understanding, examining and choosing are all thinking based. and that's why stoicism isn't really working well for humans. emotions are neuropsychologically lower level than thoughts/logic/ratio. having said that, lectures about stoicism might well be excellent instructions for language models on how to handle communication with humans.
Part of practicing Stoicism is to bring emotions up to the understanding, examining, and choosing level. You still have emotions, but you don't let them control you.
I love JiuJitsu because many parts of it are like microcosms of life. The first time someone lays on you and you feel like you can't breath, you panic. That's an emotion. After a few times you realize you can breath and eventually you will feel the panic and instead of succumbing, it'll wash past you. By practicing feeling emotions, especially negative ones like being uncomfortable over and over, eventually they move into your higher level thinking and no longer control you. You absolutely still have them, but your reaction to them has changed.
I would actually argue that the sensation from experiencing asphyxiation is not really an emotion but instead one of the most fundamental sensations any life form will experience. Just saying as I already argued that ratio is a layer above emotions. Having said that, Jujutsu (as well as all forms of martial arts and sports) are intertwined with emotional experience and needs. Jujutsu for example is probably one of the best physical therapies for adults to overcome fear of non-sexual physical contact. Also the whole idea around fighting other people in your spare time draws its inspiration from a desire to externalize negative emotions which are either too abstract or too challenging to address in a mental reflection process.
Keep in mind, you’re not actually asphyxiating in this case. It’s just uncomfortable to have someone in your space, feeling closed in, etc… it’s all emotion.
Thats different from actually being choked and tapping to end the fight.
Also, BJJ has been one of the biggest unlocks in my personal growth and stoicism journey. Things that used to make me uncomfortable or annoy me in daily simply don’t. I’m not externalizing my negative emotions, I’ve just become better at dealing with them through repeated challenges. Early on my teacher told me that everyone loses, but the difference between white and black belts is the black will be calm thinking how to escape until the very end. Contrast the white belt who loses control and flails around accomplishing nothing.
It's more to separate the feeling from the reaction to the feeling by a layer of understanding & examination. Feel first, understand the feeling, examine whether the feeling is appropriate for the situation that caused it, determine how to react, react. It's an OODA loop applied to one's own emotions: Observe the feeling, Orient on the situation, Decide on a response, Act as decided. If you pre-decide to always suppress any reaction you're missing the point. Stoicism is quite similar to modern Cognitive Behavior Therapy. If you just react without thinking you'll often react to your learned habits rather than the actual situation at hand.
The realization of emerging emotions by cultivating mindfulness. I mean this is basically also what various practices/exercises in (Zen) Buddhism aim at. But I'd argue that the practical methodology advertised by Stoicism is too ratio based to be effective beyond a basic . I would rather put my money on more indirect approaches like classic mindfulness exercises and meditation. They are less goal oriented by design, but the axiom (which I accept from experience and observation) is that a healthy mind will be expressing stoic virtues naturally without knowing how to call it.
Very well put. I'd add the psychological concept of dissociation which seems to be central to the hackernews version of stoicism. Instead of connecting to your emotions it encourages pushing them down. That's just going to postpone the moment when you have to deal with them. Either because of psychosomatic illness, depression, burn out or mental breakdown. Attempting to influence, change, control feelings/emotions by rational concepts and thinking is doomed to fail. Emotions are on a lower level than verbal and logical mental processes.
Mac battery life is insane - I agree. It is very impressive what they have done. Still, I prefer my ThinkPad running Arch even though it probably has 1/2 the battery life of my Macbook.
Most people sit at their desk with the laptop plugged into the socket and use the battery for meetings or in a cafeteria. Either takes maybe an hour or two, three hours tops.
So what? Most people don't care about battery, so let's just have a crap battery? That argument would work, if Apple released a super light laptop with a tiny battery, specially made for "most people who sit at their desk".
No, people do care about battery life. That's where Macs excel. (I'm saying this as a Thinkpad user, where getting 6-8hrs of battery is doable, if you don't do anything on the laptop).
Sure, there are pros and cons for everything. It also depends on circumstances. I remember in 2012 I'd dim the screen and play with cpufreqd to get maximum time out of a battery, because I had a 3h train ride to my university weekly, with no power sockets most of the time on the train. I barely could do 3h. Today, in age of cheap PD powerbanks and USB-C everywhere, I'd easily take a better OS over battery life.
The touchpad is great, yes, I like it, too. But I'm anyway mostly using mouse and keyboard and occasionally the 3-finger-swipe which is possible with Thinkpad+Linux as well since a few years. Thinkpads are also famous for their touchpad/trackpoint if one doesn't fancy using a mouse.
i have been using macbooks for many years as that's usually the only corporate option next to thinkpad+windows. and i definitely prefer a logitech mouse.
> Anti-ditto. I would never give Linux to my parents.
I don't know about your parents but most people (including my parents) just use a browser and some applications that are identical to their Windows versions or sufficiently similar. There isn't really anything new to learn.
Same here. Using Linux Mint for about 15 years now. Same for various computer illiterate family members. As far as I am concerned it is significantly more pleasant to use than Windows and MacOS.
Not necessarily. Such an event would be a geopolitical reenactment of the Danish folk tale "The Emperor's New Clothes". Turns out the emperor isn't just naked he's still living in his parent's basement. And the emperor here is Europe and the parents are the US. Why would I as a German support a war over an island that has not just been criminally neglected by a supposed alley (Denmark), it is even politically and economically irrelevant (as of now). And not just that ... "we" have been begging the US to keep protecting us and for them Greenland is in that respect very much serving a purpose in line with that very military support. Europe is naked as it stands. I don't like it. But that's just how it is.
I find your analogy to be extremely strange. We are extremely well-armed. Greenland has also not been neglected in any way.
With regard to why you should care about Greenland, you've signed an agreement to do it, you are after all in NATO.
There has indeed been co-operation in protecting Greenland and this is very reasonable considering that the US has a presence there in the form of their military bases. I don't see this co-operation as begging.
The disrespectful, colonialist treatment of Greenland by Denmark is sufficiently well documented. And if you think Europe stands a chance in a war against US then I don't even know what to say anymore ...
No one is calling for war, but it's not like that documented history happened in this century. Greenland had been part of Denmark since the vikings. Surely we can get past the history and talk in today's terms. The people of Greenland have a voice in Danish politics and both the people and politicians said NO to wanting to have US rule them and YES to stay with Denmark.
So yes, defending Greenland becomes a case of helping a people stay free and not invaded, no matter the enemy.
It's silly to say "well we have no chance against" because then you can end that with China, Russia or even India.
Then you are the deluded one, because Europe has nukes and if Europe dissapears under US nukes, California turns into a big crater and NYC ceases to exist. Everyone - I repeat, everyone - losses. USA, Europe, China, the rest of the world. Everything lost like the Bronze Age, but far worse.
As far as my quick twitter research goes there have been reports¹ to an attack before 2am EST (= 7am UTC). So, is this correlation actually useful or just a gimmick?
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