Stoicism, my aesthetic preference

Modernity makes life easier -- I don't automatically want that. 

 I particularly can't understand the people who complain about anything, implying that the system ought to make things easier for them, although  I can understand complaining against the system, to take on a challenge and see where that leads.  

Stoicism is the basis for my aesthetic appreciation of life and this is why I have such a strong aversion to modernity in many ways.   

I can't understand the demand that structural aspects of society be altered so that one does not feel  any emotion or sensation anymore.  




Whereas old-fashioned Stoics may oppose certain tendencies in the other person, moderns seek to reduce the other's differences in all but the slightest matters, to escape from being influenced by the disliked aspects of another person.

To complain goes against my stoical vein.   I'll do it to combat oppression but never simply to make life feel easier and nothing more.   Complaining is bureaucratic.  It's a way of inviting the system to tie the noose around people's necks by making them conform to regimented patterns. If it's not your own neck you are requesting to have constricted, it's the neck of somebody close to you.   

People who complain are confessing, "I can't handle this on my own. I need a more circumscribed environment to make me happy!"

I've never felt it shameful, or all that weird to be out of step with other people.  This was in my upbringing:  I was never "in step". 

Being very obviously "out of step" happened to be the essence our national pride.