“Don’t kill what you hate,
Save what you love.”

— Elon Musk

SOMEWHERE SOMEONE’S DYING

“Whenever disturbing news is delivered to you, bear in mind that no news can ever be relevant to your reasoned choice. Can anyone break news to you that your assumptions or desires are wrong? No way! But they can tell you someone died—even so, what is that to you?” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.18.1–2

A well-meaning friend might ask you today: “What do you think about [insert tragedy from the other side of the world]?” You, in your equally well-meaning concern, might say, “I just feel awful about it.” In this scenario, both of you have put aside your reasoned choice without doing a single thing for the victims suffering from the actual tragedy. It can be so easy to get distracted by, even consumed by, horrible news from all over the world. The proper response of the Stoic to these events is not to not care, but mindless, meaningless sympathy does very little either (and comes at the cost of one’s own serenity, in most cases).

If there is something you can actually do to help these suffering people, then, yes, the disturbing news (and your reaction to it) has relevance to your reasoned choice. If emoting is the end of your participation, then you ought to get back to your own individual duty—to yourself, to your family, to your country.

WHEN GOOD MEN DO NOTHING

“Often injustice lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.”

—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.5

History abounds with evidence that humanity is capable of doing evil, not only actively but passively. In some of our most shameful moments—from slavery to the Holocaust to segregation to the murder of Kitty Genovese—guilt wasn’t limited to perpetrators but to ordinary citizens who, for a multitude of reasons, declined to get involved. It’s that old line: all evil needs to prevail is for good men to do nothing. It’s not enough just to refrain from doing evil. You must also be a force for good in the world, as best you can.



Diteric Bonhoeffer said
"Silence before evil is itself evil"

Real scientist are delighted when they find out they are wrong. And to me that is one of the greatest gifts that a scientific education can bring.] There are too many people in this world who want to be right. And too few who just want to know.

- Brian Cox

WHERE IS ANYTHING BETTER?


“Indeed, if you find anything in human life better than justice, truth, self-control, courage—in short, anything better than the sufficiency of your own mind, which keeps you acting according to the demands of true reason and accepting what fate gives you outside of your own power of choice—I tell you, if you can see anything better than this, turn to it heart and soul and take full advantage of this greater good you’ve found.”

—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS,

We’ve all chased things we thought would matter. At some point, we all thought that money would be the answer, that success was the highest prize, that the undying love of a beautiful person would finally make us feel warm inside.


What do we find when we actually attain these sacred objects? Not that they are empty or meaningless—only those who have never had them think that—but what we find is that they are not enough. Money creates problems. Climbing one mountain exposes another, higher peak. There is never enough love. There is something better out there: real virtue. It is its own reward.


Virtue is the one good that reveals itself to be more than we expect and something that one cannot have in degrees. We simply have it or we don’t. And that is why virtue—made up as it is of justice, honesty, discipline, and courage—is the only thing worth striving for.