Man accepts death but not the hour of his death

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This doesn't seem to be a critique of happiness itself, but selfish individual happiness at the expense of collective relational happiness between individuals in a society. Happiness is not zero-sum and, as such, should not be pursued in a selfish individualized approach. Instead, it should be pursued collectively with a focus on relationships and collective experiences.

Do you have a point? Assumedly your comment is also driven by motivation.

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it's typical of modern thought to suggest that our thinking has an irrational basis (freud and marx are the two big ones). But what about THAT thought? But anyway, what this does is simply look at motives rather than what is said. WHY did he say it- not what did he say- is he correct etc. This means you just diagnose your opponent- instead of arguing with him. Meanwhile only those that understand this can have a legitimate voice...

Anyway, more speicifically he says (paraphrasing), there was a booming period for democracies but now a certain distrust has come in (why?) now people go for trump bolsonaro, they are drawn [irreovcably, emotionally) toward the strong man to solve their problems.

I shall translate: western govt gave power to their people (aren't they nice?) but people are perverse and are throwing it away

If you believe this version of events...

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Does he not say that? Would being more direct be beneficial? Topics this encompassing seem to require circumambulation.

>reinforces all the banal pressuppositions of our rotten society

Depends, from the UK he sounds like a far right lunatic, and I'd vouch for France on that too.

>Imagine for example that you did have many friends. But over time one by one, you lost those friendships. And at every time, you said "This is ok, it happens." And when you had no friends and had trouble making them you said "this is ok, I can do everything alone!" And so on.

I would think the rational response eventually would be to question "why do I keep losing friends?" regardless of if there is acceptance of each individual loss of a friend. If anything, stoicism should promotes Intellectual examination of one's life instead of such apathy.

Edit: >And when you had no friends and had trouble making them you said "this is ok, I can do everything alone!" And so on.

I already explained why this conclusion doesn't really fit well with the foundations of stoicism, to them humans are social animals.

Yes, however what I am saying is that constantly persuing to put "reason over emotion" leads to a dulled sense of yourself and emotions to the point that you may not even realize/understand what youre feeling.

Imagine for example that you did have many friends. But over time one by one, you lost those friendships. And at every time, you said "This is ok, it happens." And when you had no friends and had trouble making them you said "this is ok, It happens. I can do everything alone!" And so on. You wouldnt immediately feel this deep sense of loneliness, youd have adapted at each point to be reasonable about the outcomes. See the reasonable thing is to always be ok with something. So imagine you were a perfect Stoic from birth, would you be any different from a robot?

You have to be in tune with your emotions to recognize and change them, but I find that hard to do if I always put reason first.

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I still have a feeling that we read a completely different article...

> We Westerners are not recognizing the great achievements and there is an excessive distrust in the system that connects with the nostalgia for a strong leader.

He talks a lot about happiness in the abstract and how we’re not appreciating the great accomplishments of our current system, but at least from an American’s perspective the big thing he’s not mentioning is capitalism and how these days people just seem to feel squeezed. If you need to work more and more hours at a crappy job with an aggressive boss in order to afford the same amount of food and a crappier place to rent and you can’t afford a family or leisure time and you have all this anxiety around your future being worse than your present, it’s a big deal. And add to that a sense of unfairness at wealth inequality, and a ruling class rigging thing for themselves and critical under-addressed issues like climate change and all the headlines about violence, and corporations spying on you and trying harder and harder to milk you for profit … I mean at some point life just stops being fun. And when that happens it casts a shadow over our philosophical meaning-making and our sense that using our rational mind to play the game that society sets out before us is the winning strategy

His only mention of suffering is a random line in passing “This is why wars always work the same way: I want to destroy you, I suffer and I want revenge.” He doesn’t seem to perceive rational people existing in the current world as sufferin; he just thinks of them as ungrateful.

Attach your passions to the journey, not the destination. Do your best according to your current understanding of things, but know that your current understanding is incomplete and delight in the “surprises” of failure that allow you to improve that understanding.

Its not fashionable its just people think they should be more happy because of all the social networks, stories and movies about how people are happy, and watching of other people pretending to be happy on instagram. We only experience our own happines so only problem (if it is a problem) is that people are constantly comparing with others.

I think what you are talking about is tangential to what I am saying.

I dont have anything against therapy, if your natural reactions are indeed causing you issues then as I said, one has to try to control their feelings in order to improve, but what I am saying is that there is no need to achieve being a perfectly virtuous being.

In the context of stocist philosophy, the ultimate goal is to achieve a peace and calm through all misfortune by recognizing that such events are a natural part of life, typically outside our control. Say if one experienced an earthquake that led to a loss of loved ones and ruined their fortune, the ultimate stoic response would be to say "This was a natural event I could not do anything about. There is nothing to feel angry or spiteful about".

Or if you were wronged, youd try to understand that the person who wronged you is a human being whose acting out of their biological impulses, and instead of being angry youd try to be understanding and and subdue your natural distateful resctions.

While this a completely logical course, my argument is that the practice of constantly trying to subdue such feelings, in my experience, is in itself harmful.

I am arguing that such a practice goes against your natural will as a human being. That it isnt necessarily good to always be logical about things and it is good at times to let out your natural reactions of being fearful, angry, spiteful, hateful.

I find being trying to be logical about everything to be a surpressment of myself as a human being. I took this view after reading Nietzche.

I no longer feel need to be ok with everything and everyone. There are things and people I hate and I feel much more at peace with myself expressing that.

To respond to your, why do I think it makes for someone being uninteresting. Uninteresting, isnt the right word, its more like you feel a sense of dullness. But Imagine that we all achieved this perfect state of being, everyone would be the same person with no defining personal characteristics.

>However, if say relationships arent working out for me, or I cant seem to make friends and feel lonely, and if I have to tell myself "This is ok. This is a natural part of life. I should be content", etc I find that very damaging as it is really just a lie. I feel sad, angry, lonely etc on the inside as much as I tell myself that I am not, I just become far removed from understanding myself.

In this particular case, stoicism would tend to motivate you to change the situation for an entirely different reason. The fundamental definition of a human being to nearly all stoic philosophers was along the lines of "a rational animal that exists/thrives in a society". So stoicism developed to be innately pro-social, to a certain extent, and the basic stoic concept "living the good life" includes having meaningful relationships with other people. In otherwords, to a stoic philosopher persistent isolation and loneliness for a human being would be fundamentally unnatural conditions that need to be rectified just as much as the inability to control one's own anger.

However, beyond that I think you still aren't quite understanding what the stoic perspective on emotions. To them emotion *is not intrinsically wrong, as feeling emotion is a part of human life. What they did believe was wrong is when emotions control one's thoughts and actions. Yet, even that doesn't mean emotions cannot serve as prompts to rational decisions. For example, it would be entirely acceptable to a stoic for someone to use the feelings of disappointment, frustration, etc... of not achieving an end as an impetus to rethink how one is trying achieve that end and/or reconsider if that end is worthwhile. They would probably would view it as similar to a situation like somone's aching muscles while carrying heavy things from one side of a warehouse to another causing them to decide to use a cart or wheelbarrow. In both cases even though the irrational feeling starts a chain of events, there is a rational decision that governs it. That is what they mean by "reason over emotion".

Happiness is overrated

Marxists, for all their talk of inevitable history, have a fundamentally flawed understanding of hierarchies in general.

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