Our society prioritizes emotional resilience and control to an almost extreme degree. People are expected to contain their feelings to suit the needs of others, with philosophies like stoicism becoming widely celebrated for helping individuals navigate adversity. The idea of these belief systems is to fortify one’s mind against the challenges of life, or even detach from them entirely, making it a popular approach in the self-help industry, corporate circles, and beyond.
But is stoicism all it’s cracked up to be? Should individuals use it whenever life throws challenges in their direction?
Clearly, philosophy offers some valuable lessons about self-discipline, but does it really help when it comes to the average person’s emotions? Many experts find its focus on emotional detachment to be problematic, specifically for people dealing with issues from sexism to ableism. Confronting these forms of oppression often requires more than a British stiff upper lip, which stoicism seems to imply. They also need confrontation, which many forms of stoicism seek to avoid.
Stoicism’s Strengths And Limitations
No philosophy is perfect, and stoicism is surely one of them. It asks people to control their emotions and that focusing on a “can do” attitude usually results in better outcomes.
Superficially, this observation is certainly true. Hating your job but doing nothing but sobbing about it won’t help. But on a deeper level, the emphasis seems wrong for many people.
Stoicism’s focus on internal control seems to minimize the lingering effects of external reality. Pain, suffering, and hardship are all things that exist outside of the conscious control of any person, particularly short-term. Gritting one’s teeth and bearing it sometimes isn’t the best option.
These challenges are even more present in communities where injustices are ingrained. Many people in the Black community are arrested, for instance, even though the charges against them are minimal, or non-existent.
“Many people are arrested in communities across the country,” says Mr Nice Guy Bail Bonds, an agency that helps people get out of jail following incarceration by the police. “You often see specific areas seeing higher rates of arrests, simply because the police are more active in these locations. Yes, it’s challenging for those involved, which is why it is so critical to provide help nearby.”
Stoicism would presumably involve simply accepting this situation. However, allowing arrests to occur without any consequences or assistance wouldn’t improve the situation and could potentially make it more challenging for those in the Black community. It wouldn’t do anything to undo the structural harm that’s in place in specific areas where reform is lacking.
The Political Dimensions Of Emotional Expression
Many commentators on the left believe that emotions aren’t purely personal, but are also political. Feelings like grief and rage are transformative for social movements, and many of them work against the classic maxims of stoicism.
For example, in the 1960s civil rights activists often used emotionality to encourage support for their positions. Being “stoic” simply wasn’t an option for many of these people, since the idea wasn’t to endure, but to change the situation.
This resistance eventually reached the highest level and the government relented. It changed the rules and people in the Black community gained the rights they had always deserved under the law. Similar movements saw action across other communities later in the 20th century, leading to wholesale societal changes. If those movements hadn’t occurred with emotion driving them, it seems unlikely that they would have succeeded. Stoicism may have prevented the growth of civil rights in the U.S. and the abandonment of segregationist policies.
Stoicism also risks developing a sense of attachment to many of these situations. Marginalized individuals may struggle to see a path forward when they believe that the only thing they need to do is focus on their emotions and manage them more successfully. The goal should be more than to cope, it should be to fight.
The Emotional Labor Of Marginalized Communities
Some commentators also point to the emotional labor marginalized communities could face with the wholesale acceptance of a philosophy, like stoicism. Many people on the fringes of society already have to deal with challenging situations, but asking them to adopt a stoic attitude on top of that makes their situation even more difficult.
Stoicism tends to work best for those already in powerful or acceptable positions in society. It can offer solace in some situations, for example, helping the busy CEO push through a 100-hour week to meet various deadlines set by investors. However, it isn’t clear how much it helps the black person being told that they are angry about being treated badly, or the woman told she is hysterical for sharing her opinions. In these situations, it doesn’t seem like an empowering philosophy that can help people.
The Greeks originally developed stoicism to help them in their culture. Obviously, Greece in 500 BC was quite different from the USA of the 2020s. Today, we must deal with issues that were largely absent in ancient societies, including things like systemic racism, economic hardship, and various other forms of oppression. Greek society was largely egalitarian with only a handful of wealthy elites, mainly in the small political class. Everyone else worked the land or used manual labor to provide services in cities.
In America, that situation is different. Today, the capitalist structure of the economy means that people have to partake in the system to survive. Given the growing population and the price of land, it isn’t possible any longer to simply live by oneself, detached from the economic order.
A More Inclusive Approach
A more inclusive approach might be to go beyond stoicism and focus on concepts of emotional justice. Marginalized communities should have the same rights as everyone else to feel anger and grief in response to the society around them. Simply ignoring these feelings could lead to long-term structural issues that affect everyone in these communities negatively. Stoicism may be a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t work as well in the modern context, outside of niche areas.
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This post brought to you by Atif Sharif
Photo: Pexels / RDNE Stock project
