/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18193915]

Is stoicism flawed since it implies that the mind and environment are two separate units?when in reality they are one thing, your environment affects your perception of your environment.
Are there any better ideologies that take lack of freewill as a fact yet battle the pessimism?

[Anonymous No.18193925]

>>18193915
>Are there any better ideologies that take lack of freewill as a fact yet battle the pessimism?
yes buddhism. and buddhist shit on karma all the time


Buddhism doesn’t care about society. Buddhism works in feudalism, republics, empires, monotheism, paganism, whatever non-enlightened people create as political system. Buddhism doesn't try to change society at all.

in Buddhism, there is no non-duality, people do not have a true nature, people are not the cosmos, people are not Brahma, people do not come from Brahma, people are not nibanna, people do not come from nibanna, people are not Buddha, people do not come from a buddha, people are not their mind, people are not loka, people are not born already enlightened. there is only craving for pretty things &the pretty ideas of having ''a true nature'' &there is a lack of craving for pretty things &pretty ideas. People get enlightened when they stop craving for those. The way to get enlightened is to purify the mind, however not with useless incantations &rituals nor with magical objects, unlike the Hindus do, but with the mind itself, ie all the time inclining [with the mind] the mind towards what the buddha calls good qualities &then directly knowing the mind as it really is, which is anicca, dukkha, anatta [contrary to what the hindus say], which is the condition for dispassion, dispassion which is the condition for liberation, liberation which is the condition for direct knowledge that dukkha is ended.

[Anonymous No.18193927]

>>18193915
The stoics taught that the soul (which includes the mind) is literally altered by impressions about the outside world. Not sure where you got the idea that they thought it was totally separate.

[Anonymous No.18193932]

>>18193915
>Is stoicism cucked
Entirely

[Anonymous No.18193947]

>>18193915
>Is stoicism flawed since it implies that the mind and environment are two separate units?
No and they are. The mind and the body are connected, but they are not the same thing. The mind and the environment are also connected but not the same thing.
>Are there any better ideologies
Stoicism isn't an ideology, it is a philosophy.
>that take lack of freewill as a fact yet battle the pessimism?
Sounds like a gay cope idk why you'd want that.

[Anonymous No.18193953]

>>18193927
yea but these impressions of the world are altered by impressions of the world.
i look at women and get rape urges(impressions by outside world)
so i will now learn to be stoic and look at women and not get rape urges by controlling my perception

Thus i literally havent done anything???
Where's the involvement??
Didn't stoics say that we control how we react to our environment?

[Anonymous No.18193963]

>>18193947
think about it man
Your brain forms your mind, every single thought you've had is a result of the environment because these thoughts(the mind) cannot happen without the brain.

[Anonymous No.18193969]

>>18193963
Are you unironically saying that the brain is a part of your "environment"?

[Anonymous No.18193989]

>>18193969
this has to be a bait, are you unironically unironically telling me that your brain is any different than the rest of the world matter?
A magical unit with a soul?
Your brain is entirely equivalent to your faeces in the universal context, both affect your actions and determine your thoughts.

[Anonymous No.18194052]

>>18193989
>this has to be a bait, are you unironically unironically telling me that your brain is any different than the rest of the world matter?
>A magical unit with a soul?
First of all, there is no logical connection at all between your two statements here. Yes, your brain is extremely different from the rest of world matter, because it makes up the most important part of your nervous system. Chopping down a tree won't kill you. Getting an axe slammed into your brain will instantly kill you. To imply that the brain is a part of your "environment" is ridiculous - it is a part of your body, it is an organ, a tool, a faculty.
Second, your smug rhetorical question in no way makes gay physicalism a foregone conclusion. There is obviously a connection between consciousness and the brain, but consciousness is still not the brain.
>Your brain is entirely equivalent to your faeces in the universal context, both affect your actions and determine your thoughts.
I can see how your brain is equivalent to your faeces. I am afraid it's different for the rest of us. If you had compared the brain with the intestines, maybe you could have at least made a meaningful point - you would have still been wrong, but at least you would have made a reasonable observation. Instead, you decided to push your dumb argument way farther than you should have and now you look like a moron. Poop is not an organ, anon, it is waste produced by organs. It can not be compared to organs in any meaningful sense.

