Based Camp - Stoicism： The First Self Help Philosophy is Still The Best

00:00:00.000 hello simone today we are going to be talking about stoicism we are going to be doing an

00:00:06.520 overview of the philosophy of stoicism investigating how it relates to the modern world

00:00:13.040 and where it differentiates from our own philosophy and belief system which i see as as we go into

00:00:20.320 stoicism you're going to see that they are highly related to each other and if anything you could

00:00:26.220 see our larger philosophy as just building on the stoic philosophy really wow to why we are doing

00:00:34.080 this youtube told us to we've been trying to figure out how to grow the channel and youtube was like

00:00:38.700 your audience would like to hear about stoicism and so i'm like well dang let's go into it stoicism

00:00:44.480 is an ancient greco-roman philosophy that originated in the third century bce with xeno of sitium and

00:00:51.820 was further developed by thinkers such as cleonisis chrysisyphus seneca epictus and marcus aurelius

00:00:59.880 i can't get a common thing on the show okay marcus aurelius okay at its core stoicism is not just

00:01:06.500 a theoretical system of thought it is very much a practical philosophy aimed at cultivating inner

00:01:11.620 virtue emotional resilience and harmony with the broader natural order stoics understood philosophy

00:01:17.580 as a way of life something to be enacted in one's day-to-day conduct rather than treated as an

00:01:22.780 abstract intellectual pastime which is something i really appreciate about the stoic philosophy as we

00:01:28.080 get into it is it is very much designed around sort of guiding actions instead of something to just

00:01:37.520 talk about idly like this is good or this is good and i think in a way that can make it better for

00:01:44.260 daily life than other philosophies because the stoic philosophy is going to help you make day-to-day

00:01:53.400 decisions much more than the more abstract philosophical frameworks you might interact with

00:01:59.240 but unlike let's say a modern you know there's like modern self-help-y sort of ideologies that are

00:02:06.800 sort of meant to help you live a healthier life stoicism covers a lot more than that so it has its own

00:02:12.840 sort of metaphysical framework so stoics believe that the universe is an orderly rational whole

00:02:19.240 often referred to as the logos human beings as rational creatures share in this order and have

00:02:25.340 the capacity to live in alignment with it the stoic ideal is to understand nature's laws accepting what

00:02:31.080 is beyond our control and live according to reason and virtue so huge part of stoicism is accept the

00:02:38.060 things you cannot change okay and they think that a lot of the negatives in an individual's life comes

00:02:42.800 from not accepting the things you cannot change however this is part of their metaphysical

00:02:47.520 understanding of reality rather than just like life advice so to drill on that a bit further

00:02:55.000 they held that the universe is governed by the logos the rational principle and human beings as

00:03:00.780 rational agents have the capacity to align themselves with it to do this one must use reason to see

00:03:06.680 belong personal biases fears or desires stoics believed in a concept called okiosis the idea that

00:03:13.500 individuals have natural ties and obligations extending outwards first to themselves then to

00:03:19.500 their family community and ultimately to the wider human polis a stoic would reflect on these

00:03:25.620 concentric circles of obligation

00:03:27.500 so does that make sense to you simone and like what are your thoughts on on this more broadly this idea of

00:03:35.900 tying a moral mandate to action and to act on reasoned virtue to a metaphysical understanding

00:03:44.720 which is that logos sort of reasoned virtue is the principle that governs our reality and that you are

00:03:53.120 acting in alignment with the the sort of the it's not a god exactly it's almost sort of like a clockwork

00:04:00.160 god of virtue that you are aligning yourself with the clockwork god of virtue when you act in a virtuous

00:04:06.480 way it sounds extremely like our world view which is more driven by like our understanding of quantum

00:04:13.560 physics and just rational behavior and pragmatism but i mean that's if it ain't broke don't fix it this

00:04:21.740 sounds great yeah you can go to our track series to learn more about our worldview or our nietzsche

00:04:26.220 video which i think did a pretty good job of laying out our modern worldview so here i've talked a lot

00:04:30.780 about this concept of virtue and you might be thinking well what does that mean in a stoic mindset

00:04:35.340 right central to stoicism is the notion that virtue encompassing wisdom courage justice and self-control

00:04:44.120 is the only true good external things such as wealth reputation health and even life itself are

00:04:51.600 considered quote-unquote indifference meaning that they are neither inherently good nor bad what matters

00:04:57.240 most is how one uses these externals and whether one's actions reflect moral excellence so if you ask

