How is stoicism not just a massive cope?

Alright, so we can agree that stoicism is a cope.
But how can you keep your mind healthy then, and not let it be poisoned by negative emotions?
Can you unironically not just think away bad emotions, but actually need to change your life?

You can't, embrace negative emotions and let them be your motivation.

Well those youtubers (like alfsvoid) do have degrees in philosophy. So its not information taken just from anywhere random.

>Repressing your emotions
>repressing
Try again

Can you think away a scar? There's no magic eloxir for everything.

What's wrong with that?

A degree in philosophy is nothing if you can't embody philosophy. Having a philosophy degree makes you as much a philosopher as owning weights makes you a bodybuilder.

>alfsvoid
I haven't seen her stuff and it's possible that she knows her stuff but it's always best to actually read the source material yourself before forming a concrete opinion on something imo. Esp. with Stoicism since there's pretty much no preliminary reading required and the texts aren't that long either. You could read the enchiridion in under an hour.

What's wrong with that? What isn't? Stoicism is about accepting emotions without having them influence your decisions. In fact if you repress your emotions as a stoic you're doing it wrong. You can't repress them, but you can control what you value rationally, and thus you more or less control what emotions do end up rearing their heads.

not him, but I read Seneca and Marc Aurel and it still seems like a massive cope to me.

>“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
how is that not repressing your emotions?

Explain why this is seen as virtuous then:

That principle has actually been hugely influential in psychotherapy.

Well i've only read Marcus and seen her numereous vids on stoicism tho, if that isnt enough then so be it.
Also her videos have been kind of shit lately, i've been watching her for a few months and can confirm that she really has daddy issues and made a lot of poor life decisions.

Ok senpai. You win.

It reiterates that your evaluation of the external is what's causing you distress, and that if you change your evaluation with scrutiny then the external can't bother you. This is different from valuing an external, letting it bother you, and then repressing the emotions you feel as a consequence. The key lies in your evaluation, not in the emotion or impression.

Seneca accepts what he can't control. In other words, he did not let his rationality be compromised. I think it's important to understand that death is not evil or something to necessarily avoid in the mind of a stoic, and thus not something to worry or even think about. The fact that he could keep calm in the face of what causes many others distress is seen as virtuous.

It's seems like a minor distinction but it's of paramount importance. Epictetus is saying that events themselves don't distress us but our judgements of those events. If we are pained by an event -- our son dying -- it is not simply because our son has died that we are pained, but because we judge that it is bad for him to have died. If we revoke this judgement, we will no longer feel pain over his death; and this is not "repressing emotions" it is eliminating the cause of those emotions.

>incisive
>profound
A lot of vain mental wanking. Proverbs and Ecclesiasties covers the only life advice you need

Their determinism is materialistic and empiricist. That is the reason why stoic ethics is based on prudence. It is not cope if you do it consciously.
Also, read a fucking book, american shithead.
/thread

Closed minded fundamentalist. Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are great, in fact some of the only good books in the bible, but they are by no means enough. Just so you know, Epictetus was one of the only pagan authors that the church let people read because of the edifying nature of his works.

>Epictetus was one of the only pagan authors that the church let people read
They changed Socrates to St Paul afaik, though. Crazy fuckers.

Why does everyone go around looking for "copes" now? Newsflash, pal. You can accept reality as it is while also adopting an attitude towards it that doesn't make you miserable. All these people who accuse every outlook that isn't suicide-inducing a "cope" are really coping by trying to protect themselves from disappointment.

>having to read and write philosophy for at least 6 years has the same effect as spending money
based and redpilled analogy, user-kun

I am a fundamentalist and you are another pleb who thinks wanking over continually atomized abstractions is beneficial to anyone. Stoicism is another failed non-conclusive ideology

wtf I hate epictetus now

It is. Even Spengler noted that Stoicism is a symptom of a dying civilization. Rather than exert one's will onto the earth, he retreats inside himself. His internal conditions conform to the earth then, and his will and spirit has been extinguished. Whitehead noted something similar regarding Buddhism -- that it was never worthwhile because it always sought internal rather than external change.

Marcus isn't the greatest example though, as he conquered a lot of shit.

Considering the state of higher education these days? Yeah, that sounds about right.

>You can't control your emotions, it has been scientifically proven that the brain areas that create your emotions can not be regulated at will.

What is meditation?

I don't think stoicism is about withdrawing your will, rather it's about rationally directing it, and not letting the external direct it.

He's talking nonsense. Even if you don't buy into stoicism, it's clear you can control your emotions. If you're angry or anxious simply controlling your breathing will make the emotion weaker or make it subside.