[Anonymous No.18194069]

read heidegger

[Anonymous No.18194128]

>>18194052
so it appears i have the pleasure to introduce you to the real workings of the world
see chopping a tree can equally kill you once it falls and crushes your skull.
so then who made the decision of your death? the brain? the unconventionally angle growing tree? your feces that made you rush with the cutting of the tree as you wanted to go shit so badly?

[Anonymous No.18194141]

>>18194128
I genuinely hope you are not OP, because if you are this means I wasted a precious few minutes on a person retarded enough to write what you wrote unironically OR to write what you wrote ironically in pursuit of the "intelligent trolling" his small-souled self craves.

[Anonymous No.18194262]

>>18194141
as always that's the point where you are too small minded to actually reply and instead shift towards personal attacks

[Anonymous No.18194345]

>>18194262
As always when people stop playing along with your trolling you feign intellectual superiority to try and reel them back in. If you are serious about this, go reread our conversation, then read your last response again and consider why you missed the point entirely.

[Anonymous No.18194398]

>>18193915
>Are there any better ideologies that take lack of freewill as a fact yet battle the pessimism?
Literally described Nietzsche. His whole philosophical goal is based around making life innocent again by realizing the deterministic nature of becoming. There is no being behind becoming, there is only deterministic cause and effect, ergo all life is innocent of its supposed crimes, no matter what they are. Life is made wholly innocent, and free again to operate without delusion about itself.

[Anonymous No.18194407]

>>18193915
>mind and environment are two separate units.
Uff. This is what happens when you don't read any Stoic beside Seneca (a well-educated man who cannot do philosophy), Marcus (who is eclectic at best) and Epictetus (the only actual philosopher and actual Stoic of the three). If you cared reading what is left from the founders of the school instead of dealing in superficial twitter self-help rhetoric using the Stoics as an excuse to justifying being an incel who thinks himself brave, maybe you wouldn't have killed a thread for this.
That said, there is still a possibility that you are none of these things, and that you are a well-meaning person trying to better understand philosophy, so here's a book suggestion: pic related has several chapters with sources on the Stoic conception of god and the soul, and can explain you in detail how the enviroment and the mind are not separated at all. The body of god compenetrates the enviroment as well as your soul: the soul is a fragment of the soul of god, and the same forces holding together the cosmos are responsible for your physical coherence, the life within your body and your mental faculties. Here's a wikipedia page in case you want to have a first look at this:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneuma_(Stoic)
Please if you are actually interested in Stoicism, and are not simply using them as an excuse to justify some failures of your personality, take care to go beyond the trend that they are right now and read more about them.

[Anonymous No.18194435]

>>18194398
I get that but it kind of takes the course towards absurdity, i am already way past that point, i learned to be partly ignorant and be fine with that, sure life is predetermined and we are all a part of universe taking it's natural course, yea sure but since i am ignorant about it and i revolt absurdity i have to be a part of life, meaning participate in the social race and all, but i still want to be mindful of my actions without getting too deep and repeat the cycle of existentialism.
Is there any middle ground?

[Anonymous No.18194450]

>>18194435
How does Nietzsche take the path toward absurdity? Sounds like you're speaking about Camus or Sartre. Nietzsche took the path (or tried to at least expound it) towards nobility and superiority, without delusions or idealism. Have you read many of his works?

[Anonymous No.18194453]

>>18194407
>god
while i had hopes before, now i am confident to entirely avoid stoicism
thanks for the heads up anon

[Anonymous No.18194458]

>>18194450
>Nietzsche took the path (or tried to at least expound it) towards nobility and superiority, without delusions or idealism.
Nietzsche took the path of being an hedonist, but creating a narrative of larping as dionysus and also that values are not real, but you have to create some and fight for them. that's 100% mental gymnastics jut to avoid suicide after embracing relativism

[Anonymous No.18194474]

>>18194450
never did, no that's why i started this thread in the first place
it's just that you said
>His whole philosophical goal...by realizing the deterministic nature of becoming
Deterministic = absurd
so essentially just another way of unraveling the nature of absurdity

[Anonymous No.18194477]

>>18193915
It's flawed because it's dogmatic.

[Anonymous No.18194489]

>>18194477
If an ideology is based on the concept of truth then it should be, otherwise it's as good as anything else, stoicism is based on coping with life's suffering thus it must be assuring and dogmatic unlike pessimistic concepts such as absurdity.

