Oppressor Guilt Is Showing Up Everywhere: The Big Boohoo On Quartz About Stoicism Hitting Silicon Valley
There's a piece sneering at stoicism, a philosophy that influenced the late Albert Ellis in his coming up with (and co-founding) cognitive behavioral therapy. This is the type of therapy that you can do on yourself -- as Ellis advocated and helped people do with books laying out his simple A, B, C method of problem solving.

Basically, just use reason -- rather than endless whining over irrationally catastrophic thinking -- in order to solve your problems. Basically, as Ellis explained it, you are emotionally disturbed because you are thinking irrationally. You change your irrational thought about an issue and you can change the way you feel and then act more rationally and productively.

That isn't stoicism, but that's what Albert Ellis made out of the cookie dough of it.

Olivia Goldhill, formerly a writer for The Telegraph, writes at Quartz:

Though several Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism have a clear practical element, Stoicism is one of the most accessible and explicitly practical schools of western philosophy. The philosophy advocates self-control and not being overly indulgent in sensual pleasures.

...But there's also something a little, well, eye-rollingly predictable about Silicon Valley elites latching onto a philosophy that teaches them how to accept the things they cannot change. This is a world that's already seen as doing far too little to address real world concerns, is largely populated by privileged white men who are less affected by such issues, and is notorious for being a closed bubble.

...To give a simple overview, Stoicism advocates developing four virtues: courage, temperance (namely self-control), justice (which they saw as treating all others with fairness), and having the practical wisdom to navigate complicated situations. These virtues, says Pigliucci, allows you to develop equanimity. "You will take the good stuff in stride and enjoy it but not get too attached to it, and take the bad stuff in stride as well. You'll develop serenity or peacefulness of mind that allows you to look at what happens in your life with a bit of detachment," he adds.

Stoicism was written for everyone, not just those enslaved--Aurelius, after all, was an emperor. But, as Sandy Grant, philosopher at University of Cambridge notes in a recent interview with the American Philosophical Association, "Stoicism was a philosophy for a time of slaves and when women were chattel, of fixed hierarchies." And Pigliucci adds that Stoicism is certainly "more useful" for the oppressed. "If you've had a pampered life, sure, you can practice stoicism just like you can practice Buddhism but it doesn't seem to be so crucial," he adds.

Why the philosophy is "hopelessly outmoded"
Stoicism is a nuanced and compelling philosophy that has been widely read for thousands of years for good reason. So perhaps it's no bad thing that tech gurus become a little contemplative?

Holiday insists that Stoicism is not meant to encourage passivity. By recognizing what is not within our control, he says, we can focus on influencing things we can affect. For example, he writes in an email, a Stoic wouldn't spend time complaining about whether Trump deserves to be president and worrying about the uncertain terrible effects of his leadership. "Instead they'd focus on what's in their control: their own actions, working for the next election, making sure they are prepared in case of an emergency, comforting others, etc," he adds.

Grant agrees that Stoicism today is "hopelessly outmoded." The philosophy written thousands of years ago "cannot grasp the modern predicament or suggest to people how they may best live now," she writes in an email. "Stoicism gets the question wrong. It is no longer a matter of 'What can I control?' but rather of 'Given that I, as all others, am implicated, what should I do?' The control fantasy is ridiculous in an interdependent, globalized world," she adds.

Oh, please. I have read Stoic philosophers (Epictetus and others) and have been influenced by them. I'm not exactly one to sit around motionless and mute. I defend my neighborhood, people who get preyed on by other people, my own rights, and our Constitutional rights (to the point a TSA worker tried to get $500K out of me after I was civilly disobedient at the airport...thank you, Marc J. Randazza!).

What this piece reflects -- disturbingly -- is how pervasive the SJW notion; the SJW-driven racism and sexism, really; has become.

There is no subject that cannot be turned around and used as a flogging stick for being white and being male.

There's this at the end of the piece:

The notion of turning trials into triumph is an easier pill to swallow when you have few trials to face.

It's actually a great lesson that I use all the time and that anyone can use. I see that what researcher Gabriele Oettingen advises in Rethinking Positive Thinking. As she notes from her research, looking at the obstacles in your path and thinking of how hard they'll be to overcome is a more effective way (than just dreaming of success) to actually make yourself a success. It leads you to be more realistic and to come up with ways to overcome those obstacles.

Nassim Taleb also talks about this in Antifragile. As I wrote in a column:

Conflict is bad, right? Well, not exactly. It turns out that there's good conflict and there's bad conflict. Bad conflict involves the stuff of "ugly arguments" -- sneering, mocking, and getting up on moral high ground...just so you can shoulder-check the other person off the edge. Good conflict, on the other hand, involves getting (and giving) healthy pushback -- which means being what Nassim Taleb calls "antifragile."

In "Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder," risk researcher Taleb, a former derivatives trader, explains that antifragile is "the exact opposite of fragile" -- but it goes beyond "resilience or robustness." Antifragile describes the way living things are improved by stressors -- becoming better, stronger, and more able to cope with difficult, unpredictable stuff that comes their way.

What those sneering at stoicism are doing in this piece is hijacking a philosophy that can be extremely useful for doing instead of whining and for reasoning instead of, well, emotioning, and twisting it into cartoon.

(Or, in this case, maybe there were just no other "counterintuitive" angles the writer could think of for a piece.)

It's yet another way to howl, "J'accuse!" at white guys -- which is a whole lot easier than creating your own startup or your own pioneering career path and doing what it takes to move it forward.

via @KellyBEWorks