00:05:05.140 them further to define i'm like okay yeah but then define virtue as an action right um because this gets me

00:05:13.140 it's like okay well if virtue is just things that embody wisdom courage justice and self-control

00:05:18.840 anyone could subjectively define anything as virtuous right like that's a really weak system

00:05:24.780 for virtue and they would say in the stoic worldview a virtuous action is one that aligns perfectly with

00:05:30.320 reason and nature virtue is not a contingent property that depends on circumstances or outcomes

00:05:36.080 rather it is stable and complete expression of the rational soul acting in accordance with the cosmic

00:05:41.980 order to quote live according to nature in quote means to understand the nature of the world the

00:05:47.880 universal order and one's own nature as a rational being and to let this understanding guide one's

00:05:53.720 actions here you can almost think of this as like wu-wei if you're talking about the dow philosophy or

00:05:59.940 slack if you're talking about subgenius philosophy at least it seems it i see it more as just in this

00:06:05.640 case efficiency like don't wait you are allowing a way of seeing the world to almost aesthetically

00:06:13.400 guide your actions with the understanding that this will lead to better outcomes but this is tempered

00:06:19.300 by the way of seeing the world that they aspire is dispassionate logic um or rationality um the four

00:06:28.700 cardinal stoic virtues wisdom courage justice and temperance serve as guides virtue is defined as an

00:06:35.520 excellent state of character the perfectly wise person always acts virtuously because they perceive the

00:06:41.260 right course of action through reason hence any act performed from true virtue i.e. from a rational

00:06:48.900 fully informed and morally sound perspective is quote-unquote good in and of itself the stoics

00:06:54.120 emphasize that only true virtue is genuinely good while external circumstances wealth reputation

00:06:59.740 health are indifference that they have no moral value on their own the right action then is the one

00:07:06.360 a perfectly rational agent would choose an action chosen for the sake of doing what reason prescribes

00:07:12.960 independently of personal gain or loss and this is where the pragmatist guide to life is i think

00:07:18.840 strictly builds upon stoic philosophy because i think the big gap in stoic philosophy is yeah but how do you

00:07:28.420 define virtuous if you take something like should i go to war right even once you have removed

00:07:36.360 any personal thing that might overly motivate you to go to war you know like oh personal pride

00:07:42.960 or you have removed potential wealth or potential anger that you may have towards your opponents

00:07:49.120 you still have the problem with the fact that temperance may say not to go to war but courage says

00:07:55.240 to go to war justice may say to go to war but rationality will say you'll cause more suffering in the

00:08:01.200 long run like there it doesn't give you a good heuristic for making these decisions whereas

00:08:07.240 the model laid out in our books of pragmatist guide to life does the problem here being is that the model

00:08:14.600 laid out in the pragmatist guide to life might be too heady for a lot of people and the stoic philosophy

00:08:20.300 i think works really well for the average person yeah but it just breaks down immediately for me

00:08:26.560 when when i hear virtue i just hear cheat code i hear i wish for more wishes because virtue is just

00:08:33.200 like oh just be perfect just be good yeah like just be good and it's like define good what does yeah

00:08:38.540 what does that even mean yeah well they say good is rational and i'm like okay well then define what

00:08:43.600 a rational person should be optimizing right and they go a rational person should be optimizing people

00:08:47.860 acting rationally it's like well that's not it's kind of a circular definition there yeah it doesn't

00:08:53.560 it doesn't so so i think i agree with you i think that that's where it is lacking as a philosophy

00:08:59.120 but in a way it's also kind of a strength because it helps in one of our videos where we talk about

00:09:04.900 like the alpha beta and i think that's like a really bad way to differentiate men and i think a

00:09:10.660 better system is we have a few classes but two of them are knights and kings and kings typically need

00:09:17.720 to always be sort of consequentialist they need to always think through all of their actions

00:09:22.080 uh whereas knights need to be more duty bound in the stoic philosophy i think is the best

00:09:28.420 knight philosophy i have seen of all masculine archetype philosophies uh i would want a stoic

00:09:36.200 as a follower even more than somebody like if i was giving orders to a subordinate even more than

00:09:41.920 somebody who was a full pragmatist as laid out in the pragmatist guide to life and it's also really

00:09:47.680 interesting to me how it differentiates from consequentialist and deontological ethical

00:09:53.300 subsystems so if i'm looking stoics do not measure the morality of an action based on external outcomes

