Beyond Therapy

Realizing the full potential of Stoicism

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The contemporary resurgence of Stoicism may in large parts be attributed to the aspects of the philosophy which complement the discipline of therapeutics. Chrysippus historically wrote a 4-book treatise on the passions, examining, analyzing, and theorizing on the passions in the first 3 books; and with the final book, laying out how passion ought to be treated and prevented. It’s this line of inquiry that constitutes large parts of what’s survived of ancient Stoicism, and likewise the aspect of Stoicism that remains most “alive” to this day – if for nothing else, how Stoic precepts survive within disciplines like cognitive therapy, as exemplified by American psychotherapist Albert Ellis who in the 50’ies would in part found numerous therapeutic direction which would eventually lead to the cognitive-behavioral therapy we know today.

Given the developments that have happened over the millennia, and, particularly, last handful of decades with psychology and therapy being their own dedicated disciplines, what advantages does this ancient philosophy still hold? Why do so many flock to the philosophy today? Why is it the most popular it’s perhaps ever been since antiquity?

The unassailable advantage of Stoicism

Therapy was my entry point into Stoicism, having discovered the philosophy just after finishing a few months sessions – and at the time being shocked how much of what I’d just underwent was already captured by this ancient philosophy; so it is for most others to this day. Just go to any Stoic forum, and you’ll see that almost every thread and question (particularly as they pertain to newcomers) are therapeutic in nature. As for me, I studied and practiced Stoicism as a continuation of my therapy (as I had to continue applying what I’d learnt during the sessions afterwards, anyway) quite rigorously for over 2 years, before I eventually found myself drifting elsewhere in my personal studies (towards other areas of philosophy, and also other disciplines like psychology, anthropology, etc.).

With that being said, I obviously took everything I’d learnt with me, and everything I’d practiced – whether it was negative visualizations, the Stoic pause, withholding judgement, perfecting my reason, etc. – had largely been internalized and, to an extent, become part of my character. Hence even when I wasn’t an actively avowed Stoic the ancient philosophy still provided me with direction in life, implicitly exerting an influence upon my choices and outcomes. In a sense, I consider the therapeutic aspects of Stoicism to be like a vaccine – it’s not a cure for what’s happened previously¹, but it does inoculate oneself against the adversities of the future.

And that’s where I perceive Stoicism’s inherent advantage in contrast to the discipline of psychology and therapeutics lie: Direction. Because Stoicism is an ethos, everything that’s within the purview of Stoicism must in some way redound to support said character² and thus the philosophy asserts what ought to be positively valued. In contrast, the disciplines generally (pretend to) act as neutral inquirers into their given object of inquiry, and are thus hard pressed to assert positive value beyond appeals to statistical averages, means, and normal distributions. Hence when the statistical normal shifts, so does the discipline – as for psychology and therapeutics, I think a potential example (subject to a separate dedicated inquiry) of such a shift occurring could be that of the “sexual revolution”, as being sexually subdued used to be a sign of a good character, and being sexually expressive as a sign of psychological issues - but as things shifted, so did the language; and now we tend view those who attempt to subdue their sexuality as “repressed”, while those who’re expressive as “in touch” with themselves³.

When the social norms are a certain way, statistical deviations may then become the subject of psychology or therapeutics to “return” the statistical deviation to within the bulk of the normal distribution. However, when the broad social norms shifts, aspects which used to be statistical outliers may become normalized and thus not deemed subject to correction; and aspects which used to be accepted become subject to scrutiny⁴.

So, what direction does Stoicism provide? When I practiced Stoicism intensely all those years ago, it wasn’t apparent to me, particularly when one just focuses on the practical side to Stoicism like I did in the beginning (when I began studying Stoicism, the theoretical aspects went over my head, I’d only begin to comprehend them later on). But all of Stoicism is ultimately focused toward a single point: Virtue. The entire philosophy, built around the telos Zeno formulated to achieve eudaimonia, is predicated entirely on the practical realization of complete and ceaseless virtue, as Zeno concluded that only virtue could suffice to achieve said eudaimonia⁵. Thus all the constituent parts of Stoicism is formed to realize that in some capacity, however major or minor – therefore, even if one doesn’t carry the intent of virtue when applying the practical side of Stoicism, the parts will still tacitly direct one towards virtue, in theory shaping one’s character to be better whether one realizes it or not. Which is not to say that aspects of Stoicism can’t be abused in isolation, which is a particular risk when one tries to “adapt” a given facet of the philosophy for some other purpose, without keeping in mind that it ought to abet the realization of virtue⁶.

