Ask a Stoic anything

reply to post by Agarta


I completely disagree. My view of emotions are explained in the original post.

reply to post by arpgme


Honestly, what a pathetic philosophy. When you're only rebuttal to a well thought out response is, "i am indifferent to your opinion", you merely prove the sheer pointlessness, and decadence of the stoic attitude.

While I can definitely see some degree of stoicism as valuable, to adopt it to the extreme as you have, to avoid all emotional experience, to avoid all life (since the emotion is life) is such a waste of life, and frankly, to choose the stoic path without learning of much more effective paths such as Zen, or even the simplicity of serving God, with LOVE and ZEAL, and still be able to transcend the pathos of negative emotions, or to live above them, is to deny yourself a much better and fuller life.

reply to post by arpgme


wow i would find it hard to be like that, feeling are important to me and define who i am..

reply to post by arpgme


Please see my last post as I edited to include a question.

No emotions. Cool. Are you a PC? Really, is there a need for flesh and blood without emotions when logical circuits can clearly outperform people in rational thinking?

reply to post by dontreally


Emotions are not life. Life is experience. Life is events. A stoic flows through life fully, being completely detached of emotion.

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge


My lack of emotion is not caused by anyone's "needs". I am a human being (as far as I can tell). I lack emotion but this does not imply rationally. I could be an emotionless irrational thinker.

So what sort of practices do you have as a stoic?

reply to post by arpgme


And what is the stoic experiencing???

Emotion IS life. It is the blossoming of life into time, space and DIFFERENTIATION. What banality to avoid the dimensions of life in this world. Its ups and downs, rights and lefts. You are stuck in one point, rejecting the fact of its 6 dimensions.

I don't expect you to appreciate the metaphysical associations between spatial dimension and spiritual dimension. A life such as you describe, is a life deprived of living. It is not going anywhere, and as such, you will find no great innovation, no great sagacity, no great value beyond not 'hurting', in the stoic.

Originally posted by Shepp
reply to post by Pokoia

 

How do you know indifference is the opposite of love?

The reason I ask is because it seems to me there are two primal emotions. Attraction and aversion.

if u think love as an emotion then there is no love to u, so indifference is right answer from urself free perspective of it

emotions are conditions of free means, if u really mean love then u r the free behind watever conditions upon that are based on interests upon ur free energy to abuse or employ made of powerful superior pretenses by forcing others to their life terms

love is not either an attraction sense, when love is absolutely free energy self resources that confirm how freedom is true power by proving being able to realize objectively positive freedom alone

love is to superiority sense, while what is superior can never b objective, so love is the free superior realization of itself one, the push one out need to give to one itself still free depth, so one could b free objectively superior inn and out to what it was in absolute terms
when truth is freedom superiority then love is positive normal sense by first being true

u r meaning peace bc u come from reverse reference, hate
so peace is the indifference to hate that is ur principal positive reason ways, being above others by taking advantages of watever weakness u see or whatever u can get from what they have while asserting how they become inferiors
free hate is exclusively to never recognize another freedom existing other then urs

that is how opposite to hate is indifference or peace in the sense of meaning at least to ignore the subject of other existence for ur own self freedom interests to save out of conflicts with else

and when love is superior free sense one realisation absolutely alone, then the opposite to love is objective free sense as being not superior so indifferent to itself, as the reason of one to stay still in realising nothing,

love is the self reason to change to become different free which is possible only through absolute superiority self realization

Now, if you're speaking of non-attachment, one can experience emotion without being attached and dependent on the expression. For instance, God is the absolute. If one accepts with joy whatever one encounters in life, and embraces the ups - the joy of laughter, of games, and play, as well as the downs, in the sense that Solomon describes in Ecclesiastes with its 14 ups symmetrical with 14 downs, to accept whatever one encounters with 'indifference' to ones own desire or expectations, then one can have the proverbial cake and eat it too. He can experience the joys of life, without expecting things to always go as one desires. This is the egoless way.

Abandoning emotion is not the key. The point is to abandon the ego, which is that part of us which interprets negative experiences as being negative for us.

reply to post by arpgme



Let me show you what apathy is. This is video shows apathy for all to see. This is what can become in a world devoid of emotion. (Warning - graphic video)



Apathy is a complete and total denial of who we are. It appears to be rampant in the world today. To see someone claim - nor less believe - that apathy and lack of emotion is the road to a peaceful and balanced state of mind sounds like a recipe for more insanity in the world to me.

I find peace through love. I highly recommend it. Better for the soul. As I presented a video of my perspective of apathy, I will leave with a video which touches more upon the concepts I embrace.

ok spock, so you have no emotion. that means any decisions you make would be based on pure logic.

Definition of LOGIC. 1. a (1) : a science that deals with the principles and criteria of validity and demonstration.

my question is how can you beleive in god

You sound inanimate.

Life is fraught with emotion. Life IS emotion. To deny emotion is to deny the purpose of life.

I believe that you have a lot to learn. You'll get there though.

-The hardest path is the right path.-

reply to post by Open2Truth


I take back what i said above: stoicism does hurt by NOT ACTING. By indifference to morality. All for selfish reasons of not wanting to 'hurt myself' by the experience of emotion.

That video sickens me whenever i see it.

When contemplating China, i wonder, what can make these people so unaffected by emotion, and by morality? and then i think about the spiritual foundations of asia: In Taoism and Buddhism, both of which teach a type of moral relativism, an attitude of indifference to right and wrong (Chang tzu has an interesting anecdote about this, in the form of a mock discussion between Confucius and Lao Tsu. The former arguing a more traditionalist spiritual approach to life, while the latter considers the spiritual perspective of the former, as vain, and egoistic, and so the better path he prescribes is one of 'going with the way' without consideration of 'right and wrong') and so one can see why China, Cambodia, Vietname and North Korea, all went down communist paths, where the state - the representation of the void (or the eternal law) inflicts its brute force on the particular (individual people) without concern for right and wrong.

So were you always a 'stoic'? Are you naturally emotionless or is this something that came to you through some sort of realization of sorts?

So, you ignored shep's question? How do you survive in this money hungry world? I'm guessing you avoided it because the answer would be uncomfortable. (i.e. "I live with my wealthy spouse/parents/sibling/friend" or "trust fund" or "inheritance" etc) yeah if I had all my needs instantly met, I could be pretty care-free and at peace, too. If I was an inconsiderate person who wasn't concerned with all the starving, dying, suffering people in the world, that is. :/

Its an amazing thing to be so apathetic yet so attention seeking.
If the op was truly apathetic why post and answer questions. Why even interact. By its very nature to be apathetic the act of interacting is only a speed bump to complete fulfillment of apathy...and yet here we are.
Obviously the op doesnt drive a car and ever get cut off in traffic, or accidentally hurt themselves and respond in pain and frustration.
Obviously the OP hasnt a spouse or children, probably no friends because of the attitude they hold, and probably posted a thread to illicit a little attention.

Personally I think the OP has to learn that pretending to be somebody will only make them less a person.
Hey buddy, Go find a friend.

Free of all emotions for inner peace eh? Sounds boring to me… I'd rather go the route of love and laughter then nothingness.

reply to post by arpgme


I disagree.

2nd

emotions are superficial., they belong to the mind.