Stoic Optimism

This week, we wrapped up the psychonalalytic criticism unit by submitting our final essays on Winesburg, Ohio and began the unit on feminist criticism.  To sum up what I learned about life from the psychoanalytic criticism unit, I would say that life can be pretty awful.  With the exception of two stories in Winesburg, Ohio, every single chapter in the book was a sad story about society.  The transformation from psychoanalytic criticism to feminist criticism brought a slightly happier mood, but history is drenched with mysogyny, so feminist criticism is not quite the happiest unit.  Amidst these depressing units, I stumbled upon a philosophy that I found intriguing, and counters the sadness from these two units.

I do not know much about this philosophy, as I just briefly stumbled upon it while watching youtube, but the few ideas that I found about stoicism were fascinating.  Since I do not know much about this philosophy, I will not go into detail about it because I would not be able to give a just explanation as to exactly what it is, but one of the concepts that grabbed me goes along the lines of accepting that bad things will happen in life, so when they do, you will not be upset because you have already accepted that bad things will happen, and that you should think off all of the bad things that happen as learning experience and be grateful for them because they give you the opportunity to become a better person.  I am intrigued by this idea because it ties into both the feminist unit and psychoanalysis unit.  Accepting bad experiences and using them to make yourself a better person because of those experiences fits perfectly within the definition of sublimation, the most mature defense mechanism.  The feminist unit outlines the concept of privilege, which is when society gives you advantages that you did not earn.  For example, I am a white, middle-class, christian male living in the Northeast, so my demographics allow me to have many privileges.  I can't speak for people that have less privilege than I do, but in theory you could apply this stoic idea of becoming a better individual from unwanted experiences to lack of privilege.  An example of this could be Ben Carson, who grew up in a bad part of Detroit with a poor family, but later in life became the world's top neurosurgeon, and the first person to successfully to complete a hemispherectomy and to separate a pair of conjoined twins.