Seneca used the epistolary form in the works we now know as “Letters from a Stoic.” In his missives to the Roman politician Lucilius, he advises his friend about self-mastery, inspired reasoning, the value of courage and friendship, and consideration of Stoic virtues. He also includes some ungenerous sniping at their mutual friends and acquaintances, which I regret to say is a feature of my letters too. Even though these letters were sent to another person, they were also directed at Seneca himself, a way for him to consider his own values and ideas–as are my letters.

Epictetus’s thoughts are collected in the Discourses and in the Enchiridion, or “Handbook.” As far as we know Epictetus wrote nothing down, but his student Arrian made notes on the lectures of his great teacher. His journaling is the only source for Epictetus’ ideas–so think carefully about what you write down! 20 centuries from now, some student of life might be flipping through your diary for inspiration. Try to include some crude jokes to lighten the mood for your future students; take inspiration from the wild man Diogenes the Cynic, whose no doubt scabrous writings have sadly not survived to brighten my day.

We’ve all read “The Diary of Anne Frank,” in which she writes, “Paper is more patient than man.” Don’t be afraid to express yourself in writing no matter what the subject, even if it seems banal. Not everything Marcus wrote was a timeless gem either (though I’m told everything I write is). Why not start journaling for yourself–today? Writing in a journal is a gift to your future self. It is an opportunity to commit to your goals, monitor your progress, and spend time alone with your thoughts.

One of the most ardent promoters of journaling in the modern age is Julia Cameron. In her book “The Artist’s Way” she encourages artists and writers to embrace the habit of writing “The Morning Pages.” She suggests that we write down what is floating around in our brain and get it on paper and do this exercise until we have covered three full pages. Cameron believes the most vital tool for creativity is the daily ritual of writing from your stream of consciousness for twenty minutes each morning. If the idea of journaling for the rest of your life seems daunting, why not start with ’s 90-day course in “How To Journal Like A Stoic”?

There is no wrong way to journal. I write mine as I enjoy the quiet moments in the morning, before the day barges in on me. I sit in a sunny corner and write lists, goals, ideas and fragments of quotes I wish to remember. I write in several notebooks at once and there are days when I write my morning pages in the evening. Journaling helps me clarify my thoughts. I see patterns and track my objectives and goals. The most important thing is simply to get going. 1% of your day is about 15 minutes. Can you spare just 15 minutes to improve your life? As Epictetus asks, “How long are you going to wait to demand the best for yourself?” Let’s start today.

Jamie Greenberg is a writer/director whose current project is “Vex Voom In The 21st Century!,” a scripted narrative comedy podcast in the style of a 1930s radio cliff-hanger. His feature film “Future ’38,” an independent comedy starring Betty Gilpin, premiered at Slamdance, where it won the Beyond Feature Audience Award.

In addition to filmmaking, Greenberg has had an extensive television career, including writing on all 5 seasons of PBS’ acclaimed “Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?” He co-created and produced its sister show “Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?,” for which he received two Emmy Award nominations.

Greenberg also hosted the Object Of The Week series for History Channel Online, in which he examined and explained incredible historical treasures at the Library Of Congress.

In his spare time he enjoys writing about himself in the third person.

1. You’re a writer, performer, director, and editor. What’s the hardest role for you, and why?

I often do all four jobs on a given project and for me, acting and directing are highly social and spiked with adrenaline (and a little bit of fear). There’s a sense of excitement, even danger, to being on a busy set with all eyes on you. But the thrill of filming is bookended by the writing and editing phases, which, are very long and solitary and often pretty dreary. I guess I find writing the hardest, particularly on a long-form project like a feature film (or my current project, a 26-episode scripted narrative podcast). You could spend years writing a project, and you’re never entirely sure you’re going in the right direction. I liken it to walking for miles and miles in the dark, just hoping you’re headed the right way.

