One day in church I had to read the lesson from the First Letter of Peter (2:2-10), which contained some theology I simply don't like.

To you then who believe, he (Jesus) is precious; but for those who do not believe, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner," and "A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. -- 1 Peter 2:7-8 (NRSV)

The common interpretation in other Christian circles for this sort of thing is Predestination, the idea that from before the beginning of Time, God had already decided who would go to heaven and who wouldn't. It is a dangerous theological concept because once someone is convinced they are saved no matter what, then they feel they are free to do whatever they want and give in to their vices because ultimately their moral failings do not matter; they will be rewarded in heaven.

I do not like reading this sort of thing in church. I consider my job as a lector to be, for a moment, a teacher. I look for the lesson in the reading and this one bothers me. The stumbling line is a quotation of Isiah 8:14:

He will become a sanctuary, a stone one strikes against; for both houses of Israel he will become a rock one stumbles over—a trap and a snare for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

I suspect this quotation is a contextectomy, but that's another topic.

Predestination bothers me, and I struggled to understand this passage. However, I remembered Chryssipus and the metaphor of the cylinder. The basic idea runs like this: The soul is like a cylinder. What gives the cylinder a push does not cause it to roll, but the nature of the cylinder causes it, once impressed upon, to roll. Therefore what we assent to does not cause our consequent actions, but our nature determines our consequent actions.

I got to thinking about these cylinders. A rigid cylinder, made of hard plastic, will roll and every little stone along the path will cause it to jump and jitter and get jolted. A rough path could even throw the cylinder off the path entirely with only a few bumps. A more flexible cylinder, say something like a balloon filled with water, will keep its path better because it can roll over the small bumps without pausing. So the inflexible soul will constantly be jostled by life and redirected, and the flexible soul can continue on the path it has chosen to follow.

Then the size of the cylinder came to mind. My flexible balloon-like soul could still be stopped by a large rock on the path, unless the balloon itself was large enough to roll over the larger rocks as well. A larger rigid cylinder would also be stopped by these large rocks, unless it was rigid enough to simply crush them. So the lesson I'm learning is to have a large flexible soul, not a small soul and not a rigid soul.

Flexibility seems easy to understand, but how does one grow the soul so that even the largest impediments do not bother us? Magnanimity, generosity, and kindness are the first things I thought of. We are here for other people, after all.

The rigid soul sees things "clearer than they really are". Some people interpret everyone else's actions through a simplified lens of their own philosophy. Stoics are subject to the same flaw, even though we have instructions not to do so:

Somebody is hasty about bathing; do not say that he bathes badly, but that he is hasty about bathing. Somebody drinks a good deal of wine; do not say that he drinks badly, but that he drinks a good deal. For until you have decided what judgement prompts him, how do you know that what he is doing is bad? And thus the final result will not be that you receive convincing sense-impressions of some things, but give your assent to others. Enchiridion 45 (Oldfather)

We cannot make fair judgements about other people's actions unless we know that person's own judgements that led them to that action. In other words, be magnanimous, be kind, be forgiving.

To feel affection for other people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize: that they're human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you'll both be dead before long. And, above all, that they haven't really hurt you. They haven't diminished your ability to choose. Meditations 7.22 (Hays)

This resolves my initial problem. What does Peter mean when he writes some are destined to stumble? They disobey not because God is making them disobey, but because their natures, their rigid inflexible souls, will not let them hear the Truth as we see it.

Well, it looks like Kilby finally made the decision to end the facade and kill the organization. I hope people find there way here to form a community of writers. I still think the core idea of the challenge is sound, and it seems to have been a positive force for most participants over the decades. It's sad to see it go, but I'm glad there are places to keep the spirit of the thing alive.

I'm not checking in often here, sadly. I'm still spending more time on Reddit where there is more activity, and I'm struggling to apply Stoic principles in daily life a bit, but today I had a sort-of success story.

I participate in several subs over there. I am part of a few Christian subs as I am a practicing Episcopalian. A troll came in and asked a question, which I took as a good faith question. I gave an honest answer, as did others, and the trolling behavior started. Then someone pointed out that the poster had posted the exact same question in other Christian subs and about half of them were removed. I guess some subs are better (or just more sensitive) to trolls.

After some back and forth, I decided to cut the conversation short.

And now I'm thinking about this in Stoic terms. We have been given Socrates example of dialectic in which we are supposed to find the truth, or at least uncover some bullshit beliefs we have and expose ignorance.

The challenge today was recognizing that I wasn't in a dialectic soon enough. The initial question was suspect, but I answered it as best I could, and I think I had a pretty good answer. The first warning was in the second response I got from the OP. The first response seemed like a logical follow-up question, but the second response was "You didn't answer the question ..." and I was pretty sure at that point I wasn't in a serious discussion.

