Stoicism Isn't All About You

Stoicism has pulled off the comeback of the ages, appearing everywhere from Silicon Valley boardrooms to self-help bestsellers.

Modern interpretations are cherry-picking Stoic practices, presenting them as tools for productivity, emotional control, and personal achievement - a kind of ancient life hack for the ambitious modern man.

But the populist revival is distorting one of the philosophy's core teachings, turning a deeply interconnected worldview into a focus on individual success and personal gain.

The modern, pastel colored, individualistic interpretation gets Stoicism's essential concept of the interconnected whole completely wrong - or just pretends that it doesn't exist.

Stoicism Isn’t Just About You. It’s Not Just About Me. It’s About All of Us.

Epictetus summed up what I'm getting into here:

"We are bound up by the law of nature with the whole fabric of the world."

Stoic philosophy sees each person as an integral part of a vast cosmic order, not as an isolated agent pursuing personal excellence.

The Stoic sage doesn’t practice acceptance just to reach some inner peace or personal tranquility. They do it because they understand that their reactions, their decisions, echo far beyond their own life. Every choice ripples outward, part of an endless chain of cause and effect that links each of us to something much larger than ourselves.

Today’s “stoicism-lite” waters down the whole tradition into a handful of mental tricks for keeping cool when things go south. And sure, that has its uses—hell, I’d even say it’s saved my life on more than one occasion. But taken alone, it’s still a shallow reading of what Stoicism was really getting at. The original philosophy wasn’t a checklist of “coping mechanisms.” It was a radical shift in perspective: recognizing that we’re tiny threads woven together, what the Stoics called logos—the universal order.

To the ancient Stoics, it wasn’t enough to master your emotions and stay calm under pressure. That’s just step one. The real practice is understanding that you’re not here to chase individual success in a vacuum; you’re here to align yourself with the whole, to act in a way that serves not just you, but the grand design you’re a part of. The goal isn’t to bend Stoicism to fit your ambitions. It's to reshape your ambitions to fit Stoicism. Anything less is missing the mark entirely.

The Stoic Concept of Interconnectedness

1. At the core of Stoic philosophy is sympatheia—the idea that everything is interconnected, bound by a cosmic glue that ignores the boundaries of individual identity. Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher-emperor, put it plainly: “Meditate often on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe.” Aurelius emphasizes this Stoic view that none of us exist in a vacuum; we’re all stuck in a web of shared reality, each life nudging and shaping the others, whether we like it or not.
2. Another key Stoic concept: oikeiosis, the instinctive pull toward community and social responsibility. It’s the process of realizing that you’re not just some lone speck, but part of a bigger whole—a shift that nurtures virtues like kindness, fairness, and compassion. For the Stoics, this isn’t optional or just a nice idea; it’s fundamental to what it means to be human. They argue that we’re wired for cooperation, meant to live in sync with others. Embracing oikeiosis means you're not seeing yourself as a solitary island, you're a thread in the same tangled, messy ball of found and discarded yarn as the rest of us.

The Stoic worldview demands a radical shift—from seeing yourself as a lone, self-contained individual to understanding yourself as a single cell within the body of humanity. You’re not some isolated unit chasing personal goals. You’re an integral part of a larger organism, where every action, every thought, every intention ripples out to affect the whole. This is in fact the backbone of Stoic ethics.

To the Stoics, virtue isn’t found in personal wealth, or inner peace in isolation. When you act with integrity, when you act for the collective good, you're acknowledging that your choices are threads in a web that binds all of us. Stoicism actually asks you to find peace by fully accepting your role within it, by understanding that your life is part of something vast and interconnected, whether you like it or not.

Stoics believe that the universe is governed by a rational structure, an order that unites all things in a purposeful design. Living in harmony with logos means aligning our actions with this larger, rational structure. In doing so, Stoics argue that we can live virtuously, acting in ways that benefit not only ourselves but also the larger community of which we are a part.

The emphasis is on duty and social responsibility. Recognizing your role in the larger whole reinforces your obligations to family, community, and humanity at large.

This duty isn’t discharged by helping others for personal satisfaction or reward. It's fulfilling one’s role as a citizen of the universe. Stoics believe that by serving others, you serve the larger whole, aligning with nature itself.

This ethical stance challenges the self-centered approaches in the philosophical traditions and popular culture of today.

For Stoics, true virtue is incompatible with the pursuit of self-interest. The core tension here revolves around whether ethical principles must be applied absolutely or can be implemented strategically.