00:09:59.980 or consequences so they are strictly not consequentialist even if a virtuous action leads

00:10:04.720 to a personal harm or fails to produce beneficial result it remains virtuous and thus the right action

00:10:11.820 the goodness of an action is dependent not on what it brings about but on the moral quality of the

00:10:16.680 intention and the character that produced it but you can see here it's also very different from

00:10:21.800 deontological because it's not based on like rules for their own sake so if i was going to word this

00:10:28.540 differently a consequentialist would say like if i do an action and it leads to a negative consequence

00:10:36.160 and i tried to say i couldn't have known it would lead to that negative consequence a true consequentialist

00:10:43.060 would say you had a moral responsibility to do more research then you cannot externalize the

00:10:48.440 responsibility for your failure here whereas a stoic would say don't overly stress about that

00:10:55.780 you acted with the best information you had access to at the time and you tried to fully acquire all

00:11:01.880 information but i think that this is only kings really have to burden themselves when i say kings

00:11:08.720 i mean people at the top of a hierarchy in terms of like handing down orders and stuff like that

00:11:14.520 have to really worry about beating themselves up for having thought that they had collected all of the

00:11:21.080 information relevant and then it later turning out that they hadn't that is not something that it is

00:11:25.860 good for a random follower to beat themselves up about so i think that stoicism is a more broadly

00:11:31.860 applicable philosophy than the philosophy we lay out in the private described life thoughts that

00:11:37.120 makes a lot of sense yeah i and i i do like in general that philosophy it's something that people

00:11:45.820 training others in bayesian thinking and even poker talk about a lot where when they're training someone

00:11:51.500 how to make optimal decisions and then that person gets too focused on still losing a hand in poker for

00:11:57.700 example even though they may have made all the optimal choices based on the data they had they're

00:12:02.340 like well clearly this isn't working because i lost and they're like there's you did do everything

00:12:07.660 you should not have done anything differently you were 100 optimal sometimes you just lose a hand

00:12:12.060 and i i also agree with you though that at a certain level it just doesn't matter that you you

00:12:18.960 have to frame things a little bit differently because that might you know when the stakes are so high

00:12:25.080 and you're a king maybe you shouldn't be playing a game like poker like you should be playing a game

00:12:31.320 that's that's not based on odds you can't always win because the stakes are way too high for you to

00:12:36.600 risk that kind of thing yeah you have failed by going into such a risky game in the first place yeah

00:12:41.920 yeah but at lower levels it doesn't matter it's just a low stakes poker game so go for it

00:12:46.920 yeah well and this also comes to like our crypto decisions you're like malcolm we made our decision

00:12:51.920 to sell at the time because we'd already made huge gains and you didn't want to risk losing

00:12:57.800 everything uh given that that was probably what was going to happen if the peak of this cycle happened

00:13:02.960 below the peak of the last cycle or wasn't significantly above the peak of the last cycle

00:13:07.720 and you were like you made the right call given that it's like our children and our family's future

00:13:13.360 and the information you used to make that call wasn't hugely off i mean tell me the anecdote i mean

00:13:19.140 the reason why we took out is we're like i don't see it having a long-term future any amount

00:13:22.680 more was current crypto get quantum computing advancements and you told me the story about

00:13:27.440 chamath i think it was on chamath i was just listening to the online podcast and i'm listening

00:13:32.260 and i don't hear that i don't know who's necessarily talking at one point but one of the people on all

00:13:38.260 in and i think it was chamath and i learned about a new quantum chip development that google had

00:13:42.500 released he like mixed missed his next meeting and was sort of in a daze researching the consequences

00:13:49.820 that this has on crypto specifically because it quantum computing will undermine bitcoin pretty

00:13:56.300 seriously once it happens and he ultimately concluded that the timeline was more like i think three to five

00:14:03.020 years but he was in a panic for a moment and again this is just something that i i worry about a lot

00:14:10.140 with this kind of thing and and i don't and i feel like i made a mistake i'm like i should have done

00:14:16.140 more research i should have looked at more rainbow charts i should have looked at yeah so i took in

00:14:21.740 this case the stoic approach i was like hey i'm making the optimal decision and that there is a very

00:14:26.660 clear expiration date for bitcoin we had made money we should leave before the expiration date hits which

00:14:34.140 could be at any time and you're not looking at it you're like well but now there's this period

00:14:39.900 where we could have held sold later and made more money therefore what we did must have been wrong

00:14:45.620 and so yeah you're taking a different view from the stoic view of we did what was optimal in the

