Retiring the Stoicism: fighting against fate
Note: this is a post I made earlier this year in my tumblr page, but because I no longer use it, I decided to archive it here.
Half a year ago, I finally noticed that something was wrong about my life. I didn’t know WHAT it was that was wrong, but I definitely didn’t feel happy. Yes, I had discovered I wasn’t going to finish college by the end of that year, but I wasn’t particularly affected by the prospects of having to wait a year just to finish 3 classes.
I had just begun working full-time as an application security analyst, and I had discovered “stoicism”. I had interpreted it as what everyone in social media said at the time, the art of becoming “indestructible”, to not let the world move us. I decided to follow this school of thought, thinking that becoming indestructible would also make me happy.
I was very wrong about the things I’ve learned. Stoicism is not about becoming indestructible. Moreover, it’s almost a teaching of submission. It treats the emotions we feel, whether positive or negative, as a sickness or object of aversion. It treats adherence to virtue as the highest glory one can have. And worst of all, it poises the belief that permeates my very nightmares.
In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law? Is it like the hand of God hovering above? At least it is true that man has no control, even over his own will.
The stoics believe that things go in accordance to fate, and that we have no place worrying about things that are out of our control, pre-ordained by fate. I am only now coming to this realization and as someone who has time and time again fought against authority and for my own destiny to be controlled by me and me alone, to fight against fate.
I have decided to put down Meditations and Marcus Aurelius in general. He has good talking points, of course, but I do not believe Stoicism should be followed as a personal philosophy - it will cause you to submit yourself to the world around you and suppress your emotions like a coke bottle filled with mentos. Eventually, you will break. Take what’s good from the stoics, then move on.
Instead, I have decided I will start reading Nietzsche. I had bought Meditations half a year ago, but I had “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” in my basement the whole time. And it’s here that I’ll start. I had heard that Nietzsche was a big critic of the Stoics, so he must have fell down the same path as me. I don’t need to stop being stoic, but maybe it’s time to retire the stoicism.