In genuine Stoicism, the idea of interconnectedness directly influences behavior. And this is where we get into the missing pieces of the stoicism-as-ambition starter kit we get sold on Reddit.

Imagine this scenario. "Jason", CEO of "GlobalTech", faces a profound personal and professional dilemma. After experiencing burnout last year, he began studying Stoic philosophy and it transformed his worldview. Stoicism taught him to view himself not just as a leader of a corporation, but as a participant in a larger community, bound by mutual obligations and ethical responsibility.

Now, in the face of market pressure, he’s facing a decision: his company has developed a unique lending model that would significantly boost profits and likely secure his position for years to come. But his research team has found that, while lucrative, it's weighted to lead customers to overspend, locking them into contracts they'll struggle to afford long-term. We're talking bankruptcies, and we're talking about vulnerable people.

Should Jason:

• P1: Separate Personal and Professional Ethics Jason should compartmentalize his personal philosophical beliefs from his professional duties, focusing solely on his fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.
• P2: Full Integration of Stoic Principles Jason should fully embrace Stoic ethics in his role as CEO, making decisions based on his understanding of universal reason and duty to the whole, even if it means risking his position.
• P3: Strategic Virtue Jason should find ways to gradually shift company culture and practices to align with ethical principles while maintaining his influence and position of leadership.

P1: Separate Personal and Professional Ethics

• Explanation: This approach argues that personal philosophical beliefs should remain separate from professional duties, viewing the role of CEO as having its own distinct ethical framework centered on shareholder value.
• Implications: -- Preserves traditional corporate function -- Maintains clear decision-making framework -- Likely ensures personal career success -- Creates internal conflict and potential moral distress
• Counterarguments: -- Artificially separates personal virtue from professional action -- Contradicts Stoic teaching about duty and integrity -- May lead to long-term psychological toll -- Ignores the reality that all decisions reflect personal values

P2: Full Integration of Stoic Principles

• Explanation: This approach fully embraces Epictetus's teaching that we are "bound up by the law of nature with the whole fabric of the world," applying this understanding to corporate leadership.
• Implications: -- Potential sacrifice of career advancement -- Personal integrity and philosophical consistency -- Setting new example of leadership ethics -- Possible resistance from board and shareholders
• Counterarguments: -- Might remove him from position of influence -- Could be seen as imposing personal philosophy on corporation -- May not serve long-term ethical goals if replaced -- Risks oversimplifying complex business realities

P3: Strategic Virtue

• Explanation: This approach seeks to maintain influence while gradually implementing change, viewing ethical leadership as a long-term strategy rather than an immediate transformation.
• Implications: -- Allows for measured organizational change -- Maintains position of influence -- Balances practical and ethical concerns -- Creates opportunity for broader impact
• Counterarguments: -- Still compromises Stoic principles -- Leads to ethical drift through rationalization -- Could be seen as moral cowardice -- Uncertain timeline for meaningful change

Your choice between these three paths shows exactly how deep—or shallow—your commitment to Stoic philosophy really is. The “strategic virtue” approach (P3) and the “compartmentalization” approach (P1) might look attractive, neatly aligning with modern ideas about “pragmatism” and “career growth.” But they're a performative, virtue signaling, surface-level engagement with Stoicism, treating it like a handy set of life hacks rather than a complete, demanding way of life.

Both approaches turn Stoicism into a tool for personal success, a means to stay calm under pressure and boost productivity. They miss the point entirely. Stoicism isn’t a self-help toolkit you dip into when it suits you. It’s a relentless, all-encompassing framework that asks you to prioritize integrity over convenience, principle over comfort. That's the message of it. True commitment means embracing Stoicism as something that shapes every choice—even, and especially, when that choice comes at a personal cost.

Now imagine this scenario. James, a 23-year-old software engineer, faces an immediate ethical and emotional dilemma. His closest friend Michael, who he's known since childhood, has confided that he's struggling with severe depression and suicidal thoughts. But Michael made James promise not to tell anyone, especially Michael's parents, who James has known his whole life and regularly sees around town. James knows Michael's parents have the resources and dedication to help, but Michael insists that telling them would destroy their relationship and his trust forever. How does James confront how his understanding of "interconnectedness" conflict with modern notions of loyalty, privacy, and individual autonomy?