Now for the keen readers or aficionados of the Originary articulation of Stoicism I’m advancing, a paradox may be perceived. Because, as I also emphasized in my last article, virtue is contextually tied to the concrete scene and scenic stack, and thus tied to the culture and nomos that produced it – and consequently when the culture shifts, so does it affect what’ll end up be considered virtuous. Then why is this different than the means and averages⁷ that the discipline’s ground their justifications in? Because Stoicism will always point toward virtue as being the principal pursuit of the Stoic; what’s practically considered virtuous is inconsequential⁸. I.e. the disciplines ground themselves in the particular contents of the culture and nomos as it exists, whereas Stoicism acts on a meta-level that prepares its adherents for realizing virtue – however it may manifest itself, whatever it might require. An analogy to programming terms I’ve found apt, is that virtue is a pointer variable that points to a fixed variable but doesn’t inherently contain any values.

This principal advantage that Stoicism has in ceaselessly encouraging its adherents toward the excellency of ability and goodness of character that virtue demands, means that in practice the Stoic ought to always be(come) “well adjusted” according to whatever societal standard may reign for the day⁹. However, this doesn’t explain why Stoicism has gained the traction it has over the last couple of decades – what’s the contemporary salience that Stoicism addresses?

The salience of Stoicism

Intuitively, this is a very open-ended question with many plausible answers, most of which probably are right to some extent: Societal atomization, alienation, social media, etc. These are lines of inquiry that have been explored to varying degrees in the works of others, hence I won’t bother taking the discussion in those directions, other than acknowledging they also bear some degree of validity. Rather, I’ll focus the discussion on what I perceive is a major driver of Stoicism’s emergence (but not Stoicism exclusively) that I haven’t really seen brought up in the community: Societies of control.

In the 90’ies, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze argued that the sort of society (or societal structures) that French philosopher Michel Foucault detailed in his book “Discipline and Punish” had started to fade. Previously, the societal institutions (schools, prisons, military, factories and businesses, etc.) were tasked with disciplining and shaping the individual person. For example, a person would gain employment with an employer and said employer was tasked with “molding” the person into the kind of employee they needed – meaning that the individual was relatively unshaped and undisciplined prior to entering a given organization and institution, and the molding process would first commence when they became embedded within these structures.

In recent decades the expectations have shifted dramatically, and Deleuze already noticed this shift occurring in the 90’ies. What he observed was that the responsibility was being shifted unto the individual themselves. I.e. the individual was now tasked with shaping and disciplining themselves, so that they may “fit in” with the social structures they were looking to embed themselves within. And at present, this has become highly pervasive, as institutions and corporations have become exceedingly averse to train up new employees, and expecting that candidates for positions can manage more or less every system and duty prior to getting hired.

And it is in this shift that Stoicism has found resurgence in. Because Stoicism is a philosophy that can be practiced alone; and with all the pre-digested works that’ve been published in the last decade or two, it’s exceedingly trivial to gain more or less everything from the philosophy on one’s own. Hence it fits well within the expectation that one ought to discipline oneself, along with the emergence of a whole range of “self-help” literature that’s likewise emerged in the wake of this societal shift. And beyond Stoicism generally helping its practitioners become “well adjusted” within really any societal context (scenic stack), as pointed out earlier, Stoicism also fosters a great degree of agency as well. For example, by being able to withhold one’s assent, one’s able to change the final outcome rather than assenting and acting on one’s initial impulse – which alone provides a great extent of agency, rather than being a black box automaton that outputs predictable outcomes to given stimuli or impressions.

While it’s indeed possible to claim that Stoicism is thus “coopted” by zeitgeist of our time, this doesn’t mean that Stoicism couldn’t prove to become something more consequential and authentic. I think there’s a real possibility, given the right direction and initiative, that Stoic philosophy and ethos could go from being an instrument to these larger societal forces, to becoming a significant enough force on its own – and thus to some extent transform the broader society in turn. Those who’ve read my book will know that I attempt at scaling up Stoicism on a society-wide level, theorizing what a Stoic society would likely look like (kind of like Zeno’s own “Politeia”, though my approach is very different).

