From Oliver Burkeman today: “Thus a person encounters, say, a book of practices derived from Stoicism, and rather than thinking “How useful, some Stoic techniques to add to my collection!”, instead concludes: “I’ll become a Stoic, which will fix all the ways I feel problematic, and then life will be plain sailing!””
Yes, yes, yes!
“We do this, I suppose, for the same reason people join cults or embrace rigid political ideologies: because it’s more scary to acknowledge the reality…”
No, we do it because we think there’s supposed to be a magic bullet. That everyone ELSE has a magic bullet; we’re the only ones futzing around.
Tytania 