Cf discourse around "emotional labor" -- who does the work of emotional self-regulation, and who gets to enjoy emotional free expression is not a neutral thing and an expression of power gradients etc etc. Stoicism can be used as a moral stance to beat up on "snowflakes"
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Ie, the very fact of emotional self-regulation in a stoic mode implies access to a free choice between regulating and not regulating that's revealing of privilege. "The waiter must smile, the diner can be rude" basically.
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I've always thought "you can't control what happens, but you can control how you respond" to be uncontroversially true and available to anyone, but I guess that is debated in woke circles? If you can't sleep or eat well, it does become harder.
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that's not disputed. the problem is telling someone else what they can or can't control, esp coming from a place of privilege. stoicism sounds a lot like "just accept your lot" which is good advice in many cases, but reinforces the status quo as a normative theory for living
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But that would be a problem with a strawman version of stoicism, wouldn't it?
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Or a problem with stoicism as practiced... you’d be defending a strawman no-true-stoic ideal 😄
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I have considered that, but is that in fact how it is practiced by most people? My understanding is that the whole point is how you handle yourself, not how you expect other people to handle themselves.
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The idea that your choices and mine are separable prima facie before moral/ethical considerations are entertained is a basic weakness in all conservative philosophies (and stoicism is one). It implicitly assumes the legitimacy of the status quo so long as you personally can cope
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Basically under sufficient privilege a stoic posture is either naïveté or hypocrisy. If my adversity is trivial, handling it with stoic grace says nothing about whether I’m more moral/stronger etc than someone throwing screaming tantrums under far greater stressors.
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Of course not! I think I see the divergence here. Yes, virtue ethics where virtue = bearing something stoically, means virtue is more available to some than others. I guess I just mentally filter that stuff out & try to take the good bits about understanding scope of action.
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In some ways it seems like a category error to call stoicism an ideology or ethic at all under modern conditions. It’s closer to a consumption aesthetic, like minimalism. A performed aesthetic of bearing, composure etc. I honestly find it hard to take seriously. Reads larp to me.
Fair enough. I think there are some good bits about swallowing your ego & focusing on what you can control.
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Oh definitely. There’s good bits to stoicism. It’s just not a posture I’d personally adopt in the culture wars.


