(Well, actually neither - just me on the compatibility of stoicism and social justice warrior-ing).There is this man called Jeremiah Tall, who sings Folk/Americana songs while playing various instruments, including a kick-drum that doubles as a suitcase the rest of the time. There is this other man, Epictetus, who was born almost two thousand years ago as a slave and became of the most well-known proponents of stoicism. You, the reader, may at this point be thinking "Yeah, so?", and you have a good point. But here's the thing - the former has a song with some lyrics that I really like, but also think the latter might have had something to say about. The song is Working For, and the lyrics are "Sorry if I find it hard / To wake up impressed . . . To work someone else's fields / Until my hands fall off", and Epictetus' complaint may have been that the only way to live the Good Life is to calmly accept whatever fate delivers, not to complain about your situation. To Epictetus, Mr. Tall may be focussing on the wrong thing with his unimpressed-ness.
But this essay really isn't about a long-dead philosopher, or a well-bearded folk musician. It is about how one might reconcile stoic beliefs and practises with a desire for social justice. One of the major complaints about stoicism (other than how weird it is that you're supposed to whisper "tomorrow you will die" to your child every night before they go to sleep) is the appearance that individuals are not enabled to cause human progress as we should avoid any sense of dissatisfaction with the current situation. As someone with stoic inclinations on top of newly Christian beliefs and love of pursuing social justice, this is clearly rather problematic. How is it possible to value both an unswerving acceptance of all that comes before us, and the passionate fight for what we believe to be right? The first, an attitude that has the old adage about crying over spilt milk tattooed on its forearm, allows the stoic sage to live rationally irrespective of circumstances. Whether you were born into slavery like Epictetus, or whether your hands are falling off, like the narrator in Mr. Tall's song, stoicism says you can live the Good Life. That seems like a great deal - living wisely wherever you are. The other, the passionate fight, might actually help the world be a better place. Which also seems like a good thing. Reconciling the two, however, looks unlikely. One possible answer is that the rationality advocated by the stoics is the best way to create a more just society. There is no rational reason why women should be paid sixty-six cents to every man's dollar, nor why anyone should care about where a trans person pees other than that person. Perhaps a society full of stoic sages would not be riddled with the injustices that our one is. Therefore, we must all work on out daily Stoic practises, though maybe we'll skip the creepy whispering, and become better citizens. Unfortunately, this still isn't likely to save the world. Leading by example can only ever go so far in achieving justice when unjust laws that need to be address and reformed abound. The alternative may be to simply embrace the contradiction of Epictetus' steadfast acceptance and Mr. Tall's narrator's request for "a holiday". Embracing contradiction was one of the great talents of G K Chesterton, who wrote extensively on the paradoxical nature of Christian faith, and who owned that courage was "almost a contradiction in terms". According to Chesterton, "No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. . . It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die." If it's not too much of an offence to Chesterton, I believe we can apply this definition to the subject at hand. It means a strong desire for change taking the form of readiness to live fully under whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. For those of us who to prefer to grin and bear pain we cannot change, but who are all the same outraged by institutional racism and sexism, perhaps we hold up the proverbial middle finger to Ayn Rand and live with the contradiction. We laugh it off when we miss the flight and shout with all our breath for equality-geared law reform. Jeremiah Tall's narrator would continue to ask "Who am I working for", but make use of all his other limbs when his hands are gone.
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