2. What’s the funniest thing in the world to you--book, movie, TV show, what have you--and why?

Without question, the funniest thing ever is the character name “Alotta Fagina” in the first Austin Powers film. It is likely the summit of human endeavor. The humor works on so many axes (meaning the plural of axis, not the chopping thing):

- It is, of course, a parody of the actual James Bond character “Pussy Galore. “

- It manages to be precisely 3% more dopey and absurd than the original.

- Like most parody it embodies the thing it is critiquing: while pointing up how crass and smutty Pussy Galore” is, it is itself very crass and smutty.

- It does manage to sound (ish) like a name, far more than “Pussy Galore”.”

- IT’S FUNNY.

3. There are many theories about humor and what makes people laugh. What’s yours?

I think (having considered this for the first time 7 seconds ago) that there are two things that make humor work: surprise or recognition. We laugh because it’s pleasurable to be surprised (X showed up without pants!) or because it’s pleasurable to recognize something (I didn’t realize X sounds like that… but he really does!). Oh wait the second option also relies on surprise. Okay there’s one thing that makes humor work..

4. Is there a philosophy that underlies your work, or your approach to life in general?

There is a grade of oil called LIGHT SWEET CRUDE. I believe, or at least hope, these three words characterize my approach to humor.

5. What’s your favorite joke that just fell completely flat?

In “Stags,” my first feature film, a supporting character originally had a B-story in which he works for MTV (which I hilariously disguised as “EMPTV”). I actually worked at MTV for years and thus concocted what I thought was a hilarious and trenchant and subversive parody of the network and its shows and its people. (Not including Duff! We never worked together.) I loved all the EMPTV stuff in the script! But despite its incandescent brilliance, the entire subplot was cut in edit… not precisely because it fell flat, but because it was indulgent and extraneous to the main plot. A very bitter lesson.

Bonus question: What should we have asked you, and what's the answer?

Q: Did you ever toss an orange to LL Cool J?

A: OMG, I did actually!

1. What’s the biggest creative challenge you face as a television executive?

Having started on the production side as a writer and producer, it’s always challenging to manage the clash of business reality in a creative context. I remember when I first became an executive how shocked I was that everyone focused so much on ratings and revenue, with far less regard for the all of the creative effort that went into making something. Luckily, I work for one of the only media companies run by a former producer (as were his two predecessors), so there is an appreciation for how the sausage is made. But ultimately, financial considerations drive all companies and media is no exception. I guess that’s why they call it ‘show business’ and not ‘show art.’

2. What’s the most rewarding or fulfilling experience you’ve had in the business?

For three glorious years, I was head writer and then senior producer on a series called This Week in History, which was a 60 Minutes-style magazine show for the History Channel. As a former graduate student and history buff, I loved the subject matter and the endless variety of stories And I also got to collaborate with an amazing group of smart and creative people, some of whom became good friends. I said to my wife then and now, they wouldn’t have had to pay me to do that job. But I’m glad they did.

3. Do you have a philosophy or set of principles that guides you as an executive?

Always appreciate and respect your audience and push for excellence no matter the genre or price point. Some executives bring an elitist view to the content they make or look down on the audience. I believe an executive’s job is to bring out the best and most exciting creative version of whatever they are overseeing, be it Masterpiece Theater or professional wrestling.

4. What’s your dream show that never got made, or hasn’t yet been made?

Until recently I would’ve said a massive documentary on WWII as nothing of scale had been done since The World at War with Laurence Olivier in 1973. We just launched WWII with Tom Hanks, a 20-hour documentary series, which has been years in the making. In general, I’m fairly critical of our work, but the team did an incredible job with this one. A dream fulfilled with scary timeliness.

5. What was your most awkward celebrity encounter?

I was friendly with the brother of a celebrity. We dined one night and the next day, I randomly bumped into his sister on a set, having never met her. When I cheerfully introduced myself and mentioned the happy coincidence of having just dined with her brother, she started screaming at me about what an asshole he was, strongly implying that any friend of his must be one too. And this was in front of a set full of people.

Bonus question: What should we have asked you, and what’s the answer?

“What’s the strangest question you’ve been asked by a business person about TV?”

