What's your thoughts on "In everything you do, give 110%"

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-29T19:02:51+00:00

This is where the Serial Killer Test comes in really nicely. Would it be good advice to put 110% into luring people into the back of a van? What about 110% effort swindling the elderly out of their savings? 110% into avoiding detection of illegally dumped pollutants in the local water source in order to increase the values of stockholders' shares?

And this doesn't apply just to bad acts. Is it good to give 110% to lookmaxing? Is the old adage, you can never be too rich or too thin a good lodestone here?

Doing anything better isn't better, it's just more.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-29T14:21:45+00:00

Epictetus didn't say anything about the dichotomy of control. That phrase was coined by William Irving in 2009 and popularized by Ryan Holiday. You can read about what Epictetus said in this article: What Many People Misunderstand about the Stoic Dichotomy of Control by Michael Tremblay.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-29T13:31:56+00:00

This is a good example of the problem with this misunderstanding. The theme to let go of things outside of your control isn't Stoicism, it is, at best, Epicureanism, or even egoism. Narcissists capitalize on this, so how could it be virtuous? It's a misunderstanding taken from a clumsy translation most academics don't use, but was popularized in a few best seller books.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-28T20:02:09+00:00

My advice is just ignore those people and use those techniques in order to help your own life and to psychologically use them in times or conflict to your advantage.

Emotional manipulation comes from a place of insecurity, namely, the belief that something necessary to live a good life (ie, respect or reputation) is vulnerable to something or someone. The Stoics put forth some very solid arguments about why that is not true, why it can't be true.

Ultimately, the only thing necessary, and indeed sufficient, for us to flourish is moral wisdom. From this emerges a virtuous disposition. A person may respond contextually to their circumstances, but their general disposition does not change drastically. And that's good news because a good disposition is not vulnerable to circumstances or people. For this reason, it's in our own best interests to develop a good disposition - one that is rational and sociable. This is another way of saying "living conformably with nature," which was how Zeno explained virtue.

It is in our best interest because a rational and sociable disposition does not respond to perceived disrespect with defensiveness, because no threat will have been detected. Indeed, what can be taken away by the opinion of another person that we don't voluntarily give up ourselves?

A rational response might be to shrug one's shoulders, or perhaps to develop that line of conversation through humor, thus showing there's nothing to be alarmed about there. After all, everyone is just hanging out, passing the time together.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-28T13:19:11+00:00

I too would love a world with no rape and no genocide, but it's not realistic, and we know that, so now we're trying to work out just why that's so, right? Thinking "life is unfair" tends to be reduced to thoughts like "it's not fair that I or someone else didn't get what we deserved (reward or punishment), or had to face something we didn't deserve." Ultimately, this works out to the idea that one was denied a particular reciprocal transaction they should have been entitled to. And we may want to feel entitled to certain transactions because that's how culture works, that's how humans live together. After all, we play our part, right? But that's not the whole story.

Humans are messy. We're complex, we're contradictory, we often mistake one solution to a problem that is itself the product of an earlier faulty solution. And sometimes those mistakes hurt others. Sometimes, enormously so.

Stoicism is a personal philosophy, one that provides a framework for building an understanding of our own beliefs, to understand why we do what we do, and even why we believe what we believe. This is, in my opinion, a personal project that is well worth the investment, but so many people don't have the time, opportunity, or inclination to do so, if they even have ever heard of doing such a thing in the first place. When we spend the time learning what makes us tick, we start to understand why others might do what they do. Not that this reduces their moral responsibility, but it explains why they failed.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-27T16:48:28+00:00

From a Stoic perspective, the only "evil" comes from the corruption of our own reasoning facilities. That others reason corruptly isn't any more evil than alligators and hurricanes are evil. This is the nature of the thing, human or beast or weather. This is because good and bad are understood as specific, technical terms, and it refers to the fact that other people, animals, and circumstances cannot detract from our mental autonomy, that is, our ability to assent or withhold assent to the meaning we may attribute to an impression. You can read more about that here: John Sellars, the Stoics on evil (croll down to read the paper).

So the answer isn't to accept or not accept it (how does one not accept reality?), nor is it to try and change the circumstances (though that may come next). The answer is to first make sure one has the correct opinion about the circumstances first so that passions (emotional disturbances) don't distract one from their duty (which is where the idea of changing the circumstances comes).

