I’m unexpectedly bonding easily with the Stoics — “to such a person, glasses are amazing; to everyone else, a glass is just a glass, and it is half empty to boot.”pic.twitter.com/aBnJYHCuKx
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On its face, Stoicism seemed to me like a possible complacency-enabler. If you fully grok how ephemeral ALL things are, from your car to your job to your love and right down to your sight... ability to walk... mind... do you keep white-knuckling it through 80-hour work weeks?
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And maybe you *don't*, but if you don't, it's probably because whatever the lived experience + material product of those 80-hour weeks is *isn't actually something that you want for the sum output of your life*. You're trying to buy a new job title + raise or whatever.
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Not trying to dismantle the career ladder here, but after a year or two of this nonsense you're not going to walk away from the promotion when something interesting lands at your feet. Sunk costs are anchors. Any philosophy that frees you of this makes you *broadly more free*
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FWIW, the Roman Stoics Irvine writes about were living out various manifestations of a legit OG *rock & roll lifestyle*, contributing significantly to the political, cultural & academic scenes between periods of severe illness or banishment to dismal rocks off the coast
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Right. A (non-linear!) extension to this is Schoppenhauer’s philosophical pessimism. Of which, Nietzsche found a way out in some sort of “not a bug but feature” approach. “Precisely because ‘
#nothingmatterslol,’ what you do matters & is how you create/find meaning.” -
Ecclesiastes is also a great read. And while in fact Nietzsche was very critical of (Christendom & generally) religion, if you one up his framework, I think, it actually allows and encourages deep religious beliefs to counter/cope the “absurd” w his distinct Dionysian attitude.
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