How come you don’t just pick the hit shows? Some version of that question has been asked of me on several occasions.

There’s still time to live immediately by joining , , and us at the Stoic Arts Conference on Saturday, April 25 in Boston! Hope to see you there, livin’ immediately!

Today, I chose Musonius Rufus. The passage I landed on was this:

“Perhaps someone may say that courage is a virtue appropriate to men only. That is not so. For a woman too of the right sort must have courage and be wholly free of cowardice, so that she will neither be swayed by hardships nor by fear.”

I hope I’m a woman of the right sort!

One fine fall day I was strolling down our road in the hills near our farm, returning home from a long walk. It was a beautiful day and the gentle pace in nature was helping me get over a pain flare. A car approached me from the opposite direction, and came to a stop. “There’s a bear down there, but don’t worry, it’s only a cub,” the driver said. I thanked him and walked on, being sure to make noise as I went, so as not to startle the young bear with my looming presence.

A couple hundred yards down the road, I heard rustling in the forest on my right and I suddenly realized with great clarity that I didn’t want to encounter a bear of any age or size. Just as I was having my epiphany, the cub emerged from the trees about 20 feet away. He looked plenty big enough to me--not full grown, but more of a yearling than a cute little Teddy cub. Roughly a young Danny DeVito sized bear.

I had studied up on what to do, as I’d always known there was a chance that I might encounter one up close. I made myself “big” by raising my arms over my head. I didn’t look the cub in the eyes. I spoke in a calm and even tone. I don’t remember what exactly I said but it must have greatly angered him, because he let out a bowel-evacuatingly scary growl and charged me. He didn’t bite or claw me, but he did ram me with his shoulder as he went by, before turning and running back into the woods.

The blow caused me to stagger back a few steps, and I was lucky to stay on my feet, as I’m not very steady to begin with. I didn’t know what to do. At this point I heard a crashing noise in the forest to my left, and I recalled that a bear cub is never far from its mother. I was now in the proverbial worst place in the woods—between a mother bear and her cub.

I couldn’t see the mama yet, but I knew enough not to turn and leg it, because the bears could move faster than me, and there was no elderly person or small child nearby for me to outrun. I moved away slowly, still babbling nonsense in what I hoped was a calm tone. I took careful steps backward, praying that I wouldn’t trip and fall.

The mama bear came charging out of the forest and ran across the road and into the woods where the cub had gone. I paused for a bit, wondering if it was safe to reverse course and head home. The mama bear had other ideas. She came back out of the woods and began patrolling back and forth, blocking my way. She was big, maybe 200 pounds.

I tried to call for help, but I had no cell service. I had no choice but to pace and wait for rescue. I have no sense of smell, but I knew that when the small bear charged me, he left his scent on my clothing. I knew the mama could smell it too, and identify me as the bipedal bear-botherer.

Before very long I heard a car approaching and when it came around the bend I waved it down. The driver came to a stop in the middle of the road and opened the passenger window a couple inches. “There’s a bear down there, her cub charged at me, can you give me a ride?” I blurted. And the woman said, “I don’t know you.” It was just my luck that at this moment the mama bear had retreated into the woods.

I pleaded with the woman that this was a matter of safety. I was nearly in tears. “I live at the farm right down the road!” “Well, I’ll drive along next to you while you walk.” This would have left me just as exposed to the vigilant mama bear. I’m a middle-aged broad with the muscle tone of a raw clam and I don’t think my appearance is intimidating, especially in yoga pants and ballet slippers.

I couldn’t force my way into her car. I told her, “Okay, go, I will find somebody who will help me.” I was weak in the knees, tears welling in my eyes, trembling with a confluence of emotions. I was angry and disappointed that she wouldn’t help a fellow human. I wasn’t asking for a kidney, I was asking to sit in the trunk of her car to get safely home. My house was in the direction she was going anyway! As this Bad Samaritan drove away, I reflected that if I did get mauled, at least she’d feel extremely guilty when she read my obituary.

