Life Is Messy
Ryan Holiday has it all wrong. Should We Cancel the Stoics? Probably.
Life is messy. Oh no! I didn’t say that.
If you believe in justice, freedom, righteousness, truth and the family way, all you need to do is (move to Portland, or South Dakota, join Proud Boys, or join Antifa, pin up your anti-war posters, buy AR-15s, march for–fill in the blank, vote for–fill in the blank, pick one). See? It’s actually straightforward.
We don’t need no stinking philosophers.
The Stoics were heathen atheists; I’m Catholic, and I know what the nuns taught me. Follow my Twelve Steps for Making It All Go Away, sponsored by Purdue Pharma.
Ryan thinks old white men hold the secret to living–from Roman times no less — even ones from Spain– but I’m here to tell you not to worry your pretty little heads about reading all that malarky, er, history.
First of all, it’s silly thinking two thousand years ago they knew shit from shinola about the super, wiz bang technologies of our gloriously modern world. They didn’t have Twitter.
We have Zuckerberg; who needs Stoics?
I say tear down the statues! Marcus Aurelius was a dictator! Of course he could write–his patrician parents paid a ton of drachmas so William Singer could get him into Stanford. And he had slaves–just like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. If Columbus isn’t good enough for you, how could a man with a serious Roman snoz be any use? OK, I forgot, Columbus was Italian. Am I being too hard on the Italians?
I say free the Stoics–from their chains of modern hero worship–and let them slide back into the dustbins and film cans of The History Channel. We have more important matters to attend to–like tracking the seven-day Covid stats.
Oh, and voting to send Red Donnie to Tierra del Fuego–not that they deserve him either.
