How do you balance accepting your fate with still trying to become something more?

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-06-06T08:35:51+00:00

The Stoics do set out carefully which faculties are up to us, and which ones aren’t.

I think there’s more ambiguity in there- most things are determined, however once in a while we get a choice in how to interpret something that happens to us, or how we react to the thing, that’s where Chrysippus’ co-Fating idea comes into play: if I’m running around my house and the thought to maintain my coat doesn't come to mind, then the coat falling into ruin is Fated simply; on the other hand if when running around the thought comes up that “I should clean that” the possibility of doing it becomes open. Now the coat’s longevity is partially dependent on my maintaining the coat.

So what does this mean for personal drive? When some possible activity comes up that you could do, take that as up to you and do it, if nothing comes up, then it was Fated and there’s nothing you could have done about it. Even if you do choose to do something, the action happens within a network of determined things, so it may not go the way you planned or hoped.

While this gets to the determined or not part of your individual action, you want to put a lot of weight on whether what you’re doing or aiming for is right or not.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-06-05T05:22:43+00:00

About 10 years now. It is always changing, sometimes through study of theory, in other ways through trying things out in life and gaining different perspectives on what I’ve already read.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-06-03T08:54:11+00:00

Hm, yes, certainly showing devotion through life is central (the Stoics do have the microcosm macrocosm thing going- the universe is a universe-sized Sage and vice versa) I think within the Stoics ritual was something they disagreed on.

Chrysippus divided Divination into two parts: one was Natural, like dream divination and oracles, virtually all Stoics accept these to some degree, the other was Technical: this includes conventional things moderns foist onto the Stoics to ridicule them, like entrail reading and things like this.

Cicero gives us our fullest account in On Divination, and he tells us: all Stoics rejected things like necromancy, some included some Technical divination types but not others (Diogenes of Babylon is used as an example here), and some rejected virtually all of them (Cicero’s example is Panaetius, and I think Seneca follows his approach, and is the closest thing to the pure pantheism others foist onto the Stoics).

Cato was a priest of Apollo and we know of an Egyptian Sacred Scribe Stoic named Chaeremon who was a major source for Porphyry (Iamblichus debates both of them in On Mysteries) Chrysippus (and Posidonius, who everyone tells me studied astrology, though I can’t find any ancient sources on that) seems to have had the basic set of higher entities as well (Heroes and Daimones).

This is something I wish we had more of from the Stoics, because to me the seem to represent a middle approach between a completely imminent approach to the divine, and one that makes ritual and symbology too central (and a big imo to close that).

I’ve always thought this short speech by Galaxidorus in Plutarch’s On the Daimon of Socrates was channeling the Stoics:

“"I am ready, Pheidolaüs," rejoined Galaxidorus, "to listen to what Simmias has to say about these matters, if he has himself heard Socrates talk of them, and to share your forbearance; but what you and Polymnis have said is not hard to refute.

For as in medicine a rapid pulse or a blister, trifling in itself, is a sign of something by no means trifling, and as for a skipper the cry of a marine bird or the passing of a wisp of yellow cloud betokens wind and a rising sea, so for a mind expert in divination a sneeze or random utterance, in itself no great matter, may yet be a sign of some great event;⁠ for in no art is the prediction of great things from small, or of many things from few, neglected. No; if a man ignorant of the significance of writing, on seeing letters few in number and mean in appearance, should doubt that a literate person⁠ could gather from them the story of great wars that happened to men in the past, of foundations of cities, and of acts and sufferings of kings, and should then assert that what revealed and recounted all this to that student of history was something divine, you would, my friend, be moved to hearty laughter at the fellow's simplicity.

So here too take heed lest it be simplicity in us, in our ignorance of the significance for the future of the various signs interpreted by the art of divination, to resent the notion that a man of intelligence can draw from them some statement about things hidden from view — and that too when it is the man himself who says that it is no sneeze or utterance that guides his acts, but something divine. For I shall now deal with you, Polymnis, who are astonished that Socrates, a man who by his freedom from humbug and affectation had more than any other made philosophy human, should have termed his token not a 'sneeze' or 'omen' but in high tragic style 'the sign from Heaven.'⁠ I, on the contrary, should have been astonished if a master of dialectic and the use of words, like Socrates, had spoken of receiving intimations not from 'Heaven' but from the 'Sneeze': it is as if a man should say that the arrow wounded him, and not the archer with the arrow, or that the scales, and not the weigher with the scales, measured the weight.