I theorize some different ways that this could transpire, however those who’ve read my book, are versed in Generative Anthropology, or even some of my prior articles will know that the final outcome must result in the founding idiom of Stoicism becoming central to the given social order. Because, as Generative Anthropology asserts, meaning hinges upon the idioms we use, and we always interpret events and happenings through idioms. For example, take the idiom “practice makes perfect”; this may ostensibly look like that’s just a factual statement, however if we were to scrutinize its propositional “truth value”, innumerable questions would pop up: How much practice? Just once, or for eternity? Is it just any practice? Or does it need to be specific forms of practice? Can perfection be reached? Hence idioms aren’t measured by their propositional truth value, but rather their lived performativity. For example, take someone that interprets and acts on the world through the idiom “practice makes perfect”, and contrast it with someone who interprets and acts on the world through the idiom “practice is self-subjugation” (just inventing something hyperbolic here) – we’d likely observe that the one who lives by the former to do better in life than the one who lives by the latter.

As cannot be repeated enough, Stoicism is wholly captured by the idiom “to live consistently with nature”, and this is the idiom that avowed Stoics (ought to) live by, with the assumptions that go into the idiom. And it’s this idiom that must become popularized and embedded within society’s idiomatic order – the more it’s affirmed and acted by, the more central it becomes within said ordering, and thus the greater influence it exerts (impresses itself) upon the rest of the idiomatic order. In theory, this should direct the social order towards greater excellency and goodness of character. Hence this centralization of the Stoic founding idiom is what must anthropologically happen – so that Stoicism may go from being “revived” by, and subject to, the idioms that dictate this need for self-disciplining, to reversing the relationship or at least becoming a force on its own.

Figure 1: Idiomatic order with the Stoic founding idiom at the center.

While this shouldn’t come as a surprise to the voracious student of Stoicism, let’s walk through why Stoicism is so good by understanding what it’s setting out to do.

Attainment

Stoicism is an ontologically eudaimonic philosophy, meaning that the fundamental assumption of Stoicism is to achieve what the Greeks called “eudaimonia”. In contrast, a philosophy like Epicureanism has a telos of “ataraxia”, which is what that philosophy aims to achieve. Eudaimonia is a concept that’s been translated in many ways, directly meaning “good (eu) spirits (daimon)”, in English the most common translation is probably as “happiness”, but “contentment”, “fulfilment”, “welfare”, among others, are also used to various extents – the translation I favor, however, is “flourishing”¹⁰. Why I’d argue is the flourishing is the better term to use, is that it seems the most encompassing of all the good things; happiness, fulfilment, contentment, welfare, and many more will implicitly result from achieving flourishing. And for routine readers of my work, keep in mind this is always what I implicitly assume when I speak of virtue and eudaimonia – but other Stoic scholars may have a marginally different conception in mind.

Now, eudaimonia is far from unique to Stoicism, with Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy being primary alternatives (and forebearers) – the key is how they propose to achieve it. All 3 philosophies that virtue is a key ingredient in achieving virtue; however where Aristotelian philosophy considers things like pleasure to also be needed to some extent, both Stoic and Platonic philosophy agree that only virtue is necessary for the attainment of eudaimonia, and that externals (matters or concerns external to virtue) are wholly irrelevant to human flourishing. How Stoicism achieves eudaimonia is best exemplified by Zeno himself: When asked by a man what the telos of life was, Zeno replied “to live consistently with nature” - this aphorism of how to achieve eudaimonia lays the foundation for all of Stoic philosophy, and is the most concise articulation of Stoicism in toto.

For the long explanation, read the article I keep linking to. For the short explanation: 1) the Stoics considered virtue to be the highest expression of human nature; 2) they surmised that one must be consequently and consistently virtuous to flourish (of which they considered “reason” to be the quintessential path to achieving such consistency); 3) one must be pragmatically able to live what Stoicism expounds, and thus the philosophy must adapt to what’s practically possible (i.e. lived reality is the final judge, not theoretical finesse). Notably, much of Stoic philosophy (at least the surviving bits) pertains to achieving consistency¹¹, meaning that the therapeutic aspect of Stoic philosophy were developed to achieve consistency in being virtuous.

The keen reader will notice that all of these therapeutic aspects were “just” in support of the second must important “part” of Stoicism, and that virtue is actually the critically important part (i.e. the principal pursuit of any Stoic). Thence let’s properly consider why virtue is the principal good by situating the profound integrity of the human flourishing that eudaimonia represents.

