Interesting:
The Stoics were giving salvation for tough times. It’s a great philosophy for tough times, I’m not sure it’s a great philosophy for everyday living. It’s always good to feel more in control, but it’s not good to think that luck and the vicissitudes of the world can’t touch you or that you can’t show moral outrage, love, grief, and so on.
The preceding paragraphs are terse and add further insight about the limits of Stoicism (or perhaps the little-s version that one might commonly adopt if under stress) and its effects on curtailing emotions.
Stoicism is about not allowing your emotions to govern you.
Subtle but profound difference.
But I never let them run my life, and I remove them from any bigger decisions. Cold hard facts don't change, and so doesn't your perspective and decisions based on them. Any new fact just adds to the mix with at most mild alteration of the result.
Yet many folks I know have fucked up something bad in their life, by giving up to emotions in crucial moments. Lifelong regrets often afterwards, either hiding the fact in shame or living with consequences, in both cases visibly permanently less happy (not just cheating to be clear although that's of course one of main ones).
One imperfect, but applicable analogy: "emotions are a fuel, and reasoning should be the steering system"
I think it would be useful to emphasize that not letting the emotions govern applies to regret as well: Yeah, I did what I shouldn't have (or missed an opportunity), but now it's done and staying miserable helps noone, just makes me feel bad. Let's take it seriously and make the best of it (at least using it as a very important lesson), focusing on improving the future, not crying about the past.
Past girlfriends are a prime example - since they are past, there was always a not-nice breakup for those long trelationships, but every time I learned very valuable lessons about psychology and personalities and also myself and areas to work on, that led me to my current, non-perfect but pretty amazing wife.
Of course then focus of not repeating those mistakes, this is going back to rationality.
And past is a great source of lessons, but that's about it - focus on now and future, time spent pondering about 'what if' is wasting precious little time we still have in this reality, and it will go fast.
Anyway I don’t see the connection between the vicissitudes of life and travelling half-way across the world and then getting blown up by an IDE^W IED. What part of that fits into the Reinhold Nieburh quote?
> God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.
Respect.
Well, giving up is taboo in the military. As is fragging etc.
I think there is a big correlation between being defeated and thinking you are.
The quote seems to imply a one way causality. Like as if the realization causes the defeat.
e. g. US thought it defeated Taliban by the end of 2001, Taliban certainly didn't think so. Similar thing with Palestinians vs. Israel.
I just think that’s a bigger conversation than “this one disorder is normal if you’re in traumatic environments”; it needs to be something more like “people aren’t responsible for their mental failings”. Obviously, that’s still a controversial one in and out of the military.
You’re in a lethality and violence-soaked environment, increasingly in population-centric environments. There’s a lot of grey area - who’s the enemy, are they a voluntary or involuntary human-shield, and so on.
I guess she understandably doesn’t want to focus on that part, but this has to be a huge part of rising PTSD rates: it’s hard to ignore that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were ultimately immorally waged. What scientists call the “are we the baddies?-syndrome”Hard to believe, but it is possible.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-are-in-the-us-...