Ten thoughts about Stoicism:
Don't just read about approaches to philosophy and try to imitate them. Instead, find a philosophy that feels true and rational to you, try to learn about it and make it a personal guide for your actions and your life.
People will try to misrepresent classical philosophy or make you believe that if you listen to their interpretation you'll turn out to be a much better person.
Read history written for the general public. Even if you are not interested in the personalities and events of the times, these books will show you how people thought about themselves and their place in the world.
Reality is intertwined: you can't have an independent moral system or even a theory about politics outside a general paradigm about the nature of reality.
By distancing ourselves from nature, from the rest of living beings, human beings are "mad". But why do we tolerate so much irrationality in our lives and societies? We accept suffering and death without thinking.
If you find philosophy appealing, if you seriously seek wisdom, a moment may come when you will read situations in your life as a challenge to the rational principles you are willing to accept and preserve. We could call such a moment a moment of anarchy.
European and American thought has become divorced from the body, from the senses and from the world. It looks very rational and informed but it sometimes contradicts itself and lacks common sense.
In ancient philosophy and in other cultures, however, this separation of reason and the senses was never made. The ultimate implications of this turn are more radical than they might seem at first.
First Stoics talked about reason as a "god" within. They were crazy. But if you try to see things with a mind that's free from Judea-Christian logic, seeing reasons as consequences of natural logic, then philosophy as you thought you knew it falls apart.
Stoicism can be another way of personal and social emancipation: Stoicism can be another way of personal and social emancipation: it's a philosophy for freedom and for a worthiness not determined by institutions.
