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by tangue 5000 days ago
Well, one of the most famous disciple of Seneca, was Nero (yes the infamous emperor)... As long as you believe that there is such a thing like a "Personal operating system", it's a long way to understand stoicism. If you really spend a lot of time reading Seneca and Marcus Aurelius (I don't encourage you to do so, I did because I learned latin as a teen ) you'll realize that these writings are deeply connected to the context of the first century in the Roman Empire. Many of these thoughts have percolated through Christianism, that's why they're able to reach most westerners today, but remember that stoicism has failed to change romans, both individually and as a society.
1 comments

Hedonism and capitalism have served us better as a society?

Judging a philosophy based on the merits of select adherents does not a representative sample make.

I suppose that by hedonism you mean materialism, and I get your point. What I was trying to say is that it's tempting to believe that some kind of ancient wisdom could guide your life (indeed I'm sure Tim Ferris doesn't believe it himself, but some readers might). But ideas are reactions to a very specific reality, and even in the context of this reality these ideas didn't work. It doesn't mean that there is nothing valuable in the stoics' writings, just that using these thoughts as a "Personal Operating System" is as useful as installing MS-DOS on a smartphone