A rich person will by definition not be struggling financially but there are a lots of other problems a person can have. Maybe their wife divorced them, maybe their father just passed away, maybe their kid has a severe learning disability, maybe they are involved in a protracted court battle over the rights to a book they wrote.

Point is that there are so many problems people can have, and you wont notice unless you know the person well.

Seneca called out fear of losing one's wealth as a particular affliction of the rich, and prescribed a day, every so often, of living as a beggar to remind oneself that life goes on even in those circumstances.

It's just this generations spin on new-age spiritualism. Boomers were there decades ago. The difference: we're now mining Zeno instead of Jung.

Not necessarily a bad thing in some ways. There's lots of anxiety and neuroticism in our generation and we need tools besides benzodiazepines to address them.

I came to the Stoics before it was HN-cool via Salinger (b. 1919) so it's been in US (sort of) pop culture longer than that. Ditto Buddhism. He published in prime (earlyish) Boomer years.

The belief the physical pain is the only kind of pain worth caring about is very misguided and causes a lot of harm in the world. It's think kind of belief that causes mental health issues to become stigmatized so people avoid seeking treatment or discussing it. This leads to breakdowns or suicide.

Just because muscles are not aching and bones are not broken and skin is intact does not mean a person is not suffering or in anguish emotionally or mentally. And especially in higher education and high-pressure tech jobs, the constant drive to succeed can cause significant mental health strains.

I don't know if you were intending to belittle mental health as less important than physical health, but I'd like to point out that there are hardships in this world that don't involve callouses or sunburns.

Nobody is saying physical pain is the only pain worth considering. What people are saying is that if you asked 100 coal miners and 100 tech workers to swap jobs for one year, then asked them one year later whether they would like to switch back, there will be an overwhelming asymmetry towards staying a tech worker.

The problems a tech worker faces is minuscule relative to a coal miner. And the above thought experiment highlights that.

That is not odds with philosophy adoption at all. In fact, nature of these (imagined) miners problems can make it harder to adopt philosophy that would make it harder to seek solutions to very real problems they have. If you endure pain with no display, your pain is taken less seriously after all and at some point, you need that doctor to understand it is real. And at other point you already need to stop working or fight for better conditions. Very real miners were very real dying and passive acceptance of that was not what bought changes.

But in case of tech people, stoically waiting is to your benefit as tech is generally higher status job. Moreover tech workers often time primary use stoicism to put expectations on other people rather then themselves.

Generally, if you are male, no one is going to look on you with much sympathy if you express that you are in pain. Pity and contempt are the more likely outcomes. Stoicism is a tool that helps it to be a little easier to suck it up and drive on and do your job.

You do get a doctor to have a look at your hand or back. You can get pain relief medication. Stoicism is not philosophy for people at breaking point nor thos with real problems that needs to be solved actively. You as tech worker think about how others looks at you and consider social status. Poor miner needs fix for back that is hurting enough to prevent him to fully perform which puts him at risk to be even poorer.

My poit is that civil rights nor security regulations nor anything like that happened because people were stoic.

Moreover, places with those sucky-destroy-you miner jobs tend to, well, not be stoic. They have host of social problems, alcoholism, drugs, physical fights etc. These people are not signing to stoicism as philosophy. They are drawning and reacting to that.

Suffering is the only human constant, and dismissing suffering by comparison to others gets you nowhere. A better thing to do is to use this suffering to connect with others rather than to reject connection.

A salient clip from James Baldwin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZmBy7C9gHQ&t=1h27m06s

That's not what stoicism is. The aspect you refer to is the insight that we can only control our thoughts and our actions and not a single other thing. There is also more to it, regarding the ends to which we should order our thoughts and actions.

Also, human suffering and dismay are universal. Wealthy westerners may have escaped material want, but none of us can escape the human condition.

Stoicism isn't about not showing feelings, it's about thinking about the world in different ways so that losses don't matter

A regular Joe might like his coffee mug and be sad if it smashes. A Stoic has already imagined the loss of his mug, knows it belongs to the Universe, and the Universe wanted it back.

Well once it’s smashed no amount of whining sill bring it back, will it? Best buy a new mug and move on.

And imho the reason us millenial tech workers need stoicism is precisely because our lives are cushy. We have too much time to spend emotional energy on shit that doesn’t matter. Stoicism is a good way to fight that and remind yourself that hey this ain’t so bad.

I think this is a great point. Stoicism can be comforting and helpful in becoming mentally stronger. We may be very strong in our intelligence, but our emotional resilience tends to be less strong, because we're not used to hardships.

People who have to work hard physically may be more naturally inclined to understand how to live in a more balanced way: work hard, then relax in your off hours. Us tech folks tend to live in the same "mode" much of the time.

I personally found Stoicism helpful in becoming more self-sufficient and less whiny about things that befall me. Your example of the mug is great and can be generalised: complaining helps nobody and makes you feel worse and you get "stuck" in this emotion. Instead, move on and fix or replace it. And even if it can't be replaced (maybe it was a hand-made mug by a loved one you lost), being sad about it still does not serve your well-being in any way.

Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome. Stoicism is for everybody.

maybe, maybe it's for emperors

Epictetus was a slave.