• P1: Honor Individual Privacy James should respect Michael's autonomy and keep his promise of confidentiality, supporting his friend while maintaining their trust.
• P2: Full Recognition of Interconnectedness James should act on his understanding that all parties are bound together in a web of mutual responsibility, telling Michael's parents despite the personal consequences.
• P3: Strategic Intervention James should try to gradually convince Michael to tell his parents himself, maintaining the relationship while working toward the needed intervention.

P1: Honor Individual Privacy

• Explanation: This approach prioritizes modern values of individual autonomy and consent, viewing the promise of confidentiality as sacrosanct and friendship as based on absolute trust.
• Implications: -- Preserves immediate trust and friendship -- Respects Michael's autonomy -- Places full emotional burden on James -- Makes James complicit if tragedy occurs
• Counterarguments: -- Treats relationships as isolated contracts rather than interconnected responsibilities -- Misunderstands true friendship as enabling versus helping -- Prioritizes individual choice over collective well-being -- Ignores deeper obligations to Michael's family and community

P2: Full Recognition of Interconnectedness

• Explanation: This approach embodies Marcus Aurelius's understanding that "what brings no benefit to the hive brings none to the bee." It recognizes that true loyalty sometimes requires risking a friendship to serve the greater good.
• Implications: -- Likely immediate rupture with Michael -- Personal emotional distress -- Potential salvation of a life -- Fulfillment of deeper moral obligations
• Counterarguments: – Could worsen Michael's short term mental state – Risks losing ability to talk to Michael at all

P3: Strategic Intervention

• Explanation: This approach attempts to balance respect for individual autonomy with recognition of interconnected responsibility through gradual persuasion.
• Implications: -- Maintains ability to influence Michael -- Reduces immediate confrontation -- Allows time for trust-building -- Delays necessary intervention
• Counterarguments: -- Time may be of the essence -- Compromises moral clarity -- Perpetuates dangerous situation -- Places pragmatism over principle

If you think modern, individualistic views of friendship and loyalty clash with this understanding of interconnectedness and responsibility - you wouldn't be wrong.

The dominant perspective, represented by P1, treats friendship as a contract between autonomous agents, where personal freedom and explicit consent are valued above all else. It’s clean, it’s straightforward, and it’s easy to justify—but it also means you can stand by and do nothing, so long as you can say, “I respected their choices.” It's how most of us treat each other. It's why we nod at our neighbors but we don't know who the fuck they are. We leave each other alone. For better or - more often - for worse.

Then there’s P3, the “practical compromise,” where you try to gently persuade, nudge, and hope for the best. It feels morally acceptable on the surface, but in matters of life and death, it's just a softer way of looking the other way. It’s an attempt to ease your conscience without rocking the boat, a polite sidestep around true responsibility. In the end, it’s a moral cop-out—a way to feel virtuous without really taking a stand.

P2, however, recognizes that real friendship, real loyalty, sometimes means stepping in against someone’s expressed wishes, not because it’s easy or comfortable, but because you owe them more than passive respect. It’s the painful choice, the one that risks anger, resentment, even the loss of the relationship itself. But it’s a choice rooted in the understanding that we’re bound to each other in ways that go beyond individual autonomy—that sometimes, acting for someone’s good, and for the good of the larger whole, means pushing back against their immediate desires. In the Stoic sense, true friendship demands that you act with integrity, even if it costs you—because to do otherwise is to abandon not just them, but your own principles.

The modern tendency to view relationships as contracts between autonomous individuals rather than threads in a larger social fabric becomes particularly dangerous in situations involving mental health. When we fully understand our interconnected nature, we realize that allowing someone to isolate themselves in their darkness out of respect for their "privacy" isn't respect at all - it's abandonment disguised as autonomy.

When Marcus Aurelius teaches that "All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy," he isn't offering a suggestion or an aspirational metaphor, he's describing the fundamental nature of reality. To choose gradual implementation or compartmentalization is to admit that you view Stoicism as a useful lifestyle brand rather than a way to understand your place in the cosmos.

The true test of philosophical commitment always hits right when it’s most uncomfortable—when the principles you claim to live by demand actual sacrifice. When influence, relationships or power give you a platform, they also give you a choice. You’re faced with a line in the sand between real conviction and convenient compromise, and the resistance you encounter—the risks, the career threats, the uncomfortable pushback, the hard choices— is the crucible where your so-called beliefs are forged or shattered.

