Donald Robertson
The Globe and Mail
Originally published April 19, 2019
Recently, a bartender in Nova Scotia showed me a quote from the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius tattooed on his forearm. “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be,” it said, “just be one.”
We live in an age when social media bombards everyone, especially the young, with advice about every aspect of their lives. Stoic philosophy, of which Marcus Aurelius was history’s most famous proponent, taught its followers not to waste time on diversions that don’t actually improve their character.
In recent decades, Stoicism has been experiencing a resurgence in popularity, especially among millennials. There has been a spate of popular self-help books that helped to spread the word. One of the best known is Ryan Holiday and Steven Hanselman’s The Daily Stoic, which introduced a whole new generation to the concept of philosophy, based on the classics, as a way of life. It has fuelled interest among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. So has endorsement from self-improvement guru Tim Ferriss who describes Stoicism as the “ideal operating system for thriving in high-stress environments.”
Why should the thoughts of a Roman emperor who died nearly 2,000 years ago seem particularly relevant today, though? What’s driving this rebirth of Stoicism?
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