For 20 nerve-racking minutes I watched the mama bear walking her beat, perhaps thinking of recipes. Finally another car came along and this time the driver was willing to give me a lift.

When I got back home and had the ability to sip a mug of tea without shaking, I thought about bravery. I didn’t think I’d been brave in facing down the bear cub and its mamma. I was stuck in the situation; I had no choice but to do my best. The woman who refused to let me in her car—she was a coward. She had a choice to make and she chose fear.

A great number of our choices are fear-based. There is a lot to fear and it’s easy to fall prey to the emotion. This has been a nerve-jangling century. It began with the 2000 election, followed by haunting horrors of 9/11, the ensuing wars, more terrorism, economic collapse, Ebola, SARS, bird flu, political jackassery, Zika, racial injustice, environmental crisis, COVID-19, and rule by a kakistocracy. We’ve had the pants scared off us on numerous occasions.

You don’t set out to be brave in the face of everything that’s hurled at you. It’s within everyone to be brave. Courage is not absence of fear, it’s acting in the face of fear. Each day brings risks, everything from slipping on a banana peel, to ripping a foghorn fart in a religious service, to getting pancaked by a meteor. You don’t quiver in your room under the covers, though, you get up and go out in the world.

Every day, people walk around out in the open, even though falling blue ice from an airplane toilet could plummet 30,000 feet and turn them into a stinky flattened corpse. We face up to the dangers, and perhaps even laugh at them. As Seneca said, “Sometimes just to live is an act of bravery.”

Since we all have this resource of courage, why don’t we celebrate it? We tend to focus more on our negative thoughts, as if somehow our fears and anxieties are more important than kindness and generosity. Our finer qualities like resilience and bravery, these should be our valued virtues. You can become braver by changing your way of thinking. Honor and nurture your courage. Shift your attention from worry to anticipation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” You have the power to make that assessment.

In order to experience tranquility and calm in the world, we need to have it in our community, our home, and first of all in our minds. In my family, we’ve learned how to stay calm and in control from being on the water.

My husband John rowed in college and raced internationally and continues to row at the Master’s Level. My son, Jack, is a high-level competitive collegiate rower and national champion. He’s won races around the US and the UK. He has hopes of making the 2028 Olympic team. (As for me, I enjoy floating on an inflatable raft in the pool on a sunny day.)

Jack and his teammates are so good because they practice. Two hours a day, six days a week, every week of the year. The season is ten races and they finish each in under six minutes. Hundreds of hours of practice for an hour of competition. He’s now training for the Henley Regatta in England and they’re practicing more intensely than ever. A morning row, then lifting, then another row, and then a 5K run.

Even with all this preparation, there’s a lot that can go wrong in a crew race, technically or physically. The wind, temperature and currents are unpredictable. The cheering of the crowd and the ringing of cowbells is distracting. “Catching a crab,” which means missing a stroke, can not only be painful, but can knock a boat out of the running. If the wind is too strong you can’t hear the coxswain coaching your team down the course. There are unforeseen obstacles: at a recent regatta one boat rammed into a goose. Another was hit by a wave and was swamped. Maybe you just ate a bad clam the night before the race and aren’t feeling tip-top. There’s a lot of literal and figurative turbulence.

This is why Jack and his teammates practice with such intensity and passion. When you’ve done it all before, reacting to anything unexpected will be second nature. As they train their bodies, they train their minds to stay calm.

Just as crew practice happens in a lower-key atmosphere than race day, I believe we should tend to our philosophy in quiet calm moments. That’s the only way you’ll be ready when chaos comes knocking.

Two years ago, Jack was set to race at Henley for the first time. His team was supposed to fly to London from New York. The flight was canceled, and they slept overnight on the floor in JFK airport. Finally they got on a flight for Manchester and then raced for a train to Henley. They arrived 39 minutes before their first race started, without any of their luggage. They rowed in the airplane clothes they had been wearing for three days–and won that qualifying heat. Jack and his teammates, now in their usual uniforms, went on to win the Reading Regatta and set a course record. They did not allow this turbulent and chaotic trip to derail them.

