I haven't written much this month simply because I don't find myself interested in thinking and writing lately. There is simply not much of a reason for me to write. Writing for me has historically been about figuring out a complex situation so that I can make sense of it and navigate it better, and right now I simply don't have many obvious problems in my life that require thinking. I want to get better at drawing, and there have been a bunch of factors that have revealed my poor abilities to regulate and work under pressure, but those are not intellectual roadblocks, so I don't feel the need to write about any of this.
During the Summer I had some free time and wanted to put it towards writing a more fleshed out philosophy that could make sense of the society we live in, and the root of much of our problems (individual and collective). But I recognize two important things now, which is firstly that most of the ideas are found in Darren Allen's writing, most specifically his books, which articulate the general ideas I have much better than I can give voice to them. And secondly that I do not have any audience whatsoever, and that even if I did, no one is convinced by mere writing. What's the point of tediously writing all my points, paragraph by paragraph, if I understand the important parts already? Embodying them is much more important than articulating them to an imaginary audience. 1 Just because my philosophy hasn't been spelled out in a series of essays, or in a book, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, just like a mushroom can exist as only its mycelial network, without the visible part that we typically call 'mushroom'.
The biggest mistake I made in my first job, attitude-wise, was to treat it as a temporary phase of my life which was ultimately inconsequential, a way to earn money so that I could eventually do the thing I really wanted to. In some sense this was valuable, because my job was very uninteresting and I could never do it long-term, and having something beyond it to aim for means that I didn't age into a stifling job. The problem is that it led me to constantly dissociate and refuse to settle into the situation that was in front of me, and considering that I worked there for three and a half years, I would say it was a bad mindset to have for such a long (relatively speaking) period of time.
Such an approach leads one to constantly dissociate through life because what is in front of them isn't engaging or meaningful enough. The move isn't to gaslight oneself into enjoying whatever is happening, because office jobs are not particularly high on Eros energy, but it's to find whatever way to accept the current situation without needlessly resisting it.
I have recently finished reading 'Crime and Punishment' by Dostoevsky, and I found it to be a very compelling depiction of acceptance of suffering. I don't think there is anything beautiful or ennobling about suffering in and of itself, but when we try to escape from it at all costs, we lose something deeply important about being human. 2
Speaking of 'toughing it out', Stoicism is an important worldview that seems to consistently show up in the declining phase of a society, and so in our times you can fairly easily find people who preach its virtues. I think there is much to learn from it, but like everything, it has its limitations which are worth examining.
One notable problem with Stoicism, especially its modern incarnation, is that it attracts people who are incredibly boring and unadventurous, meaning that they adopt it in order to be good at doing tasks that are tedious and quite meaningless. Stoicism without a lust for life isn't very different from trying to be a more efficient machine amidst an alienating machine world: better at handling stress 3, being more efficient with one's energy, but ultimately resigned to the lifeless world that one inhabits. This is probably why Stoicism (and Western Buddhism) is so popular in the middle class today, because it allows them to deal with their anxiety and their tendency to overthink while remaining in the confines of their comfortable life.
Calling upon one's passion on the other hand might confront one to realize just how utterly uninterested in their fellow people, their society and culture, their surroundings (particularly nature), or generally anything one is, which is very confronting, but on the other hand giving a few tricks to manage one's problems doesn't inconvenience the reader (and the writer who has to embody what he preaches), and so it is very reassuring.
We live in a world of merely reassuring preachers and writers, which is why every worldview, especially if it presents itself as radical and upsetting to the status quo, should be viewed with suspicion. It is rarely radical change, the kind that starts in one's personal life and in one's consciousness, which is called upon, but rather merely clever jabs at other people. Even to the extent that people ask one another to take responsibility, there is usually a bedrock of acceptance upon which it is founded, something like: "Yeah you need to change your life, which you can do by following these methods and thinking through these concepts, do not under any circumstance examine the entirety of your life, just add those methods and ideas in your life like how you download apps onto your phone".
Stoicism, at least the way we understand it today 4, has its value, but by itself it leaves one lopsided. It is like a shield that we can call upon when we cannot do anything about the situation at hand, so that the most courageous thing to do is to accept it. But not every situation is as such, and living one's entire life in this way misses both the situations where we can actively shape our life, as well as the situations where there is no problem to face or to conquer to begin with, only beautiful moments to enjoy. Wisdom is about living in a way that is apt to the situation, and as such, the man who only has the shield of (modern) Stoicism ends up missing all the goodness from Life which requires a total participation in the now, rather than a merely distant acceptance of its painful and unpleasant parts.
What do modern stoics have to say about making love, about the astounding beauty of all the things around us we take for granted, such as the flight of the birds, or the clouds, or the rhythmic sway of a tree? Hardly anything. Modern Stoicism appeals to managers who are ultimately not interested in life, merely in managing their own life more efficiently, which is why they tend to be so boring, and it also appeals to people who live in a tiny box, afraid of ever stepping out of line, and who then have to compensate by making the smallest of tasks seem like an arduous conquest to fight for. The acceptance and resilience of Stoicism will prove to be invaluable in the coming decades, as the decline of our modern society continues, but a man who lives his entire life crouched behind his shield can hardly be said to live at all, for he cannot fight and he cannot see, he can only resist. Thus is the fate of the modern Stoic, someone who endures life rather than lives it.
1 This is especially important for me to point out because I have seen just how much the orientation towards pleasing an audience has an impact on what is made, creatively speaking. More in a standalone essay soon hopefully.
2 I feel the same way about death. I wouldn't say that death in and of itself is good, but people who constantly worry and try to escape from it are running away from something important. Death is a teacher and its lesson is ultimately love, and those who do not want to listen to it are unlikely to learn the lesson in any form of depth.
3 A word which originally only referred to general hardship or physical pressure, and then was used in physics to describe the strain on a physical object, and only in the 20th century did it start being used as a psychological term, the usage we find today.
4 The version we have today of Stoicism is that of a hyper-rational person who isn't swayed by anything that they can't control and never relinquish their personal sovereignty, even in the face of death. This misses the fact that Stoicism, like any long-standing tradition, has its fair share of myths, which like any great myths, are grounded in an unknowable, mysterious Reality, which is why they did not disavow Greek mythology, and why they might talk about a 'primordial fire' as the active force in the Universe, or about the 'soul of the World', concepts which would immediately rank you in the camp of the irrationals by our modern rationalists.
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2026-10-28