
An Online Stoic Mindfulness and Resilience Training Course Starting 17th May - weavie
http://modernstoicism.com/
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brianbreslin
Can someone explain to me in laymen's terms what stoicism means in this
context? I've googled it and have a general idea, but am curious what it means
to everyone here, and why it and mindfulness seem to be having a minor
fad/resurgence recently.

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ashark
I don't know much about the whole mindfulness thing, but the fundamental
insight of stoicism (as explained by Aurelius, anyway) seems to me to be that
the majority of negative emotions and unhappiness the typical person feels or
experiences are _self-inflicted_ , which means one may learn, through
knowledge that these are under one's control and practice avoiding them, not
to feel them.

I can't speak for everyone, but this was a major breakthrough in my
development as a person. Once you think of it in those terms and treat
negativity as a considered choice, you may find it astonishing how many little
ill thoughts and such clutter one's day, in addition to larger, obvious things
like brooding uselessly over a situation or event that one does not like but
cannot, at the time of the brooding, meaningfully change.

YMMV. Maybe that's obvious to some people from the beginning, or maybe some
people naturally come to understand that as they grow older. I know that I
feel fortunate to have encountered Stoicism, by way of a high school English
teacher who taught Salinger's _Franny and Zooey_ , when I did.

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subpixel
This course is powered by moodle.org, an open source learning platform.

I don't know their business model or who their competition is, but signing up
for this course was the worst signup/onboarding experience I've had in a long
time.

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slazaro
We used moodle a lot for courses in university a few years ago. It was
horrible back then, still horrible now.

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charlieegan3
We had Moodle at school and it was bad, but it's nothing on Blackboard. Not
even close.

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verelo
Moodle as a project really makes me sad. I'm glad it exists, its marginally
better than nothing, but I was working on a private product in 2006-2008 that
was so far ahead. Sadly they were crushed by the mighty BlackBoard Inc. and
the source was never made public. I would love to get back into online
learning and try move it forward.

~~~
elehack
Sakai is an open source offering that seems to be pretty good. At Texas State
we use a (heavily customized, I believe) instance of it as the standard
e-learning platform, and it's quite a bit better than Moodle in most respects.

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erikb
Should someone who has never had any contact to whatever is meant by "stoic
mindfulness" get an introduction to the topic? Should a link be shared and
upvoted if it doesn't make it clear what its purpose is?

PS: After clicking links and reading blog articles for about 10 minutes
starting from that page I still have not the slightest idea what I would learn
from that course. But a comment made by @ashark can at least explain that
stoicism is a topic from ancient philosophy and that practicing it might
improve your view on the world by avoiding self-inflicted feelings. That's not
so hard to put on the first page of a website about that topic, or on the
about page, right?

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Splendor
How often is the course? I couldn't find any information past the start date.

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Aoyagi
Side note: "Smrt" stands for "death" in Czech.

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Dewie3
I guess I could make a comment about the apparent blending of stoicism and
mindfulness. But right now I want to give a critique on the site itself - or
be a grump, depending on how you view it.

1\. The sign-up says that I should enter my email twice. No big deal, but
what's really the point? I've heard that this practice is cargo cult
programming; is that correct?

2\. This password requirement:

> The password must have at least 8 characters, at least 1 digit(s), at least
> 1 lower case letter(s), at least 1 upper case letter(s), at least 1 non-
> alphanumeric character(s)

Is a pain. in. the. ass.

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Jtsummers
This and the other replies just seem sort of ironic to me given the course
that people are trying to sign up for:

    
    
      Stoicism:
        the endurance of pain or hardship without a display of
        feelings and without complaint.

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Dewie3
Not sure what's ironic about that. If I was already skilled at being stoic,
then why would I need a course on it? :)

And I intended to sign up for it because I was curious, not because I was
already sold on the concept.

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Jtsummers
Perhaps amusing would have been a better choice of words.