00:14:50.660 moment and i still hold that bitcoin has an expiration date and also that the nature of quantum computing is

00:14:58.480 that's when you when you break bitcoin cryptography using quantum computing and i know that this is the

00:15:04.880 big resource thing like it's it's unlikely that just randos out there are going to be the ones to

00:15:10.320 develop quantum computing and keep it secret but i do think there's a pretty big incentive for the

00:15:17.640 first person to get there to spend a little time profiting off the fact that they can

00:15:22.280 mint bitcoin really easily or they let people know because they can make a lot of money and it's in

00:15:29.280 their best interest now to prop prices up by maybe coordinating with whales and paying them off a little

00:15:33.780 bit i don't know i'm just saying the incentives and the data that i have are such that i'm not

00:15:39.340 comfortable holding on to bitcoin but yeah i appreciate that and what this is like the type

00:15:44.780 of debate we have internally that is related to these sorts of philosophical questions and it's a

00:15:49.880 big life decision right so control and acceptance a defining tenant is the clear distinction between what

00:15:57.460 we can control our judgments intentions and actions and what we cannot external events other people's

00:16:03.160 opinions natural occurrences according to the stoics much human suffering stems from trying to

00:16:09.280 influence what lies outside of our power by focusing on what is within our control individuals learn to

00:16:14.720 maintain inner tranquility regardless of changing circumstances which is sort of what we've been

00:16:19.820 talking about here however while stoicism does not advocate for the suppression of all feelings it

00:16:25.480 encourages the transforming destructive emotions such as anger envy and anxiety through an understanding

00:16:31.840 and rational reflection the stoic approach fosters emotional resilience by challenging irrational

00:16:37.520 beliefs practicing self-discipline and viewing difficulty as an opportunity to develop strengths

00:16:42.680 of character all of which are beliefs that we heavily hold as i've talked about i often see

00:16:47.400 times in my life of challenge as being a gift from god to improve myself and to never look at

00:16:54.000 them with negative to never look at any negative big setback in my life as like a true negative i'm like

00:16:59.340 like with the bitcoin thing like this is something i can learn from right i need to examine how i was

00:17:04.740 making these choices i need to examine how i was and and how might i change how i make decisions in the

00:17:11.060 future based on something i judge as wrong today but i want to point out that there stoicism emerged at a

00:17:18.280 time when the context of bad things happening was so bad things happened way more frequently and made way

00:17:27.180 more seriously like oh you have gangrene you're gonna die soon or oh your infant child just died oh 0.80

00:17:35.060 your wife just died like people died all the time people had grave and extremely painful injuries and

00:17:41.660 health conditions all the time stoicism i mean now yeah it's oh i lost a little money in investment or

00:17:47.060 like oh my i got fired or like oh you know that that girlfriend turned me down like these are not

00:17:53.320 what the original stoic masters were dealing with when they were talking about dealing with hardship

00:17:58.180 and i think that this is one place where i think stoicism enthusiasts really need to dig in deeper

00:18:05.240 because they may they may act as though they are the stoic masters in in the face of like my uber was late

00:18:12.060 i i must endure when really this comes down to and then they crumble if they lose their job or god 0.99

00:18:20.480 forbid lose a family member when that's so you're saying modern stoics are a bunch of pussies i'm i'm 0.99

00:18:26.640 saying that the aesthetic appeals to them but they're not going deep enough and they need to go deeper 0.98

00:18:32.220 well and i'd also say and we've talked about what i also really like about this is the idea of

00:18:37.220 learning to redirect and reinterpret emotions such as anger envy and anxiety which is something that

00:18:43.400 we talk about we talk about in our videos like trauma is a scam basically like it's not a real

00:18:48.900 thing it's entirely self-created there was a great study on this that showed that while the amount of

00:18:55.000 trauma that somebody reported that they experienced in their childhood correlated with all the negative

00:19:00.180 things we know trauma correlates with it did not correlate with how much trauma they actually

00:19:04.720 experienced in their trial as as recorded by by court orders and if you look at like court order

00:19:10.020 real problems we're definitely yes they they are invented and so much of our our problems and even

00:19:17.520 even emotions like anger envy anxiety these things are largely a personal choice you are choosing to

00:19:24.600 indulge in emotion that does not lead to positive outcomes outside of signaling specific things

00:19:31.580 to the people around you so what i mean by this is i often tell simone i'm like simone i never need to

