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Comment by annyeonghada | Hacker News Reader

Completely disagree. The "heaviness" of an insult is determined by various factors: how much you value the person holding that opinion, how much you want to be accepted, how many rejections you got through... We are not robots that can automatically choose to not care: in the past I was in the stoic camp, red Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and so on but now I recognize that that philosophy brought me lots of pain: even if I cannot control something, like others opinion, it doesn't mean that I should not try to change it. Humanity get by by dreaming of something better: being through religion, riches, wisdom and so on; stoicism (and in part meditation) destroyed that impulse to improve.

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I'm no philosopher but my understanding is the stoics didn't simply choose not to care, they were selective about what they cared about.

When someone insults you are they responsible for how much you value their opinion? Are they responsible for how much you want to be accepted? Are they responsible for how many rejections you have had in the past?

The insult is a signal that something is wrong in the world, and may require effort and attention, even if you aren't suffering because of the insult.

But no this isn't particularly useful to actual humans who are still (easily) overwhelmed to madness with reactive pain, and the stoics compassion feels like that shown by the (non-hysterical) passengers in that one Airplane! scene [0].

(It occurs to me that expressing cruelty toward those suffering from hysterics is more than mere sadism; it may be a legitimate coping mechanism with their own fear. Focusing the mind on something, even hatefully, can save the hater from their own fear that the world is completely out-of-control.)

0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNkpIDBtC2c

> We are not robots that can automatically choose to not care:

We are not robots. We are human. And while we cannot be automated, we survived due to our ability to adapt. Where we channel your attention, what we choose to focus on, and what we choose to value *is* something we have control over.

The idea that someone saying something to me and those words control me, my mind, and my world...that's silly.

I don’t think stoicism was applied correctly.

Stoicism is about controlling what you have control over. Chief among this… is our thoughts.

Thoughts matter. How one thinks about things, events, situations that happen to us… matter.

Re-framing and interpreting how one thinks about what happened to us. Is important, for peace of mind.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy is an example of how one can apply stoicism.

I would put it differently.

Stoicism is about realising what you have control over and what you do not. It about acknowledging the agency you have no matter how little it may be.

Even if you have a tendency to be very reactive there is always something you can do to nullify or lessen the impact of an insult.

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