Rowing is a Stoic sport. Stoicism emphasizes self control and mastery of emotions. Rowing demands rigorous training, mastery of technique and the mental vigor to pursue excellence.

Marcus Aurelius wrote that “The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.” In Stoic wisdom, the dichotomy of control states that we can’t control what happens, we can only control how we respond. In rowing, what is in your control is your effort and training, your strength with each stroke and staying in rhythm with your boatmates. What is out of your control is the wind, the temperature, the currents in the river. You can’t control the competition, the traffic on the river, the noise from the spectators, or the wildlife that lives near the water. A calm mind gives the rower strength.

The boats are designed for speed and are easy to tip over. Disruption and panic can flip the boat. Rowers must learn to stay calm when things get tough. I think that practice is a form of premeditatio malorum, honing them on not just how to do the right things in an intense competition, but how to succeed when everything seems to be going wrong. As for me, cheering on the banks and banging on my cowbell, I know what could go wrong during a race, but I am tranquil because I know Jack has prepared.

Who can you offer forgiveness to?

What are you paying attention to today?

He is a member of the faculty at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He produces philosophy videos in his main YouTube channel (over 3,500 so far), is a member of the Modern Stoicism steering committee, and was editor of Stoicism Today from 2016-2023.

Greg and his wife Andi live in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1. As a philosophy professor, what’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned from your students?

I’ve been teaching philosophy, as well as a variety of other subjects (religious studies, literature, writing), now for 27 years, so not only can I say that I’ve had a vast number of interactions with students, but I also have to admit that I’ve likely forgotten a far greater number of those than the ones I remember. And since there have been countless surprises over the years, there’s a strong possibility that the most surprising ones number among those I’ve forgotten! Rather than focusing on one particular interaction that was surprising, I think I’ll say something about a broader dynamic that it took me a while to wrap my head around. I’ll call it a “virtuous cycle” in education, both in the classroom and online.

Most of my academic teaching has been in what we call “service classes.” These are the sort of “core” or “general education” courses that students are required to take, which only very occasionally satisfy any requirement for their major. It’s rare for me to have any philosophy majors in those classes. Think Intro to Philosophy, Critical Thinking, general Ethics, or Logic courses, as well as various applied or professional ethics courses like Medical Ethics or Business Ethics. You’ve generally got a mix of students from different backgrounds, with varied levels of interest and diligence, majoring in most of the fields the institution offers. For many of them, it is their very first and perhaps only philosophy course they will take. Most have no idea what “philosophy” might mean. Some are anxious, imagining it is going to be very difficult and abstract, worried about whether they’re up for it. Many of them would rather not be devoting that time to a subject and to topics they don’t see any payoff for in their life or studies.

I basically stumbled into a productive approach (I won’t say the only possible right approach) to those students early on in my teaching career. It accomplishes a number of different things that we want to occur in college or university education. I don’t water down the curriculum as some instructors are tempted to do, thinking they’ll more easily reach the students “where they’re at” by selecting much easier texts. I have my students read selections, sometimes entire works, by classic and contemporary thinkers. I also stress to those students that every single one of them, whether they feel themselves up to studying the real deal philosophical works, is indeed capable of reading and understanding them, provided they get some needed support. And that support is what they get in my classes, both through the many resources I’ve developed for them (lesson pages, handouts, videos, just to name a few), and focused class sessions where we work through the texts and apply the concepts to many examples taken from their day-to-day lives or their majors.

It’s not 100% guaranteed (what is?) to work with every class of students, but generally what happens is the development of a virtuous circle. I hold the students to high expectations, but I tell them I have confidence they can meet them with support, and I provide them that support. That not only eases a lot of anxiety and removes some of their reticence to contribute in class. More positively it gives at least some of them a sense that we’re engaged in something important for them, that they’re getting an opportunity to study something worthwhile, and that they’ve got an experienced leader who cares about not just the material but them as persons, their ideas and experiences, their development, and their later careers. And that in turn tends to make them more willing to work, not to be merely passive consumers in the class, to make an effort to contribute on their ends. That generates classes that are typically enjoyable and engaging for at least most of us on any given day. And over the course of the semester, the cycle repeats, which tends to help the matters we studied stick in their heads better after our course time together is finished.