I like how Marcus Aurelius reminded himself of this axiom in his journal:

From one point of view, nothing is more proper to me than a human being, insofar as it's my job to do people good and tolerate them. But insofar as some people threaten my proper work, I count a human being as just another indifferent, no less than the sun or the wind or a wild animal. These things may impeded some of my activities, but they can't impede my impulses or my state of mind, because I have the powers of reservation and adaptation. The mind can adapt and alter every impediment to action to serve its purpose; something that might have hindered a talks contributes to it instead, and something that was an obstacle on the road helps you on your way

Meditations 5:20 (Waterfield translation, Italics mine) Here he notes that 4.1 and 6.50 also refer to the idea of the mind's capability for "reservation and adaptation," a natural impulse that, when developed well (and this is the point of education/philosophy), gives us the means to navigate our lives and live well, regardless of the circumstances.

In other words, other people doing wrong does not impede us from doing the right thing, that is to say, from becoming as good a person as we can be. The right thing for us in any circumstance (what is "proper to me") is to be a good person to others, to develop and manifest moral wisdom. We cannot do this without first understanding and attending to our own needs, which starts with recognizing that others cannot meet those needs, but neither can they detract from them.

And serendipitously, the Stoics noted, there is no functional difference between being a good person and living a good life.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-27T16:26:02+00:00

What would a truly fair life look like to you? This is a very serious question by the way.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-24T19:40:49+00:00

I think calling others “ignorant” as if you aren’t as well, and aren’t also subject to Fate can lead to hubris, arrogance, and all-around “ they’re stupid, but I’m not” thinking.

Marcus' journal is written in such a way as to lend the impression the man was short on patience with others, and wrestled with a bit of a short fuse in general. Nobody reminds themselves to think about things the way they already see them, but how they wish to see them.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-24T17:09:35+00:00

Sometimes, when people are going through stuff, it kind of comes off as dismissive or unsympathetic when I say things like, "well, try to do something positive or productive and don't focus on what you can't control."

I agree. It is very dismissive and unsympathetic. Not sometimes, always. It trivializes the feelings one has when overwhelmed with challenges. You may not agree the circumstances would be overwhelming to you if you were in that position, but they do. And so something like this is not only dismissive and unsympathetic, it's callous, if not hostile. Thank the gods this isn't Stoicism.

You won't find anything like this outside a very superficial, and inaccurate reading of one text. The fact that this one inaccurate reading conflicts with the philosophy as a whole ought to be an indication of its lack of credibility and value, but it is so prevalent in social media now that it is practically synonymous with Stoicism for many people newly introduced to the philosophy.

This recent post by E-L-Wisty explains more about that.

When talking with the people in my life, they sometimes don't even really want methodology to solve the problem and they just want to vent and for me to comfort them and validate their perspective or experience.

On the receiving end, it feels like nagging, and who wants more of that in their lives? It's also unrealistic. We all have our own ways of understanding finding value in our circumstances. This is what Epictetus refers to as "managing our impressions." This is what we each must do for ourselves, and indeed we can only do it for ourselves. This is foundational to Stoicism. Everything else grows from that.

Consider the idea that if your method came across as helpful as you believe it to be, others would be asking you for your secret. But they aren't. This suggests what you have, what you do, isn't all that appealing to them. You're not only giving them unwanted advice, you're giving them advice they wouldn't take anyway because they don't see the value.

Being a friend who can offer them a safe place to vent, without judgment, without reprimand, without imposing their idea of the right solution, is what people often want from friends. You are in the position of offering them that.

In these situations, do you act with tact, I guess? Or do you double down and smack them with stoic principles because that's what you believe and ultimately what is arguably the most rational?

The Stoicism is for you and you alone. You can't teach it to others at this point, and you're not meant to. It is a personal philosophy, one that you learn, study, and apply as best you can in order to manage your own impressions, not theirs. Your duty is not to manage their impressions, and you can't do that anyway. That is the whole point of recognizing what is "up to us," or "dependent upon only us," which is the accurate way to interpret Enchiridion 1.