>Repressing your emotions and tricking your mind into thinking he can decide what emotions he should feel.
Brainlet post. Stoicism is about letting negative emotions come and go without letting them cloud your judgement, and enjoying pleasures as they come without relying on them. Anyone who thinks all stoics have to repress emotion and feeling is a retard.
>Stoicism only looks at life as suffering and pain
lmao

how is buddhism not just a massive cope?
how is christianity not just a massive cope?
how is any life philosophy predicated on suffering not just a massive cope?

spengler didn't know shit

>JUST GO TO YOUTUBE THEY ARE ALL INCELS LMFAO
thats how retarded you sound

Based. All it's concerned with is what is in one's own control. I'm surprised how many people here just see it as
>I MUST ALWAYS HAVE ZERO EMOTION OR EXPRESSION ABOUT ANYTHING BECAUSE LIFE IS AWFUL AND I CAN'T HANDLE IT WITH NORMAL EMOTIONS

>Stoicism is about accepting emotions
nope, thats new age bs
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoic_passions

the other reply i made you faggot.

It's not a repression of emotions to put them into context and to recognize what actually contributes to happiness and what doesn't. It wouldn't be a bad idea to actually read the stoics and figure out what they're saying before trying to criticize them. At the very least read some Cicero because he provides some very good summaries along with his criticism.

Based

Okay this stuff is all fine and dandy in THEORY but how the fuck do you actually apply it? Like how do you get to this point? I don't think there's a human alive who is capable of this.

All philosophy is a cope. Life is a larp.

Meditation, testing yourself in situations where others would give way to irrational emotion, soul searching

all of philosophy is cope, and denying that is also cope

Not letting an emotion affect you is what I consider accepting it. The categorisation of emotions does not contradict this directly. Rage, for example- you can feel angry initially, but if you accept it as little more than an impression then you can judge with scrutiny and then not act upon it. That's what I initially meant by accepting. Over time you will not feel rage at all.

Do you have any specific troubles? Most of stoicism is little more than willing yourself to be rational always.
As for Seneca: he knew death was both inevitable and not something he could control, so why would he throw a fit?

Pseud

Most of your emotions are bullshit and are a consequence of your brainlet thoughts.

this lol
stoicism is lite buddhism because when you stop thinking too much the emotions go away with it

bruh you just posted cringe

>Repressing your emotions and tricking your mind into thinking he can decide what emotions he should feel.
That's not how Stoicism works. It is not about "repressing emotions" or tricking your mind. It is about correcting your judgements so that you don't have the "wrong" emotions.
Suppose there are two men who are watching a football game. The two of them support the same team. One of them does not care if his team loses since "well, in the end it is just a game". The other is a fanatic. The two of them will have different emotions if their team loses. Their judgements create two different emotions.
And this actually works. The gold standard in terms of psychological therapy for depression and anxiety (that is, the method that empirical data shows to be the best for this) is not based on psychological research, but on Stoicism. The therapist helps the patient in challenging their judgements that are causing them problems and also lead to practice that will help them fix their judgements,

>I'm sure people who follow this philosophy will eventually burst and let all their repressed emotions loose.
The hydraulic theory of emotion is not accepted nowadays.

>Whitehead noted something similar regarding Buddhism -- that it was never worthwhile because it always sought internal rather than external change.
that sounds like he's stuck in some mind body like duality

>The military commander Avidius Cassius called the Emperor Marcus Aurelius a "philosophical old woman."
And then died while failing to usurp Aurelius.

>Rather than exert one's will onto the earth, he retreats inside himself. His internal conditions conform to the earth then
That's how every decent philosophy of life works. Anything that is different from this will lead to an unhappier life.
Recently, there are some books about the current decline of civilization which claim that a large part of the decline is due to changing the ideology from "cultivate virtue and reduce your desires" to "try to fulfill all your desires".

And the disciples of Musonius Rufus ended a tyrannical regime and created an era that is recognized as "Rome's peak".

>It's another Yea Forums Stoicism thread where the people speaking against it can't even bother to read the basic texts
Sad!

>asceticism
If you think Stoicism is Asceticism, you literally don't even know the first thing about the Stoic philosophy. Seneca literally writes an entire essay talking about why Stoicism is not Asceticism. You are a moron who didn't even google both definitions

You have misinterpreted stoicism and I’m guessing you haven’t read much of the primary sources

Man, I like the Stoics and came here to defend them, but the Gospels are works of art.

>omg u didn't even read seneca omg ur a brainlet it's not asceticism is completely different
shut up stupid faggot everyone has read seneca

There’s a difference between reading and understanding something

you suck dicks in public truck stops

All of philosophy and literature is a massive cope.

The world is shitty and we must deal with it one way or another.

Stoics are like incels though, they lack profundity.
Aurelius wasclean your room tier

>All of philosophy and literature is a massive cope.
Sort of this. I just read philosophy for entertainment at this point.

When you first start digging into philosophy (especially illiberal stuff to get a different worldview from what you've been taught) there's some benefit, but after a while it just becomes pointless abstractions

Life comes down to rolling out of bed for work and coming home and figuring out how to do a job you don't hate and find a wife who isn't a bitch

Only your moms, faggot