if you were given the choice of receiving ten million dollars or becoming a paraphalegic, I think it is obvious that you would prefer the ten million dollars, and rationally would do what is in your control to receive it. However, you must recognize that in the real sense, both outcomes are indifferent to your ability to cultivate virtue, and thus should not be approached with desire or aversion, because they are neither good nor bad.

It is only rational to desire true goods, and the only true good is virtue.

It is not semantic, it has different meaning. The difference is that preference are passion, thus are heteromous. I.g they happen to you. The rationally refer to reason and thus is autonomous i.g. you "make" them happen. (eddit was missing info)

I think it’s more, “irrespective of your physical situation”, e.g., if you had a broken leg, or if you were born with a deformity, this wouldn’t necessarily restrict you from pursuing a life worth living.

I'm not sure about Stoicism, but in Advaita Vedanta, which does have a striking similarity to Stoicism, the mind and the body are considered separate identities operationally, but are considered one entity. The mind affects the body, and the body affects the mind.

Most likely the stoics (the classical stoics) had a plurality of beliefs related to mind/body dualism -- some believed in a pneuma or soul, some did not. All believed that we -- whether mind or body, were part of an ordered universe, one giant machine of matter and logic, so even if body and mind were believed to be separate, they are still both part of logos.

Whether the mind exists out of the body's matter notwithstanding, Epictetus considers the body as external and not under our control, he says it right on page one of The Enchiridion actually. Despite your best intentions and efforts, you could be effected by cancer or be in an accident, for example. Neither situation is in your control, or prevents you from cultivating virtue, so to be emotionally disturbed by such events is irrational.

I think what the modern stoic must acknowledge, moreso than neurobiology, is that we now know that in some cases it may not be possible to control our own mind and we may lose our faculties of reason. Dementia being the most clear example but someone may fall victim to psychological disorders as well. This is tough to come to terms with and I personally am not sure I have a solution.

Yes, a slave with a crippled leg, who's lessons were compiled into one of the most influential texts on ethics of all time, and who's legacy underpins the bulk of modern psychotherapy 2000 years later.

He lived a life in pursuit of virtue, with reason and pro-social action at its core. Does being enslaved or crippled have anything to do with cultivating either?

its about attaching to an outcome, which causes suffering both if the outcome doesnt happen, or a delusion of control if it does.

it’s setting goals, having intentions, making choices, and instead of saying ‘i want this to happen’ you say ‘let’s see what happens’.

it’s curiosity, which ends in acceptance. acceptance that all of this shit is really random.

if you’ve ever done everything right and ‘failed’ then you can understand a bit easier.

You still set goals and try to achieve them (learn the piano for example). But if the outcome isn't what you set out for (you don't play Carnegie Hall) you don't lament it, but appreciate that you learned piano. Then set a new goal.

>I guess I am struggling to see on what basis one would do anything (except perhaps the immediately gratifying) if one had no desires about future states of the world.

It's not that you can't work towards an aim, but just detach yourself from the expectation of outcomes. It's ok to want to become rich, so that you can help your near and dear ones, and work hard towards it. But always be aware that the outcome of your effort need not be plentiful always.

>Unlike Arjuna I can’t just ask a god what I should do!

You can read the Bhagvad Gita.

So not philosophy, but in therapy you are taught to:

• Recognize your emotion and label it.
• Validate and feel your emotion.
• Then formulate how you act or react.

Using anger, its important to recognize that thats a "secondary" emotion, as in its not truly the emotion you are feeling and is merely the way you are responding to said emotion. Anger usually stems from places like fear, shame, stress, and being hurt. In your example, you arent angry that someone honked at you. You are startled by the sudden stimuli (a fear response), you are feeling stimulus overload after avoiding a potentially dangerous situation (fear), you are ashamed that you did something thatd cause someone to honk at you (shame).

So to follow the steps:

• You get angry at being honked at, because you swerved into another lane after the car in front of you abruptly stopped.

• You recognize, examine, and label it the true emotion you are feeling.

• You validate that feeling and feel it. Its important in this step to avoid imperitives like 'should' and 'need'. Don't focus on next steps to lessons to take away, just the moment you are in. So if you avoided a potentially dangerous situation and someone honked at you, you would say to yourself "They are reacting to the method I chose to protect myself. I am safe now. My adrenaline is pumping right now and my heart is racing, but I am currently safe."