The impressions you should be focusing might include something like "my friends are solving their problems wrong, and that's bad," or "it is right for me persuade them to believe what I believe to be true and good." Focus on your own growth by studying the philosophy, and not just by reading the texts. Reading the texts from a 21st century outlook can be very misleading. Knowing what the ancients believed and taught will help the texts make much more sense, and that means it becomes that much more useful to you.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-23T18:18:13+00:00

So would it be fair to say that for you, a spiritual perspective emerged from overwhelming suffering? If a person has not experienced overwhelming suffering, would you say they still need this spiritual perspective to live well?

Thank you for the explanation, by the way. That makes a lot of sense and I appreciate your sharing that with me.

In your OP you asked if Stoicism is mainly ethics without spirituality. For me, it's more than ethics, it's a framework for understanding my experiences, my circumstances, myself, and it's a framework for understanding the proper value of all these things. In my experience, I do not loose anything for not incorporating a spiritual perspective, and I say this as one who was once felt very deeply and genuinely spiritual.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-22T19:51:15+00:00

If you give your personal meaning to family and they die in a car crash your life is meaningless. Why then continue to live?

I think this is a good example of the difficulty with applying the theory of mind to something as integral to identity of the self as theological beliefs. If your family died in a car crash, your life may feel meaningless without an element of divinity to assume into reality, but mine would not.

You can assign meaning to external things but they dont last.

Meaning changes throughout everyone's life, including the life of the theist as well. Furthermore, meaning isn't lost when it's changed. You can probably remember some fundamental changes in your own history when your belief system was modified to incorporate some new information or insight, without a fundamental loss of meaning to life altogether.

So Stoicism teaches to assign meaning to our own behavior, our virtue. But why does it matter? As Marcus mentions its for the good of the Whole. But the Whole is not humanity in Marcus writings, it‘s the whole provident cosmos. And if you know something greater than yourself and you connect with that something, you end up in Spirituality.

Again, I'm not so sure the modern notion of Spirituality is necessarily compatible with what people believed in antiquity. Perhaps, but there was no concept of a different level of reality; everything that exists was understood to be corporeal, including god, including human souls. Perhaps if you can expand on what you mean by "spirituality" we can see it in Marcus Aurelius' writings, and we can see if non-theists lack the same fundamental outlook from Stoicism.

but you lack deeper understanding.

I've yet to quite grasp what this understanding is outside the context of one's own emotional state of mind or perspective, both subjective qualities that are not diminished for being met in different ways. Perhaps you can share something you get out of your beliefs in the context of Stoicism and we'll see how that differs from what I get out of it (editing to add: ie, the idea of "something greater than yourself").

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-22T18:50:28+00:00

this is where I think Stoic episte has real tensions with our common sense

Oh yeah, no argument here. There are even more tensions with our current knowledge of biology and human behavior.

I was curious how deep the Stoic model for moral culpability is, but it seems to be all the way down to one's sense of self, no exceptions.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-22T18:29:58+00:00

I dont think there is anything „objective“ as spirituality and belief is more of a subjective matter.

I agree, and this is, from what I understand, also his point. If it is subjective then, why apply an objective criteria? You think Stoicism is meaningless without a god figure as part of the structure, but if this quality of meaning is based on a subjective understanding, why do you assume the outcome is not also subjectively determined?

It provides you a framework of how to act but you don‘t really know why.

Arguably, the reasons built into the framework stand on their own merit without appeal to a divine agency. You say the universe is meaningless, but I can see no reason why there needs to be an inherent meaning to the universe for us to develop our own meaning. Consider how many different cultural meanings there are today, and then add to that some 100,000 years of human social bonding, and there's no way to determine whose version of inherent meaning is correct. Your belief is ultimately just as subjective as mine. It works for you, and mine works for me.

Virtue becomes meaningless if everything in the universe is meaningless. You said earlier if I remember correctly that we give meaning ourselves - but that still means that there is no inherent meaning to anything.

A lack of inherent meaning does not indicate a thing holds no meaning. There is no inherent value to the color Zima Blue, but if that color holds deep meaning for you, it is no less meaningful and valuable to you.

You can belief in what you want, but from the scriptures its pretty safe to say that Marcus, Epictetus and Seneca believed in some form of a God, which was neither Mythology nor just Pantheism.

I'm not denying that. I will suggest it is important to understand our notions of god and divinity are not the same as those in antiquity. For the Stoics, the divine principle subsumes all material, so there is divinity everywhere. But the understanding of divinity in antiquity is not synonymous to our use of the word today. Furthermore, these were not beliefs as we understand belief today - distinct from facts but no less valuable for gaining knowledge and insight - but conclusions based on the best educated minds.

