“Oh, for f***’s sake!” Did I say that out loud, browsing alone in the Sunset News in Terminal 2 at SFO? Oops. Yes, I’m now talking to myself in public.
It was the wall of books on “Stoicism” that provoked me. We live in a time when anyone can productize anything, repackage whatever in the guise of content creation, prance around delivering self-satisfied thought-entertainment.
Like most light business books, these books were no deeper than a 3 x 5 card that bloated itself into a blog post and then metastasized into a “platform” and a book. Ick. Even if that’s how “it” works today, ick.
I left the store in disgust to board my flight. Watching the California coast glide past, I thought about what the Stoicism fad really tells us.
Many things happened as democracy wound its way down in Greece. Stoicism is a philosophy of resignation that responds to epochal turbulence. It emerged as Classical Greek civilization transitioned into the Hellenistic period (Zeno). The death of the Roman Republic lifted Stoicism’s fortunes once again (Seneca). It was the companion philosophy of Empire from Epictetus, an enslaved Greek, to Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor, last before a period of political chaos and imperial decline.
Do these beats sound familiar? Relevant? What have these Stoic popularizers sniffed out about who and where we are now? Why does it resonate with readers today?
I suspect the trend expresses something more dire than cheap and easy repackaging.
Decoding Decision States
2023-10-27
