yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

I’m Averse To People! (A Stoic perspective)


3m read
·Nov 4, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

The dynamics of desire and aversion lie at the basis of Stoic thought in regards to how we relate to the world. Aversion means a strong dislike and disinclination towards something or someone. Even though this might seem harmless, it can cause a lot of trouble. In this video, I want to share Stoic views on aversion and how to deal with it. I recently got a question from Frank Bask, asking me: “Can you make a video about aversion? More specifically, aversion to a certain person or group of people. I’ve been struggling with that for the past couple of weeks.” End quote.

Well, to understand aversion, we have to understand its polar opposite as well, which is desire. Because desire is a form of aversion and aversion is a form of desire. I think I’m throwing a bit of Taoism in there by saying that one opposite cannot exist without the other and that both turn around a spindle. Let’s say that we desire a million dollars. And I mean that we really crave for it. The desire automatically contains the aversion to not having a million dollars, which we could translate into the aversion to being poor.

By taking this position, we make our future happiness conditional. If we’re able to obtain a million dollars, we’re happy. But if we fail, we’re miserable. This is a quote by Epictetus about this mechanism: “Remember that following desire promises the attainment of that of which you are desirous; and aversion promises the avoiding that to which you are averse. However, he who fails to obtain the object of his desire is disappointed, and he who incurs the object of his aversion wretched.” End quote.

Does this mean that we should abolish desire and aversion? No, that’s too simplistic. The Stoics of old recognized that human nature has a tendency to desire things that are good for us. They called this phenomenon oikeiosis. Things that are good for us but not necessarily required for reaching a state of eudaimonia are known as preferred indifferents. Examples of these are wealth, health, and a good reputation. The opposite are dispreferred indifferents. Examples of these are death, poverty, and sickness.

So, how does this boil down to the aversion towards a person or a group of people? Being averse to a serial killer is healthy because incurring a serial killer probably isn’t good for your health. And it would also be wise to be averse to a thief, savage, and any other person that will do us harm. Since human nature wants us to live, it makes sense that we naturally avoid the people that pose a threat.

So, we might want to ask ourselves the following questions: Are our estimations about the people we’re averse to truly correct? Do the people we’re averse to truly pose a threat? Many fears are irrational. As Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius: “There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” End quote.

According to the Stoics, our capacity for rational thinking is what sets us apart from animals. This means that fears, even though they might be ingrained in the primitive part of our nature, can be overridden by rational thoughts. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a way to replace irrational thoughts with rational thinking, and this form of therapy happens to have roots in Stoicism.

Let’s say you’re averse to a group of people because of prejudices based on news coverage in regards to that group. We have a tendency to think that all members of that group are like that, which probably isn't true. Moreover, we only know this information for sure if we know every single person of that group. Similarly, this applies to a single person we might be averse to. We might have heard some rumors and formed an image in our heads about this person that does not correspond with reality.

“Accordingly, some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.” End quote. The trick is to c...

More Articles

View All
Introduction to the possessive | The Apostrophe | Punctuation | Khan Academy
Hello Garans, hello Paige, hi David in the driver’s seat. So Paige, today, uh, it is my understanding that we are going to talk about the possessive. That’s right. Um, what even is the possessive in English? What does that mean? When we say that, like, w…
Senate confirmation as a check on the judicial branch | US government and civics | Khan Academy
When we think about how the executive or the legislative branch have some form of check or power over the judicial branch, a key element of that is the executive’s ability to appoint judges to federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. But it’s not…
The Theory of Information
That was a message found in a half-broken bottle that washed up a shore near a Croatian beach. It had spent nearly 23 years at sea, from the time of writing to the time it was finally found. Who Jonathan and Mary were, and what the message actually means,…
An overview of the Crusades (part 2)
Where we left off in the last video, we had seen what would eventually be called the First Crusades. From a European point of view, it seemed successful; they were able to take back much of the Holy Land from Muslim rule. The Byzantine Empire was able to …
Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances
This is a great excerpt from Federalist 51 by James Madison. Just as a reminder, the Federalist Papers, which were written by Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay, were an attempt to get the Constitution passed, to get it ratified. So these were really kind of…
Reflecting functions: examples | Transformations of functions | Algebra 2 | Khan Academy
What we’re going to do in this video is do some practice examples of exercises on Khan Academy that deal with reflections of functions. So, this first one says this is the graph of function f. Fair enough. Function g is defined as g of x is equal to f of …