Episode 67 - Charlie Plumb & Stoicism
The cornerstone of stoicism is the reminder that we’re all mortal, and our time is limited. So how do we draw an optimistic lesson from ‘Memento Mori’?
The rates of PTSD for the POWs tormented in the Hanoi Hilton were shockingly low. Too low, in fact, compared to any other major war on record. But we have a few testimonies from pilots who were shot down in Vietnam, and came back to explain how they kept their sanity during the round-the-clock toture. In a word, their mental fortitude comes down to two factors: Stoicism and community.
Today we’re diving deep into the virtues of stoicism. Specifically, we want to define stoicism as a philosophy, and pick apart what people are reading online and in popular literature, versus what the ancient stoics taught. Because we want to figure out how much of stoicism is accepting shitty circumstances, how much is radical realism, and how much is just plain misreading it as another form of philosophical optimism. We’ll also get into a discussion about trendy, Silicon Valley Stoics. A discussion which might have been inspired by a Forbes article that doled out a few sick burns for anyone adopting the ancient philosophy as a hip corporate identity.
History Links:
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/J._Charles_Plumb,_Jr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%E1%BB%8Fa_L%C3%B2_Prison
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fxujdc/im_retired_navy_capt_j_charles_charlie_plumb/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234472/ https://www.dodreads.com/lessons-from-the-hanoi-hilton/
https://dailystoic.com/7-stoic-tenets-to-keep-in-mind-today/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism#Basic_tenets
https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_stoicism.html
https://allthatsinteresting.com/hanoi-hilton
Science Links:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160809-why-it-pays-to-be-grumpy-and-bad-tempered
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/the-science-of-smart-how-to-build-mental-toughness/