I'm not checking in often here, sadly. I'm still spending more time on Reddit where there is more activity, and I'm struggling to apply Stoic principles in daily life a bit, but today I had a sort-of success story.
I participate in several subs over there. I am part of a few Christian subs as I am a practicing Episcopalian. A troll came in and asked a question, which I took as a good faith question. I gave an honest answer, as did others, and the trolling behavior started. Then someone pointed out that the poster had posted the exact same question in other Christian subs and about half of them were removed. I guess some subs are better (or just more sensitive) to trolls.
After some back and forth, I decided to cut the conversation short.
And now I'm thinking about this in Stoic terms. We have been given Socrates example of dialectic in which we are supposed to find the truth, or at least uncover some bullshit beliefs we have and expose ignorance.
The challenge today was recognizing that I wasn't in a dialectic soon enough. The initial question was suspect, but I answered it as best I could, and I think I had a pretty good answer. The first warning was in the second response I got from the OP. The first response seemed like a logical follow-up question, but the second response was "You didn't answer the question ..." and I was pretty sure at that point I wasn't in a serious discussion.
I still gave it a chance, and looked at the other conversations and they were all going pretty much the same. The OP continued to tell people what they answered without actually quoting what they answered, and then belittled them for it. Classic straw man tactics.
So how should a Stoic respond? I decided to emphasize a few facts. First, I was not going to limit my definition of "Truth" to what modern science says. Science deals with Fact, and anything beyond scientific fact cannot be addressed by science and it is a mistake, in my opinion, to limit all of reality to what science can address. That would be like trying to limit all art to watercolor or all music to opera.
After all, there is no science to confirm for us the Virtue is the only Good. This is a Truth of our philosophy we must agree to without relying on science's various measuring sticks to confirm it for us.
The second thing I did was to insult the OPs argument as "petty thinking". I have to be careful to direct such statements to the behavior and not the person. I also called the OPs behavior childish, his tactics crude and his fallacies clear as day.
Sadly, I did not live up to this ideal. After I gave him a warning he continued to straw man me and insisting on using a wrong definition of Truth. I did end the conversation with "It is tiring, little one. Oh, so tiring" and gave him the pyhhric victory. I have blocked them.
I was very deliberate in explaining the OP's "win" was a pyhhric victory.
I consider this successful in that I didn't lose my overall sense of calm, and I have not, to my best knowledge, judged the OP as a child, only using childish behavior.
I suppose I could have handled it better. What do you think?
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