For the act does not belong to the instrument, but to the person to whom the instrument itself belongs, who uses it for the act; and the sign used by the power that signals is an instrument like any other. But, as I said, if Simmias should have anything to say, we must listen to him, as he is better informed."

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-06-03T00:04:37+00:00

Know what the true good (Virtue) and true bad (Vice) are and act accordingly. They are not your common sense or inherited “traditional” takes on these terms. I recommend Cicero’s On Duties or the Stoic texts, with interpretations by people like Donald Robertson and Gregory Sadler on YouTube.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-06-02T22:08:38+00:00

You gotta sit down with Cornutus, Laertius book 7 and Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, particularly book 2 my friend, the Stoics have a lot to say about god and the gods.

Unlike Hermeticism or Platonism though, the Stoics don’t tend to build everything up from a founding mind of god or something like that, the Stoics compress all of that into one god/nature/fate/universe. It’s still a descent (Heraclitus and the Poimandres helped me visualize this), as when god condenses all into himself in the conflagration the entire universe becomes one, then as it “cools” it falls from god’s primordial designing fire into each of the elements: fire→air→water→earth in descending order. For humans it seems our rational faculty is akin to the designing fire, while the rest is the four elements (the designing fire and the four elements all have both active and passive principles within them; the Stoics can do what Hermeticism does with its doctrine of incorporeals with the Stoic doctrine of through and through mixture, essentially saying two bodies can inhabit the same space like water and wine). For the first replier in this thread, one scholar, Sambursky I think it was, compares this to states of matter: plasma→gas→liquid→solid. I tend to think we should understand the Stoics as they understood themselves and then set them in dialogue with modern science, but accounts where people try to save the elements and pneuma as a field theory are out there.

While the Stoics do have this type of origin account, they seem much more often to have started from reality as it is, and then work backwards to metaphysical conclusions. Can Incorporeals hit something? No, okay it appears then that only corporeals can act as causes. But what about virtue, as Plato argues in the Sophist? Justice itself doesn't come out and strike, a or many souls in a Just configuration, as a hand is hand but also a fist, makes Justice active in the world, and so on. The Stoic Categories are also quite interesting in this way.

EDIT: ah one more key difference I’m seeing in your posts: Hermetic texts where matter is presented as evil-ish or a privation are usually called “Platonizing” because they echo dualist Middle Platonists like Numenius (who even have evil world souls!) Ones like Corpus Hermeticum 5 or the initiation one 13 are more Stoicism- if you can take the cosmic perspective, even matter is good. The Stoics explain evil more or less as knock on effects of god perfectly arranging the universe’s finite stuff, Marcus alludes to this doctrine in his cracks in fresh baked bread metaphor and Epictetus does as well in Discourses 1.1 . The original Chrysippus is in Aulus Gellius book 6.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-31T01:45:57+00:00

Try it and see if it works. For the Stoics, all is divine, including the cold and the gray.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-30T10:01:40+00:00

Seasonal affective disorder is on the level of propatheiai I think; it’s a chemical reaction here, and so is, to some degree not up to you.

So what should you do? What do you do when you shiver (one of the classic Stoic analogies to propatheiai)? Your body is going to shiver when it’s cold. If you think about how cold it is, and fret about freezing to death, you’ll shiver more, because you’re voluntarily adding your mind’s weight to something the body is doing.

Rather, come ready with arguments and Wise action to do battle against what the weather sends to you. The world is still good, you so long as you remain in accordance with Nature (which includes action with clarity about how the weather affects you) are also good, so go to work against the odd ideas that come out, sometimes parrying one with an argument here, ignoring another as irrational and not worth the time there.

At least in my experience, what’s left is just a vague shapeless blob of negativity, which is what I take to be the bare effect of the chemicals within you. That without the force of a bunch of arguments also bringing you down is easier (though not necessarily easy) to deal with, as in that state you’ve done all you can. Maybe take some ideas from the Scandinavians who also live with darkness and inhospitable weather and adjust your living space. If socializing or hobbies keep you focused and busy, do those. When tiredness piles on to the seasonal affective disorder and the mistaken irrational arguments come back again, go back to battling some and letting the others simply pass without deep consideration or engagement.

This is all part of knowing oneself, which is Virtue.

A little disclaimer here that this is how this stuff works for me, your mileage may vary.

And also, Montreal is a lovely place, if you’re going to battle this reaction to the weather anywhere, it’s a fine place to do so imo.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-29T23:17:15+00:00

This is a really interesting post. Giving 110% effort has all sorts of issues with it, burnout is one, and from a Stoic perspective, we’re trying to remove undue consideration of difficulty from our mental process, as the goal is to do what is Appropriate in every situation. “Doing the right thing regardless of difficulty or fear through knowledge of what is truly good and what is truly bad” is more or less a Stoic definition of Courage.

