Gray Champion Predictions

[Eric the Green]

(03-19-2022, 09:27 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(03-19-2022, 08:50 AM)David Horn Wrote: I think you improperly conflate stoicism and masculinity. I've met many stoics in my life, and gender doesn't seem to be a defining feature. Yes, stoicism has taken a beating in the last few decades, but macho chest-beating is not a stoic characteristic. If anything, they are polar opposites. Stoics endure quietly and suffer inside rather than blame-shame in public. FWIW, politicians are rarely stoic. Look elsewhere.

If I allegedly conflate masculinity with stoicism, you conflate it with macho chest beating. a drive for power and ambition, a healthy sense of competitiveness and an ability to stand strong and be a protective pillar for one's family do not require macho chest beating. Unfortunately, this conflation has become the default reaction of the American public with regards to masculinity. They can't see that their fragmenting society, failure to produce strong leaders and deteriorating family life are all trace back to a lack of masculine backbone.

The American public "can't see that" because there is nothing there to see. It does not trace back to that. It traces back to excess commercialism and neoliberal individualism and whatever else saps our ability to have a sense of civic and moral responsibility.

Quote:Stoicism is still a primarily masculine trait (esp since it's strongly correlated to low trait neuroticism), but it is the opposite of chest beating. Where chest beating places offense, stoicism plays defense and turns inward to exert control over one's self and not allow external pressures to break them, disrupt their composure or force a reaction.

Quote:If you want to see heroism, look at Ukraine. Almost no one is interested in being brave or fighting, for that matter. They just want to endure and save whatever is left of their dignity and past life. That's not even vaguely RPG-like. It's real.

My point was that entertainment trends show us millennials have a sharp interest in heroism, albeit a largely unconscious one.

The only entertainment trend I see among young people today is lousy entertainment. I doubt this has much to do with heroism, but if a hero generation has a sharp interest in heroism, should that surprise us?

The stoic and the epicurean both have their place in a reasonably balanced life. On the philosophers wheel, I think I am somewhere on the middle vertical axis between them, but higher up on the axis than either.


https://philosopherswheel.com/questionnaire.htm