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stoicism

an original definition by J. E. Brown

stoicism

n.

  1. A collection of mind games designed to brainwash people into becoming betas who are satisfied and happy with less privilege.
  2. The belief that people, especially other people, should not be allowed to have emotions.
  3. A self-centered belief that others should just stop whining.
  4. The attitude of “You exist purely for my entertainment. Instead of crying and whining about your so-called ‘problems’, you should think about how your sadness affects me!”
  5. The opposite of empathy.
  6. A perverted system of ethics in which you’re responsible for everything that happens TO you.
  7. A form of insensitivity. A belief that other people do not have real feelings or emotions, and all emotional displays are intended to manipulate others.
  8. Techniques for trivializing the problems of others. Techniques for conveying to people that their problems look really small to you.
  9. A socially accepted way of expressing hostility and dominance.
  10. A type of cowardice, in which only the safer target (i.e., the weaker target) is advised to show restraint.
    Example    : When an abuser picks on a victim, the stoic bystander lectures the victim for his reaction but does nothing to stop the abuser. (This bystander’s behavior is also an example of Feeding Frenzy, in which bystanders recognize an easy target and join in the abuse.)
  11. The pop psychology that teaches people to be passive victims.
  12. A technique for making conflict appear to disappear, using the placebo of self-blame. Example: Someone bullies or abuses you, and you go through lengthy mental gymnastics to convince yourself that the abuser or bully shouldn’t be penalized for that wrongdoing — that the responsibility to “Be a Bigger Person” is somehow on you, not on the abuser or bully. A variant of what Freud called displacement, in which the wrong person is held responsible.
  13. An ancient religion. A junk science. A quack therapy.

Synonyms:

egocentrism; narcissism; solipsism; self-centeredness; being insensitive; being a jerk. {You’re reading “Stoicism” by J. E. Brown.}

Antonyms:

being a friend.

Related Concepts:

brainwashing; censorship; double standards; drama; empathy deficiency; empathy disorders; manipulation; might makes right; negativity; positivity culture; practicing pop psychology without a license; silencing the emotions of others; silencing victims; victim blaming. {You’re reading “Stoicism” by J. E. Brown.}


stoic

adj.

Street Definition:

Showing no emotion.

The Thermostat

It is a law of cybernetics that if you design any self-regulating system (a thermostat, a pressure safety valve, or a voltage regulator) to respond at only one particular temperature or pressure, then that is the temperature or pressure you will get. The system will let off steam at the selected level, and this creates a limit, which stops the system from overheating.

The principle applies equally well to physical systems and social systems: If you design a society where people are taught to complain when rudeness and injustice occur, then rudeness and injustice are limited at that level.

On the other hand, if you advise victims not to complain about abuse, you are removing the thermostat which would have let the victims call for help, and the amount of abuse in society rises because you have bent or broken or tampered with its regulating mechanism.

The Twins

Nobody is obligated to be entertaining just for your benefit. Remember the two Iranian sisters who were joined at the head? Remember how interesting it was to see that they could drive a car, prepare a meal, and deal with all the other special challenges of their life? And they did it all with such good cheer and optimism. Not only could we have learned a lot from them if they had stayed joined, but they were great examples. But that entertainment and learning would only have benefited us. It was necessary at last to do the unselfish thing and think about their benefit, and to allow them their wish, to be separated. That’s what it means to care about others.

Discrimination and the Pecking Order

Stoicism is about selective correction of others. The powerful, for example, are never corrected — stoics will only attack safe targets.
Hence, all correction means “I think of you as my subordinate.”

One reason you might want to hide your emotions: Some people who learn about your misfortunes will automatically assume you’re a beta, and try to take advantage.

Stoicism is a tool for constructing and maintaining a pecking order.

Boneless

I was six years old when I first saw a fish fileted. People filet a fish alive. They just put the fish on a board and start cutting on it.

I asked, “Doesn’t it hurt the fish?”

“No,” my grandmother said, “Fish are cold-blooded, so they don’t feel pain.”

It just goes to show you:

  1. People do whatever they want, then look for excuses.
  2. When looking for excuses, people believe whatever’s convenient. Never mind thinking. Never mind logic.

Likewise, when people decide to hurt you, they turn off their empathy chip. They tell themselves you don’t feel pain.

Stoicism consists of denying that people (especially other people) have feelings.

Inhumanity in Humanity

Remember, stoicism is a philosophy, not a science. It arose thousands of years ago, not out of research, but out of self-centeredness.

