{"id":12730,"date":"2009-03-20T19:05:09","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T19:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/20\/we-annoy-ourselves\/"},"modified":"2009-03-20T19:05:09","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T19:05:09","slug":"we-annoy-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/20\/we-annoy-ourselves\/","title":{"rendered":"We Annoy Ourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are not a few situations in life in which we are tempted to say or think, 'Your behavior is annoying!' Thinking this, we only make ourselves more annoyed. Saying it is even worse. For then two are annoyed. Instead of saying or thinking of something external to oneself that he, she, or it is annoying, think to oneself: I am annoying myself<\/em>, or I am allowing myself to become annnoyed<\/em>.<\/font><\/p>\n

Just as one enjoys oneself, one annoys oneself. Enjoyment of a thing external to oneself is enjoyment of oneself in relation to the thing. The same goes for annoyance. There is of course an objective stimulus, not in one's power. One's tablemate, for example, is slurping his soup. His slurping is not in one's power, or else not conveniently<\/em> in one's power. (Shooting him only makes matters worse.) But how one responds to the slurping is within one's power.<\/font><\/p>\n

Stoicism may not take us very far along the road to happiness, but where it takes us is worth visiting.<\/font><\/p>\n

It goes without saying that adjusting one's attitude is the appropriate response only in some of life's difficult situations. One does not adjust one's attitude to the 'annoying' behavior of a terrorist: one literally shoots him, thereby inducing a radical attitude adjustment in him<\/em>. If the shooting adversely affects one's <\/font>ataraxia<\/font><\/a>, too bad. Better a little less tranquillitas animi<\/em> than death or submission to the religion of 'peace.' Better his being red than your being dead.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are not a few situations in life in which we are tempted to say or think, 'Your behavior is annoying!' Thinking this, we only make ourselves more annoyed. Saying it is even worse. For then two are annoyed. Instead of saying or thinking of something external to oneself that he, she, or it is … Continue reading “We Annoy Ourselves”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-predicament","category-stoicism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}