00:19:40.460 get angry with you if i do not think like i almost basically never get angry with simone but i it wasn't

00:19:47.980 always that way because earlier in our relationship there were moments when it was clear that she just

00:19:53.160 wouldn't fully digest what i was saying if it wasn't said combined with the emotion of anger

00:19:59.860 anger and if i didn't combine it with anger just in one ear and out the other and this is true with

00:20:06.540 kids a lot too where somebody's like why would you show anger towards your kids because they're not

00:20:11.400 fully adults they have trouble judging what things do i actually take in and take seriously and what

00:20:17.920 things do i not take in and take seriously and when daddy says don't do something and his voice

00:20:22.980 contains anger then they are much more likely to record actually don't do this than in my voice

00:20:29.360 doesn't contain anger which is one of the dangers of removing this signaling method from how we

00:20:34.500 communicate with things like children okay next anything you want to say there

00:20:39.120 carry on living in accordance with reason reason for stoics is not cold logic stripped of empathy rather

00:20:46.800 it is the faculty that allows us to perceive what is just to value integrity over expedience and to

00:20:53.820 connect meaningfully with others it is through reason that we understand our duties as citizens

00:20:59.140 parents friends and strive to improve ourselves in our community so again really this worship of

00:21:05.260 reason the problem is reason is not very well defined in a lot of this um now practical ways of living

00:21:11.640 stoically a big part that stoics talk about that is brought up a lot today is to imagine the worst

00:21:18.380 case scenario to help emotionally deal with a potential choice or something that you are anxious about

00:21:24.600 which i find very interesting because that's a an emotional tool that a lot of people still use today

00:21:30.160 do you know the tool i'm talking about here it's okay you're stressed about something imagine the

00:21:39.300 absolute worst case scenario that you are stressed about happens now what are you doing to handle that

00:21:44.860 and a lot of the times what we're stressed about is just not that bad

00:21:50.220 they also in encourage focusing on the present moment uh so rather than worrying about past misfortunes

00:21:59.780 or things that could happen in the future focus on the decisions and opportunities that are available to

00:22:05.300 you right now this is something i agree with to an extent but i would warn against using this to

00:22:12.080 avoid learning from past mistakes if you have not taken away a lesson and and this can be too

00:22:18.860 dispassionately in the moment if you feel like you made a mistake in the past be like what information

00:22:23.880 should i have been considering that i wasn't considering next

00:22:29.200 oh i was just gonna add i this reminds me of when i was on my way to my first date with you

00:22:38.200 and i wrote down on my phone everything that could possibly go wrong on our first date because i was so

00:22:42.240 nervous about meeting you it works it totally works because it was kind of stupid how nervous i was

00:22:49.360 and i realized that after i wrote down everything that could go wrong so here i'm gonna go a bit

00:22:56.260 deeper into the stoic metaphysical philosophy because i find that to be one of the most interesting

00:23:00.620 parts i didn't realize it was i thought it was more like therapy for ancient robins i didn't realize

00:23:10.640 that it was yeah i did too i didn't realize how big the metaphysical religious view yeah this is

00:23:15.220 very interesting so stoics do in fact have a distinct metaphysical framework they were not

00:23:22.120 merely moral psychologists but system builders who saw ethics logic and physics their term for

00:23:27.980 philosophy as integral disciplines in their metaphysics the stoics posited a single rational

00:23:34.860 and provident cosmos governed by the logos an ordering principle that permeates everything

00:23:42.120 this logos is both a natural and divine element ensuring that the universe is fundamentally rational

00:23:49.700 and coherent unlike the platonic tradition which often distinguish between material and immaterial realms

00:23:56.240 the stoics were corporealists they believed that everything that exists is ultimately physical

00:24:02.340 including what we might think of as intangible qualities or forces very similar to our philosophy so far

00:24:10.360 in fact you could almost see it as a less defined iteration of the philosophy we lay out in

00:24:16.340 techno puritanism their metaphysics also included the idea of a cyclical cosmos which goes through

00:24:22.320 repeated phases of conflagration epicurosis and rebirth always reconstructing the same rational

00:24:31.240 structure while this cyclical perspective was debated among stoics over time the core idea is that the

00:24:37.960 universe is alive rational and purposeful that human rationality is an integral part of this cosmic

00:24:44.280 rationality that we would deeply disagree with um which is interesting how they're so aligned in

00:24:51.760 everything and then they get to this one super mystical framework uh and that's a really common part of

