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Because you're a social animal in a social world, whose social action creates and modifies that world.

Since you are a body, in an environment, with a psychology -- your actions have an effect upon the world.

The invitation to dissociate and mute your social emotions is an invitation to keep everything as-it-is.



This is not an invitation to mute your emotions.

This is questioning why someone should feel a particular emotion.

> is an invitation to keep everything as-it-is.

I don’t need to feel personal guilt about something outside of my control in order to 1) recognize problems in the world, 2) want the factors causing those problems to change, and 3) actively work to change them.

And for many people, feeling guilt - especially for things outside of their control - is absolutely paralyzing and leads to the opposite of action.


I mean I'm more responding to Marcus Aurellius and other formalisations of historical stoicism, than the pretty widely understood idea that "somethings are important, some arent" and "care most about what you can change, and least about what you cant"

These sort of bits of old wisdom also come in their opposites ("you never know when something is important", "your passions can define your life, and create opportunities") etc.

So I'm taking stoicism as a particular prioritising of those "bits of old wisdom" that combine together in relevant historical texts, and add up, in my view, to being quite radically dissociative.

Stoicism doesnt own, "keep calm under fire"


> These sort of bits of old wisdom also come in their opposites ("you never know when something is important", "your passions can define your life, and create opportunities") etc.

But they don't. They're typically not used in such a way, because they're nonsense.

> you never know when something is important

This is just resigning yourself to ignorance and chance. It's an unfalsifiable truism, because you can point to instances where it was true (survivor bias) and say you applied this bit of wisdom, whereas in reality it was just chance.

> your passions can define your life, and create opportunities

Sure, that's one of the possibilities. But it's not wisdom. It's another random truism out of a horoscope that may or may not end up being true.

> Stoicism doesnt own, "keep calm under fire"

A philosophy doesn't need to own anything for it to be valid. One of its principles can be used by other philosophies. What a weird thing to write.


You're agreeing with me. Those are all my views.


So if I'm fortunate and blessed with wealth, I should feel guilty and be vocal about my guilt. So I make my life worse off and that of the people around me. People with heavy burden of guilt are often insufferable. And this will somehow make the world better off?

Notice these people making these arguments never argue for voluntary charitable giving which is actually encouraged by stoic philosophy as is promoting justice.

But the most important thing to some people is the signaling and guilt associated with any gift.


If someone is blessed with wealth, they should only feel guilty if they don't use their blessing to fight for societal change to make things more just, if they achieved their wealth at the expense of others, or if their actions promote inequality.




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