Massimo Pigliucci

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?

So he was one of the so-called five good emperors.

Marcos had a difficult time as an emperor.

He did not want to be an emperor.

He was really not that interested.

In the meditations, at some point, he says, you can live a good life anywhere.

If you have to be in a palace, then you can have a good life even in a palace, which tells you that he wasn't exactly.

And he did not have an easy reign, unlike the others, especially his predecessor, Antoninus Pius.

Because during Marcus's reign, a number of things happened.