00:24:57.120 mystical frameworks if you go to our three religions video um now i think that there are ways to reword that

00:25:03.160 where we do believe that you likely have multiple cycles that our reality will likely collapse at one

00:25:09.140 point and then restart again uh but it won't restart the same it will restart in a way that is designed by

00:25:15.980 whichever civilization is around at the time of collapse uh one of the the sci-fis that i've written is about

00:25:21.400 somebody who is witnessing this and that that human civilization essentially in time for a big crunch

00:25:29.780 structure is a big crunch in just such a way that it ensures that human civilization will again

00:25:36.360 evolve in the next cycle but anyway your thoughts

00:25:39.520 this is one of the classic tropes where someone does so well so well so well it's like watching a dog

00:25:47.920 you know go go along one of those dog pedigree contest optical courses surrounded by distractions

00:25:54.080 and like there's a metaphysical physical philosophy it's like it's on track it's on track and then

00:25:58.200 oh no one runs up for the treat you're like no no you were so close you're so close and then the

00:26:04.560 mysticism just really pulled it in right well it's interesting as well how much this aligns with early

00:26:11.160 calvinist doctrine and that a lot of that can be seen as almost building on this and really with sort of

00:26:18.160 the treat that you're talking about it reminds me a bit of when i read like urban monoculture self-help

00:26:24.000 books which focus on self-affirmation and self-acceptance and they remind me of like that dog who's just

00:26:29.980 eating every treat on the way down and i'm like no you failed in every step

00:26:34.080 oh look at that cutie but i i really if somebody came to me and they're like

00:26:53.980 i am a stoic how differentiated i am i from your world philosophy i would say that the places where

00:27:02.060 our philosophy differentiates from stoicism is parts of the page that aren't colored in stoicism

00:27:08.340 not a core refutation of any of the core stoic ideas except for the cyclicality of reality and the

00:27:15.040 pointlessness of decisions potentially due to that cyclicality yeah well and i would say that when it

00:27:20.240 comes to stoicism in practice as you see it in modernity there is there oh a great comparison

00:27:28.440 in terms of characters in in media is in parks and rec there is ron swanson who is a true stoic

00:27:35.520 and then there is what is his name christians or something that the the the the healthy guy who's

00:27:42.020 clearly like the neurotic healthy guy yeah yes who like will tell you all about what he's doing and

00:27:46.940 is like trying so hard i want to thank you for being so ruthless and cruel in a meeting the other

00:27:52.920 day you'll have to be more specific what the is this this desk is the epitome of the swedish concept

00:28:00.720 of a jamstodact or equality what about my office and its many walls that becomes a new public waiting

00:28:09.540 room excuse me there's a sign it ramps it park that says do not drink the sprinkler water

00:28:15.400 so i made sun tea with it and now i have an infection sir are are are you listening to me

00:28:22.040 all told we were in there about six hours and no i was not meditating i just stood there quietly 0.92

00:28:29.300 breathing my mind was blank i don't know what the hell these other crackpots are doing 1.00

00:28:34.680 and i i think it's really important to look at marcus aurelius and and how he practiced stoicism

00:28:43.320 for example so everyone always reads his meditations as their starting point they dive into it and

00:28:48.540 they're like oh yes and then they go on and they blog about it they talk about it all the time and

00:28:52.760 it's this big thing completely forgetting that that marcus aurelius wrote those things just

00:28:58.280 privately this is like his private notes to himself this wasn't him trying to proclaim

00:29:03.020 was it really i didn't know yes and basically it's one of those things that if someone tells

00:29:09.440 me they're a stoic or they're a stoic influencer i'm like oh thank you you've let me know that

00:29:14.380 you're not a stoic and then i see various people just living their lives and i can instantly tell

00:29:20.080 that they're a stoic based on what i understand of the philosophy which is entirely in line with what

00:29:24.760 you said i had no idea there was a whole metaphysical framework that is insane so that's that's my

00:29:31.100 my thought on it is if people want to be more stoic everything is show don't tell the more you talk

00:29:38.520 or take notes about being stoic the less stoic you are in my opinion i don't know if i agree with that

00:29:45.500 i i'm gonna be sure like marcus aurelius did deepen his stoicism by by writing and i do think

00:29:52.700 that journaling and thinking through your thoughts and thinking through how to get over these things is

00:29:57.000 very important so okay yeah i mean like publicly performatively signaling stuff is is not a very

00:30:02.360 stoic thing to do i would like to add in post here that i didn't know this so i did go to check this