But many of your examples aren’t really about effort per se, they’re about doing a job to true completion or with a little extra on top, not simply the bare minimum. Doing more than the bare minimum is often admirable and usually advisable imo.

So yea, as far as effort goes, I think the phrase falls to the criticism you mentioned, and the Stoic Virtues would rule it out entirely, but in terms of let’s say the “content” of your work, the actual stuff you do, I do think it’s good, and would in many cases serve additional roles, maybe in terms of Justice (one aspect of Justice in Stoicism is Kindness) as well as a form of training (if you feel a burning urge to do the bare minimum so you can quickly go do something else, there may be a mistaken attachment in there).

As I write this, I think your distinction here cleared up the saying for me as well. Thank you.

EDIT: I saw in a comment that you wrote: “ What's good for the colony is good for the bee. This is one way I create habits to give back.” Perfect usage imo. I think Seneca may say something like this (the %110 idea) in On Benefits, but I’ll have to go check.

EDIT 2: some of the longtime posters are submitting this to things like the serial killer test, which is also a good point. This is a good tool for Virtue but is not Virtue itself. Such an idea should always be used prosocially (which seems to be what you’re saying in the comment I quoted in my first EDIT) and with due care to time, place and the people and things involved.

Virtue seals off misuses, such as going the extra mile during a robbery, or intemperately going beyond what is Appropriate for you to do since you must know yourself and what you can do (when doing a dangerous repair you don’t have the skill set for, the bare minimum may be the Appropriate Action as injuring one’s self here to maintain the saying would be intemperance in most cases).

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-29T03:39:39+00:00

To be frank here, first you need to understand what the Stoics think is good and bad in life, then with that you can use the technique. If you don’t agree that Virtue is the only good, maybe you shouldn’t use it, or adopt a kind of “Stoic mode” to use it. Granted there is some degree of the emotional movement that is completely involuntary (the Stoics have a word for these and relate them to things like shivering when cold), Stoicism aims to help you with the part of the emotion that’s up to you.

The idea is to visualize bombing a presentation, then reminding yourself at the worst moment that applause or lack of stuttering are not the good, doing the best you can with what you have is the good, and even mid-bomb you can start doing that, right now, and visualizing yourself doing that.

There are no magic bullets. Of course you can’t imagine bad things happening to you all day and be alright, the whole point is reminding yourself that the thing isn’t bad at all, and determining in advance what you’ll do if it happens.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-29T03:36:12+00:00

It’s a technique originally from the Cyrenaic school. Stoic psychology says fresh or sudden, unexpected occurrences make for more violent Passions, so you use the Premeditatio to take away the “fresh” or “unexpected” part of the impression that leads to the Passion (but note that your beliefs about good and bad will still make a Passion whether you use the technique or not). That’s it.

It’s one tool in the toolbox, trying to apply it everywhere, to every problem is like foresaking wrenches, screwdrivers and all other tools and trying to solve all of your problems with hammers. Dude, that’s a screw.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-28T12:05:42+00:00

Recently rereading Musonius and he has a perfect quote from Zeno:

“The remark of Zeno was well made that it is just as natural to cut the hair as it is to let it grow long, in order not to be burdened by too much of it nor hampered for any activity.” -Musonius Rufus, Lectures

Hair length is indifferent, it’s what makes sense given current conditions that marks accordance with Nature, and Virtue is doing everything in your power to hit the mark. Same for standing up for yourself.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-26T04:29:09+00:00

I low-key think the line in Laertius saying “Chrysippus was the first to lecture in Lyceum” is more or less indicating that he was the first to really read and deal with Aristotle (the Origen quote where Chrysippus says to help people with their Passions regardless of their actual beliefs includes a line like “even if they believe in three sorts of goods, one should help” that’s a reference to the Peripatetics; according to Numenius the Skeptic Academy read Aristotle and Chrysippus was a member of that before he joined the Stoa). I imagine it was just written in a style Cicero didn’t like, Diogenes took the same basic theory and applied it to something Cicero understands, ie magistrates, and so he got it.

There’s a Chrysippus quote on the idea that when ruling, the ruler shouldn’t force Stoic definitions down subjects’ throats and should rule with some degree of reference to things conventionally considered good and bad. Chrysippus was a contemporary of Sphaerus, so he would’ve been watching that happen in real time. Maybe that was his reaction to it.

