r/Stoic

There's a line from Jung that Stoic philosophy kept circling back to without naming directly.

Epictetus said it one way. Marcus Aurelius said it another. But Jung made it clinical.

He watched intelligent, capable people spend their entire lives protecting an image of themselves that had never been tested. Not because they were lazy. Because the psychological cost of testing it — and potentially finding out it wasn't real — was higher than the cost of deferring it indefinitely.

The Stoics called this the obstacle. Jung called it the persona.

Same mechanism. Different vocabulary.

"That which we do not bring to consciousness appears in our lives as fate."

Most people read that as philosophy. It isn't. It's a description of the pattern that keeps repeating in your life — the project that never starts, the gap that never closes, the capable version of yourself that stays permanently possible because it's permanently untested.

Safe never comes. It was never going to come.

The test has always been available. You've just been declining it.

Warning — Consent Required: Do not force anyone to read this text. It strips illusions and exposes reality without comfort. Read only if you knowingly accept being confronted by the truth and take full responsibility for your reaction. 

Loss of Control

In this myth, we show clearly why you are controlled by the universe. Everything forms as patterns, one following another, like a single line extending forward. You are not separate from this line; you are a fully formed pattern created from what came before. For anything to work, a pattern must exist first. Nothing is free. Everything is patterns, including you. Chemicals align to shape how you react. Biology aligns to shape how you behave. These patterns formed long before you, and you simply align within them. You move forward because the pattern moves forward. When you look at it this way, where exactly would free will exist?

The Body

In this myth, the body controls the brain through signals. When you think about it, all information comes from the environment. It touches the body first, not the brain. The body reacts through chemicals, sensation, memory, and need, and only then does it send those signals upward as thoughts. Thoughts are messages from the body. They appear in the mind, and you respond to them. You decide what to do with the information, but you did not create it. The body speaks first, and the brain reacts after. You are not directing the body from above. You are reacting to the body. The brain is where the body’s reactions become meaning, choice, and awareness. Control comes later than we are taught to believe, and consciousness is not the source of action, but the place where action is understood.

 

Filtering
In this myth, the body sends signals to the brain. The brain turns these signals into thoughts. Memory watches the thoughts and organizes them, deciding what matters. Then the brain sends instructions back to the body, and the body acts. You, as memory, do not control any of this. You are only a reference point, a filter in the process. By the time action happens, you have already been bypassed. Control is not yours. You exist only to observe what has already unfolded.

Bypass
In this myth, the brain can bypass memories. In a moment of fear, the mind doesn’t pause to sort through past experiences or weigh consequences. It reacts instantly. The body moves, fights, or flees without consulting the archives of the mind. Memory is a guide, but in the purest moments of survival, it can be ignored and left behind. Since you exist only as memory in the brain, control is an illusion and you can be bypassed, your sense of self and your choices secondary to the immediate flow of action.

 

hi so I'm 18 (which I am guessing is not the average age of people here?) so anyway like any other kid I am driven by emotions and adrenaline, maybe a little more than usual. I am also a v argumentative person though I do walk away from arguments far more easily than I did six months ago. Similarly I can get (very) angry quickly too though I take some time alone and calm myself rather than taking it out on anyone or anything. Ig I am on the right track?

What has helped you become a stoic and how?

>There are three fields of study in which people who are going to be good and excellent must first have been trained. The first has to do with desires and aversions, that they may never fail to get what they desire, nor fall into what they avoid; the second with cases of choice and of refusal, and, in general, with duty, that they may act in an orderly fashion, upon good reasons, and not carelessly; the third with the avoidance of error and rashness in judgment, and, in general, about cases of assent.

— Discourses, iii. 2.

Stoicism helps protect our character in trying times. And we do it by putting reasoning and desires, our inherent characters above learned behaviors, and by putting external factors at the bottom of our concerns.

I understand that reflexes and desire for food etc. are inherent, because new born baby literally crawl to mother's breast and have moro reflexes starting the moment they are born. But can we prove reasoning is also inherent and not a learned behavior, i.e. can a new born baby immediately express surprise when something isn't normal etc.?

Edit: we need reasoning to learn so the idea of reasoning is a learned behavior is contradictory.

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