A guy comes along and tells us that we should have some self control, patience and a tempered response to difficult situations instead of jumping straight into anger and fury, and your take is that this concept is just privileged sexism?
Weird o.O
well, yes.
what this guy says is basically gaslighting emotional people.
also, he doesnt say “yo, if you have a bad day, just chill” he condones the angry and complaining. that is a call to discipline. from a roman emperor.
i dont understand how this could be seen as self help advice.
if you are angry, be. if you have things to complain on, do.
and if you see someone else being angry and or complaining, how about not labeling them anything? we are all angry from time to time. and complaining about unfairness is our first nature. not acting on your complaints wont get you anywhere, but you do stay productive. not acting on your anger will keep you a nice fellow, but do consider who you want to be a fellow with.
also, i didnt say sexism. because it isnt. it’s just denying certain emotions due to them being inconvenient in a “civilized” society. emotions caused by unfair, but “civilized” actions and norms.
i mean, i dont know exactly what he had in mind when writing that, but, like, there are only so many things that concern an emperors mind.
Great advice if your goal is to be destructive to yourself and others. I am recovering from abuse and can for sure say that nothing good has ever come from, or will ever come from anger. We’re all angry from time to time. And it’s still destructive as its only quality. Being violent in thought or action is not useful. Ever. Only apologists hiding from reality will say that being angry was good. Every scenario you can pose is better met with good temper. Even under actual physical attack, a calm collected response leads to superior outcomes. There is no real world use for anger. It is a remnant hunter gatherer feature.
He wrote this for himself in his Meditations. So he wasn’t telling this to anyone but himself, therefore not ‘gaslighting’ anyone. Beyond being a roman emperor, he is also a pretty respected philosopher, and that generally doesn’t happen without having something interesting to say on the subject.
i mean, i dont know exactly what he had in mind when writing that, but, like, there are only so many things that concern an emperors mind.
It’s an excerpt from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. Aurelius was a philosopher in addition to an Emperor, and his writings are excellent-but-pretty-orthodox expressions of Stoic doctrine of the time.
The big three surviving philosophical schools of the time all had a very “Look inwards” worldview - Stoicism claiming that we decide ourselves how the outside world pains or does not pain us; Epicureans claiming that it is by learning to appreciate the simple pleasures of life that one achieves contentment with life; and Cynics claiming that mankind is happiest in a state of nature, and that the constructs of human society are window dressing at best - as such, one should act according to one’s ‘gut’ in any given situation.
i still cant take it for what you say it is.
there was/is this dude (perhaps a journalist) who coined a question to ask oneself as a reader… “who? says what? to whom? with what purpose? using what channel?”
something like that. and since being able to read/write wasnt as common as today, i can only read this as “to whoever wants to be a good citizen: beware” coming from a ruler, and pointedly not “how to be a happy human on earth <3”
but that is just me. and i only replied again because iheartneopets replied, but he basically says what you were saying… so i feel like you deserve my response more.
sorry if you were hoping lecturing me was over :P
