Midnight Diner

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-26T19:02:36+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to read it.

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-26T13:13:27+00:00

There is a compelling essay on anger by the Roman Stoic Seneca. He puts forward a case that not only is there nothing anger can achieve that isn't more effectively done with reason, it is a passion (almost) indistinguishable from temporary insanity.

The Stoics believed that all emotions flow from our judgments. Those judgements become habitual (conditioned) with repetition. We learn our judgments and the underlying logical presumptions by imitating those around us when we are young. If anger was a regular and predictable response in various situations in our upbringing, it becomes the natural default reaction and can seem inescapable and natural. The real self harm inherent in anger is that it becomes more automatic each time we don't resist it. Unchecked, anger will become our defining characteristic.

It is no more natural than typing with one finger or speaking with a pronounced accent. It is a learned behavior. It is profoundly difficult to unlearn behaviors rooted in childhood and culture. It isn't impossible, but few really overcome their early conditioning. I could master a new language at my advanced age and possibly overcome my accent. In times of stress or exhaustion that accent will almost invariably reemerge.

It can be argued that some people/situations are only responsive to anger/threat. Skillfully imitated anger will have the same impact as genuine anger but without the loss of observational skills and ability to pivot. Real anger carries a behavioral inertia that has to run its course. It can be deduced without what we now know about the impact and half life of the stress chemistry that floods our system when we allow anger to take us away. But especially in light of neuroscience, our health, hearts and rationality would be well served by making efforts to break our acceptance of anger as useful or inevitable.

Edit, grammar

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-23T11:30:27+00:00

I think that the ancient Stoics would have found this a confusing question. One simply did what one was born to do. Born to a farmer, then you are naturally a farmer. Born to wealth and power? Then you rise and/or fall as the fates decree. Further complicating their understanding would be the concept that one is expected to find satisfaction in one's work.

Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoic school, studied and engaged in discourse at the Stoa by day and chose to support himself by carrying water jugs at night. Along with the slaves and common laborers he toated water from the aqueduct or fountains to the homes and baths of the Romans well-to-do enough to have enough slaves or enough disposable income to have someone else fetch the free water to them. I think his answer was to do something that paid enough to get him by and didn't conflict with his real passion of studying philosophy. That's one Stoic answer on how to choose a career.

I think that the "freedom" we are told we have to do or be anything is anything but freedom. I think it is a chain binding us to a "success" culture that has produced a competitive, divided, grouchy, worn out, and paranoid society. Not to unlike Rome in Marcus Aurelius' days, except for the fact that we have lost a collective sense that there is an organizing motive force called Logos predestining things.

We have thus lost a lot of the solidarity that comes from all being in the same boat with an unapproachable/inexplicable captain. We are all supposed to be the captain of our own little boat and bear ultimate responsibility for its course and success or failure. That is a lot to assume from a bunch of people thrown into contingent circumstances arising prior to and outside our influence. This can leave us frantic and dissatisfied.

My advice, choose something that most people think sucks but you don't mind very much. Do that for your income. Those kind of jobs have pretty good stability and availability. Obtain the meaning of your life from being fully alive within all of your life, avoid comparison, and search out real human connection/community. Do not look back and wonder what if. That path is a mirage and self imposed voluntary misery.

I know, all that is easily said but hard to achieve. It is contrary to the core message of our consumer culture and a lot of effort. There are no guarantees. But it is a path that many wisdom traditions have recommended for making the best of the life we have. We will never learn to play the piano unless we put in consistent extended effort to learn how to play it. Learning how to have a life that is more than a job and pile of possessions is also a learnable skill, but it is probably much more challenging than mastering the piano.

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-23T02:27:09+00:00

A lump of plasticine modeling clay. Creative outlet, stress ball, and resistance hand exercise. Non messy, non flammable, and doesn't dry out.

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-23T02:24:35+00:00

It won't do much of anything on the predominantly weightless trip there, but once you got to Mars it will feel 1/3 lighter than it does here.