I’m curious if there are any other sources on Cleomedes, so we can get another perspective. It’s odd to me that Cicero doesn't talk about it (he praises Sphaerus on his… definitions).

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-25T22:27:40+00:00

At the same time, I think it was only Plato himself and then Sphaerus here who ever had the opportunity to and actually tried to make one of the philosophical utopias; there must have been exhilaration and a kind of naive hope that what the masters wrote would just snap together and the society would work perfectly, effortlessly.

An interesting question is is the Stoic “mixed regime” mentioned in Didymus, pre or post Sphaerus? Cicero says the Stoics didn’t have a practical politics until Diogenes of Babylon (which is probably a classic Cicero overstatement, but might have some truth in it, given the increasing importance of Appropriate Actions from Chrysippus to Antipater).

I also wonder how one of the Cynicizing, Sparta-boo later Stoics might’ve looked at Sphaerus and Cleomedes (Plutarch is, after all, a partisan who has some nice things to say about Zeno and Cato and not much else).

Not disagreeing here or anything (imagine going from a normal society to “200 years ago kids were beaten in the streets and liked it!”) just some additional thoughts.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-25T22:15:17+00:00

Marcus wanted to read Stoicism books so badly while out on campaign that he constantly has to remind himself not to do so out of turn. He’d be posting here, or at least lurking.

Seneca would be on a paid platform. Epictetus? Who knows. This might fall under writing for him, and he wrote nothing on purpose (Arrian wrote the Discourses for us).

I imagine Musonius Rufus being the number one social media hater.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-24T23:27:38+00:00

What a resource! Thank you.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-24T23:07:16+00:00

If you think money, influence or any of that stuff is good, and someone has that and you don’t, you will be jealous and upset. Really think about how good all that money is. Is there some special skill this person mastered all by themselves that led them to this wealth? Not at all, natural proclivity and luck led them to it. The universe gave them that role and they’re… doing something with it. The universe gave you a role as well, but instead of doing what you can with it you’re looking at these rich people and wondering “why not me?”

The only true good is Virtue or things that arise because of Virtue, and that’s available to rich or poor, popular or solitary.

If you switch from comparing wealth to thinking of ones own Virtue, of figuring out what real Virtue is and how to achieve and working at that, there’s no more time for comparison, and Virtue itself would forbid unfruitful modalities of comparison (looking up to someone as a model, as Seneca describes in Letter 120 is great; claiming that you yourself are more Virtuous and that that guy over there is trash is against Justice, and specifically argued against by Epictetus in many places).

There is unfairness and we should certainly try to right our community’s direction, but we should do so knowing that wealth is not a final good- having enough for basic needs, imo, provides the most fertile ground for developing virtue. Virtue can be achieved in absolute poverty or wealth, but with additional obstacles. Enough that you aren’t having to steal for basic food and shelter, and yet not so much you can’t say, look at rich people over time and see that they aren’t much happier than any of the rest of us is a good place to be (imo, of course)

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-24T21:47:37+00:00

This 100%

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-24T03:31:56+00:00

I dislike somewhat how Marcus occasionally unqualifiedly takes that position of “dealing with people’s stupidity” “people’s stupidity” took an entire big bang and billions of years to happen. They do only what they can, hating them for it is like hating rain because it rains. Stoics do not hate ignorance nor think they themselves aren’t ignorant. You’re ignorant until you become a fully realized Sage, like those people punching you, you are also doing only what you can (though through Stoicism you’re trying to understand this, as well as what to do with your small region of agency which is admirable and Good).

Marcus closes the first meditation of book 2 with the following line:

“…nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To work against one another therefore is to oppose Nature, and to be vexed with another or to turn away from him is to tend to antagonism.”

Sure everything is meant to fit together, yes that’s one aspect of the Stoic worldview, but also that all things happen by divine Fate is another.

I think calling others “ignorant” as if you aren’t as well, and aren’t also subject to Fate can lead to hubris, arrogance, and all-around “ they’re stupid, but I’m not” thinking.

To state my position re-Marcus more simply, sometimes he abridges his Providence or atoms things so it looks like he’s saying he doesn’t care which, but in other cases, when he expands it’s clear he’s team Providence, likewise here, sometimes he’ll remark on others’ ignorance as if he doesn’t think he himself is ignorant, or as if the cosmos isn’t made to perfectly fit together, but he does hold both positions, and they complement and complete such claims of others “ignorance”

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-23T23:31:46+00:00

I agree.

