I see plenty of lessons to be learned in stoicism and the modern barrage/sharing of information. Too much to type out on a phone. But yes, I am a fan.
This mostly revolves around how we choose to react and interact with people we don’t know and most likely will never meet in the digital world.
I had always thought stoicism as this emotionless, stone faced personality. But I’m learning it’s a philosophy of separating external conditions and they way you respond, and values referred as virtues.
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius books are available for free on Kindle.
Keep one on your phone to read when you have to sit and wait for a long time, like at the DPS or the tax office. It will help you keep calm when faced with vast amounts of stupidity.
It's hard to harness our busy brain, i honestly can't reconcile our brain power with evolutionary theroy. Explanatory descriptions fly outI the window describing how selective pressure led to our large brains, that sometimes I think do nothing more than torture us and fill out free time with internal stressors that drive us to illogical conclusions. I would love to discuss this with anyone who'd thought about it. But this thought process also makes the fallacy of expecting scientific theory to describe what is happening, instead of producing the closest description possible deductively without being nullified. I'm gonna shut up now.
"Scientists have successfully driven the layman—and this includes the highly educated philosopher—out of the business of knowing something about the world." This quote sums up what I gathered in college. You can't expect Science to explain things, it's just an attempt to get close to the bullseye, and that's what I think it should be taken as. Plus to me, the bible gives good advice when the apostles and the old testament speak of pride. The sun may rise every morning after I brush my teeth but that doesn't mean it rises because I brush my teeth. What I'm getting at is that a description of what happens, however detailed and and thoughtful, doesn't elucidate "why". And it let's me down when people quote some scientific theory as truth. "Layman-and I am one too" It's a large splitting maul that is unwieldy and may split wood, but not efficiently or with any certainty. It's just a brutish way of accomplishing ones goal, argumetatively or otherwise, without acknowledging the limits of what is trying to be accomplished.
I’m agnostic and a libertarian.
Life is hard. It always has been and always will be.
I like the Bible and the teachings of the apostles.
I like books and science and music and all kinds of ****.
But at its core I understand that humanity is not perfect and we will eat our own and we are not above the known laws of nature. And I’m gonna do my best to raise strong, independent, thoughtful children and enjoy the ride.
With all the goings on of this past year I've noticed my mindset slipping from where it should be. That being said, I've jumped back into the works of the stoics the past few days and I've noticed a major shift in my attitude and anxiety levels.
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