By: Maya Barillas Mohan, Staff Writer, Corbett Gildersleve, Opinions Editor
We can all attest to a growing phenomenon of masculine self-help within the past few years. Quarantine as a result of COVID-19 gave many of us a shared sense of isolation and helplessness. This moment was a prime backdrop for self-help spaces to encourage men to adopt stoic beliefs as a way to cope.
Stoicism is roughly the idea that in circumstances you cannot control, one should concern themselves with things you can control, namely, your emotional responses.
However, this has led to men co-opting and misunderstanding this philosophy to promote becoming unemotional. This could have the side effect where men will more readily approach shared dilemmas in life with passivity.
Dealing with large complex problems like climate change can lead to anxiety. Climate anxiety can result in burnout and a sense of hopelessness for activists who don’t see any meaningful change. Therefore, people exploring social media for ways to control how they react to something so large and complex makes sense. However, this push has also allowed men to co-opt stoic beliefs that misunderstand the philosophy connecting it to masculinity. While stoicism champions living unfrivolously (and thus, sustainably), many influencers display their success through status symbols like muscle or sports cars, showing the opposite of their beliefs. Viewing issues outside of our direct control as not the responsibility of any one individual does not mitigate or fix the issue; collective action is the seed that enables change.
Stoicism and continued climate change behaviours go together through their connection to masculinity. Is stoicism really an effective worldview to hold as we all march towards a higher global temperature? It seems to me that in this misunderstanding of stoicism, some of the emotional responses to crises are bleached. We need climate grief to take action as no change will emerge from apathy.
Emotional suppression is described as stability and confidence but I would argue it’s closer to a kind of deprivation in all scenarios. This co-opted stoicism believes in dispensing with all of the “unnecessary emotions,” but I think some of these emotions are rather proof of a close connection. Masculinity does not have to be threatened through climate activism — the closest connection we have is to our planet. In protecting our planet, we can also have a closer connection to one another by dispensing with cars and the identity we foster through them, maybe by taking the train instead.
Stoicism has some benefits in handling a changing world, and versions of its ideologies are valuable to everyone seeking control over their own lives. But the brand of stoicism that is specifically peddled to an environmentally unsustainable masculinity can be harmful. If we extinguish the role of emotions in activism, our changing world will just keep changing, no matter how calm we stay about it.