Virtue in theory

Virtue signifies the highest expression of excellency, meaning both in terms of competency of one’s ability as well as utterly well-intentioned goodness. In my last article I examined the hypothetical situation of someone drowning, and demonstrated how the virtuous action for any given person was dependent on their position and abilities, and thus what’s appropriate to do (i.e. virtuous) is different from person to person. The social scene I simulated was between that of a drowning person, someone feeble, and a lifeguard: The drowning person doesn’t have agency in the situation they find themselves in other than do their best to keep themselves alive, so in practice the path(s) of virtue come down to the feeble person and the lifeguard. The feeble person would not be appropriate to attempt a rescue themselves, as they’re liable to make the situation worse (doesn’t possess the competency or ability the situation demands); he ought rather to call for help, direct the attention of others where it’s needed, which most ideally is the lifeguard. And the lifeguard, who possessed the required competencies and abilities, is obliged to answer the call of duty and resolve the situation in an excellent manner - i.e. rescue the person, as letting them drown (or even contributing to their demise) wouldn’t result in the goodness of character that virtue demands.

Hence excellency doesn’t mean that the Stoic must be best at everything they set out to do, in any situation they’re in – rather, it’s a reflection of how their own position and capacity may best contribute to the scenic center. What I neglected to make explicit in my last article was how the virtuous paths for each actor on the given social scene are all (mimetically) functions of the actors that’re on the social scene. This is a given to those versed in Generative Anthropology, however on the social scene we “size up” and “measure” one another, each donating their attention to center and the center informing all the actors back what their duties are (I also explain this a bit differently in my last article).

Figure 2: The individual attention of actors joins together and becomes the collective intentionality of the center.

Hence on the scene where someone is drowning, the two actors with agency size each other up, estimating their own and the other actor’s capacity, in relation to their own and the other actor’s capacity – i.e. in the same oscillation that make human language and consciousness possible in the first place, as also explained in a prior article.

Figure 3: I see you see me see X.

The Classical articulation of Stoicism has a conception of virtue that mirrors that of Platonic metaphysics – i.e. as ideal forms which are exist in a medium or plane that’s separate from humans, and humans are essentially doomed forever attempting to replicate these ideal forms in inferior replications, even if they’re pursuing the ever-perfectioning of their replicas. In contrast, the Originary articulation of Stoicism that I put forward has been articulated through the framework that Generative Anthropology provides, and thus defers to the scenic arrangement it imposes – this shouldn’t be read as drawbacks, as those who’ve read my book will know, I consider it vastly superior; and as my work (hopefully) demonstrates, it fits and complements Stoicism very well.

In the Originary articulation of Stoicism, virtue is grounded on the specific scene, within the scenic stack – and I identify it as the unique intersection between morality and ethics. What follows is that virtue isn’t something apart from the human or the social scene, but a product of the social scene, and thus constituted through the mimesis of all the actors attending to the scene and its center. Or to put it plainly: Humans create virtue. Just not in the sense that we can individually dictate what virtue is, but rather it’s the highest expression of the sum total (average) of the intention of all the actors paying attention (on the given social scene). The central critique that Generative Anthropology levies against Platonic metaphysics is that metaphysics imagines a space devoid of mimesis, which Generative Anthropology asserts is not possible – and thus virtue must too be a product of mimesis. The resulting difference between these two conceptions of virtue is that Originary conception is practically much more attainable, whereas the metaphysical conception is barely attainable (if at all) – though I’d argue no less demanding.

Lastly, I want to mention something that I brought up in my last article, but think bears re-emphasizing: Virtue is not something inside of you. You alone are responsible for your own virtue – but as example of the drowning person also showcases, it’s something that’s acted out in the social context of the given scene. Because humans are able to deliberately direct mimesis due to our unique 3^rd order attentionality and are constantly imitating, and impressing upon, each other, simultaneously modeling ourselves and others upon one another, what’s consequential to the center (to each other) is how the mimesis is expressed. Each time we take an action, we’ve favored giving assent to express a particular part of our internal model (psyche) over potential alternatives; and given our internal model is assembled through mimesis we’ve been exposed to that’s permanently impressed itself, the implication is that the only thing that could ever be relevant to the center (i.e. the scene and its social actors) is what mimesis one chooses to express – which is expressed through action. Hence, virtue is only ascertained, manifested, or realized through action – and the avowed Stoic may only be in accordance with the founding idiom, to live consistently with nature, and only truly realize the full potential of what Stoicism promises, if they can translate the fortitude they’ve gained from the therapeutic aspects of the philosophy into (sustained) action.

Thence to ensure that the reader is convinced of the benefits of virtue, let’s discuss what virtue and its consequences is supposed to practically amount to.

