Today’s Stoic: Life Can Be Confusing & Weird… “It’s tough to be alive now,” the actor Timothée Chalamet recently said. “I think societal collapse is in the air — it smells like it.” It’s one of those lines that got picked up by dozens of media outlets. Because those outlets know it’s one of those headlines people can’t resist clicking on. As the economist Deirdre McCloskey once put it, “For reasons I have never understood, people like to hear that the world is going to hell.” Perhaps you’re one of those people. Perhaps you’re alarmed about the state of the world. Perhaps you’re horrified at the risks and dangers that lurk about—pandemics, political chaos, riots, people at each other’s throats, unprecedented events. Perhaps you’re getting a strong whiff of societal collapse. Certainly the Stoics knew that smell. How could they not? The fall of the Republic. Nero. The Antonine Plague. And yet they kept going. They did not despair. It’s not that they were naive optimists, they just knew that their job always remained the same: Focus on what you control. Do your best. Live with virtue. Real optimists, “bear in mind constantly,” as Marcus Aurelius wrote, “that all of this has happened before. And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging.” Remember, this is just what it means to live through history. It can be scary. It can be confusing and weird and smelly. The Spanish Flu, The Depression, Watergate years, the Six-Day War, the 1973 oil embargo, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 2008 Financial Crisis—living through history always has at least a faint smell of collapse. It’s strange to think that we can find optimism in this, but we can. Because when we face challenges with proper Stoicism—with courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom—the odds of a good outcome are in our favor.

Today’s Stoic: Life Can Be Confusing & Weird… “It’s tough to be alive now,” the actor Timothée Chalamet recently said. “I think societal collapse is in the air — it smells like it.” It’s one of those lines that got picked up by dozens of media outlets. Because those outlets know it’s one of those headlines people can’t resist clicking on. As the economist Deirdre McCloskey once put it, “For reasons I have never understood, people like to hear that the world is going to hell.” Perhaps you’re one of those people. Perhaps you’re alarmed about the state of the world. Perhaps you’re horrified at the risks and dangers that lurk about—pandemics, political chaos, riots, people at each other’s throats, unprecedented events. Perhaps you’re getting a strong whiff of societal collapse. Certainly the Stoics knew that smell. How could they not? The fall of the Republic. Nero. The Antonine Plague. And yet they kept going. They did not despair. It’s not that they were naive optimists, they just knew that their job always remained the same: Focus on what you control. Do your best. Live with virtue. Real optimists, “bear in mind constantly,” as Marcus Aurelius wrote, “that all of this has happened before. And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging.” Remember, this is just what it means to live through history. It can be scary. It can be confusing and weird and smelly. The Spanish Flu, The Depression, Watergate years, the Six-Day War, the 1973 oil embargo, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 2008 Financial Crisis—living through history always has at least a faint smell of collapse. It’s strange to think that we can find optimism in this, but we can. Because when we face challenges with proper Stoicism—with courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom—the odds of a good outcome are in our favor.
by Jm Moran

2022-10-20T15:14:02.000Z
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