00:30:07.760 and yes marcus aurelius's meditations were written to be completely private in fact they were so private

00:30:15.200 that from the period of marcus aurelius's death in 180 ce there is no surviving record of anyone

00:30:22.800 mentioning the meditations for 700 years until around 900 ce where a recess of cesar a byzantian

00:30:32.100 bishop and book collector discovered a manuscript of meditations he copied it and began mentioning it

00:30:38.060 in his letters and works introducing it to the public discourse that is absolutely wild that a roman emperor 1.00

00:30:46.380 could write private diaries and they would stay hidden for 700 years but on top of that it's also

00:30:53.760 such a chad thing to do and such a stoic thing to do to in a world where self-help books didn't exist

00:31:01.180 to literally write your own self-help book for how to become a better person i guess it's it's somewhat

00:31:08.160 similar to what we did with the pragmatist guide to life yeah and i think that the philosophy

00:31:13.820 that we have come to would argue that and it is very much a descendant of stoicism however many

00:31:22.900 historic stoics did identify as a stoic like i don't know if i agree with you on that point i think

00:31:30.020 i think you can you can you can say you're a stoic i guess but

00:31:34.960 i mean as long as you're not blogging about being stoic and telling something about being stoic and

00:31:42.340 being a stoic influencer is in a way a self-defeating goal in that the externalities of

00:31:49.880 being an influencer in terms of the externality positive things that occur in your life you are

00:31:54.820 almost certainly either motivated by how this alters your self-perception or how this alters the

00:32:01.640 other people perceive you which is a very non-stoic thing however rationality may argue to you and

00:32:08.480 virtue may argue to you and courage may argue to you that it is worth being an influencer and

00:32:13.840 spreading a philosophy you see as a fundamental good especially if it's a philosophy that a lot

00:32:18.600 of people know about so that's a fair point for example katie herzog recently defined

00:32:24.800 uh lots of types of online influencers as people who make something that's incredibly hard look

00:32:30.960 incredibly easy like trad wives make make being a homemaker with a lot of kids or who lives out on 1.00

00:32:37.860 a farm in a more traditional way look really seamless and easy when it's obviously not or no

00:32:43.500 helen lewis did that yes helen lewis recently defined on the lots of reported podcast influencers

00:32:50.100 of people who make things that look okay the guy said the first take was better you are driving me

00:32:57.140 nuts middle noodle you just don't wanna you don't want to stop you don't want to stop you can't stop

00:33:03.240 helen lewis on a recent blocked and reported podcast episode defined influencers as being people who made

00:33:09.380 incredibly difficult things look incredibly easy and that that happens with trad wives for example their 1.00

00:33:14.880 lives are actually pretty difficult you know as she pointed out you don't show a woman like cutting 0.69

00:33:20.940 off dingleberries off of a sheep that has been unsure you know and is covered with their own poop

00:33:25.140 you just see the beautiful wait hold on do you consider yourself in this category are you making

00:33:30.540 having a kid look easy or no i'm clearly not making this look easy but i i i think that the same can go

00:33:37.880 for stoicism and and yeah you're right maybe it's still worth it to spread the message just like it's

00:33:42.700 still worth it for ballerina farms to make being a trad wife at least the highlights of it look good 1.00

00:33:48.600 because ultimately i think in the end with most of these things even though they end up being harder

00:33:53.800 than influencers make them seem in the you typically remember the highlights of your choices in life

00:34:00.500 anyway when we think back on our kids we don't think back on the time that we had like the 15th time

00:34:06.980 that we just scraped poop out of you know a bathroom that was spread all over the place we think about

00:34:11.420 the hilarious and adorable things that they do and maybe because our lives and memories ultimately

00:34:19.140 become like an instagram highlights reel and not like our actual lives it's worth it for

00:34:25.060 instagrammers and influencers and youtubers and everything else to advertise that because that's

00:34:33.800 what you get in the end well and i think here it's really important is that during the time of the

00:34:39.300 stoic writers the core fear or enemy to stoicism would have been hedonism whereas today i think

00:34:46.520 more dangerous than hedonism is two things one is is a focus on masturbating or emphasizing a self-identity

00:34:55.740 a way you want to see yourself and use whether it's social media or the way you're presenting yourself 0.62

00:35:02.080 to uh masturbate this vision of like for example yourself as an ultra masculine man right like that's 0.90

00:35:09.100 a huge uh siren call to many people who would otherwise embrace stoicism end up just trying to max how much 0.97