• Now you can formulate your response to being honked at, which would likely be ignoring it and working on clearing your stress, whule continuing to your destination.

Notice that this doesnt suppress or subdue your emotions. Outwardly, it makes you less reactive and volatile, but at no point are you saying "I shouldnt feel this, I am not allowed to be angry, Im not upset at all and everything is hunky dory". You are simply taking the next step after having an emotional response and addressing it. If anything, not addressing the true emotion and simply saying "Im angry" is as much suppression as saying "Im not upset" and not addressing the root emotion.

I dont think that would make you have no personality or be okay with everything.

I would also challenge you to examine why you feel that someone choosing to not react with anger, fear, sadness, etc. and instead processing their emotions and working through them would make someone less of a person, or a less interesting one, it why someone being reactive to their negative emotions make them more interesting and "more" of a person.

To use a topical example, look at how many people are experiencing lonliness, a sense of nowhere to belong, and instead of examining it are saying "Im angry" and allowing that to blind them and get wrapped up in the incel movement, terrorist (domestic or otherwise)pipelines, or otherwise hateful ideologies. (NOTE: Not trying to say that these people are intetesting and therefore what you are talking about.) Does getting angry and lashing out at a demographic of strangers really address that sense of lonliness? If you took an incel and gave them a "perfect" woman by their definition, would that really resolve the underlying state they are in and reacting to?

Part of why the "monkeys paw" is such a powerful trope is because rarely what we think we want is truly what we want, its just merely a reaction to something triggering our fright, flight, or freeze response.

I don’t know about stoicism, but controlling them could also mean using them as a tool in pursuit of a goal.

I think for your second example, loneliness should sting a little to act as motivation and provide a direction to seek change. But it’s not for wallowing in.

>However, if say relationships arent working out for me, or I cant seem to make friends and feel lonely, and if I have to tell myself "This is ok. This is a natural part of life. I should be content", etc I find that very damaging as it is really just a lie. I feel sad, angry, lonely etc on the inside as much as I tell myself that I am not, I just become far removed from understanding myself.

In this particular case, stoicism would tend to motivate you to change the situation for an entirely different reason. The fundamental definition of a human being to nearly all stoic philosophers was along the lines of "a rational animal that exists/thrives in a society". So stoicism developed to be innately pro-social, to a certain extent, and the basic stoic concept "living the good life" includes having meaningful relationships with other people. In otherwords, to a stoic philosopher persistent isolation and loneliness for a human being would be fundamentally unnatural conditions that need to be rectified just as much as the inability to control one's own anger.

However, beyond that I think you still aren't quite understanding what the stoic perspective on emotions. To them emotion *is not intrinsically wrong, as feeling emotion is a part of human life. What they did believe was wrong is when emotions control one's thoughts and actions. Yet, even that doesn't mean emotions cannot serve as prompts to rational decisions. For example, it would be entirely acceptable to a stoic for someone to use the feelings of disappointment, frustration, etc... of not achieving an end as an impetus to rethink how one is trying achieve that end and/or reconsider if that end is worthwhile. They would probably would view it as similar to a situation like somone's aching muscles while carrying heavy things from one side of a warehouse to another causing them to decide to use a cart or wheelbarrow. In both cases even though the irrational feeling starts a chain of events, there is a rational decision that governs it. That is what they mean by "reason over emotion".

There is a difference between "how you feel" and "how you act". A stoic wouldn't argue to not feel, or force themselves to feel everything as okay. Rather, they would investigate why they feel this way and try to find the root cause and think of the most fitting action. Therefore, they make their emotions constructive rather than destructive.

The idea is that having a desire for things that don't happen is sure to cause you unhappiness. "Wish" is maybe a bit of a bad term to use there, but it also works- don't hope for things to happen, just accept what happens.

You can still work to make things happen, of course, but don't put any emotional investment into one result. Maybe you try to make your favorite dinner and get it. Great. Maybe you try to make it and the stove breaks and you can't. Okay. If you focus on the difference between the thing you wanted and the thing that happened, you'll just make yourself miserable.

I understand what you mean. Remember that these were written in Ancient Greek/Latin , sometimes something doesn’t translate well or is interpreted in a confusing way.

> happen*" irregardless of

Did you mean to say "regardless"?
Explanation: irregardless is not a word.
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