Make stoicism great again.
Discussion
currently reading Discourses by Epictetus 🫂
Great book!
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.”
— Discourses, 2.4.4–5
Or, as we Christians say:
I like the complete Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things
I cannot change,
Courage to change the
things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardship as the
pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this
sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make
all things right if I
surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy
in this life, and supremely
happy with Him forever in
the next.
Amen
Reinhold Niebuhr (1926)
"Stoicism is not a school of emotionless thought. They are not grim wooden individuals with harsh perceptions. A frequent goal of stoicism is oppressing negative emotions and finding temperance within natural desires.
Temperance comes through the four cardinal virtues of stoicism: Courage, Justice, Moderation, and Wisdom. These might sound familiar as they are part of the seven virtues at the center of Catholic moral theology."
https://catholicismcoffee.org/can-catholics-be-stoic-catholicismcoffee-b966683b7814
The Catechism states:
"Four virtues play a pivotal role and accordingly are called "cardinal"; all the others are grouped around them. They are: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance."
Stoicism, I think, is the opposite of "woke".
To be "woke", is to be preoccupied with changing things which normally are beyond your own control, usually with an energy that precludes changing things within yourself.
It's never not been great, even when other ideas like Protestantism and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tried to steal large chunks of it and pass them off as their own.