Now, why is that a surprise? Really for two main reasons. First, as I wrote earlier, I just sort of wound up doing things that way, and it paid off well for me and the thousands of students enrolled in my courses over the years. Second, I’ve noticed that that sort of approach, and that kind of virtuous circle, is unfortunately not all that common in higher education. I’ve had many philosophy colleagues over the years who really dislike and disvalue teaching those service classes, framing them as essentially wasting their time slumming with people who will never really care about philosophy, just to earn a paycheck. I’ve talked with many people who took an Intro to Philosophy or Ethics class, and said that for one reason or another it was not a good experience, and when we’ve discussed it further, at least a significant responsibility for that clearly fell on the instructor’s shoulders. So it’s a surprise to me that people who claim to care about their field, its grand ideas, great writers and texts, wouldn’t want to foster an interest in it and appreciation for it with as many students as possible.

2. You’ve written about your recent accident and the aftermath. Is Stoicism helping with your recovery? Do you use a crutch like Epictetus, or a cane?

I’m still four months later using a cane, but only when I have to walk some distance, and mainly because my medical staff haven’t entirely cleared me to leave it behind. I’m hoping to put it away in storage before too long. Just so people know what we’re referring to, I had a rather freak accident, fell just right on a hardwood floor and shattered what they call the “head and neck” of my right femur. So I had to have an emergency hip replacement, which due to the trauma and other circumstances is a bit unlike, a bit more intense than, the usual hip replacement surgery people might have in mind. There was a good bit of healing, adjustment, and physical therapy required afterwards.

I suppose that Stoicism has helped with my recovery, though not in any sort of direct way. I’m not knocking anyone for whom this helps, but I don’t usually bring up quotes for myself in particular situations to provide guidance on how to get through them. It’s more like I’ve been rereading and sometimes teaching or referencing Stoic texts and thinkers for so long that after a while I found my attitudes, mindsets, priorities, reactions and what I focus upon wind up changing along lines that are, let’s say, in accordance with Stoicism. When the accident happened, immediately accompanied by a lot of pain and loss of mobility, soon after involving time in the emergency room, being transported and contorted for x-rays, a somewhat bumpy ambulance ride over to the main medical campus, lots of explanations and questions from doctors and nurses, and then the surgery itself and the aftermath, my reactions to everything were surprisingly reasonable.

The pain was the pain, not the worst I’ve ever felt, but pretty intense, but I was able to view it in context of what happens when you’ve got a body, you wind up doing serious damage to it, and pretty significant interventions and alterations are the only prudent remedy. For someone used to walking four to five miles a day, having to laboriously use a walker just to move around a hospital room or later in our small living space could feel demoralizing. That, too, I was able to respond to in a way that kept things in proportion. I was entirely dependent upon the medical staff and my wife in the hospital and then just my wife for about my first week at home, and for someone accustomed to a lot of independence and used to long work weeks, that likely would have been a lot tougher for me years back. But studying and practicing Stoicism for years, again not in any direct manner, prepared me well to deal with the new, non-ideal circumstances well.

3. What drew you to Stoicism?

Originally, it wasn’t so much Stoicism I was drawn to as to two Stoic authors. One of them, Epictetus, I ran across back in college, when we read his Enchiridion as the only Stoic text in an Ancient and Medieval Philosophy class. I also got a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations my first year in college and read through it, though I was mainly interested in him as a military commander. So I didn’t get much out of those first encounters with Stoicism. It was only later on in graduate school and then early on in my teaching career, that I made my way back to Stoicism. In a used book store, I found a copy of Epictetus’ Discourses, and as I was reading around in it I realized that he was discussing a number of matters having to do with choice, habits, motivation, and self-improvement that I had become particularly interested in. So I bought the book and read through it multiple times, just in the English translation back then (though by that point in grad school, I was reading Plato and Aristotle in Greek).