Stoicism pretends to be a philosophy, but it is nothing more than the ideologizing of insensitivity.
It comes from a time when human sacrifice was considered entertainment. When murder in the Colosseum was considered a sport. A time when human life was not valued.
Stoicism is not a philosophy (in the sense of “a system of beliefs or actions”), but an expectation or insistence that other people should be philosophical (in the sense of “calm and unemotional and unflappable”).

Stoicism is an attitude of dismissiveness toward other people’s problems.

Book Review

My review of the book of Discourses by the stoic philosopher Epictetus:

The rantings of the ancient philosopher Epictetus, who went around telling people how they could become less offensive (to HIM) by controlling their emotions. Because it was all about HIM. Because to HIM, people who have problems are just a bunch of whiners. 🙄

Epictetus had a point of view which nowadays we call “uncultured” and “inhuman”. His system of “philosophy” consists mainly of sneering at anyone who’s Other. His collection of beliefs is one which any teenage hipster could come up with — and even today, many still do.

Here, check out his medieval advice:

  • “It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.”

Great advice. I’m sure crazy basketball coaches and abusive spouses *love* that one.

  • A gladiator, headed to his death in the Colosseum, should have the attitude “I go either to excel, or to give another the occasion to excel.”

This is why I dislike the Stoics: They found it so easy to trivialize other people’s situations. They felt that everyone exists for the entertainment of others.

A great book for those who believe in slavery and human sacrifice.

Epictetus, that ancient Roman “life coach”, liked to say that a slave should learn to think of himself as free. He liked to say that you’ll be free if you simply don’t let your captivity bother you. Just stop having emotions about it, he said. Once the cage stops bothering you, it doesn’t exist.

Um — No. That’s total BS, actually.
By that definition, freedom consists of concealing from oneself that one is a slave!

A cage is a cage.
Denying that the cage exists does not make you “free”.
Refusing to call it a cage does not make you “free”.
Decorating the cage with New Age mind games or other religious aphorisms does not make you “free”.
And finally, false hope does not make you “free” — it only drugs you into not fighting your captivity.

If you would see people free, encourage them to fight what enslaves them.

I feel nothing but scorn for stoicism, because when we hide what we’re going through, the people who understand us, the other people who are in our shoes, feel alone. Emoting, done right, is a kind of performance art, every bit as much as the advice to “dance like no one’s watching.”

... See, this is what our culture of Stoicism buys us: People suffer in silence. I think that if people suffered out loud, the rest of us could learn, and make different choices.
In that vein, I like this article from Dan Pearce: “Pulled from the Truth Box, week 5”

— J. E. Brown

About 2500 years ago, a mind virus got loose and infected many of the world’s religions: a belief that people’s feelings are unimportant, and that they should just stop whining, because people are just so much more fun to be around when they paste fake smiles on their faces.
The new meme said “Give up all desire, give up all attempts to change the world, and you will be Free.” They think freedom consists in wearing blinders so you can’t see how much agency you’ve lost and how far you’ve fallen.

My friends:
That is not freedom — that is becoming complicit in your own captivity.
That is not freedom — that is internalizing The Man.
That is not freedom — that is becoming your own jailer and your own kapo.

That is not freedom. That is submission.

Apparently, any belief system that teaches half the people to be free of their dignity — and teaches the other half to be free of their empathy — is destined for popularity.

Red Flags: Words and Phrases Often Used by Offenders.

  • be the bigger person
  • change your expectations
  • cheer up
  • complainer
  • control your emotions
  • faking
  • focus on what you can change
  • free, freedom: “When you stop having desires, you will be free.”
  • get over it
  • hypersensitive
  • hysterical
  • “If you resist your abuser or bully, you might make him mad.” (Double standard under which abusers and bullies are treated better than victims)
  • master, mastery (as in “mastering oneself”, “mastering your emotions”, “mastering your life”)
  • perceptions: “I’m sorry you perceived that I ____.” (See also Mind Games.)
  • perspective
  • reactions are a choice
  • resilience
  • self-regulation
  • Smile!
  • stop being a victim
  • thick skin, thin skin
  • Advice designed to increase your powerlessness, such as: “Turn the other cheek.”
  • victim mentality
  • whiner, whining
  • “You shouldn’t let it bother you” (esp. the belief that insults bother you because you choose to let them, not because (duh) they’re insults. Anyone who abuses you on purpose should be slapped in the face and/or dumped.)

Excerpts from my book (in progress)

Translations

Statement Meaning

“You shouldn’t let it bother you.”
“You shouldn’t let them get to you.”
“You should develop a thicker skin.”
“Get over it!”
… and most other stoic statements.

“You should learn to see your problems as unimportant — the way I see them!”

“When you stop having desires, you will be free.”

“Self-actualization is for Alphas, not for little old you.”

— J. E. Brown

Comebacks

Responses to a few childish debating tactics.

