Great piece! I also think Stoicism has other elements of subjectivity allowing for this type of self assessment built in. Both Epictetus's role ethics and broader decision making based on virtue call for the correctly-powered and scaled response based on where you are in life and what else you've taken on and been born into. Even the virtue of moderation seems to entail knowing yourself enough to know what enough looks like and what excess looks like. Those things will be relative to your personality.
On one hand, the theoretical sage may have the "best" response what may be irrespective of personality. But given that we're not sages and cannot know, we have to reason our way there based on experience of ourselves under pressure.
As a sensitive personality type myself, I look forward to your next essay. Confucianism doesn't posit rationalism as the central feature of the human being in the way Stoicism does, and counsels a less abstract view of approaching character development and goodness. Any advance towards wisdom requires us to learn how to "read the room", so we can act/listen/speak accordingly.
Great piece! I also think Stoicism has other elements of subjectivity allowing for this type of self assessment built in. Both Epictetus's role ethics and broader decision making based on virtue call for the correctly-powered and scaled response based on where you are in life and what else you've taken on and been born into. Even the virtue of moderation seems to entail knowing yourself enough to know what enough looks like and what excess looks like. Those things will be relative to your personality.
On one hand, the theoretical sage may have the "best" response what may be irrespective of personality. But given that we're not sages and cannot know, we have to reason our way there based on experience of ourselves under pressure.
As a sensitive personality type myself, I look forward to your next essay. Confucianism doesn't posit rationalism as the central feature of the human being in the way Stoicism does, and counsels a less abstract view of approaching character development and goodness. Any advance towards wisdom requires us to learn how to "read the room", so we can act/listen/speak accordingly.