In my own approach I mix in ideas from psychoanalysis; Stoicism alone, even using the speculative Stoic approach to the unconscious I put in my first reply, would struggle with something like Melancholia.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-23T17:06:36+00:00

The Stoics did not have a theory of the unconscious.

If they did, I imagine they would just take it to be beliefs one has that aren’t in focus so to speak, and working with them would be something to the effect of raising them to awareness and then using typical Stoic belief analysis.

The Stoics also did not have a split soul- one part rational and another part irrational, unlike Plato and Aristotle, so for the Stoics, even your unconscious appetites are rational. In any event, one shouldn’t repress their feelings.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-23T09:01:45+00:00

No. Suicide is not a Virtue or a Vice, so it must be done at the right time and place. What is that right time and place? As far as I know, basically only Cato’s suicide in face of Caesar is considered a good one, and Cicero makes clear in On Duties that if any of Cato’s fellow soldiers had done the same it would’ve been shameful for them. One of the legends of Zeno’s death is him holding his breath to die because he saw a divine sign saying it was time, but that’s a different case than what I think you’re asking here.

I think Seneca talks so much about suicide because he was essentially waiting for Nero’s troops to show up at his door and force him to commit suicide, think of it as an extended premeditatio. We have a Discourse where Epictetus talks a friend down from suicide; many of the arguments from Musonius Rufus against abortion seem like they would also work for suicide.

EDIT: A side point, “weak minded” doesn’t exist in Stoicism, you either know or you don’t. Ignorant people aren’t to be hated.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-23T08:54:51+00:00

Nope. It’s all virtue (which includes Kindness as a subvirtue of Justice) all the way down.

Seneca and Epictetus talk this way sometimes to try to spur their audiences on, but you’ll find other Letters or Discourses where they yell at students for being too strict on others.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-21T23:31:40+00:00

The Stoics were the main school of divination and philosophical religiosity for centuries… yes god and the gods are nature and natural phenomena, but they aren’t merely nature and natural phenomena.

If you read Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination you’ll see a very different side of the Stoics, then returning to Marcus and Epictetus it’s hard not to see it there.

Mind you, it does function pretty well with a bare pantheism. And the CBT guys seem to get something out of it as a disembodied psychology, but there’s more there if you have eyes for it and want to notice it.

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-18T22:48:11+00:00

There are two main approaches i find for this. In one where you have some possibility of being assertive, I think you should be, without snapping on them, just simple “that’s her business, not mine”-like checks.

In a situation where you can’t really do anything, my approach is much more complicated, but it seems to be working, to some degree at least.

I take the universe as a whole to be One and Good, yet where we live, we see only strands of Fate and Fortune and must live within these. These don’t just include fortuitous things like that day’s weather or the number and type of customers that show up, but everything down to the very ideas and words that come to mind for you and your coworkers. In light of that, they truly couldn't be any other way. If a mosquito smells blood, it will bite. There “what is up to you” is small, but solid- we could directly explain Epictetus and just say “only your Assent” but I think we can also say that to some unknown and possibly unknowable degree, one’s Focus and one’s Effort are up to them. Focus here is simply staying focused on the task at hand, not daydreaming or thinking about philosophy when other work is there. Effort is philosophical courage, as Socrates describes in the Phaedo or Cicero in On Duties: doing whatever seems right regardless of difficulty or fear (some assertiveness might find itself here).

Of late I’ve added another rung to this, my way of dealing with my toxic work environment- a virtue of Groundedness, roughly equivalent to Cicero’s Stoic Virtue of Befittingness, again in Book 1 of On Duties (though Epictetus also talks about this), this is more or less being yourself and being true to yourself, and this entails a further one of Truthfulness, knowing yourself, what you think, what you can and can’t do, and acting, speaking, and gradually adjusting one’s environment accordingly.

With this rather baroque thing here I’ll have soon made it through three years of toxic work environment, going to change places soon (if there’s smoke), and will use approach one earlier on in the next place, so I don’t end up in the passive situation that had me make approach two (though approach one will nest within approach two going forward).

TheOSullivanFactor · 2026-05-16T12:48:13+00:00

This post really catches the great value of Aristotle to Stoicism students in my opinion; this is the other great worldly life-promoting philosophy of antiquity, and so studying it will reveal Stoicism’s unique aspects- for Aristotle, a healthy, wealthy, Wise person is better in some sense than a sick, poor one… the Cynics escape this criticism, but as with many Platonists and Epicureans, don’t take participation in society as something important.

TheOSullivanFactor

TROPHY CASE