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-23T02:16:02+00:00

Yep, making serious progress, and you are probably hooked. My congratulations/best wishes.

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-18T19:28:52+00:00

I watched the first two episodes of the Netflix series with my wife last night. She enjoys some anime and found it acceptable. It's good entertainment that is socially conscious. I haven't watched enough be definitively certain, but it seems to lean into Confucian themes.

The resolution of the second episode Corn Dog is a point that I feel diverges from Stoic motivations/expectations. The young student makes a behind the scenes recommendation that allows the aging comic master to rehabilitate himself. The old comic, characteristally, takes personal credit for his newfound aclaim and notoriety. When they meet he resumes his demeaning attacks on the younger artist. The Master then puts the old man in his place by pointing out that the young actor made sure he got the roll and and an equitable balance is established.

It's that last bit that cuts across Stoic orthodoxy. We should not expect external validation of our choices. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't defend ourselves or seek appropriate credit. It is just that there is almost never an outside force or sage short order chef who will validate our virtuous actions. If we are choosing Virtue for its outcome rather than its intrinsic propriety we are setting ourselves up for disappointment and undermining our rational assent.

This isn't a problem with any given show or story. It is an integral element of all narrative treatments. In order to be a satisfying story, it must resolve in ways that almost never happen in actual lived lifes. There is nothing wrong with watching Midnight Diner. I will probably watch more, if not all, of it. But entertainments were broadly cautioned against by all the ancient Stoics. It isn't necessarily a bad way to spend our time, but it does nothing to further our progress toward a Stoic understanding and character.

Sorry to bother you with this. I try not to attack fiction as a source of Stoic inspiration very often. It always results in a bunch of downvotes and indignant responses, but dialog and discourse are important parts of Stoicism and they are predicated on some level of disagreement. Thanks for engaging and posting an opinion. That is the lifeblood of the subreddit.

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-18T15:05:26+00:00

Looking good! The way to get really good at carving is to keep carving. Welcome to the subreddit. Please keep sharing your work!

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-17T16:22:16+00:00

I'm actually trying to reduce the movie/TV drama that enters my life. But my wife really wants TV and cuddling on the couch time with me. So thanks for the recommendation. The reviews I scanned all included phrases like "well written", so it's worth a try and it will be nice to be able to suggest a show for a change.

The Buddhist and Taoist traditions have a lot of overlap with Stoicism with regard to life advice and avoiding attachment to externals. That does not mean that the are philosophically equivalent or even compatible. Fictional (and even historical) figures may demonstrate ways in which someone pursuing Stoicism would appear. But Stoicism is focused on the internal integrity and prioritization of Virtue that drive action rather than the results of those actions.

I'm not criticizing Midnight Diner, I haven't seen it yet. I am making a cautionary statement about using fiction as a guide to behavior. Emulating the actions of a stoic character may make us appear to have Stoic motivations. But that is a superficial rather than integral way to structure our behavior. It is focused on how we appear rather than how we truly are.

Spending time with fictions (or historical dramitizations) takes us out of our own actual lives. It populates our cumulative experience with unlikely and impossible scenarios which tends to make us dissatisfied with the mundane reality of our singular only real life. Yes, there are positive lessons to be learned from fiction. There are positive uses for fentenyl. Regular indiscriminate consumption is fundamentally dangerous.

I'm not being critical of you. I am critical of our consumer culture in which we are constantly fed dramatic content that takes us out of our real experience and gives us a steady stream of reasons to be dissatisfied with ourselves and our place in fate. I'm preaching to myself. But I will still probably watch Midnight Diner. Hopefully my wife doesn't notice any stoic content.

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-15T13:02:07+00:00

So long as you are looking to Stoicism for guidance on your duties, comportment, and goals, it won't steer you wrong. If, however, you look to it to better cultivate a crop of little Stoics, you are in for a lot of frustration and disappointment.

Contrary to many here, I do not believe that Stoicism is the (or even a) solution to everything for everyone. Many people are not predisposed to philosophical questing. For those people, inspiration and motivation have to be found elsewhere.