I still gave it a chance, and looked at the other conversations and they were all going pretty much the same. The OP continued to tell people what they answered without actually quoting what they answered, and then belittled them for it. Classic straw man tactics.

So how should a Stoic respond? I decided to emphasize a few facts. First, I was not going to limit my definition of "Truth" to what modern science says. Science deals with Fact, and anything beyond scientific fact cannot be addressed by science and it is a mistake, in my opinion, to limit all of reality to what science can address. That would be like trying to limit all art to watercolor or all music to opera.

After all, there is no science to confirm for us the Virtue is the only Good. This is a Truth of our philosophy we must agree to without relying on science's various measuring sticks to confirm it for us.

The second thing I did was to insult the OPs argument as "petty thinking". I have to be careful to direct such statements to the behavior and not the person. I also called the OPs behavior childish, his tactics crude and his fallacies clear as day.

Sadly, I did not live up to this ideal. After I gave him a warning he continued to straw man me and insisting on using a wrong definition of Truth. I did end the conversation with "It is tiring, little one. Oh, so tiring" and gave him the pyhhric victory. I have blocked them.

I was very deliberate in explaining the OP's "win" was a pyhhric victory.

I consider this successful in that I didn't lose my overall sense of calm, and I have not, to my best knowledge, judged the OP as a child, only using childish behavior.

I suppose I could have handled it better. What do you think?

I sing in a church choir and we do an annual fundraiser of Broadway music, which is quite different from what we normally sing. I have been singing a solo in this show for the past several years. This year I completely blew my solo. Despite all my preparation I could not perform the song, or even remember parts of it. To say I was disappointed is to say the sun is a little warm.

I was expecting this. A dark mook had been hanging over me all week. I was expecting to fail and, as expected, I failed. So what do I do with this feeling of disappointment?

My voice teacher tried several different tactics to talk me out of my pessimism:

• Since this is a church community and not an audition for a play or an adjudicated competition, does in matter if I screw up? Well, no, other than the high standard I have set for myself.
• Are the audiences experts who will notice every missed word or are they there to enjoy themselves? They're there to enjoy themselves, but I still want to entertain them properly.
• Will it matter in a week? No. Not at all.

These tactics did not really help, but I didn't give them time to get past my defenses. I sulked through the first performance, and after the second I wanted to go home and abandon the show, which would have only made life harder for a lot of other people. So I stayed.

Everyone complimented me. The closest I got to an accurate (i.e. that agreed my my own) opinion was our old choir director who was there and said "that is a very hard song." He still thought I did okay.

So now that it is all over I am numb about it and not really chastising myself anymore. I guess all that's left is to sort out what went wrong and how to improve the situation for next year.

First, I chose a song at the top of my range and even after transposing it down several steps I couldn't maintain the effort. I need to choose a song that is more fitting for my bass-baritone range.

Second, I did skimp on preparation. I relied on repetition instead of any of the other tools at my disposal to memorize the song, and I didn't engage in attentive repetition, which would have shortened my learning time.

Third, I told myself I was going to screw it up, and I screwed it up. I told myself I was going to forget the words and I forget the words.

I guess my biggest challenge is understanding what I could have done better in my preparation. What questions could I have asked myself to avoid this disappointing outcome?

I don't want this place to be just me pontificating, but a community of people exploring Stoicism. I think I've set this up so anyone could post.

The challenge of learning to practice Stoicism is in the application of the principals to the particulars of life. That's what I carved this space to be.

Feel free to ask questions, make assertions, or discuss any topic.

There is a thread in Stoic conversations that seem to imply that a Stoic should be truly apathetic towards things outside their power. This is, in my opinion, a faulty understanding of how the philosophy is supposed to guide us in our lives. The Enchiridion opens with a note about what is in our power and what is not in our power. It is in many ways the first exercise we need to practice on our journey through Stoicism. Unfortunately I see the results of this leading to people dividing things into "this is in my control" and "I don't care about this". It may be that for some beginners, this is the broad stroke that needs to understand the distinction, but I suspect for many it is not the right way to start. I see this in too many responses online: The opinion of others doesn't matter to me because I'm a Stoic. This is selfishness, not Stoicism. Our reputations are the aggregated opinions of others about us. Reputation is even one of things listed right there in the Enchiridion's first paragraph about what is outside our power, but it is also a powerful tool for Stoics. Our reputation is also information. Our reputation is feedback from the world around us. We want to see things clearly. We are after the truth:

If anyone can refute me--show me I'm making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective--I'll gladly change. It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in in self-deceit and ignorance.

