A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison | Hacker News Reader

A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison

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40 pointsstanrivers21 comments

The Stoicism topic is interesting to observe. A few years ago a few people were talking about it, possibly triggered by mentions in the book "Antifragile", then there was a wave of Stoicism on social media, in blogs, even in the App stores, and then it disappeared again, making me wonder what the next big self help thing will be. Or maybe it will stick around a bit longer? As this post appeared on the front page of HN today..

I also noticed it is a recurring self-help philosophical aid, particularly among the tech crowd. Of course, the stoicism version that gets publicized here only keeps the "pragmatical" aspect of stoicism, but ignores all the metaphysical theory around it (which provides the justification for a particular practice, but oh well). In the end, it becomes an inconsistent catch it all term for "being resilient" in a Hemingway way, which is very removed from the actual Stoic philosophy. But I guess this is inevitable and it has happened to many traditions when they get publicized for self-help.

One thing I find interesting about this time, and maybe HN specifically, is how the people focus on wealth and success (as a substitute for community and religion I think), and at the same time invest time in things like stoicism.

Part of stoicism is the practice of thinking about (your impending) death, often called memento mori[0], which directly contrasts any focus on ephemeral things such as wealth.

It's not surprising that this very contrast became a rather popular type of painting, called the Vanitas[1]. Two of my personal favorites:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori#/media/File:Still...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas#/media/File:1628_Claes...

Memento mori / Vanitas also escalated a bit in the 15th century, when we arrived at the Danse Macabre[2] (these days probably mainly known for that one famous Saint-Saëns composition). My favourite Danse Macabre painting was destroyed in a bombing, but there's still a high resolution photograph of it: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Totentan...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre

Metaphysics is basically impossible to know for certain. I can't blame people for rejecting one metaphysics story and replacing it with another.

Heck you can invalidate all philosophy by being a metaphysics skeptic.

It's just not particularly useful.

To be fair to stoicism, it’s been around for ~2300 years already, so it’s probably got a bit more staying power than your typical selfhelp fad. I found the backlash against it to be quite interesting though.

I never heard anyone oppose stoicism. Where can one read more about it?

Nietzsche, for one, wrote against the dangers of “disengagement from outcomes” present ins stoicism, buddism and any other “accept the world as it is” philosophy.

I think I have heard people criticize it quite a bit for "not caring about what happens" or "don't worry about the outcome" - which is a misunderstanding of the concept of taking control of what you can control, and accept you can't control everything.

From the article - I like this concept here.

"Treat your station in life with indifference. Not contempt, just indifference."

Don't let yourself be defined by what you have achieved, because eventually, it will be taken from you - in death, in old age, in sickness, in unluckiness

"Do you want to live "according to nature"? O you noble Stoics, what a verbal swindle! Imagine a being like nature - extravagant without limit, indifferent without limit, without purposes and consideration, without pity and justice, simultaneously fruitful, desolate, and unknown - imagine this indifference itself as a power - how could you live in accordance with this indifference?8 Living - isn't that precisely a will to be something different from what this nature is? Isn't living appraising, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? And if your imperative "live according to nature" basically means what amounts to "live according to life"- why can you not just do that? Why make a principle out of what you yourselves are and must be? The truth of the matter is quite different: while you pretend to be in raptures as you read the canon of your law out of nature, you want something which is the reverse of this, you weird actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to prescribe to and incorporate into nature, this very nature, your morality, your ideal. You demand that nature be "in accordance with the stoa ," and you'd like to make all existence merely living in accordance with your own image of it - as a huge and eternal glorification and universalizing of stoicism! With all your love of truth, you have forced yourselves for such a long time and with such persistence and hypnotic rigidity to look at nature falsely, that is, stoically, until you're no long capable of seeing nature as anything else - and some abysmal arrogance finally inspires you with the lunatic hope that, because you know how to tyrannize over yourselves - Stoicism is self-tyranny - nature also allows herself to be tyrannized. Is the Stoic then not a part of nature?.... But this is an ancient eternal story: what happened then with the Stoics is still happening today, as soon as a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates a world in its own image. It cannot do anything different. Philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the spiritual will to power, to a "creation of the world," to the causa prima [first cause]."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 9

You can ridicule Stoicism as "self-tyrrany" as Nietzsche did, but it's hard to quibble with its effectiveness in a situation where your control over your life really is minimal. The first books I had Amazon ship to an old friend when he was sent to prison for a couple of years were the _Enchiridion_ and Marcus Aurelius' _Meditiations_, and he credits them with equipping him with the philosophical and psychological tools to survive there.

I just thought that maybe this is a response to a widespread experience of loss of control over life circumstances and decisions. You struggle for a while, then you accept and surrender to realizing you won't get rich, you will be forever at the whim of a landlord ... natrual reaction then is to establish a dissociated emotional way of life / thinking and conceptualize it - voilà Stoicism. You can't do anything about it so you might just as well stop complaining and worrying about it. If that works is another question and if that is Stoicism as it was meant originally also questionable - but I think this is the dynamic behind the Stoicism fad.

Which is unfortunate - there is a futility feeling in that takeaway / summary, which I agree is often said; you can also use Stoicism as a way to remember to prioritize and focus on what you can actually control… that’s the important takeaway to me… can you control that your landlord is going to try to raise rent next year - no, not generally. Can you look and have many options? Maybe… that kind of concept

Philosopher makes bad politician.

Stockdale was Ross Perot's VP candidate in 1992. He acted humbly and was not cashing in his war hero background. He had hearing loss from beatings in prison, so he was portrayed as senile and he became a joke for the public.

Running for a position is a fight for power by seducing the public, not an discussion. He refused to use the ammo he had and fight.

Philosophers can make great politicians (See: Marc Aurel). Philosophers don't necessarily make good showmen, and that's what politicians in western, two-party democracies need to be.

I still consider voting for him in 1992 a high point and would do it again in context.

Possibly not the optimal choice, but hey: "Die with your boots on."

This is an interesting comment, because I get both respect and unhappiness for Stockdale from it.

Are you saying - he should have played the game more, but you respect that he didn't? or are you saying he should have known the game that he was playing and thus played it better?

You are thrown off because I tried to make positive statement and everything is interpreted as normative in the internet.

positive vs. normative statements.

positive: opinion about what is, the state of the world.

normative: what ought to be. a value judgment.

Fair enough, it was an interesting comment the way I read it though; makes me think about all the things I complain about where I am complaining about “the rules of the game” - like in a job or something.

I picked to play that game, if the rules are whatever playing that game are using, then if I am frustrated by the rules, am I not the one who should look in the mirror and say “hmm, maybe I shouldn’t play this specific game”

Sounds like it was a team failure. The PR people should have advertised Stockdale's qualities more and let him be himself.

I thought Stockdale was a bad choice because of age and he just seemed distant and unengaged. If that's because of the hearing loss, I don't know. I doubt Seneca was a humble, bystander.

Disclaimer: I voted for Perot/Stockdale.

>Sounds like it was a team failure. The PR people should have advertised Stockdale's qualities more and let him be himself

Sounds like the failure of a political culture. Politics shouldn't have PR people.

Wait, think that through.

Why should politics not have people whose entire job is to manage public relations?

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