Stoicism gets associated with "hustle culture" quite often.
By idiots
Stoicism gets associated with "hustle culture" quite often. At first glance this is strange to me and I would expect many people here to agree. But I figured it could be an interesting topic for discussion. In part since it's so prevalent and in part for my own sake, since I haven't given it enough thought that I may have missed something or I can't explain my viewpoint well enough.
I did a quick search but couldn't find a well-established definition of what "hustle culture" is. But this explanation fits with my understanding of the term:
Hustle culture is the idea of constantly grinding. It’s when there is an intense focus on productivity, ambition, and success, with little regard for down time and self care. The foundation for hustle culture was laid during the entrepreneurial boom of the 1990s and 2000s. During this time a new standard emerged of the ‘go hard’ or ‘go home’ mindset. It’s the idea that you can only find success by working hard and long hours and when you think you are working your hardest, push yourself even harder. Sacrificing your leisure time is the way to reach your goals of success.
https://projecthumanities.asu.edu/blog/content/saying-goodbye-hustle-culture
My initial thoughts on this is that there is only a very a small part which fits with stoicism. And that part only fits as long as there is a big qualifier. Most of it I would consider pretty much antithetical to stoicism.
Where it fits is that Stoicism also comes with a lot of ambition and striving for success. But it's not success in the conventional form. A stoic is striving for virtue, perfected reasoning, and to live a life according to virtue. In the grand scheme of things, a virtuous person who is broke and homeless is no worse off, in any way, than a virtuous person in a mansion. They're both equally successful.
Where it doesn't fit is that the ambition of hustle culture is directed at success in external matters like reputation and money. The stoics even called greed a psychological disease. There also seems to be a lot of neglecting other areas of life that are important, like treating yourself and other people well.
So my quick verdict is that hustle culture is ambition aimed at the wrong target with a lot of collateral damage and for those reasons it is antithetical to Stoicism. What would you disagree with or add to it?
Stoicism gets associated with "hustle culture" quite often.
By idiots
your 'where it fits' is really a 'where it doesn't fit'
which is correct. bc it doesn't fit.
Stoicism gets associated with hussle culture by husslers who think philosophy promises external goods. So yes definitely, I agree with you.
Got some interesting replies, bit too many for me to adress so I'll just comment on yours and tag those I had in mind
Yep, there has always been and always will be bad actors. Whatever their motive is, I could take a guess...
Still, what's interesting to me is the reasons why Stoicism seems to lend itself so well to those kinds of interpretations, like being a good fit with hustle culture. Where the person proclaiming it and the people listening can accept it as correct even though so much seems to clearly oppose it.
Because from what I can gather from the replies here, none so far seem to think there is a good fit between stoicism and hustle culture. So what I laid out in the OP and from the elaboration from /u/-Klem and /u/Victorian_Bullfrog this part seems correct.
So I'm wondering why it happens so often, besides people wanting to sell wisdom? Some good suggestions here, I'll try to summarize them:
The topic of indifferents is difficult to understand, as pointed out by /u/TheOSullivanFactor/ (Well the whole philosophy is darn difficult to understand)
It may appear doable to isolate parts of Stoicism from the whole system. So you can easily tone down or ignore some of the more controversial claims and pick the right quotes in isolation without connecting them to the whole worldview. This can be done with no ill intent, just a bit of ignorance. It can make those quotes, and stoicism, seem to fit with a hustle culture worldview, as pointed out by /u/Victorian_Bullfrog. I imagine this has to stop working pretty fast unless you stop learning or intentionally brush over some parts.
Virtue being presented as a means to an end other than virtue and happiness itself. This can done in quite an innocuous and agreeable way like: "Be trustworthy and then you will get more clients"
Marcus (and Seneca) acting as role models while being rich and powerful. Shifting the admiration for them towards what they had rather than who they were, as pointed out by /u/Novel-Bend-8373/
An idea that no external thing can affect your condition. We can hustle for 14 hours a day and be unaffected by our condition is a really helpful tool. And Marcus Aurelius is really cool since he was an Emperor who died on campaign, redpilled hustlers won't find people like Epictetus nearly as cool since he was a slave and held no significant power/authority even after freedom.