00:35:19.400 they look like a masculine man yeah the second is an abdication of responsibility um which is to say

00:35:27.920 that what we've come to realize is that when people have everything they could ever want the thing

00:35:32.460 that they want the most is to frame themselves and say that they're not responsible for any of the bad

00:35:39.780 things in their lives or any of the you know and fighting that is incredibly important much more

00:35:46.380 important than fighting a desire to let's say drink or something like that while also recognizing and

00:35:53.260 this is of our philosophy which is an stoic philosophy which is to say that the greatest

00:35:57.700 sin is to sin and pretend it's a virtue everybody says everybody says just don't pretend it's a virtue

00:36:04.820 don't drink and say i'm cool and manly for drinking say yes bad that i drink don't play video games and

00:36:12.140 pretend like you're doing something productive

00:36:13.640 don't spend time online or post pictures online or comments online meant to show how masculine and tough you 0.63

00:36:22.340 are and see that as anything other than self-retroferential masturbation that doesn't 0.80

00:36:30.100 actually make you more masculine or more tough 0.77

00:36:32.680 all right any closing words simone

00:36:37.520 i like stoicism i think of all the various philosophies that are tumbling around the internet

00:36:43.660 it's one of the better ones and definitely one of the better ones yeah i highly approve of it i also

00:36:50.080 feel really lucky that we live in a time when the the struggles that faced most stoics are very very

00:36:57.340 unusual few and far between um it's not usually yeah although i think we do need more philosophies

00:37:06.760 that help to shepherd us through really hard times in a realistic way and stoicism really does that so i

00:37:13.160 think it's a great thing when that happens because everyone's gonna die everyone in that you ever love

00:37:19.480 is going to die so unless you go out first you're gonna have to deal with that and stoicism seems like

00:37:23.660 one of the better ways to do it love you to death simone

00:37:27.500 what's that for food tonight oh tonight we're doing the your coconut curry

00:37:35.160 barbecue brisket yeah i was gonna ask you if you could put more panang in that and a bit more

00:37:41.720 coconut milk when you reheat that and then panang from your packets no no no that is

00:37:48.940 panang is the you know what i'll mix in the panang because whenever you mix in the panang you don't

00:37:56.080 really mix it in yeah let's mix it into the coconut milk before you pour it in remember panang is is

00:38:02.140 the saying that i asked you to put in before and you ended up having it clumped up in a few spots

00:38:06.700 yeah it clumps really badly so yeah it needs to have to really work with the name to mix it into a

00:38:12.300 sauce before you pour it in well okay yes why don't you come down and show me what you want to do

00:38:17.700 because i'll show you wasn't to simmer it down from and i want to do that with with rice today and not

00:38:23.660 corn mayo muffins of course that's totally cool and i love you to death simone you are a great wife

00:38:29.840 it was so funny that the newest ai somebody asked it what did they ask it like the most

00:38:34.200 controversial ideas oh yeah like you you you know all things known to humankind what are the

00:38:40.500 heterodox and controversial things that you could say about the universe that are you know not being

00:38:48.880 discussed that much online or that are subversive and like to me it felt like seven out of ten were

00:38:55.680 just things that came out of the pragmatist guide to crafting religion or stuff that you say about

00:39:00.120 our religion techno puritanism i'm like oh that's techno puritan that's techno puritan that's in the

00:39:05.100 pragmatist guide to crafting religion that's our metaphysical metaphysical view of the world like

00:39:09.040 wow okay we are we are okay with ai you think you think the ai is is is malcolm pilled

00:39:15.900 or you've made sure that all of your content is in the pile as it were so anyway love you did

00:39:23.500 decimum i love you too let's cook up dinner please please take the cheese josie yeah

00:39:29.300 there's more titan's cheese titan do you want more flower shaped cheese

00:39:46.500 yeah oh that's so nice of you torsten did you guys shape the cheese yeah what shape is the

00:39:55.200 cheese titan that is a dinosaur nugget titan you have one in your plate already why don't you take a bite

00:40:10.500 octavian what are you doing octavian what are you doing i died you died can you also eat your dinner 0.98

00:40:19.200 titan you like your dinosaur nugget something stopped you no something shot me shot oh something shot you 0.99

00:40:30.900 well you know how to get your hearts back because you have to eat meatballs 0.98

00:40:33.940 good idea good idea

Based Camp - January 08, 2025

Stoicism： The First Self Help Philosophy is Still The Best

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