Stoics…The saving Grace

If ever the stoics had it their way, I believe that this world would be a reigning Buddhist kingdom with widespread “love-dovey” inspirations as our laws.

Famously known for their firm belief.. Stoicism has been known for having systems which are pretty much irrefutable yet silly in nature.Well, nicely placed they stood by one law: If God cannot be proven (and we aren’t saying he can’t), can we discredit him? See, the stoics nicely threaded the middle-line between belief and non-belief. They knew since the pre-Socratic era, that it was not their place to disregard or wage a war with religion but just to provide man-kind with the liberation and freedom of thoughts. Yet in this very age, being a stoic is a condemned choice and truly shameful among the main beliefs system.’ Atheism’ is the brand one would go by. Or more precisely, Practical Atheism.

Now, the question to ask in this very troubled time is 1): Why is being a stoic such a curse in these very troubled times? What do we have to attribute to that?

Simply, all we have got to do is to analyse the potential threats being waged against mankind. From civil wars, to social instability to political turmoil to greedy ambitions to the recent terrorism .When faced with uncertainty, pain and troubled times, we have been known to turn to agencies to ease up our burdens and to garner strength. Sadly, our very saviours have been there waiting to leech of our emotions. And in all these eras, religion has been the salvation of our forefather and as well as the damnation.

So seeing that religion is tightly coiled around humanity, it is apparent that the ‘snake’ hisses at anything else that comes near its prey.T he idea of stoicism, no matter how true or how comforting, does not in any way appeal to religions anymore.Well, there may have been a time where stoicism being a branch of philosophy was used to supplement Christianity and Islam. It was way more popular during the Confucius Era. Yet now, being a stoic simply means, you are neither here nor there. People live by absolutes and thus, seeing a person who threads both the lines of religion and non-belief, worries them. It’s simply discomforting to have one without a belief to be truly happy, after all that is the gift for having a belief/religion and not vice-versa.

 

However, if anyone were to look at the core of our systems/belief we would find stoicism deeply embedded inside. Basically religion follows the view of Aristotle that everything ends up in a cycle. Existence was never of nothing and never does it end up in nothing. The circle of life and what-so-ever. However to supplement that very belief we have to answer one Question:

Then, what about God? He has to be created too.?His existence has to be from something and not nothing. If yes, then firstly, it makes ‘God’ lose his grandeur and his Omni-potency. He She would not be that grand or appealing anymore and that would normalise him and make him even more human. He would share a similar trait with us: Birth.Infact,that thought itself distrupts our very core.

Yet, if the answer is No: That, God was there before time and He was of nothing. Then, that conflicts against our very true beliefs. What about the circle of life?And that is where most of us adopt the second tier belief that,yes God is Omni-potent and he was never created.Now,we have two conflicting ideas which surprisingly complements and tightens our beliefs.

So against our better judgement,we still are stoics but just of a milder version.