Virtue in practice

Within classical capitalist or free market theory, the basic idea is that through money and trade, people may pursue their own self-interest in ways that’s mutually beneficial, and thus achieve ends that – in Stoic terms – are simultaneously individually and collectively virtuous. While that’s a very interesting inquiry to pursue one day, I think this framing is very beneficial when it comes to flourishing. I.e. what does it mean on an individual level, and as a collective?

As mentioned, virtue lies at the unique intersection where one’s acting both in accordance with the moral symmetry of the particular scene one’s attending to, but also in accordance with the established ethic of scenic stack that the given scene is located within. Should one choose to act in favor of one’s own (perceived) benefit in a way that’s not virtuous, this means that to some extent, one’s not upholding either the ethical or moral terms. These may be minor things like social loafing or shirking one’s duty, practical actions like littering instead of properly disposing of waste; or they may be of major consequence like lying or stealing, practical actions like being corrupt and privatizing resources for one’s own gain instead of where they were intended.

When one’s defections are relatively minor, other actors typically prefer to avoid confrontation; however, that doesn’t mean that they can’t have real consequences. For example, if the group is preparing for some event, one’s slacking may result in the deadline not being met, or at least some of the deliveries not being met, diminishing the experience for everyone. This goes for both the other actors doing the work, who may be subject to working extra hard; as well as the people attending the event, who don’t receive as great an experience as they could have. The result is that overall flourishing (eudaimonia) is degraded, at least on a collective level. However on the individual level of the offender is where it gets interesting: Perhaps they were also to take part in the event, in which they directly hit themselves. Though let’s say they were only a worker, and as such not directly part of the outcome, would they just not have gotten away with it, and thus exclusively gained benefit? Perhaps, but let me contend why that’s actually fairly unlikely: 1) The other actors are liable to notice (or at least have a chance of doing so), of which the consequences may vary – perhaps they’ll just think less of the offender which might impact them socially, perhaps they’ll go to someone with authority and it’ll carry consequences; 2) when people realize the tasks that aren’t to schedule or quality, they’ll likely look at the people with the responsibility for them, which may also result in consequences; 3) it’ll reflect badly on everyone involved, and if they’re say a business, it might result in a hit to their reputation, and future opportunity costs which cannot be predicted; 4) either way, the offender can never know for certain if there’ll be consequences or not, so their consciousness will be aware and they’ll be under heightened alertness, resulting in them enjoying their slacking in the moment less, as well as persistently reduced peace of mind afterwards.

When one’s defections are relatively significant, all of these problems are exacerbated. Taking the example of appropriating funds in a corrupt manner, the intended consequences can be far reaching and potentially with deadly consequences. For example, if the funds were meant as aid to some people, this could directly entail them perishing; but perhaps they were just funds that were intended to employ some people, whose positions now might not be created; alternatively, the funds were going towards some research or product development, which now never gets made, and the world is now poorer (less flourishing than it could’ve potentially been) for it. As a concrete example, imagine you were responsible for overseeing the implementation of computer systems for a big organization back in the 80’ies; perhaps the intention was to place a huge order at the budding Apple or Microsoft – however if the funds are all appropriated before a commission is made (whether that’s your doing, or just diffusion through the whole system), this might result in the budding company going bankrupt, of which the historical ramifications would be immeasurable.

Just one instances can have far reaching consequences – however I want to illuminate how this can become widespread throughout an entire social order, and the effect it has. Just after the WW1, Argentina was the fourth richest country in the world per capita (and had been among the richest for a few decades already). Geographically, Argentina is blessed with lots of arable land without the need of irrigation and it’s so far away from everything else that noone’s going to bother them militarily, so it doesn’t need a large military force. In the 40’ies a leader named Juan Perón came to power, whose political “style” has since been the favored and goes by the name “Peronism”. In practice, this “style” favors appropriating funds and enriching those its politically favorable align with, and is broadly just concerned with political expediency. The result is widespread corruption, jobs and positions are awarded based on who you know, certain parts of the population are essentially punished in favor of others – with something nearing hyperinflation to follow, as well as making risk-taking and entrepreneurship dangerous, and creating a large dependent population (whether through direct handouts or government created jobs with little actual purpose). Ostensibly, this was the impetus for electing Milei Javier, to break with this system and hopefully implement something more robust – virtuous.

