Massimo Pigliucci

Now, Stoics would say that it is important to be socially and politically active.

Why?

Well, that's because it's one of your duties as a member of the cosmopolis, as a member of the broader family of humanity.

You don't live your life just on your own.

You are a part of a society and you need to do your bit in order to make society better.

I've been aware of Stoic philosophy for years.

And by the time I retired, I felt I'd mastered a hybrid Zen Stoic style of coping with life.

But the past 10 years have removed the wool from my eyes.

Life today as a human is not for the faint of heart.

The thought of my children barely surviving in a Mad Max world with billions of desperate young refugees, sea level rise, heat dome, famine, plague, and war refugees roaming the world made my inner stoic curl up in the fetal position and cry.

But thanks to your July 21st podcast, I was able to cross the line from being unable to muster my inner stoic to facing it directly towards the oncoming storm.

So, yes, it can be useful.

However...

Again, the fundamental principle here is regain your agency, reclaim your agency.

And there is really not much I can do directly to affect things like climate change or international politics and so on and so forth.

But that doesn't mean there is nothing I can do.

There is a number of things that activists can and, in fact, do carry out that can make a difference.

So the enormity of the problem is never an excuse for not acting.

So there's always something you can do.

And the important thing is to do it, of course, with, again, the usual caveat.