Last comment about Jordan Peterson, just because I tend to respond to things in my field that are trending on Twitter. (Otherwise nobody new ever reads what you're writing here!) I really notice that the way his fans talk about him has changed dramatically over time. When he first appeared they would make a big deal out of how he was an "expert" and a prof. of clinical psychology, although he seldom actually wrote about clinical psychology per se.

Andrew Tate on Stoicism. Just watched a 5 min YouTube video where Andrew Tate is interviewed about Stoicism. I might write a short article about this because, well, it neatly encapsulates an extremely common and very insidious misconception about Stoic philosophy. Basically, he claims to be into Stoicism and that what he learned from it is that feelings, such as intense rage, are feedback, and that they should be channelled into constructive activities like exercise. That's a very common piece of self-improvement advice found online.

Jordan Peterson preaches a self-improvement doctrine of extreme personal responsibility, clean your room, etc, but he also implicitly encourages his fans to disown responsibility for their negative emotions by blaming them on other people rather than their own underlying beliefs. It seems very obvious to me that his whole schtick encourages a victim mentality, which seems in total contradiction to what he claims to be teaching. There's virtually no reference, e.g., to the role of beliefs in shaping emotions like anger.

People think that Stoicism is joyless but they're wrong. They're confusing the Greek philosophy called Stoicism with the modern concept of (lowercase) "stoicism", the unemotional coping style. Marcus Aurelius describes the following three sources of happiness in Stoicism... 1. The primary source of happiness (positive emotion) in Stoic philosophy comes from contemplation of our supreme good, which is the concept of moral wisdom or virtue itself, and our capacity for virtue; by clarifying our own values, for instance, we experience deeper happiness.

Russell Brand is a good example of precisely what Socrates warned us against. He said that the Sophists gave long speeches, refused to let anyone interrupt them or ask questions, changed the subject, launched into prepared speeches, etc., to avoid justifying their claims. He frequently raises his voice and shouts over the top of people who are trying to question him or disagree with him, makes dubious assertions, and then goes off at tangents to avoid answering questions about them, worse, actually than most politicians.

Q: Would you consider it hypocritical for someone to pay a ghostwriter to write a self-help book on #Stoicism, so they can pretend they wrote it themselves and publish it under their own name? I think I've been asked about this maybe three times now. It's not something I would ever agree to do personally. I don't think it's a big deal for a celebrity to have their memoirs ghostwritten but Stoic philosophy is an ethical system that is supposed to value truth.

I guess Adolf Hitler had "something of value that he brought to the table" (Kanye) in the sense that a hamburger laced with cyanide might include a slice of tomato that could potentially contain a few healthy vitamins or something. In other words, while it's true that nobody is all bad, and we can find something positive in anyone, obviously, some people believe and do things so horrible and destructive, like genocide, that it justifiably overshadows things like making the trains run on time or whatever.

🧵 It seems to me that @SubstackInc is way better than @Medium if you're a writer, for the following reasons. I have 31k "followers" on Medium but they own that list, not me, and when I publish a new article, it seems barely any of them are typically notified. I have 26k subscribers on Substack, all emails, which I can potentially migrate elsewhere, and roughly 30% open rate.

The big question with Twitter has long been how it could be monetized. There doesn't seem to be an easy answer. Elon Musk tried charging for a "verification" check mark but I think it's already pretty clear that flopped and comes nowhere near the $$$ he needs to generate. When it was first floated, author Stephen King responded "Fuck that, they should pay me", and, you know what, he had a point. Twitter could be paying content creators, like Stephen King, to keep their platform alive, while raking in more money from advertisers.

Things not to do when you disagree with a guest on a podcast (that people have done to me in the past) - a thread. 1. Don't cancel the whole interview at the last-minute when you discover that the guest doesn't share your political views - that's a really low move and has only happened to me once, I think.

Alright, I don't pretend to much of an expert on writing or publishing but How to Think Like a Roman Emperor has sold over 150k units and been translated into about 18 languages so here's are a few random observations for other writers... Most books, these days, are vanity projects, in a sense, which aren't actually read by many people. It's not easy to reach a big audience. And, to be honest, like with most things in life, there's an element of luck involved. That said, there are ways to improve your luck.