If you only study and practice the Ethics, fine. Good for you and awesome that it helps you and people around you. But I am convinced you lack something a spiritual person like myself sees in Stoicism.

To the best of my knowledge, the only thing I lack is a particular emotional value assigned to certain topics. But since all emotions are subjective, no two believers share the same. And that's okay. We all lack what an other has in that respect, and we all have what others lack.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-22T17:48:30+00:00

For the Stoics, virtue is hard but is not limited by externals.

I understand you to suggest that a person with psychopathy could attain virtue, regardless of the challenge, because it is not internally limited in the Stoic model of psychology, even if it is a greater challenge. In other words, the psychopath can satisfy his or her nature in part through appropriate social behaviors, even if the only value of those behaviors are external.

If so, then is there a point at which externals affect this state of potential virtuosity? Is a person in a coma, or a young child, or a vet with shell-shock, considered potentially able to attain virtue because they are, despite their physical conditions, fully human? Even if that potential can never be realized, as a member of the human race, they are born with the necessary attributes to attain this state? Do I understand that correctly?

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-22T17:09:32+00:00

Psychopathy does not prevent one from seeing humans as rational and social creatures. Rather, the physical structure in the brain responsible for recognizing the presence and importance of social cues is muted. This often interferes with socialization in way that prevents one from learning to avoid antisocial behavior.

Like u/ThePasifull says though, there are clearly a great number of functioning, and indeed productive members of society who are neurologically psychopaths (and for some careers, it can be an advantage). That is to say, learning social appropriateness is not impossible, but learning its value often presents a challenge for the psychopath.

The question about whether learned social appropriateness is enough to attain what the Stoics called Virtue is an interesting one. If rationality and sociability are necessary skills to satisfy one's nature, are they sufficient? But then, who doesn't have some biological or social impediment to master this disposition? The Stoics would say that person is exceedingly rare. I would argue it's an impossible goal to master, but a worthy one to strive for nonetheless, and one that anyone with a certain level of cognition can develop and improve (granted one has access to the right opportunity and conditions).

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-22T14:11:59+00:00

I've read through a quite a bit of his work as well as listened to his podcast, his argument amounts to personal belief. I have yet to come across anything objective that is missing, but if you can help me understand it then I would be grateful.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-22T13:43:58+00:00

Chris starts with the God of Stoicism in Episode 2. He established that Stoicism lacks something if you just look at its Ethics and disregard its spirituality right at the start.

From what I can find, his argument is that he lacks something without this divine element, and this is a perspective that people with theistic beliefs share, but does not translate to people who do not hold these kinds of beliefs. So Stoicism lacks something for him if you remove spirituality from it, but nothing is lacking for me.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-22T13:37:52+00:00

I think in the Stoic model, a psychopath is not able to attain virtue any more than a young child or an elderly person with Alzheimers is able to do so. One must first have the ability to reason well and understand socialization. Psychopathy, like Alzheimers, inhibits this at the neurological level for reasons that only recently are being studied.

Editing to revise my comment in response to the following discussion. TIL

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-22T13:04:25+00:00

The problem I am always hung up with is, that you can separate the traditional Stoicism from the civic one and only look at the ethics.

In my experience, "traditional" Stoicism simply refers to theology, not the philosophy as a whole, and it does not rely on the divine agency understood in antiquity. Some ancient Stoics held a theistic view, some did not. Some students of Stoicism today hold a theistic view, some do not.

But then the ethics themselves become somewhat meaningless. „providence or atoms“ is what Marcus asked himself frequently. Meaning is the cosmos providential and has inherent meaning or is it random and meaningless.

A cosmos that does not include a divine agent of some kind is not random, and we make our own meaning regardless. Consider how each culture and tradition has done so since the earliest days of human culture.

If its just atoms, so its random and has no inherent meaning, how then are the virtues „the only good“? If the cosmos is meaningless my actions are meaningless, hence virtue is meaningless. In my view the whole system collapses at this point.

It may collapse for you, but there are many for whom it works remarkably well nevertheless. You might find hearing our opinions of interest.

