First, a summary of Stoicism
The ultimate goal of Stoicism is to achieve constant happiness by aligning with your higher self moment after moment, always striving for excellence in all areas of your potential, such as morality, responsibility, and intellect. To do this, we must tame our strong and heavy emotions, which are like a wolf inside us that takes control of our actions, trying to act and drag us in a certain direction. By taming this emotional wolf, we gain tranquility and the confidence that we are always on the most correct path possible—the one in which we always do the best we can—thanks to the control we have over our judgment of what happens to us. In this way, we are not burdened by strong negative feelings (such as regret, anxiety, and disillusionment) that exist in the gap between us and our higher self.
The four most important areas to improve in order to develop your potential:
- Wisdom – the ability to reason, sound judgment, perspective, and common sense. Opposite: Foolishness and thoughtlessness.
- Justice – a good heart, integrity, service to others, and fairness. Opposite: Transgression and injustice.
- Courage – bravery, perseverance, honesty, and confidence. Opposite: Cowardice.
- Self-discipline (or temperance) – organization, self-control, forgiveness, and humility. Opposite: Excess.
Only after fully developing all four areas do you achieve true virtue, improving your will to do what’s right, knowing what is right, and actually doing it. Striving for self-development should be your natural path, so not being perfect is part of the process.
Consciously paying attention to each and every one of your actions allows you to mentally track your behaviors step by step, as they happen. Only then can you notice and apply the virtue involved. "You have to catch yourself in the act in order to correct it," says the philosopher Seneca. Practicing this constant tension perfectly may be impossible, but the result of having this intention is always rewarding whenever an error is noticed and corrected.
Being virtuous brings benefits to yourself and to others, which generates positive feelings—but these should be seen only as a bonus, never as the reason to be virtuous. Virtue in itself is what’s under your control and is the true reward. Virtue is the only thing that can truly be controlled, and therefore, the only thing of real value in an individual—even though health, wealth, and so on are not entirely discarded.
If you always feel tranquility in your soul and have managed to free yourself from destructive passions, then it may be that you are at peace with who you are and with what happens—that is, with what you cannot control.
The irrational thought in Stoicism
My biggest issue with Stoicism is that—even though I didn’t include it in the summary—it is based on magical thinking. The Stoic bases their actions and thinking on the belief that the best thing a vine can do is produce good fruit, and that we are like vines. In other words, we are only truly worthwhile when we shape ourselves in such a way that our actions increasingly produce positive results in terms of social virtue. This association, which removes individuality from a species based on the rest of nature, is irrational.
This issue is treated as absolute and is not questioned, because it is tied to the Stoic belief that we have a divine spark inside us, which has its own will to make us grow virtuously. This is the justification for why self-development is mandatory for a happy life, but it is nothing more than convenient magical thinking—which I also call irrational. It’s mere unfounded favoritism on the part of its practitioners.
Finally, Stoicism says we’ll live a better life by practicing virtuous behavior toward others. This is a very naïve, utopian thought, because it only works well if the community in which one lives is both well-intentioned and connected. Doing good for strangers we’ll never see again rarely brings results that justify the resources spent in the process. Worse still is doing good for people with bad intentions.
There’s also the fact that constantly analyzing our own actions can be exhausting, sometimes outweighing the positive outcomes—especially in stressful living conditions.
So, it doesn’t make sense to be socially Stoic in every situation, but rather, selectively—although applying it in more situations rather than fewer, to account for a margin of error. The problem is that being selectively Stoic is completely incompatible with Stoic philosophy.
I propose that Stoicism should indeed be practiced, but that it should be reserved for fragile situations and free time, and also for interacting with people who have ethics and critical thinking. I also propose that it’s important to practice it where it makes sense.
image https://pixabay.com/pt/illustrations/ai-gerado-estoicismo-homem-gr%C3%A9cia-8445711/