🧙‍♂️ What do you guys think of this line of questioning? When Alcibiades claims to know what "justice" means, Socrates asks when and where he first learned what justices means, how old he was, and whether he figured it out himself or was taught the meaning by others. Alcibiades is confused. He begins by saying he learned about justice himself but then he can't recall a time when he believed he was ignorant of the nature of justice, and sought to learn. So he changes tack and says other people taught him, the public (he's a Democrat).

Me being rounded up for the gulags in Canada's fascist dictatorship yesterday, and definitely not happily reading my book on a lounger in the local park, in the sunshine, or anything! 🇨🇦🍁 As with most examples what Roger Stone likes to call the "Big Lie" strategy, there are probably some who think it's just a joke or trolling and only take it half-seriously but I have definitely met people who take this stuff literally and believe Canada is a fascist dictatorship.

Just watched Jordan Peterson's new video about Canada. Why? Because I'm a Canadian and I reviewed his work in the past so there it was at the top of my feed so I thought, urgh, I guess I should see what he has to say about Canada then. Sigh. Peterson is a man who yells at the camera and throws around plentiful insults and value judgments, sweeping generalizations, and emotive rhetoric - I hope that doesn't upset his fans and they can recognize it as a verifiable fact about his style of communication.

My politics: I don't adhere to any specific political ideology. Because I follow Stoic philosophy, I believe that we should hold values lightly with regard to externals, such as the economy or foreign policy, and be prepared to revise them. Moral wisdom is the only true good. I do believe, e.g., that state-ownership of the healthcare system is probably in the best interests of the majority of people in the UK but I don't pretend to be an expert, I'm open to revising that view on the basis of evidence, and don't assume it applies to all countries.

Top tip. If people disagreeing with something one of your gurus (Rogan, Peterson) says, or even just asking for evidence supporting their claims, causes you to freak out on social media and have an emotional meltdown, then something is wrong - you're acting like a cult member. Stoicism is a philosophy, not a religion, and certainly not a cult. The Stoics named themselves after their meeting place, not Zeno, their founder, because they denied any man was perfectly wise and insisted we should all be able to question anyone's claims or theories.

🧵 Thread on why a lot of self-improvement trends are actually just toxic BS in disguise. First of all, I love self-help, I'm a cognitive psychotherapist, I've spent decades studying self-help trends, and a lot of it is good and benefits people, but a lot is bad and harms them. There are two basic problems, or illusions, with self-help that lead people astray. 1. Some strategies make people feel better temporarily but harm them longer-term, 2. Some strategies do help them but in trivial areas, leading them to neglect addressing more critical problems.

I would assume there's a reason why Will Smith flew off the handle. I doubt it's because of the pretty mild jokes Chris Rock made in the past. Maybe he was having a bad day, despite winning an Oscar. His reaction highlights the problem with anger. He lost sight of the context of his actions and their likely consequences and became narrowly focused on what was happening in front of him in that moment.

#Socrates basically said this first. He called it "double ignorance" when someone doesn't even know that they don't know something. Double ignorance about the most important things in life was the main problem his philosophy sought to remedy, through the famous Socratic method.

https://twitter.com/MichaelWarbur17/status/1507067413602476035

Socrates said double ignorance requires a kind of intellectual arrogance or conceit, i.e., (mistakenly) believing that we know something which in fact we do not know. He thought it could best be exposed by certain questions that highlight gaps and contradictions in our thinking.

🧵 Thread about anxiety. (I specialized in treating anxiety as a cognitive therapist.) I firmly believe, based on 20+ years of experience, that the most basic problem with anxiety is that our society does not have adequate words/concepts to understand how our emotions work. Our "folk psychology", the concepts we all use in daily life, is not fit for purpose in this regard. Two main reasons. 1. We fail to distinguish between different forms that anxiety can take, whereas the first thing competent researchers/clinicians do is a diagnosis.

I've been writing about #Stoicism and #psychotherapy for nearly a quarter of a century now. I started by giving talks on Stoicism at conferences for psychotherapists and discussing it with student counsellors, therapists, coaches, etc., on the training programs I ran in the UK. My first book on Stoicism was meant to be an overview of the history of its influence on modern psychotherapists, for academics and clinicians. Instead, it became more widely read among nonacademics and "laypersons". Stoicism then became more popular, partly due to Stoic Week.