practice. I keep on coming back to the book to remind myself of these ideas and to hopefully get them stuck in my head.

[mountainFrugal]

@Cam I recently finished the practicing stoic and literally just did a search to see if anyone had posted about it before I recommended reading it right now. Turns out you had the same idea! . It is incredibly helpful to have all the writings on general topics in a single place. It then makes it easier to look up the specific passages if you want to delve in further. I especially liked the sections on desire and wealth/pleasure. I think that I have revisited those sections more often than others as they essentially encapsulate all self help books regarding money, but boiled down into pithy statements. If only understanding statements and implementing them were the same thing I would be set! .

[Cam]

@Cam I recently finished the practicing stoic and literally just did a search to see if anyone had posted about it before I recommended reading it right now. Turns out you had the same idea! . It is incredibly helpful to have all the writings on general topics in a single place. It then makes it easier to look up the specific passages if you want to delve in further. I especially liked the sections on desire and wealth/pleasure. I think that I have revisited those sections more often than others as they essentially encapsulate all self help books regarding money, but boiled down into pithy statements. If only understanding statements and implementing them were the same thing I would be set! .

Glad I'm not the only one who loved it. There ya go folks two recommendations for that one now. And yes if only understanding and implementing happened simultaneously!

[Alphaville]

@Alphaville

I didn't read the full article but it is funny how 'ancient wisdom' often has much more credibility in modern spirituality than modern wisdom. Ancient Roman emperors have more marketing appeal than a postgrad from Nuneaton Polytechnic.

is that where mary beard went to school?

(that place is made up! i tried to look it up! )

anyway yeah i mean marcus aurelius gave rome commodus, so he can't have been that great.

i do like seneca though, not as a guru (who needs one?) but as solid entertainment.

[chenda]

is that where mary beard went to school?

(that place is made up! i tried to look it up! )

anyway yeah i mean marcus aurelius gave rome commodus, so he can't have been that great.

i do like seneca though, not as a guru (who needs one?) but as solid entertainment.

Haha yes it was the first obscure town which came to mind...I agree with you on gurus...

I believe the film gladiator was actually based on stoic philosophy...or it was it's hidden meaning

[Alphaville]

I believe the film gladiator was actually based on stoic philosophy...or it was it's hidden meaning

ow, i hated that movie, i thought its meaning was "cgi tigers"

i like a lot of ridley scott's earlier stuff-- alien, blade runner, the 1984 mac commercial (lol). later... i don't know. i've been meaning to watch the martian but haven't. no question on his cultural significance though, but for me he became a lot less interesting as he got more commercially successful.

[chenda]

ow, i hated that movie, i thought its meaning was "cgi tigers"

Haha I did like it but I'm quite sentimental and I like all things ancient. His other films have never appealed to me, although I've not seen many of them to be fair.

https://youtu.be/u-LsLd4RP5g

Jordan Petersen is apparently a fan, it turns boys into men or something

[Alphaville]

Jordan Petersen is apparently a fan, it turns boys into men or something

rofl

-

alien, the original film, from 1979, is a great little horror movie in space.

one of the things it featured was working class characters, "space truckers"... i guess the idea was there previously as there's a deep purple song called space trucking? but anyway it was a dan o'bannon screenplay, and he had made something similar (but comical) with john carpenter either when they were both students or right out of film school. eta: dark star! yeah... https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069945/

anyway, before alien, space was about superheroes and glorious humanity. alien was about... corporate dystopia and humans getting crushed. great movie really.

blade runner, so many cuts, but the final one, idk when it was eventually release, without the voiceover... that's one of the great cyberpunk movies of the 20th century. william gibson went to see it and reportedly walked out because it was too similar to what he was writing at the time (neuromancer) and didn't want to be influenced.

anyway i'd vouch for those 2. they earn him a place in the pantheon.

[chenda]

anyway i'd vouch for those 2. they earn him a place in the pantheon.

Great I'll add them to my list! (I literally have a to watch list, an analogue one ; )

[theanimal]

I’ve been reading parts of The Practicing Stoic recently ( h/t @mF) and have very much enjoyed the sections on Desire. Wealth and Pleasure, and What Others Think. It not only contains references to the stoics, but other historical figures who have espoused similar sentiments.

Here are some of my highlights from Chapter 5 on Desire:

“You will learn the truth by experience: the things that people value highly and try hardest to get do them no good once they have them. Those who don’t have them imagine that, once they do, everything good will be theirs; then they do get them, and the heat of their desires is the same, their agitation is the same, their disgust with what they possess is the same, and their wish for what they don’t have is the same.”
-Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.174

“It has been remarked, perhaps, by every writer who has left behind him observations upon life, that no man is pleased with his present state; which proves equally unsatisfactory, says Horace, whether fallen upon by chance, or chosen with deliberation; we are always disgusted with some circumstance or other of our situation, and imagine the condition of others more abundant in blessings, or less exposed to calamities.”
-Johnson, The Rambler no. 63 (1750)

“No one can have whatever he wants. What he can do is not want what he doesn’t have, and cheerfully enjoy what comes his way.”
-Seneca Epistles 123.3

“Wouldn’t anyone admit how much better it is, instead of working hard to get possession of someone else’s wife, to work hard to restrain your desires; instead of being distressed about money, to train yourself to want little; instead of working to become famous, to work not to thirst for fame; instead of finding a way to hurt someone you envy, to find a way not to envy anyone; and instead of acting as a slave to false friends, as sycophants do, to suffer hardships in order to find true friends?”
-Musonius Rufus That One Should Disdain Hardships

[mountainFrugal]

Keeping with the theme of wisdom in The Practicing Stoic Book:

“On hearing of the interesting events which have happened in the course of a man's experience, many people will wish that similar things had happened in their lives too, completely forgetting that they should be envious rather of the mental aptitude which lent those events the significance they possess when he describes them ; to a man of genius they were interesting adventures; but to the dull perceptions of an ordinary individual they would have been stale, everyday occurrences. This is, in the highest degree, the case with many of Goethe's and Byron's poems, which are obviously founded upon actual facts; where it is open to a foolish reader to envy the poet because so many delightful things happened to him, instead of envying that mighty power of fantasy which was capable of turning a fairly common experience into something so great and beautiful.”
― Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life, and Other Essays