Possibly, but it doesn't have to be only that, or without any merit. Cold baths and even winter swimming [1] (in icy water) are a thing in many parts of the world.
Is thinking that everything is a Silicon Valley thing, a Silicon Valley thing? Is it really plausible that no one thought to feel manly about cold showers until a bunch of nerds came along?
>Is it really plausible that no one thought to feel manly about cold showers until a bunch of nerds came along?
No, but it's quite plausible that it was a niche thing that might have been a fad at some points in the past, only to be revived by a new generation that includes many fad-chacing types, SV people, and BS-artists (aka influencers)...
I'm pretty sure cold showers have been a thing to show your ability to live without comforts ever since hot showers became a possibility.
And the term fits here, I believe: cold showers do very much wake you up and bring you into reality quickly. There's no dreaming about hypes when you're under a cold shower.
No, it is more of a euphemism for "sobering up." Existed for quite awhile, usually used for drunks though. Has minor connotations of being an oddball health nut-people extolling the benefits of being immersed into chilly water.
Stoicism hasn't been popular since Victorian times. I think SV types and rationalists kind of revived it, since it was moral austerity without any real religious background. To an extent they do the same with meditation; it's somehow gone from being something associated with New Age thinking, to something atheist rationalists tout the benefits of while carefully avoiding any hint of spirituality.
Everyone I know who identifies as a stoic is an emotionally stunted software engineer who realistically isn't tasked with stoically shouldering very much of anything.
As a counterpoint, most of the people I know whom I would consider to follow a Stoic philosophy don't self-classify all that much.
I would also say that there's a pretty big difference between "stiff upper lip/no emotions" that people imagine when using the the adjective "stoic" and the Stoic writings of Marcus Aurelius and the like.
> I would also say that there's a pretty big difference between "stiff upper lip/no emotions" that people imagine when using the the adjective "stoic" and the Stoic writings of Marcus Aurelius and the like.
A quick way to find out what sort of self-proclaimed lover of Meditations you’re dealing with is to ask what they think of its physics and metaphysics.