<story><title>Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life</title><url>https://newsletter.butwhatfor.com/p/takeaway-tuesday-facing-adversity-charlie-munger</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mjburgess</author><text>Say, there are two types of people:&lt;p&gt;(1) a person who &lt;i&gt;mostly&lt;/i&gt; experiences challenges at or just 
above their ability to solve them&lt;p&gt;(2) a person who &lt;i&gt;mostly&lt;/i&gt; experiences challenges way above their ability to solve them (even plausibly so)&lt;p&gt;Stoicism, political conservatism, rugged individualists, etc. are just those in camp-1 unaware there&amp;#x27;s a camp-2.&lt;p&gt;(Likewise, social radicals are in camp-2, saying of 1, they&amp;#x27;re privileged &lt;i&gt;as if that isnt desirable!&lt;/i&gt;. So both sides are superstitious about the other).</text></item><item><author>kodah</author><text>Kind of a weird take. Marcus Aurelius&amp;#x27; life, although that of an emperor, was filled with a lot of strife that he used philosophy to deal with. His stoic philosophies come from his early life, which saw the death of his father, and adoption by a series of people he didn&amp;#x27;t know, all the way to the death of both of his sons.&lt;p&gt;Marcus did achieve the title of emperor, but dismissing him because of his accomplishments, especially when stoicism was a key and integral part of his life along the way, is odd.</text></item><item><author>thunkshift1</author><text>Thats right, advice from a goddamn emperor on how the downtrodden should not feel downtrodden</text></item><item><author>AlbertCory</author><text>If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.&lt;p&gt;― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>somenameforme</author><text>Just because one is an emperor does not mean they can suddenly solve any problem. This is precisely what Aurelius&amp;#x27; writings [1] focus almost exclusively on. In spite of being the most powerful man in the world he found himself to be quite helpless in terms of actually improving the state of mankind which was his genuine motivation. As a peer comment mentioned, these writings were never meant to even be seen by anybody other than himself. They&amp;#x27;re effectively his diary.&lt;p&gt;He found himself not only largely unable to help better mankind, but could not even better his own son. Aurelius is generally regarded as one of the greatest leaders of humanity to have lived; his son  (Commodus) - one of the worst. Father deified, son assassinated (to great celebration) and struck from all official record.&lt;p&gt;And it wasn&amp;#x27;t simply failure to achieve, but also failure of circumstance. He was surrounded by death which climaxed with a many years long plague that by some estimates killed more than 30% of the entire empire&amp;#x27;s population, including some of Aurelius&amp;#x27; own immediate family.&lt;p&gt;[1] - &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;files.libertyfund.org&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;2133&amp;#x2F;Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;files.libertyfund.org&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;2133&amp;#x2F;Aurelius_1464_LFeBk....&lt;/a&gt;   #   That book has a lengthy, and necessary, intro (well multiple actually) explaining stoicism and providing various historical context. Aurelius&amp;#x27; writings themselves only begin on page 25 of the book, 59 of the PDF.</text></comment>
<story><title>Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life</title><url>https://newsletter.butwhatfor.com/p/takeaway-tuesday-facing-adversity-charlie-munger</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mjburgess</author><text>Say, there are two types of people:&lt;p&gt;(1) a person who &lt;i&gt;mostly&lt;/i&gt; experiences challenges at or just 
above their ability to solve them&lt;p&gt;(2) a person who &lt;i&gt;mostly&lt;/i&gt; experiences challenges way above their ability to solve them (even plausibly so)&lt;p&gt;Stoicism, political conservatism, rugged individualists, etc. are just those in camp-1 unaware there&amp;#x27;s a camp-2.&lt;p&gt;(Likewise, social radicals are in camp-2, saying of 1, they&amp;#x27;re privileged &lt;i&gt;as if that isnt desirable!&lt;/i&gt;. So both sides are superstitious about the other).</text></item><item><author>kodah</author><text>Kind of a weird take. Marcus Aurelius&amp;#x27; life, although that of an emperor, was filled with a lot of strife that he used philosophy to deal with. His stoic philosophies come from his early life, which saw the death of his father, and adoption by a series of people he didn&amp;#x27;t know, all the way to the death of both of his sons.&lt;p&gt;Marcus did achieve the title of emperor, but dismissing him because of his accomplishments, especially when stoicism was a key and integral part of his life along the way, is odd.</text></item><item><author>thunkshift1</author><text>Thats right, advice from a goddamn emperor on how the downtrodden should not feel downtrodden</text></item><item><author>AlbertCory</author><text>If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.&lt;p&gt;― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DarylZero</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s not remotely true.  Political conservatism and social radicalism demonstrably don&amp;#x27;t correlate with personal experience in that way: children adopt the beliefs of their parents (and&amp;#x2F;or peers).&lt;p&gt;Hence &amp;quot;champagne socialists&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;temporarily embarrassed millionaires.&amp;quot;</text></comment>