Massimo Pigliucci

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Amazing.

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Yes, I do hear that a lot, which is kind of ironic because Mr. Spock is actually one of my favorite fictional characters.

But on the other hand, I wouldn't suggest any actual human being to try to live as Spock does.

So it puts me in an odd position of having to defend both Spock and stoicism, which requires some mental gymnastics.

I think where it comes from is over time, over centuries, the words that identify people

several of the major Greco-Roman philosophies, not just Stoicism, but also Epicureanism, skepticism, and cynicism, they kind of degenerated in normal parlance, in common parlance, to mean something that is rooted distantly in the original, but it's actually quite distorted.

For instance, think about Epicureanism, right?

If today I say, oh, I'm an Epicurean, people immediately start thinking about sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

But that was definitely not the way Epicurus thought we would live our life, we should live our life.

He thought that the most important thing was to stay away from pain, physical and mental, if possible, and then to pursue very mild pleasures, you know, friendship, a simple meal, that sort of stuff.

Same thing with Stoicism.

Today, it often means a stiff upper lip attitude associated usually with the stereotype of British men and things like that, suppression of emotion, hence the Spock idea.

Now, those are connected vaguely to something real about Stoicism.

Stoicism is, in fact, about endurance in part.