Epictetus #1 (reading group)

The first video on the Handbook of Epictetus. Not sure if Epictetus would shoot youtubes, but it was a fun thought-experiment. Please shoot a response if you like. Select some passages that you want to discuss, question, or clarify.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uncDqaXF2Vs

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Stoic
• Stoicism
• Epictetus
• wisdom
• freedom
• mind
• philosophy
• video log
• religion
• spirituality
• talking

[bikodish]

Another Ellis 'quote', actually the title of one of my favorite books by him, 'How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable about Anything: Yes Anything! ', seems like a rather good description of Epictetus' thrust.

Ellis turned me on to the Stoic way more than 40 years ago.

[Professoranton]

Good stuff Bruce! Thanks.

[tyrbolo]

The copy I have throws chains on the reader

instantly, I suspect that is because of the

meddling of the church with his work.

Either that or his work suffers from the worst of

human flaws, casting the world into a mold of

good versus evil.

[Professoranton]

Check out my Primer on Stoicism Vid. The stoics were before the mode separation of good vs evil, especially as both today are take as outside of the person. Monotheism was still struggling to take hold and it is, as you suggest, some later Christian appropriations that cast a heavy shadow of "monotheism" onto Epictetus

[yeahwotevaman]

Interesting. My immediate thoughts are that stoicism can go two ways - one being a cultivation of a 'live and let live' attitude towards others, but it strikes me that it could also justify a kind of fatalistic apathy towards injustices and oppresive social hierachies.

[Professoranton]

So true. But it is also holds roots of what become civil rights activism.

watch?v=UVgVrSPhVsc

[mickmle1]

"Job well done" is a common way of saying "Good" - among some people, mainly in the south of England. And I think that connects with stoicism. The Good = do whatever is the job-at-hand, and do it as well as you can, even if - for reasons outside your control - the result is not always what you want. // So, that's another example of how the culture and language of ordinary people does often suggest that they have more of an insight into these ideas than some academics might think.

[PawnBACM]

Nice vid, but i don't agree. I used to when I was a hardcore theist, but not anymore. It just seems like a blueprint on how to be Jesus, and in a world prepared to nail people to a cross, what's the point?  Survival: keep coming back, it works. lol.

[manmythlegend12]

haha that little smirk on your face at all times. Good for you man. Keep living the stoic way.

[f1ghtclub2k3]

temporality with singular time periods as atoms in the ambiguity of life, which if accepted in turn grants gratefulness, grounding, and experimentation with and of life.

[bikodish]

Albert Ellis, greatly influenced by Epictetus, had a motto that I have on a poster on my wall, "I Will Not SHOULD On Myself Today!

[alchemistra]

There is a great leveling of men (ie. equality) that is inherent in the philosophy of stoicism, that I believe, harkens back to the teachings of Socrates. Nice post : )

[2bsirius]

A quick suggestion might be to schedule a blogtv or stickam discussion every month, which would be open to group members only...I almost never go to blogtv or stickam, but they both seem to be places where it's possible to have live discussion and that would add a lot IMO.

[jogayot]

it doesn't look like we will "defeat" death soon or ever... there are always fatal "accidents" like power outages in the data centers of transhuman brains in the vat...

but perhephs we could devise a collectivist indivudalism of digital minds melds... with the growing appeal of CGI entertainment consider a "druggy" appeal of thinking unabridged stream of thoughts at one another. modulo the big brother scenario of that kind of technology i'm sure it will be banned the same way LSD is, now.