If someone tells you: Your correct response is:

“You should focus on what you can change.”

“I see something I can change: I’m going to start spending less time with unsympathetic people!” 😏

“You know, it takes more muscles to frown than to smile.”

“Which means of course that frowning is better exercise.” 🙂

“I prefer to keep my feelings to myself.”

“I find this is usually a cover for having no feelings.”

“Reactions are a choice.”

“So is empathy. Where is yours?”

“If you don’t like what he said, just ignore it!”

“I’m curious. This advice you’re giving, about ignoring — when’s that going to take effect? I mean, is that advice you live by, or is that advice that you only give to other people? If you don’t like what I wrote back to him, then take your own advice and just ignore it. Now go correct someone you have authority over, asshole.”

— J. E. Brown

Random Thoughts.

Sometimes we mistakenly believe someone to be stoic when in truth he is simply unmoved. Furthermore, sometimes we mistakenly believe someone to be simply unmoved when he is in fact immovable.

Have you noticed that when a murderer is found guilty in a court of law, some journalists describe his reaction as “stoic”, while others describe that same facial expression as “showing no remorse”?

In contrast to the self-esteem movement, stoics seem dedicated to helping people think less of themselves.
They tell you “I don’t believe in sweating the small stuff.” And by “small stuff”, they mean “your stuff”.

In one form or another, Stoics always preach giving in to the strong.
Abusers are easy to recognize by the way they defend the abusive behavior of others.

Some people think that standing up for yourself and having a voice amount to “whining” and “being a victim”. They tell you this to silence you — which does make you a victim.

No one tells a man with a broken leg or even a headache sufferer that he needs to adjust his attitude to pain and stop demanding relief.
The difference, clearly, is in the person offering advice.

Most stoic sayings are written by teenagers who are still at that age where they think kowtowing to power will always be a feature of their lives.
They believe that Might Makes Right.

When you hear the self-help crowd lay out ways that you can “change your perceptions” by being more “positive”, run away as fast as you can. That kind of self-“help” is nothing more than religionized gaslighting.

Stoics don’t care about others; the emotions of others disgust them.
Their disgust at the emotions of others disgusts me.
Those who can’t handle the sight of a little human emotion aren’t as stoic as they’d have us believe.
They forget that their disgust and disdain are emotions too.
Maybe they should take their own advice:
As they’re so fond of saying, maybe they should be more in control of their own emotions.
Maybe they should “master it” instead of “letting it master them”.

I’ve engaged in a program of kicking insensitive people out of my life. After all: If they’re really as thick-skinned as they always claim to be, it shouldn’t bother them, right? ;^)

Stoic people want you to be happy. How thoughtful of them! Trouble is, they want you to be happy for their entertainment.

— J. E. Brown

From the chapter on “How to Be an Insensitive Jerk”

I don’t know if there’s really a book titled How to Be Rude, but if there were, the Devil would speak in bloody red letters, the Conscience would speak in small print, and the book would say something like this:

Happy, healthy people must surround you at all times. The poor, the homeless, the sad, the depressed, these should all go look for work, for housing, for happiness, all of which grow on trees — or so you’ll be happy to tell them. {You’re reading “Stoicism” by J. E. Brown.}

— J. E. Brown

On personal responsibility


I think “you are responsible for your own happiness” is what people with a lot of power and privilege say.

In fact, people with power and privilege are the biggest on “responsibility” in general. Why? Because they want to convince themselves they earned and therefore deserve what they got by birth and good luck.

People in poverty, people with diseases, people with disability, et cetera, are much more likely to be frustrated, and are reasonably offended by the idea that they have so much control over their circumstances.

It’s always empowering and always feels good when you step up and say you can take control of something. But if you a person can’t actually take control, it is really cruel and insensitive to keep suggesting that it is so.

   — Matt Pizzuti

Quotes


To think that entertainers always have to be happy and funny is kind of a shallow thing.

   — Pete Seeger, interview in Martin Scorsese’s film Bob Dylan: No Direction Home


Stoicism is self-tyranny.

   —  Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil


The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet.

   — Bill Cosby


… large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

   — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


… science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.

   — Helen Keller


The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

   — Alice Walker


A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

   — Ralph Waldo Emerson


Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

   — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My more literal translation:
No one is more a slave than he who believes himself free, without being so.

5th edition 01 May 2026
4th edition 21 Feb 2019
3rd edition 30 Jan 2016
2nd edition 10 Aug 2015
1st edition 15 Nov 2013

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Concepts:

definition of stoicism, what does stoicism mean, define stoicism, what are stoicism, stoicism are defined as, examples of stoicism, why do people ~.

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