And thus the whole population is eventually impoverished, not flourishing, except a select few – however I’d even argue that these few are likely not really flourishing, anyway. Because now they have to do all sorts of things to maintain their ill-gotten position, power, wealth, status, etc. – e.g. they’ll have to manage the constellation of power centers that enable the continued viability of this vicious system, they’ll have to be alert to forces that might threaten the stability of the system, usurpers, external forces that can use the internal resentment to upset the political (and social) order, etc. Thus, I’d argue that ostensibly significant beneficiaries of vicious actions are seldomly able to really enjoy them – at least not to the same extent as if they were virtuously obtained – and thus aren’t actually experiencing the kind of flourishing that eudaimonia entails. And beyond that, there’s the opportunity costs of vicious behavior, of not putting in the effort, or the effort not going, to where they were expected, thus making even the benefactors worse off in the long-term. And that’s a point I really want to emphasize: Anything obtained through vicious means hardly ever comes without strings attached, without something that diminishes the pleasure of it – regardless of whether small or large. Straying from virtue always incurs some form of opportunity costs.

Alright now that we’ve established the harm that vice does, on an individual and collective level, what are the benefits of virtue? The simple answer is to reverse the above examples: By being an upstanding guy who pulls their load, even going above and beyond the call of duty, people will like you and be drawn towards you, unforeseen opportunities will come at you, you’ll gain a great reputation, you’ll do your part to insure things get done that’ll both benefit yourself and the wider community in both anticipated and unanticipated ways. But to zero in on the experience of it, recall a prior article where I speak of “emotions” being the mimetic elongations of instinctual “feelings” – like what Generative Anthropology calls “desires” (which are very similar to what Classical Stoic theory calls “desires”) are mimetic elongations of instinctual “appetites”, with the same being the case for feelings and emotions. Meaning that they’re mediated through the center, impressed upon us through its collective intentionality; anxiety, embarrassment (something e.g. dogs famously lack), but also “positive” emotions like love – and as I argue in my book, eudaimonia.

Figure 4: The human as two distinct layers. It’s more important to understand the concept of the human as two distinct layers – one instinctual, one mimetic – rather than the specific examples.

Because when one’s doing really good work, being both a good person socially as well as meaningfully and excellently contributing according to one’s abilities and competencies, that’ll make others like you and appreciate you¹² – all of which will be donated to the center by the other actors on the scene, and thus delegate a “warm” and even “blissful” emotion to you. Thus, eudaimonic flourishing both has to do with mundane “what goes around comes around” (or “karma”) as well as emotional “bliss”. Which is why I in my book eventually settled on the definition of eudaimonia as “to flourish with society”, signifying that it cannot be achieved when done at the expense of others, but that advancement must be collectively enjoyed¹³. And when one’s gone above and beyond, and are thus experiencing the collective appreciation of everyone on the scene that becomes eudaimonia, all the “negative” emotional like fear, anxiety, etc. are obviated (positive ones like “desire” as well) as, for the moment, there’s no more demands put upon you by the center (or requests on your behalf to the center).

On a collective level, when people broadly do the right things, acting excellently and with the best of intentions, it engenders trust in the community, and things may get done in an efficient manner. For example, if everyone made business deals in good faith and could be trusted to keep up their end of the bargain, all that would suffice is the shake of the hand – however in a society where virtue is lacking, there’s great incentive to defect (i.e. cheat) and enrich oneself at the expense of one’s interlocutors, which in turn creates a necessity for contracts, lawyers, courts, etc., greatly impeding societal efficiency - flourishing. Or e.g. there wouldn’t need to be all the security associated with flying on an airplane, as there’d be no security concerns. Even going much farther, there’d e.g. not be any reason for diplomas and certifications as one could trust that anyone who shows up for a job or task had the competencies to properly carry them out.

Imagine if everyone could be trusted to do the right thing: How little oversight and bureaucracy we’d need, there’d be no need for surveillance, police, etc. If you knew your doctor always had the best of intentions, there’d be little need for the type administrative overhead that insurance industry represents. Below is a chart that shows the growth in managerial staff compared to actual physicians:

First, imagine if just a percentage of the growth in administrative overhead had gone into actual physicians, doctors, nurses, surgeons, etc., how would the healthcare industry? Now imagine that relative split between the had stayed the same since let’s say 1980 – how much less overhead there’d be overall, how much cheaper would healthcare be? And then imagine that all those people that the administrative excess represents actually went into other areas of the economy and produced actual value.

