Massimo Pigliucci

And one of the things that Epictetus says at the beginning of the discourses is that

So you want to make money.

He's talking to some of his friends.

You want to make money or you want me to make money so that I can help you.

Well, that's all fine.

But what am I going to do with that money?

The money itself isn't going to tell me.

What's going to tell me is my faculty of judgment.

And Epictetus uses this to make the general stoic point that so-called externals, things like money or health even or reputation,

are not the fundamental thing.

They're not crucial because it all depends on how you use them.

You can be very rich and do a lot of damage.

Or you may be very poor and actually use your resources very wisely.

To Epictetus and Marcus, it's not fame or money or wealth or whatever it is per se.

It's how you use them that makes a difference.

And that struck me as another fundamental insight from Stoicism that why are you now focusing on improving your decision-making ability and you keep focusing instead on more or less mindlessly follow what society at large tells you?

You're trying to become...

more wealthy, more famous, and so on and so forth.

Hold on.

What are you going to do with all that stuff once you have it?