[Anonymous No.18194524]

>>18194453
Understandable. The modern trend of stoicism avoids engaging with the physics precisely because of the idea of god. But Stoicism is almost entirely unintelligible without bringing god into the picture - and their god is a fully personal, fully thinking person, much like the christian god, which is why the early christians leeched off Stoicism (e.g. all the philosophical babbling about the holy ghost is heavily derivative of Stoic conceptions of pneuma) almost as much as they leeched off Platonism in the reinassance.

[Anonymous No.18194549]

>looking for the Truth outside of Christ
>hey internet people what is a good fundamental belief structure I should adopt I'm looking for something that should suit me well for the next 50 or 60 years
NGMI

[Anonymous No.18194555]

>>18194524
that's cool to know but isn't it counter intuitive to use a god concept when the whole point is to emphasize one's ability to fight suffering using thoughts?

[Anonymous No.18194562]

>>18194549
a friendly reminder that you are resorting to religion as a cope

[Anonymous No.18194578]

>>18194069
>nihilistic bullshit limitations
fuck that nigger. God is always with me, and thus I will be strong and win - regardless of the situation

[Anonymous No.18194602]

>>18194562
No it's because Christianity makes more sense than whatever is the latest pop metaphysics. It's hard sometimes, for instance, I want to fuck women other than my wife. I'm sure some fucking science lovers could lecture me about the benefits of polyamory and whoa what do you know it also means I get to indulge in licentiousness. The Bible says you can't do that, which combined with the common sense that you can use to derive that it's a bad idea, means you don't do it, and then you don't have a shit life.

Keep coping with whatever idiosyncratic life philosophy you picked up

[Anonymous No.18194628]

>>18194562
friendly reminder that you are an hedonist

[Anonymous No.18194640]

>>1893953
You've made the choice to practice stoicism. And yes, you are training yourself to act differently, it's how people work psychologically, a lot of what we do is habit. Chrysippus used the analogy of a cylinder and a sphere, they will roll differently from the same push just as people with different temperaments will react differently to the same impression. But people have the ability to work on their temperament and improve it so they will react better.

[Anonymous No.18194767]

>>18194602
That's what that anon meant when he said cope, though. You just want to know that you're "living right" since you have no way of affirming your moral and ethical standards without the help of a crutch.

[Anonymous No.18194785]

>>18194555
No. The idea is that you use thoughts to align yourself with god's will, because everything that happens in god's will. In this way they have an explanation for evil (perspectival error, i.e. evil isn't evil, the problem is you not understanding god and accepting his way of ordering the universe) for why thoughts can indeed help you resist pain (thoughts are meant to be synchronized with the will and thought of god). Of course, this is a superficial explanation - the book I linked is more precise on it. It's not a stupid conception, in my opinion. I don't agree with it, but they had a rather articulate way of explaining how ethics depended upon how the world (which is god) is structured.

[Anonymous No.18194795]

>>18193915
>Is stoicism flawed
Yes. /thread

[Anonymous No.18194813]

>>18194767
In my view morality can be in principle derived from nature, i.e social behaviour that makes it more likely that a group of individuals will survive.

Also in the post you're quoting I said "combined with the common sense-" i.e this stuff can be determined by rational analysis.

[Anonymous No.18194860]

>>18194813
>In my view morality can be in principle derived from nature, i.e social behaviour that makes it more likely that a group of individuals will survive.
That's pretty arbitrary. Why apply that principle at the group level rather than the individual? Makers more sense that way. Plus, you can also change it around to pleasure instead of survival. Quickly, we arrive at the ethos of the 21st century.
>Also in the post you're quoting I said "combined with the common sense-" i.e this stuff can be determined by rational analysis.
Rationality can tell you that virtue is good but it can not tell you that you must be virtuous. That involves a decision. This is the role the Bible plays for you.

[Anonymous No.18194861]

>>18193925
That is a long way to say Buddhism is nihilism.

[Anonymous No.18196230]

test to see if janny banned me

[Anonymous No.18197668]

>>18193915
No.

[Anonymous No.18197787]

>>18193927
He got it by skimming Marcus Aurelius once and not understand half of what he said

[Anonymous No.18198245]

>>18194052
>>18193969
>>18193963

kek. this is the discussion philosophers have had for the past two thousand years. both opinions are valid, but anons 'environment' is more accepted nowadays and seems to be more accurate considering empirical research and the new insights we've gained through it to expand metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.18198439]

>>18193915
Stoicism's answer to what existance is: FIRE