In my last few years in graduate school, I became very interested in what ancient and medieval philosophers could contribute to understanding and managing anger. I had been struggling with my own issues with anger since my childhood, and I’d seen quite a bit of what psychotherapists and psychologists had to say about that, a good bit of which was rather shallow and sometimes even counter-productive. And at the same time, by reading widely in philosophy, I was seeing that philosophers had worked out pretty robust approaches to that emotion, but that most people interested in philosophy weren’t reading the parts of their texts that dealt with and developed their theories and practices. You can well imagine that sooner or later I’d find out that Seneca wrote an entire work On Anger, and I’d read it. In fact, that was the first work of his I engaged with.

When I study a philosophical thinker or school, my general approach is to read around in the available texts, looking not just for some main ideas, but trying to build up in my own mind a picture of the complex interconnections between not just some main ideas but all the stuff we find in those works. Decades back, I coined an off-the-cuff name for that approach, which I call “philosophical detective work”. It’s definitely not a common approach in philosophy, but it can be incredibly rewarding to practice, and for schools like the Stoics, where you have thinkers who are writing in two different languages (Greek and Latin), often saying things that don’t easily map onto each other, it can be a very productive way to study and to present them. That’s the approach I’ve been taking with Stoicism for years.

I’ll give you one example of what I mean. We know that virtue is centrally important for the Stoics, and that, like most of the other ancient schools, they identify four main “cardinal” virtues: prudence (wisdom), justice, temperance, and courage. That’s unfortunately where a lot of would-be Stoics stop in their studies and understanding. As it turns out, each of those four cardinal virtues encompasses a number of “subordinate” virtues as well. So you can’t really know what classic Stoics meant by temperance, for example, if you just gloss it as “self-control” or “moderation”. You have to actually go see what the Stoic texts say about the full range of the subordinate virtues falling under temperance. Now Arius Didymus actually gives us some listings and brief explanations of what the subordinate virtues are, but he’s just one starting point, and unfortunately some people stop there. If you want to reconstruct and thereby really understand the full range of the subordinate virtues, you have to read across pretty much the entire body of Stoic literature as well as literature not by Stoics but about them. And to be honest, you also have to go back to the Greek and Latin, not just relying on translators. Doing precisely that with Stoicism and the virtues is a project I’ve been engaging in now for about five years, offering classes and seminars, producing videos, writing posts, producing resources, and working on two book-length projects on that topic.

To return to the original question, since you might say that I’ve ranged pretty far afield of what drew me to Stoicism, I can say that there’s an answer to what initially got me into Stoicism, and then there’s an answer about what continues to draw me in, differently and more deeply, in the present.

4. You host a heavy metal YouTube show. Can you think of an ancient Stoic who would have been into metal? If so, what would their favorite band be?

Yes, my good friend and colleague, Scott Tarulli, a guitar professor at Berklee School of Music and a great musician in his own right, and I co-host a more or less monthly Classic Metal Class. We started it years back, because in our conversations about much more academic matters, mostly philosophy and rhetoric, he and I were constantly using stuff from heavy metal as examples we’d apply the theories to, and then going off on tangents together about bands, songs, musicians, and the like. So as two metalheads since childhood, we decided to pool our talents and start up that class. Now about ancient Stoics who would have been into heavy metal, that’s a tough one, because I think that temperamentally none of the authors we read (like Seneca or Epictetus) or at least read about (like Zeno or Posidonius) would probably have been into heavy metal. They likely would view it as a bit excessive musically, and perhaps would regard many of the lyrics and themes, let’s just say, unedifying.

