That's all great and it sounds like stoicism isn't for you. But that doesn't mean that it's "a deeply hollow, dissociative, nihilistic philosophy which dresses up the status quo as 'God's plan' -- a rationalization of interest to the elite above all others."
Virtues like prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice can improve the lives of people of any part of society, not just the elites.
I was a staunch Stoic, and a hollow disassociative mess is exactly what I became.
Think of the end goal of the Stoic and what it takes to achieve it. At every misfortune, you rationalize and deny your natural emotions. If you do it well, you're an all understanding guru of life, sharing oneness with everything, and becoming nothing in particular.
We have to accept that we too are a part of nature and flawed imperfect beings who can be unreasonable, hate unnecessarily, be selfish without ultimate good reason, etc. It makes us the individuals that we are, and gives us the will to care and have something we intrinsically want to live for.
Perhaps as a peer comment is alluding to, this issue might simply be viewing things through an all-or-nothing lens.
In some ways I think this is similar to Thomas Jefferson and Christianity. He was drawn to the soundness of the values of Christianity as a system of moral and ethical behavior, but found the supernatural aspects of it unbelievable, and words of third parties as less relevant. So he simply cut them out and actually literally cut and pasted his own 'Bible' together, the Jefferson Bible. [1]
For self evident reasons he kept this as a personal project, but that was essentially 'his' Christianity. Beliefs and systems are what we make of them. Stoicism may shape one, but we can also shape it back in return, for otherwise it's certain to never truly fit.
That is totally fair, and I'd say what me and the other commenter here are doing is precisely that, arguing that Stoicism by itself, is not something to live by.
These are genuine questions, but please don't feel obligated to answer if you aren't comfortable. I'm fascinated to hear your story though.
Are you generally a pretty gung-ho person? Do you feel drawn to strive toward perfection?
Were you or are you previously religious with Christianity, Islam, or other world religion?
Do you view stoicism as an all-or-nothing thing? I.e. do you think a person applying stoicism in a light-weight or even casual manner is useful, or would you still recommend avoiding it?
Growing up I was a pretty reserved, depressed kid. Culturally Christian background but I was a pretty staunch agnostic. I am not a perfectionist when it comes to work, but I did always strive to be as rational as I could in how I approached life. It was very much naturally my coping mechanism.
If faced with being wronged, "They're just a biological machine, how could I be mad at a tree that grew the wrong way?", personal failures, "I am just a biological machine, this is just where I am at at the moment", "Whats it matter what I accomplish? Were all dead in the end anyway", faced with some accident, "Well something was bound to happen at some point. Its nothing unexpected that it happened now", a loss of love, "It happens to everybody, things just didn't coincide".
Its all very calming, and can make you resilient to what's going on, but I came to realize that what I am really doing is disassociating from every aspect of my life. Instead of feeling/processing my emotions, I was simply just not caring about any of it. I read Nietzche's Genealogy of Morals, and it was such a derailment from my natural philosophy, and yet it felt he was saying everything that I wanted personally. You're human, be angry if you're angry, be sad if you're sad, do what you want to be doing, have and enforce YOUR will for life.
Yes I agree this line of thinking is definitely needed and can be extremely helpful to someone with the opposite problems, but as with all things in life, its complicated and in truth there is a fine balance that's always difficult to know in advance.
Do you have any idea why stoicism (and rationalism) gets conflated with lack of passion and goals?
In my experience, both are tools to get what one wants, but it seems like a lot of people miss out on the instrumentality. Goal orientation is necessary to determine when emotional repression is appropriate.
That is the opposite of Stoic practice. I have never heard Stoics denying things. What does it mean to deny things that happen? Emotions are not in one's control. Whenever they come up, one would observe and act according to Stoic virtues. If one has failed to observe, then they reflect on the failure and intend to observe in the future.
>Whenever they come up, one would observe and act according to Stoic virtues.
I am talking about precisely this. If something happens that angers you or makes you sad, you can always stop and try to alter your natural reaction/thoughts to be more aligned with a more forgiving/serene/understanding nature.
What I am saying is if you do this really well, everything in life just becomes "it just is", and in turn becomes nothing at all
It does and it did in a world where I can actually be devoid and detatched from everything. But I got bored of being alone and it makes it hard to connect with anyone when youre living in your own world.
But I dunno sometimes I think all this thinking is useless cause you never really know what caused what
Virtues like prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice can improve the lives of people of any part of society, not just the elites.