You Don’t Get To Not Care

<p>There are a lot of tensions in Stoicism, as we have talked about before. How do you balance <a href='https://dailystoic.com/amor-fati-love-of-fate/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=to-not-care'>acquiescing to fate</a> and embracing your own agency? How do you balance being aware of the dangers of the future without worrying about or fearing it? How do you think regularly<a href='https://dailystoic.com/memento-mori?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=to-not-care'> of your own death</a> without losing your taste for life?</p><p>But perhaps the most relevant tension today is the one about balancing a philosophical detachment from external events and our obligations to contribute to society and democracy. As the statesman Pericles said, “One person’s disengagement is untenable unless bolstered by someone else’s commitment.” If you decide not to vote because voting seems so statistically insignificant, or you ignore the injustice happening in the world because it doesn’t affect you, it make might your life a little more peaceful, but the result is an incremental increase in the suffering of others—whether that is the additional burden placed on others to carry your part of the load or an elongation of the injustice they are trying to ameliorate. </p><p>Every famine, every plague, every genocide, every repressive regime that has terrorized a part of the globe since the end of World War II and the reorganization of the world order, one could argue owes the length of its reign to just the kind of disengagement Pericles was talking about. Five years, ten years, <em>thirty years</em>—those numbers could have been halved, if they weren’t happening so far away that it didn’t affect us. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say. </p><p>Clearly, the Stoics believed that turning off noise and chatter was not in conflict with actively participating in civic life. How could <a href='https://dailystoic.com/marcus-aurelius/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&