It's like stripping Stoicism of virtue and redirecting the should be effort for virtue to a materialistic things. With that in effect, it usually skews the practices and actions of what a Stoic should take and even the perception of things like what matters and indifferents gets twisted. Overall it's the usual Broicism. There's really nothing more to add I think.
i have a suspicion that a lot of toxic masculinity is honestly just misinterpreted stoicism, things like holding in your emotions. hope i'm wrong, but any group of beliefs be it philosophy or religion is simple going to be tools to which the user will be blinded to the actual applications, they will have already decided what they want and try to use these reputable tools to excuse their behavior completely forgetting all the other important parts, and clinging to what helps them blindly justify their own selfishness and hatred. kind of like Christians hating gay people
I agree with your conclusion and don't have anything to add, but here's what pops into my head when I think of the hustle culture all dressed up in Stoicism. Let's say hustle culture is best categorized in the same way Stoicism categorizes the study of philosophy. There physics, the study of how reality works; logic, the study of correct reasoning, and value theory/ethics.
In Stoicism, reality works through a cosmos that is Providential, it governs the cosmos for the good of humanity. For all intents and purposes, death is the end of one's existence. Logic, a system of reasoning through proofs, is how one can be assured they hold the correct beliefs. Virtue is the highest value, and in a sense the only real value. Everything else is valued in the context of Virtue. Eudaimonia is the experience of peace of mind regardless of the circumstances, it comes with moral wisdom.
In the hustle culture with the Stoic veneer, reality works through a cosmos that may or may not reward one with a joyful immortality in a different plane of existence, but certainly joy comes at a cost here and now. Everything comes at a cost. Good reasoning is based on the cost risk analysis of any particular venture. And control is the highest value. With control, one can dominate the costs and risks necessary to obtain a goal. Eudaimonia is the experience of obtaining a valuable and difficult goal. The intensity of this reward is directly related to the rarity of the goal obtained.
Taken from the Daily Stoic's list of some favorite quotes:
“Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?” – Marcus Aurelius
“External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.” – Marcus Aurelius
“He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a man who is alive.” – Seneca
“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” – Seneca
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” – Epictetus
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” – Epictetus
How well they work under both paradigms.
Honestly it is a more complicated and interesting topic than what is implied by the various quick dismissals. Fr
I think so too and why they get conflated is very interesting. What do you make of it?
We can evaluate the fitness of a new interpretation by comparing their goals with the goals of the school of philosophy they claim to represent. The aim of Stoicism is to live in agreement with nature. Their entire philosophy is directed toward that goal. Whether some thing or some phenomenon is good or not depends on their relation to that goal. There is nothing in the entirety of Stoicism that's without that framework. Hustle culture is a kind of prosperity theology. For them, financial success is the measure of moral worth. Besides their explicit statements that we see (just like the definition you quoted), we may also understand that, in a deeper layer of thought, people who engage in hustle culture have the belief that "I'm only worth anything when I'm productive". That's a cruel view of the world, and one hardly conducive to *eudaimonia*. You can never be content. You can never rest. You may love your children only to the extent that they are hard-working. But aside from that, that belief also makes it quite difficul to make Stoicism work. How can oikeiosis be possible when someone can't view invalids and kings as their equals? How can justice be possible? When equality in distribution is hindered by the view that those who make less effort deserve less. How can temperance be possible when merely *stopping* becomes a failure?
Hustle culture is a kind of prosperity theology. For them, financial success is the measure of moral worth.
This is how I see it as well. And not only does financial success presumably measure moral worth, it promises to "bless" the individual with protection from that which might hurt them, such as a perceived unstable, insecure, and increasingly weak society, personal competitors, or the Siren songs emanating from ex-girlfriends (or even would-be girlfriends). This old post from r/AskHistorians comes to my mind often when I see Stoicism portrayed as a kind of framework to become the kind of "strong man" that can create "good times," (and who doesn't want to be a hero /s) as opposed to society's plethora of "weak men" who are understood to be responsible for these "hard times." In this way, this hustle culture, or broicism, is a modern response to a current moral panic.
I think it’s a mistake stemming from a false view of externals as something to treat more or less as a utilitarian would: virtual is greatest possible happiness for the greatest number. To this though Epictetus: “ That is why Agrippinus, when Florus was considering whether he should go down to Nero's shows, to perform some part in them himself, said to him, 'Go down.' And when he asked, 'Why do you not go down yourself?' said, 'Because I do not even consider the question.' For when a man once lowers himself to think about such matters, and to value external things and calculate about them he has almost forgotten his own character.” Epictetus, Discourses, 1.2 I don’t think for a moment this is some strange “Cynicizing” Epictetus, this is Stoicism.
"Move fast and break things" comes to mind immediately when I see "hustle culture". Sure, we do have to 'trial and error' the learning process, but breaking people's mind and body is usually the end product of hustle culture, all at the expense of progress.
Hustle culture = self-advancement is the only/highest good. As self-advancement isn’t up to us, this creates a lot of emotionally disturbed individuals.