So you might well wonder whether there could be some tensions, even contradictions between being a Stoic but also not just being a longtime listener to heavy metal but someone who takes that musical genre seriously enough to devote thought and discussion to it. There’s a very straightforward response I can make, which is that I don’t actually claim to be a Stoic, but rather an eclectic like Cicero, someone who embraces a good bit but not every aspect of Stoicism and integrates it with other robust philosophies as ways of life. But that doesn’t really address the concern about Stoicism and heavy metal perhaps being out of sync for each other. I will say that there are some metal bands, musicians, songs, lyrics, lifestyles, even perhaps certain sub-genres where you’re probably not going to productively bring them together without outright contradictions. The bleakness and nihilistic pronouncements of certain black metal bands, the advocacy of hedonism above all else of others, that’s not going to fit with any genuine Stoicism. Other bands, and Triumph is the first and foremost one that comes to mind, I think are not just compatible with Stoicism but perhaps without meaning to even exemplify it.

5. How can modern Stoics strike a balance between updating the philosophy for our world, while remaining true to the core principles?

I suppose the first thing one would need to do in order to work that out is to find out for oneself what the actual core principles of Stoicism are. One common encounter I have is with people interested in Stoicism, who have studied it a bit, and think that they’ve figured out what Stoicism’s core principles are, but end up being mistaken about them. Sometimes it’s not entirely their fault that they’ve been misinformed. They trusted some popular author who led them astray, who might themselves have views about Stoicism that are at odds with what the actual classic Stoics tell us. There’s a lot of these, so I’ll just give one prime example. Stoicism teaches that “virtue is the only good,” right? Well. . . no. You can find that formulation in a very few places in Stoic texts. Much more often you’ll see “virtue and what participates in virtue is the good”. But you’ll also find a number of general or specific things that are not themselves virtue explicitly called “goods” in Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Arius, and others. So clearly the “Stoic principle” involved is more complicated than the over-simplified version of it.

So let’s say someone has put in the time to attentively study, to learn what the Stoics actually think about matters, including where some Stoics have one view and others a different view. That person has built up for themselves a good grasp of Stoic principles, and now the issue is how to live those out in a contemporary world. In a lot of cases, it seems pretty straightforward, since many features of our current day society and the world more generally haven’t changed radically. We may live longer, and we may not typically have death and dying as present in our era as they did in the ancient Mediterranean world, but we’re all going to die, and everyone we know will either die before us, after us or at the same time. That’s a for-the-present inevitable feature of the human condition that Stoic philosophy can help us understand.

We might still be subject to many illnesses and injuries that plagued people in the past, as well as some new ones as well, but the discipline of medicine has certainly advanced since ancient times. Does that radically alter how we would apply Stoic principles? Not really, though we certainly have to use them within situations that are very different from ancient times. Some matters of the body that perhaps just to be accepted and dealt with as they are now prove amenable to remedy through surgery, medication, diet, exercise, and many other approaches. And yet, the body does remain an external and indifferent from a Stoic perspective, which we ought to use wisely.

There are a vast variety of matters that play significant roles in our late modern lives that the ancient Stoics didn’t have anything to say about. Dating and the wide range of modern romantic relationships, for example, or social media usage and cell phone, or awareness of the impacts we have upon the global environment. These sorts of matters provide us with opportunities for thinking about the implications for Stoic principles we already understand within new situations, bearing on unforeseen issues and challenges.

There are yet other matters where perhaps we ought to prudently leave behind certain ideas classic Stoics were committed to, for instance, the notion of God as logos permeating the entire universe and providentially ordering it. We have to exercise prudence, an orientation to discerning truth. One might find some way to hold onto that in the present, depending on what one chooses to mix Stoicism up with, but another related notion we likely need to abandon as not just factually unlikely but also of no real use to us is the ekpyrosis, that is, the idea that the universe periodically resolves into elements that are consumed by fire, leaving only God behind, and then it starts all over again.

So it really does depend quite a bit on what Stoic “principles” we have in mind and how we think Stoicism ought to apply to our present-day situations, society, and lives.

Don’t be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day’s own trouble is enough.

Matthew 6.34

Do not let the future disturb you, for you will come to it, if necessary, bringing with you the same reason that you now use to deal with the present.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.8

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