When you can’t tell if you just tend to not experience emotions very strongly (i.e. alexythmia) or have learned to supress them 😎
For me it is suppression as part of my PTSD from my shitty life until I was about 24.
Nothing quite like being taught that emotions are a weakness to exploit to really fuck with your head.
I’m working through it but it’s going to take a long time.
Everybody has their own journey but I will say the latter is far more common.
In case you might be interested, a great way to test this is by determining whether there is any story (fiction or non-fiction), or music, or visual art if you’re so inclined that you might find significantly moving. The more engrossing / epic / awe-inspiring it is for you, the better. (Returning to material from childhood can work for some. Horror movies might not do it for those who have built up a resistance, but could be effective for others, etc., etc.)
There is some very moving art for me, and i do feel like i supress things at least a little sometimes (like if a song or movie is really hitting i might tear up but not start crying), and like thinking about certain things makes me very sad (a handful of memories, thinking about all the injustice and suffering in the world) and i’ve cried about those before. Or like sometimes the actual feeling of care towards others will swell in me if i think about it enough. But that doesn’t really say whether on average i experience emotions as strongly as normal or if i’m suppressing them. I know i suppress them at least a little sometimes (other times i’ve definitely let them loose) but it doesn’t feel like that much so it’s hard to know whether it is a lot of suppression or just having less strong emotions
The article feels likes it’s missing the mark a bit.
Stoicism is not about repressing emotions or performative masculinity, but rather about examination and self improvement. Steven R Covey is a good example of modern stoicism. You can still feel deeply and act accordingly, but that doesn’t mean that one is reactive and emotionally impulsive.
It’s important to recognize that the history of stoicism (because it is so old) has been integral in shaping masculine culture in the west. For so many people stoicism is felt more through it’s cultural influences than through the modern additions to the philosophy. I’ve posted this elsewhere but this video gives a brief history of stoicism and talks specifically about how this philosophy affected marginalized groups in the past and how that might explain why stoicism is still popular primarily among men. While doing so they try to make the case that modern stoicism is incredibly useful and attempts to draw a direct connection to modern CBT.
I agree with your comment that the history, and how that history has affected marginalized groups, specifically, is important to learn and recognize–and I think this is true of most of western culture.
Like [email protected] said, this article doesn’t feel like that. It cherry picks its sources and the author seems to fundamentally misunderstand Stoicism. In fact, it seems to me that the author is misattributing the failings and misunderstandings of some of Stoicism’s bad actors to the philosophy itself.
I have personally found Practical Stocism to be a useful tool in my own mental health journey, especially where it relates to recognizing and controlling my responses to things other people do or say in my relationships, why my responses are what they are and what I can do about those responses. It has never been taught to me as a tool of suppression, but of experience, acceptance, and, ultimately, control. If I am able to recognize what I am feeling and why, I am better able to decide for myself whether or not it would be valid to respond out of that emotion, or if doing so would perpetuate a cycle it would healthier to break. It’s not about not feeling, it’s about giving me the tools I need to decide how best to respond to what I’m feeling.
That being said, I fully recognize that language evolves and changes and that the word stoicism without the illumination now has negative connotations for mental health, and is mostly associated with unhealthy coping mechanisms and behaviors. Perhaps it would be more useful to ask where the disconnect between Stoicism and stoicism truly lies, and how we, as men (or as humans, since a lot of this ties into basic concepts of emotional maturity) can display different and better behaviors to change the association (if, indeed, we’re even interesting in doing so?).
author seems to fundamentally misunderstand Stoicism
Or rather, is using the word “Stoicism” in a different way than you are. Like when research obviously shows a link between Christianity and intolerance and people come out in droves to say that true Christianity is about love instead of hate.
Yeah, sure, you learned a neater version of stoic values. What the author is referring to is a bit more generalized, a caricature but very real form of stoicism that some people preach, sometimes even without even calling it stoicism themselves.
The conflation of Stoicism, an established and codified philosophy, with the more general idea of bog standard stoicism is precisely my criticism. The author is not using the term differently from me, they are using it incorrectly by conflating it with a more general, and more modern, term–a term without established codification, and vastly different connotations.
Which leads directly to the point I actually made–which you entirely ignored with your reply–that anyone who uses the terms interchangeably, conflates the two, or teaches one as the other fundamentally misunderstands the terms they’re using. Thus my statement that the author is laying the connotations of one term at the feet of another, different and distinct, term.
Stoicism (capitalized) and stoicism (the more general, more modern term) are not the same thing, which is why this article, in my opinion, misses the mark.
It is not so much that they are conflating two unrelated stoicisms as you seen to imply but rather that you seem to be specifically trying to distance yourself from historical stoicism. There’s good reason for this, stoic philosophy was originally just as tied up in metaphysics as any ancient philosophy. This sense of metaphysics, while easy to discount from a modern perspective, was used primarily to justify existing power structures. Key among them patriarchy and slavery. Ultimately, this has little to do with the particulars of the philosophy. Knowing that, it would seem an easy task to separate the two as you would like to and yet it is still remarkably difficult to find any modern stoic groups that do not recommend Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, etc.
What you call the more general stoicism (lower case) is better understood as the whole of stoic cultural influence as it relates to the modern world. Even the etymology of stoics comes from the school of philosophy. It is not reasonable to try to claim stoic philosophy is best understood as only it’s most modern incarnations even as popular stoicism relies on ancient men to be it’s primary mediums.
I’d be very interested to explore this idea further with more historical discourse / critiques, if you have any sources, as it’s my understanding that modern Stoicism is based primary on Seneca’s work, and treats Seneca’s ideas of the Stoic Sage as a both a blueprint for modern Stoicism and the evolution of the ideas of prior Stoics.
I appreciate your perspective, and it’s clear we’ve been educated on these topics quite differently. I’d love to learn more!
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