[magrimu]

>Stoicism about personal responsibility, about changing what you can and accepting what you can't.

Determining what you can and can't change is an (almost) impossible task on its own. The way you describe Stoicism can be used to persuade a person that their status is unchangeable and that it should be accepted as "part of Nature's plan".

[imgabe]

>Determining what you can and can't change is an (almost) impossible task on its own.

What? No it's not. You can't change the weather, you can't bring the dead back to life, you can't force other people to think a certain way.

You can control your own thoughts and actions. These things seem very obvious to me. What is difficult about this?

[magrimu]

>These things seem very obvious to me. What is difficult about this?

Clearly it's not that obvious, because all of your examples are wrong in some sense. Weather can be changed, medically dead people are brought back to life and people can most certainly be manipulated.

On the other hand, some people can't control their own thoughts and actions.

[Kalium]

You're right. This is a philosophy that can be abused to tell people at they should accept what is as unchangable.

With that said, is it perhaps possible that stoicism when properly understood might encourage people to find what they can change and how they can change it? And might it also, perhaps, be possible that any philosophy can be abused by bad actors? Some might contend that these two points taken together argue for education.

[magrimu]

I agree. It's not an authority on right and wrong, but a framework for reaching conclusions. I just think neither the article nor CP's rebuttal covered that point adequately.

[mbrodersen]

> Determining what you can and can't change is an (almost) impossible task on its own

Wot? I have absolutely no problem doing that.