This is why virtue and particularly ethics are important. Because if we don’t trust that people have the best intentions, we’ll need to erect structures, institutions, that’d be otherwise superfluous, and ostensibly are a hindrance to eudaimonia – which I interpret the above chart to be representative of. And this is why Stoicism is important, and where its true value is realized, as it holds the key to reversing one of the most damaging trends over the last decades, if not century: The unravelling of ethics. As I write in my book, sometimes part of the scenes and scenic stacks must be destroyed as they’re actively becoming vicious, and there’s certainly been a necessity for doing that over the past century, so I’m far from disputing all the social revolutions there’s occurred in that timespan. However, we’ve also come to scrutinize and level social norms, customs, rituals, and ethics (far) beyond what’s necessary¹⁴ – and this leveling has largely turned into apathy and despondence for the common person, meaning that defection rates from social norms are now very high. Because, as I write in my book, each social norm one observes and follows is technically a cost one takes upon one oneself, and that only works if largely everyone does it as well – which is what makes the societal commons work and productive. However, if defection rates become too high – and particularly when they aren’t enforced – then it undoes the incentive to keep taking that cost upon oneself, and instead defection becomes logical so as to privatize whatever gains one may still realize.

The unraveling of ethics has resulted in this scenic constellation we have now, where scenes are established just to monitor other scenes to ensure there’s sufficient compliance, that people aren’t acting too much in ways that threaten the monitored scene and scenic stack (i.e. all the administrative staff, at the expense of those actually creating value). However, this still relies on those doing the monitoring being guided by an ethos – otherwise who’s to say that they aren’t just going to use their position of power to extract value from the scene(s) they’re ostensibly meant to be shepherding? As I also remark in my book, no structure will ever be airtight, and there’ll always be room and need for individual judgment – which is where ethics is needed, to ensure that the imperative gap is bridged in a virtuous manner, and not in a self-serving manner.

Ethics is the foundation of any social order, prior to any structure and institution, and thus the endeavor with greatest return on investment is to instill and enforce and ethos in its members. The members will act in alignment with the ethos that’s been encultured, sort of like an algorithm, where they’ll intuitively know when to limit themselves and refrain from appropriation in some respects, and then know when and how to act on individual initiative in other respects. There’s isn’t any other way that’s more efficient than at the level of ethos itself, because it means that people will act appropriately of their own volition – and due to mimesis, it’s even self-correcting (as long as the ethos is pervasive enough). And when everyone in the social order understands what’s expected of them on an ethical level – and when everyone trust that everyone else understands what’s expected of them – that’s when social interactions can become truly efficient, and thus where individual and collective flourishing reaches its apex.

Which is why I opened this section by contrasting it to classical capitalist or free market theory, as I found the simultaneous distinction and alignment between individual and collective interest apt. For the individual Stoic the culmination of all their efforts is realized when they’ve cultivated a convicition to act virtuously of their own volition, and able to consistently do so, representing the best (eudaimonic) life that can be lived on an individual level. However, the full potential of Stoicism is realized when social actors wish and strive to be virtuous on a collective level – that’s when mountains can be moved, and real flourishing be attained.

Realizing the true value

As I mentioned in the theoretical section, virtue is grounded in the scenic stack because ethics is the red thread that runs through the whole stack. Ethics is the sum of the established moral symmetries within each of the individual scenes within the stack, however ethics becomes more than the sum of its parts as it insures the stability, and thus viability, of the whole stack. A scene in the middle of the stack both have to be in alignment with the more foundational stacks below, meaning that they cannot do anything that’d “harm” the more foundational stacks; but they also have to provide their own foundation for the stacks above, and thus cannot just wildly change it’s established symmetry from one moment to the next, as that sort of volatility would threaten to destabilize the scenes above – in my last article I used the image of a jenga tower. The more stable a scenic stack is, the “higher” it can be built up, meaning that the more complex and advanced it becomes – and this is how both social progress is made, but technological progress also relies on social organization to even be possible to invent and utilize in the first place.

Figure 5: Scenic stack with ethicality as a vertical axis running through the entire stack of scenes, and morality as a horizontal axis only concerning itself with the symmetry within a given scene.

It’s this unravelling that I perceive happening as ethics are coming apart, and has already happened in parts of the social order. And it’s where I perceive Stoicism’s true potential lies, as it’s an ethos that relentlessly pursues virtue, and thus it cannot tolerate this careless unravelling of ethics. In my book I develop a bespoke pedagogy for Stoicism that I named “virtuous infiltration” and I think the performativity of that pedagogy is really showcased here: Because the first step is to stem the tide that unravels ethics, whence Stoics within every discipline and scenic stack is needed, so that they may wisely and courageously prevent the ethics that’s within their purview from being unraveled. The second step would be to heal and recover what’s still able to, and from there to do the dirty work stacking the scenic stacks to achieve an evermore excellent and flourishing society.