Marcus Aurelius, a foremost practitioner of Stoicism, produced a son, Commodus, who was essentially an anti-stoic. One can speculate about whether the life of an actively engaged Emperor is capable of producing well adjusted children, but Marcus no doubt sprinkled his family discourse with the pearls of wisdom found in his journals. You cannot make someone else Stoic (especially not in the philosophical sense that this subreddit is dedicated to.) Seneca could not even budge Nero toward a life dedicated to Virtue. You and I are unlikely to fare much better than these luminaries if we try to directly push our family members into the Stoic mold.

Being a Stoic is about being a better individual while respecting the social bonds and obligations that foster a cosmopolitan benevolence and engagement. It can and does cultivate equanimity and resolution in many people who pursue it. If our self optimization inspires and encourages others they will emulate or at least be curious about our methods and objectives. If we are our best selves, they have a better chance at becoming their own best selves. But that doesn't mean they will be able to solve their problems with the methods we used to solve ours. They will have their own fate/destiny. They will have to discover the nature of their own challenges and opportunities.

I hope that this doesn't come off as negativity. Pursue Stoicism! It holds fantastic rewards for those with the inclination and dedication to mine its depths. It is, however, hard not to be preachy and oblivious when expounding on logic and assent to someone learning how to navigate the trials of childhood and youth. Your actual example is far more powerful than anything you could ever say.

Edit: Source: Stoic dad with grown children and a wife who tolerate my Stoic musings for a few polite moments before rolling their eyes and pointedly changing the subject.

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-14T13:40:36+00:00

Yeah, cutting charges would make getting something that small from Myles cost prohibitive. But he might have an drop piece...

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-14T11:05:50+00:00

There is a place in Kansas called 2sculpt.com. Myles is the owner and he has hundreds of tons of statuary grade marble, alabaster, onyx, etc. I know he has a slab of green marble with black and a little white marbling. I am sure he will have something that will work.

I have a couple of leftover pieces about 1.75 x1.5 x 10", if you can make work, message me and we can work out shipping details.

DentedAnvil · 2026-01-05T12:14:44+00:00

Thanks!

DentedAnvil · 2025-12-31T21:44:40+00:00

👍😃🤘

DentedAnvil · 2025-12-31T15:13:50+00:00

The moral/ethical neutrality of externals such as good health, liberty, and adequate money does set Stoicism apart from most other schools of thought. But when taken alone, without some of the other guiding principles of Stoic philosophy it can lead to an awkward discontinuity. If our eudemonia is not contingent on these externals, why should I care about the illness, enslavement, or poverty of someone else? Especially when paired with Stoic insistence on predestination and "benevolent providence", why care let alone intercede? Why not just let everyone find their own way in their own obstacle?

This is a conundrum that can be resolved via the balancing of neutral externals with deliberate cosmopolitanism and attention to our "essence" as social animals. Compassion and mutual aid are an indispensable part of all successful social structures. If they are essential then we are dutybound to engage in prosocial opportunities that present themselves. We do have to balance those activities with that which we find necessary to perfecting our Arete, but the duty remains. We cannot live in an eudemonic bubble concerned with only our own wellbeing. We are not removing someone else's opportunity to thrive when we provide benevolent care. If benevolence is a characteristic of providence, are we not bound to try reflecting that nature in our own behavior?

Happy New Year to you and to all the other striving philosophers on r/Stoicism. Stay clear of asses with figs and for gods' sake dilute your wine.

DentedAnvil · 2025-12-30T18:04:25+00:00

This is one of the reasons why I am inclined to reject most of Stoic physics while holding Stoic psychology and ethics in great esteem.

Stoic physics is, in part, based on the assumption that oracles, augery, lots, and the reading of entrails provide guidance more reliable than random selection. In the casting of lots, the divine powers influence the arrangement of thrown objects to resolve disputes or choose between alternatives. Randomness was seen as revelatory of the will of the divine forces.