It’s easy to spout wisdom and play the Stoic when the stakes are low, when the consequences are hypothetical. But when standing by your principles means giving something up—your comfort, your reputation, your position, even a friendship if that's what it takes—that’s when the philosophy stops being an accessory and starts being real. That’s the moment where “just doing what’s practical” reveals itself as the coward’s way out. Because if you cave, if you decide your ideals are negotiable the second they threaten your comfort, then Stoicism was never a philosophy to you; it was just a different form of identity politics.

The very difficulty of choosing full integration—of actually living as if you’re part of a greater whole, with all the sacrifices and consequences that come with it—isn’t an obstacle to sidestep. It’s the whole point. It’s a chance to show whether you’re treating Stoicism as a real philosophy or just another accessory for your “personal brand.” Because when the stakes are high, when sticking to your principles might actually cost you something, that’s where the difference shows up.

When you take the philosophy for what it is, the so-called “pragmatic” approaches aren’t wise compromises; they’re cop-outs. They’re people using Stoicism like a stress ball, squeezing it for comfort while dodging any genuine commitment. True Stoicism is sticking with the truth and the principle, even when it sticks you right back.

The "practical consequences" that seem so daunting actually illuminate Marcus Aurelius's observation that "You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." You have the power to take action, but you can't control the market. You have the responsibility to take action, but you can't control what your friend does next.

The seeming paradox is that only by accepting potential consequences, by following our beliefs through to their natural conclusion, can we discover true psychological resilience. Without consequences, we don't learn shit.

There is an unexpected source of strength amidst mounting pressures and consequences. Life, as the Stoics argue, is not a series of isolated decisions that we can conveniently compartmentalize.

Each challenge - yes, including potential loss of status or position, for sticking to your guns - serves a purpose.

Seneca:

"The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable."

This is ataraxia in action—a state of eerie calm where the world can be burning down around you and you just shrug, because you’ve finally accepted that control is a myth. By seeing yourself as one participant in the same dumpster fire, instead of this frantic, all-important protagonist, you can stop clawing for control over every little thing and finally breathe. All that modern anxiety, that endless dread of “what if” and “am I doing enough”—it just falls away, because you know it’s all ridiculous anyway.

This is philosophy yes; but it’s also survival. If you can see yourself as a piece of the whole, as something small but necessary in this swirling mess, then you’re practically untouchable. You don’t lose sleep over the stock market or who’s in office, because you know that whatever happens, the wheel keeps turning.

It’s that commitment to something beyond your own ego, beyond your own immediate comfort, that lets you stay grounded while everyone else is flailing. While they’re desperately clutching at control, trying to impose order on an indifferent universe, you’re rooted in the knowledge that you’re part of a bigger design—no more and no less important than any other part. And that’s what keeps you steady.

Living the Whole in One

If you’re taking stoicism seriously—and I mean actually living it, not just slapping a Seneca quote in your Twitter bio to seem wise between growth hacks—then you have to accept you’re part of something bigger than your own comfort, your own success, your own fragile reputation. This isn’t a self-help trick you can deploy to feel “centered” while you quietly climb the corporate ladder. No, it’s the hard reality that, like it or not, demands loyalty to something higher, even when it costs you everything.

Stoicism isn’t feeling calm while playing both sides to keep your own neck safe. It’s recognizing that we’re all tied up in this together, and sometimes that means standing for something real, even if you have to burn your own little empire to the ground to do it. When Seneca faced Nero’s corruption, he didn’t tiptoe around it, looking for a “pragmatic compromise” to keep his skin in the game. He stayed true to his principles and paid the price. No PR campaign, no “necessary evil” speeches—just a straight shot to the end, because he actually believed in the principles he preached.

Now look at today. Corporate titans and political operatives falling over themselves to talk “pragmatism” while they throw the world under the bus. They’re all too happy to cozy up to any power—and to support Donald Trump, no matter the human cost of his policies and his rhetoric, no matter the environmental cost—so long as it pads the bottom line.

These folks will talk all day about being “mission driven” and “taking personal responsibility,” but the truth is, they’d shake hands with Caligula, Nero, or whoever else promises to keep them at the top of the food chain.

They love the idea of “legacy” and “vision,” but in 2000 years, no one’s going to look back fondly on the hedge fund managers and tech execs who sold out the little people, who sold out the suffering for a little extra ROI. They’re the filler. The placeholders.

History doesn’t remember the sycophants. It remembers the Senecas—the ones who had the guts to stand up and act for the good of the whole, for humanity, for their neighbours, for the principal, even if it cost them their lives.