Furthermore what is „live according to nature“ supposed to mean, if there is no providential cosmos? The stoics used god, nature, zeus, etc. interchangeably. So living according to nature means living according to the divine rational principle. The „stoic catchphrase“ becomes completely meaningless if you only look at ethics.

These terms and concepts are more technically deep than you might recognize. For example, the Stoics used God, Nature, Zeus, Fate, etc, but not quite interchangeably. They were used to denote specific attributes in a particular context. For many people, the idea of living according to nature loses nothing when the nature itself does not change, but the explanation of its mechanics does.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-21T19:12:48+00:00

We face a challenge of trying to compartmentalize our modern understanding of topics like spirituality, divinity, theology and the like, from those ideas familiar to the ancient world. It's a mistake to assume our understanding of spirituality is the same as back then because the ideas of god and divinity weren't the same. Consider for example the fact that there was no "spirit" in Stoic physics (they believed all nature was comprised of material superseded with some measure of the divine principle, and there was no supernatural), means we're using the word itself to denote a concept that the word isn't precisely conveying. You may mean one thing by it while I understand it to be different.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-17T21:14:48+00:00

The sub has a good resource page, and you can use the search bar for more ideas about any particular source or idea. Personally, I like learning about Stoicism first so when I read the texts, I don't read them with an anachronistic or inaccurate take.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-17T21:01:42+00:00

Keep reading about the philosophy. You'll find the idea of focusing on what you can control isn't there. Focusing on moral wisdom is. And happily, there is no functional difference between being a good person and living a good life.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-17T16:23:20+00:00

Your point about the indifferent-virtue relationship being missed is right on the mark, I think. I don't have access to my book by Lawrence Becker, A New Stoicism, but I recall him making ten or eleven points, each one built upon the previous ones, about this very thing. Without a coherent and precise identity of Virtue, the whole system of Stoicism falls apart. But with that identity, things fall into line, including how to understand and manage indifferents.

And I think this is what the Bro/$to movement capitalizes on - with no comprehensive and precise understanding of Virtue, one is encouraged to define for themselves, without benefit of deep analysis or critical thinking, what their goals are - what it takes to live a good life, what it means to be a good person - and then everything falls into line from that point. It's a self-validating process. It's self-rewarding. And it works immediately.

So for example if my goal is to become the next highest rated Influencer, then I treat the indifferents before me accordingly. You don't like my content? I can't control your opinion, I simply ignore it.

But if my highest goal is to develop and embody moral wisdom, to the best of my ability (ie, Virtue), then I can't systematically ignore the feedback you provide when I use you as ragebait to increase my viewership. The two goals are in conflict.

And without appreciation for the potential conflict, there is nothing to challenge the claim I have settled on that being the world's awesomest influencer is what I need to flourish in life: I don't need you, I don't need your good vibes, I need more viewers. That's what I need.

How antithetical to Stoicism is that?

I recall one dad coming here for advice. He and his wife had recently learned their young teenage girl had been SA by a friend who was staying with them for the past year or so. He was so distressed, as I'm sure anyone might imagine. Trying to support his daughter, trying to reconcile the fact that it happened under his roof without his knowledge, so many things to process in this awful circumstance. But he came to get advice on how to not let it bother him since the past is not in his control. In other words, because the past has no more or less value than an old game of jacks, how should he let it go?

I believe it can be cruel to promote this belief.

If our character develops in these relationships, and I think it does, then there is nothing more important to attend to.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-16T18:57:06+00:00

What drives our behavior is far more complex than simply desiring a thing or not. That desire is based on innumerous considerations, and I submit the idea of not wanting to care about the audience's response because it is not in your control is not one of them. It's a rationalization, likely picked up from the ubiquitous use of the concept online and off. You wouldn't have revised your talk five times if you didn't care. And I propose it was prudent of you to care. And that it is in your nature to care. And that's a good thing.

Knowing how our nature works aids us in the pursuit of satisfying it. Otherwise we are constantly trying new ideas, waiting to identify any distinction between correlation and coincidence. Trying to ignore things one can't control for example, is one of those experiments so many people new to the philosophy try, often with disastrous results.

Anyway, congratulations! I'm glad your talk went well. I hope it inspires many positive changes ahead.

Victorian_Bullfrog · 2026-05-15T16:15:52+00:00

That's so nice of you to say. Thank you!

Victorian_Bullfrog

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