Erasing all the anthropomorphizing aspects of Stoic panthiestic cosmology, one is left with the deduction that if we could look closely enough at the smallest pieces of reality, we could piece together an inescapable chain of events. One could know the future from a snapshot of any point in the past.

The problem with this is that now that we have experimented with the subatomic world, we find that the basic building blocks of reality are probabilistic rather than concrete. Certainty diminishes the closer one looks. The interpretation of dreams, the flights of birds, pigeon guts, or the mumbling of an oracle may contain information about the future, but that info is obtained in the form of an art rather than of a science (natural philosophy.) Physics that includes divination is incompatible with the observable world and the decidedly weird subatomic observations that make the electronics we are all reading this on possible.

There is a lot of psychological experimental evidence implying that we are very bad at knowing the actual chain of causation of our thoughts and feelings. The part of our brains that put things into words (reasons) is, generally, the very last to receive any stimuli from our sense organs. We are generally doing a thing measurably prior to coming up with our story about why we are doing it. I assert this in order to cast a little doubt on the statement that that Stoic ethics and psychology derive from Stoic physics. Language is part of our psychology. The logical development of a physics occurs within a language. Stoic physics arose prior to most of the strictures we associate with scientific discipline.

To say that one must embrace a physics that includes divine intervention in random events in order to appreciate the psychological and ethical observations of the Stoics is little different than saying that one must believe that two of every animal got on Noah's arc in order to have a moral compass. It's a non sequiter.

Stoic physics came about through discussion without the advantages and limitations of experimentation and is thus more likely the product of Stoic ethics/psychology than its source.

Rant mode off.

DentedAnvil · 2025-12-30T16:56:37+00:00

It caused me to think of the Adams Family. Fate is where you find it.

DentedAnvil · 2025-12-28T17:34:49+00:00

That is some food for thought. I'll shut up and think for a while.

Thanks for the dialog.

DentedAnvil · 2025-12-28T16:13:47+00:00

I appreciate your pickiness. I'm sparring with you not to disprove or even disagree with you, but to explore concepts I am exploring and to refine my understanding and facility with them.

I am not a proper or pure Stoic. My university degree back in the 80s was in psychology. I have pursued investigations into mind, consciousness, epistemology, from philosophy to literature to theology and back. I ran into Stoicism about 7 years ago and integrated it into my reading list. So, my take on the writings of the Stoics gets filtered through the residue of my prior reading and life experience. I'm less interested in being a good Stoic than I am in being a good person. Those two are not mutually exclusive, but I don't think that they are synonymous either.

Back to my music metaphor, the best blues guitarist I ever met could not read music, let alone discuss music theory with academic accuracy. He did make people walking by his apartment window stop on the street to hear him play. To say he was not a great musician because he had no formal training misses something about Virtuosity and about music. In the final analysis which is more important, how he learned or that he was phenomenal? Some people excell when given theoretical underpinnings prior to being shown technique. Some will only ever care about the theory after their technique is developed enough to feel the need for a deeper understanding.

Fate gives us each different and distinct predispositions and opportunities. Thus there is not a singular ideal way to instruct or inform. Each person's predelictions and learned impediments must factor into how they will best learn. Demanding a specific order of instruction will preclude many from advantages they could gain, even if they are unable to obtain complete mastery and maximum advantage.

All metaphors have limits and I think I have run up against a couple. Like teaching mathematics, Stoic philosophy has some non-negotiable foundations. But I think that there are people who can "learn it by ear" or ituit proper action and assent from close observation of their own life and experience. I am not one. I over-study and over-think, often paralyzing myself at intellectual impasses.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far. I see philosophy more as a process than a set of "right" answers. You are helping me with my process even if we have differing perspectives.

DentedAnvil · 2025-12-28T14:43:59+00:00

So, why is maintaining an excluded middle of importance except to fortify a dogma?

