having evangelical enthusiasm about it seems contradictory to amor fati.
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Dumb question: how do you square embracing fate with, say, political or social activism?
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you’re resigned to it, and stipulate to chaos in the world, and that’s what you see these days with belligerent posturing on both sides.
step back from things, and view the entirety of it.
Stoicism isn’t about just embracing fate. It’s about accepting what you can live with and accepting what you can’t live with. Cato the Younger was a Stoic, and he found Caesar intolerable and rebelled against him. He lost, and lost again, and lost again. At each turn his allies went and joined Caesar, but Cato couldn’t live with that choice. Finally, when he couldn’t possibly fight Caesar any longer he killed himself.
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acceptance of something perceived is fluid, and can change
Ok, that is more nuanced and makes more sense. I had the above quote in mind when I made my post. And I was like, “Wha? I’m glad MLK wasn’t a stoic.”
I did an email search “Daily Stoic activism” and this is one of two emails that came up:
Being brave. Finding the right balance. These are core Stoic virtues, but in their seriousness, they pale in comparison to what the Stoics worshipped most highly: Doing the right thing.
There is no Stoic virtue more important than justice, because it influences all the others. Marcus Aurelius himself said that justice is “the source of all the other virtues.” Stoics throughout history have pushed and advocated for justice, oftentimes at great personal risk and with great courage, in order to do great things and defend the people and ideas that they loved.
- Cato gave his life trying to restore the Roman Republic.
- And Thrasea and Agrippinus gave theirs resisting the tyranny of Nero.
- George Washington and Thomas Jefferson formed a new nation—one which would seek, however imperfectly, to fight for democracy and justice—largely inspired by the philosophy of Cato and those other Stoics.
- Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a translator of Epictetus, led a black regiment of troops in the US Civil War.
- Beatrice Webb, who helped to found the London School of Economics and who first conceptualized the idea of collective bargaining, regularly re-read Marcus Aurelius.
Countless other activists and politicians have turned to Stoicism to gird them against the difficulty of fighting for ideals that mattered, to guide them towards what was right in a world of so much wrong. A Stoic must deeply believe that an individual can make a difference. Successful activism and political maneuvering require understanding and strategy, as well as realism… and hope. It requires wisdom, acceptance and also a refusal to accept the statue quo.
It was James Baldwin who most brilliantly captured this tension in Notes of a Native Son :
It began to seem that one would have to hold in mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in light of this idea it goes without saying that injustice is commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but one must fight them with all one’s strength.
A Stoic sees the world clearly…but also sees clearly what the world can be. And then they are brave, and strategic enough to help bring it into reality.
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does holding those 2 ideas simultaneously impact on one’s approach to action?
Sorry, which two ideas? Embracing fate and fighting against fate?
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I’m suggesting there’s more of a humility to a course of action, when both views are held, or maybe that a modesty in approach would generally serve humanity
being angry and indignant is comfortable, but do an honest appraisal of one’s self.
I think stoicism can get misconstrued sometimes. You should take into account how you feel about something.
And we all have our own definitions of what “the right thing” is and we all fall short of what we expect from ourselves all the time.
Don’t beat yourself up for it. You are human and a damn good one.
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It is an interesting dichotomy.
I interpreted it to mean when we look at life we need to accept that there will be injustices everywhere and there will be people doing more harm than good. That is just reality. (And it may also mean that we should not focus on the negatives constantly)
Even though we are not able to fix everything we still need to do our part to make our world a better place than we left it.
Doesn’t have to be anything that will be written in the history books. Just that when we see injustice or evil it is our duty to stand up and do something about it. Even if it’s just in our community.
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Amen 
zarapochka is good people
finally finished Lawrence of Arabia. I normally doze off to it. that movie is apt for this forum and this discussion/ thread in particular maybe.
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I have not seen it. Maybe I’ll put it on next time I can’t sleep
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Yah, you’re correct that there is tons of overlap. A lot of the stuff I’ve read in Zen Buddhism books I read in Stoicism, but like you, I find the historical tie ins interesting and maybe makes it a bit more relatable for me.
I don’t find myself as interested in the aesthetics of it, but admittedly that seems to be an enormous reason why most people choose a faith or philosophy.
Like I never even call myself Buddhist or a Stoic, I just take ideas that I like and apply them to my own life. I’m not really a fan of labels in general.
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Will post tomorrow when I have more time. Thank you for these post, it gives me a lot to think about.
I think it pretty clear that the core ideas of stoicism are shared by so many other philosophies because there is a core biological basis to them. Having read pretty widely across religions and philosophy I don’t find the “packaging” that interesting, other than anthropologically. For the good ones, it’s all just cultural wallpaper masking biological truths.
This is why mindfulness and stoicism work so well together. They are tapping into real biological mechanisms. They are essentially operating manuals for the human brain.
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Great movie. It also has the single most famous edit in all of film.
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