Comments on: Unhappy Anti-Stoics

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Sat, 29 Aug 2015 15:30:37 +0000

I could have sworn that passage came up when I discussed The Diamond Age a while back.

By: Candide III

Candide III — Sat, 29 Aug 2015 11:42:08 +0000

Re Alrenous, Graham: Indeed. “[The neo-Victorians'] ability to submerge their feelings, far from pathological, was rather a kind of mystical art that gave them nearly magical power over Nature and over the more intuitive tribes. Such was also the strength of the Nipponese.”

By: Bill

Bill — Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:15:16 +0000

“… it is generally considered unacceptable to question the reasonableness (let alone the sincerity) of someone’s emotional state, particularly if those emotions are linked to one’s group identity.”

For years, I’ve been struck by the deliberate conflation of reasoned argument with psychotherapy. Reasoned argument is the whole point of intellectual life in liberal arts courses; without it, parents are just buying their children useless certificates.

Perhaps I should have the following printed on a card, so I can present it to anyone I’m having a discussion with:

“Your counselor or therapist or psychiatrist may have made recommendations for you and perhaps your immediate family regarding your care and well-being, but I am not obligated to participate in your psychotherapy.”

(Of course, that’s a micro-aggression right there…)

By: Graham

Graham — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 14:59:05 +0000

Alrenous,

Well put. I am persuaded by CBT to a fairly high degree, but there need to be limits to everything — even Stoicism and Buddhism. Our emotional experience is not reality; sometimes it is a very distorted perception indeed, but it isn’t unreal either. It’s part of what we are.

We can use these kinds of ways of thinking to gain better perception of how others act, or what is driving others to act in certain ways, or of how external situations are developing, and we should be doing all that, but our desires are our desires. They may need to be redirected or tamed, but they can’t simply be declared somehow unreal. That I would expect to do more psychological harm than good.

By: A Boy and His Dog

A Boy and His Dog — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 23:36:52 +0000

It's interesting The Atlantic chose to run this indictment of the last 40 years of "progressive" management of the educational system. The comments are amusing though. Apparently a good number of Atlantic readers choose to blame evil conservatives.

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 21:57:42 +0000

Emotions do always represent something true and important. However, that thing is rarely straightforward, and is rarely thought to be anything but straightforward.

Discounting a part of yourself like that is immediately punished by inciting self-distrust. In the long term it would be exactly as destructive as emotional reasoning, were CBT taken seriously.

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“I’m offended,” is extremely far from an unbeatable trump card. There are byzantine rules determining who is allowed to be offended by what and whom. As the stupid example, white males are only allowed to be offended on some certain other’s behalf.