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.21

Those who have excellent metacognitive skills can examine their own minds and ask the important questions: Am I Wrong? Am I the Asshole here? Those whose metacognition skills are weak need to rely on information given to us by others. Sure, the information they give is biased, but so are our thoughts about ourselves. It is a human trait to see oneself as the hero of their own story. So listening to the stories about us where we are a supporting character or even a villain are important. They let us know if our perceptions about ourselves are accurate.

So to ignore reputation is to be selfish. We are rational and pro-social beings according to Stoicism. Using reputation to refine our self-perception is the rational thing to do. Other people see things differently than we do, and so they could make us see things in a new light. Being rational creatures, we take and judge all impressions, so to dismiss reputation is to mishandle an impression. It is also pro-social. Ad hominem fallacies abound in society. We dismiss people's ideas because we think some demographic quality of theirs makes their idea invalid. This is not pro-social behavior. Treating people's ideas as coming from an individual instead of a demographic is a socially-positive action. It is not reducing another person to a set of adjectives.

So why is reputation listed as the sort of thing outside of our power? Because it is not something worth pursuing. If we act towards others solely to bolster or shape our reputation, we will probably go wrong. If you make a conscious effort to be nice to people solely so they develop a positive attitude towards you, you are learning to manipulate others instead of learning to be a genuinely good person. Your metric is not "am I being virtuous" but "do I have power of these people".

We should do the right thing because it is the right thing. The intrinsic reward of practicing virtue has more value to the Stoic than extrinsic rewards of mere reputation.

#apathy #dichotomy-of-control #enchiridion #meditations #reputation

Last week I answered a question on r/Stoicism about progress in a skill. The exact skill wasn't disclosed, so my answer felt a little generic:

There is nothing in the rulebook of the universe that growth is a constant. We do not survive by inhaling only. The path towards any skill will have sprints and stumbles. The best thing to do with a stumble is to laugh at yourself. We are not machines, after all. When in a stumbling phase, go back to the basics. Slow down. Think about things in the tiniest details. Walk through a process completely before starting. Don't let yourself get away with "I know this so I don't have to think about it".

My answer didn't feel very Stoic when I wrote it, yet I was thinking only of Stoicism when I wrote it. I was expecting a challenge of some kind to justify my answer in Stoic terms, but no challenge came from anyone else so this is my answer to my own challenge.

The work of the Stoic prokopton is to manage impressions. I saw this situation as an exercise in impression management. Here, an impression is the input (either a sensory input or a random thought) and it is packaged up with a judgement into an appearance, and then we react to that appearance.

When we start an endeavor, we have made a judgement that the topic is interesting and worth exploring. As we begin our journey, we come to a point where we realize how much we don't know, and this feels like a massive weight, but it is just another appearance. It will take forever to master this, you might think, but forever is a much longer time than we think it is. We are letting impatience skew our judgments. The proper response is to remind us that it is the work, not the results, that matter. Our practice of anything matters more than the end result.

Later, as we gain more of the skill, we look forward so much all we see is the gap to mastery. Even if that gap is smaller, we forget to look behind us and say "I have learned so much already". The impression is that we are not bound by our past. In some ways, this is a very helpful thing to say. I used to be an emotional manipulator of people around me. I thought I had it beat but recent musings have led me to wonder if I am still, in some way, manipulating the emotions of those around me, although to a smaller degree and for different reasons. This opens a sidebar of our relationship to our pasts, and if we are relying on our past for help, or trying to break the habits we built.

As we get get closer to mastery, well beyond feeling like a beginner, we think our progress slows down. In many ways it does. It is like a logarithmic function. It keeps increasing, but does so very slowly after a while. We make the mistake of judging ourselves as "in a rut" or even falling behind. Here is where I was focused with my answer, I think. I was thinking about this level where mistakes seem inexcusable or inexplicable.

I have been taking voice lessons for six years. I have gained a lot of knowledge from my teacher and my voice is stronger and purer and more comfortable than ever. I can hear problems that my teacher cannot hear, because I have learned to hear and feel what my instrument is doing. I can be dissatisfied with my performance when I'm hitting about 95% of perfect technique because I can feel and hear that missing 5%. Here the mistaken judgement is that I have to sing with 100% perfect technique 100% of the time.

This is nonsense, of course. I cannot sight read so learning a new song that I've never heard and only have the music for is not going to get me very far the first time I sing it.

So to manage impressions while learning a skill is to, well, manage impressions. Ask if your feelings reflect reality or an alternate reality you have made up. This is a skill that we must practice, and we will follow the similar path to learning any other skill along the way.

#impressions #appearences #judgment #progress

Welcome. There doesn't seem to be a home for Stoicism discussions on Lemmy anymore, so here is one that will hopefully take root and flourish. I'm an active member of the Stoicism subreddit, and decided to open up a space here to discuss the philosophy and provide general advice through a Stoic lens.