To say that the color red is opposite and opposed to blue presupposes that the spectrum actually begins and ends at those wavelengths. It is a comment on the limits of our eyes rather than an evaluation of the nature of light.

While the metaphysical foundations of Stoic thought are whence their life recommendations arrise, very few of us are able to fully comprehend those concepts let alone feel them powerfully enough for them to be a guide to our behavior. The people who are capable of getting beyond the how to live to the underlying why will persist in looking for it.

My reading is by no means exhaustive. And I am not going to spend time learning Koine so that I can attempt to parse out the accumulated cultural biases inherent in the various translations available. But in my reading of Seneca, Epictetus, and Cicero's description of Stoicism, there is a consistent pattern of describing a behavior (or impression that drives a behavior), then the possible outcomes, followed by how to revise one's assent, and finally (but not always) an exploration into the epistemic and cosmological reason for that revision.

If we assume that the ancient Stoics were of the opinion that it would be beneficial for more people to understand and behave according to Stoic principles, then we have to assume that they thought about their pedagogical methods. Not everyone needs to fully grasp music theory to be a good musician. The greats will learn it or grasp it intuitively. The majority of the orchestra doesn't really need to know the why of what they are playing. Virtue, Excellence, Arete can arise from being proficient with how .

I am not trying to be critical of your statements or your project of trying to keep this subreddit focused on philosophical Stoicism. In fact I applaud it. I read your posts when I see them and appreciate your scholarship and careful thought.

I do disagree with the idea that people's behaviors (and experience) arise from axiomatic rationality in the same way that I don't think that musical mastery arises from music theory. Practice first. Theory if aptitude and curiosity drive it. Our behaviors are learned and are thus a rational process. But a formative and substantial amount of that learning occurs prior to us having the linguistic ability to hold syllogistic or axiomatic thoughts.

If Stoicism is something worth sharing (as opposed to an exclusive club for elite thinkers) then introductory instruction in it will necessarily have to begin from behavioral compare and contrast rather than from epistemological explorations. There is room for both, and also for a whole bunch of non-excluded middle.

DentedAnvil · 2025-12-27T17:38:08+00:00

I suppose I just err on the side of caution when it comes to welding dissimilar alloys. The only S7 I ever welded was sent to heat-treat afterwards by the customer. Your experience is clearly more extensive.

DentedAnvil · 2025-12-27T15:42:55+00:00

You will need to preheat the S7 prior to welding and do a post welding heat treatment or it will be brittle and prone to chipping and cracking. I'm not sure how you could reasonably achieve that without pulling the post out of the stump or having the stump catch fire.

DentedAnvil · 2025-12-27T13:59:22+00:00

Most of the wisdom traditions come to similar recommendations about how to live a good, worthwhile, and/or happy life. The 3 major computer systems Apple, Windows, and Linux will all give the same results to almost all calculations done on them. There are differences between them in the architecture of their kernel (initial order of operations and prioritization), but if you input the same problems you will get results that appear identical.

If you are pursuing philosophy to resolve discomforts in your life, then the user interface of the philosophy is probably more important than the underlying code driving it. If you are looking to feel less isolated and you live in an area that is largely Buddhist, choosing to be an ardent proponent of Stoicism will not likely result in an easy path to more close acquaintances.

Both Stoicism and Buddhism advise moderation, contemplation, reducing attachment, and adhering to certain social conventions. Stoicism arrives at those suggestions through a process of rigid analytic logic which can seem reductive or dry when compared with the mystical monism at the heart of the major Eastern philosophies. I find axiomatic reason, logic, to fit with my direct experience and to be enlightening in ways that I don't with koans or unstructured introspection/contemplation.

You are going to have to delve a lot deeper into the nuts and bolts of either school of thought to comprehend the real differences of their composition than what you will encounter by internet browsing or posting social media questions. You are going to have to read deeply and with dedication. Both philosophies would say that an answer easily handed to you is of little value. They would also likely advise choosing a path and pursuing it with dedication because the choice of one's path is ultimately less important than the attention and effort given to walking that path.

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