Stoicism still has a tremendous amount to teach us, especially in these passion-saturated times. What’s more, the Stoic legacy has shaped our world in more ways than you might expect. Here are five reasons why Stoicism matters:
- It was built for hard times.
[…] Stoicism tells us that no happiness can be secure if it’s rooted in changeable, destructible things. Our bank accounts can grow or shrink, our careers can prosper or falter, even our loved ones can be taken from us. There is only one place the world can’t touch: our inner selves, our choice at every moment to be brave, to be reasonable, to be good.
- Stoicism is made for globalization.
The world that gave birth to Stoicism was a parochial, often xenophobic place: most people held fast to age-old divisions of nationality, religion, and status. If openly embracing those divisions sounds strange to us, we have Stoicism to thank. It was perhaps the first Western philosophy to preach universal brotherhood. […]
- If you’re Christian, you’re already part-Stoic.
[…] It makes sense that Christianity is a deeply Stoic religion. Stoicism dominated Roman culture for centuries—and Christianity went mainstream in the same culture. What’s more, many of the leaders of the early Christian church were former Stoics. Of course Christianity borrowed much of its thought and terminology from Stoicism–because thinking about religion in the early 1st millennium meant thinking like a Stoic. […]
- It’s the unofficial philosophy of the military.
[…] In her book The Stoic Warrior, Nancy Sherman, who taught philosophy at the Naval Academy, argued that Stoicism is a driving force behind the military mindset–especially in its emphasis on endurance, self-control, and inner strength. As Sherman writes, whenever her philosophy class at Annapolis turned to the Stoic thinkers, “many officers and students alike felt they had come home.”
- It’s a philosophy for leadership.
Stoicism teaches us that, before we try to control events, we have to control ourselves first. Our attempts to exert influence on the world are subject to chance, disappointment, and failure–but control of the self is the only kind that can succeed 100% of the time. From emperor Marcus Aurelius on, leaders have found that a Stoic attitude earns them respect in the face of failure, and guards against arrogance in the face of success.
Some of these reasons may appeal more than others, but old ideas can still be good ideas.