The next question then becomes: How do we get Stoics into every societal domain? As this whole article started out with, therapeutics has been the main draw of Stoicism in its contemporary resurgence – which I’m not trying to detract from, I think it’s a very good development, and obviously the therapeutic aspects are designed such that the adept Stoic won’t be hindered from, or persuaded against, the pursuit of virtue. But in terms of therapeutics, Stoicism is a vaccine – to the social order, it’s the cure. I.e. it holds an order of magnitude more potential in terms of transforming the social forces that our social order is subject to – which is why I laid out earlier how Stoicism is currently subordinate to larger social forces that instrumentally make use of it, but has the potential to become a social force in its own right. But for that to happen, there needs to be a pipeline that convinces people to go from just enjoying the beneficial aspects that Stoicism offers in terms of “mental health” to hold a conviction of virtue as the highest good – which I hope this article sufficiently demonstrates why one should care about, Stoic or not.

As I’ve mentioned before, I had the privilege of meeting StoicDan a few months prior to his tragic passing. He told me that he was working making Stoic “packages” for different professions, and he gave me the example of adapting Stoicism for the purposes of a nurse or doctor. I consider this another vector to simultaneously gain more attraction to Stoicism (i.e. therapeutics currently being the main attraction) and create the needed domain products with which the local Stoics may utilize to implement virtue and achieve eudaimonia within their given domain. E.g. what does it mean to be a Stoic entrepreneur or businessman? Such a product could both attract as it’d (ideally) contain a lot of salient advice and wisdom needed anyway, and it’d lay out how to run a business in a virtuous and economically viable manner – and avowed Stoics would obviously believe that the business that’s virtuous is also the most economically viable in the long-term.

When these packages are made, pipelines established, and scenic stacks successfully infiltrated, so that the tide of unravelling is reversed and we may begin stacking our scenes ever higher, that’s when Stoicism’s true potential has been realized.

Preempting critique

For good measure, I’ll anticipate what may seem like a paradox, that the keen reader may have noticed. Because if virtue is constituted within the individual scene, and each social order generates their own sort of virtue, then why couldn’t societies where virtue is notably absent, like the example of Argentina used previously, be considered virtuous in their own sense? Well, that’s because they must engage in immoral acts like lying, in order to make their system function. Those who’ve read my book will know that anything that anything that interferes with the scenic symmetry constitutes immorality – and in an analogy I ended up deleting from my book was to the strong and weak nuclear forces, where ethicality is like the weak nuclear forces and morality is like the strong nuclear forces (an analogy I still find pretty apt). For example, a regime may present themselves as investing in a certain sector of the economy, but really the money is just being paid out to their cronies or just money laundered through various organizations and institutions. Note however that when evaluating more than one scene (i.e. scenic stacks) it’s not a binary outcome whether the whole things is either virtuous or vicious – as I emphasize in my book, it’s an unquantifiable gradient, and different societies, organizations, institutions, etc. will fall somewhere along the gradient. Obviously, Stoicism demands that the Stoic works to push the scenic stacks they operate within towards virtue – and therefore it’s important to keep in mind that for any form of scenic stacking, any social organization, to remain cohesive, there must be some degree of virtue holding it together.

Figure 6: Virtue as a gradient when evaluated on a collective level.

1. Only to a very minor extent, for example in the parts of the philosophy appertaining to fatedness, like coming to appreciate what’s happened in ones life has brought one to where one currently is.

2. Ethos means “character”, and thus ethics is about embodying or acting according to a character.

3. Obviously all of this are sweeping generalizations.

4. Averaging things out being a norm itself.

5. In contrast to other philosophers, like Aristotle, who considered virtue necessary, but not alone sufficient, to achieve eudaimonia.

6. An example of this might be what’s come to be known as “Silicon Valley Stoicism”.

7. Averaging things out itself being a norm.

8. Obviously this is a bit hyperbolic, Stoicism does carry with it some precepts about which manifestations of virtue that the Stoic ought to favor.

9. In terms of ethics.

10. Realistically, this is probably the second most popular translation anyway.

11. But are only so effective and revered because of the continuous refinement that the demand for practicality placed upon their theories, techniques, and advice.

12. A slight simplification, as I also detail in my book, there’s instances where one’s virtuous behavior may result in resentment in others.

13. Even if not everyone are necessarily advancing at the same pace.

14. And are far too lackadaisical about erecting new ones in their place.