Stoicism: A Philosophy of Powerlessness; And, Meditations on History, Religion, Philosophy & Science

Stoicism is recently faddish and in vogue, but it is popular and attractive only to those who don’t understand it.

It is not surprising that Stoicism is attractive to many people now, in the same way that many people are attracted to a death fetish: Stoisism is a philosophy of fatalism, and that attracts people who feel powerless and hopeless, just as death cults and death fetishes attract people in times of civilizational decline.

Exactly as happened in the late Roman Empire, when that civilization (sic) was in decline and crumbling, just as ours is in decline and crumbling now, people turned to death cults, death fetishes, and gladiatorial blood sports, and they turned to Sophism, which is to say nihilism, and they turn to Stoicism, which says that everything is predetermined, so, you may as well be fatalistic about it, because you have no power over anything anyway.

As an aside, it occurs to me now that the reason the Western Christian churches – the Catholics and the Protestants – became transfixed on the crucifixion, and focused on the suffering and death of Christ, while the Eastern Orthodox church has always focused on Christ’s resurrection and triumph, may have a lot to do with the fact that in 180-400AD, when the Christian churches were still new-born institutions and far more malleable than today, and Augustine’s dark vision became the official church dogma, during the same period the Eastern Roman Empire was strong, while the Western Roman Empire was in decline and decay. In the West, in the decaying Western Roman Empire, the prevailing mood or spirit of the time was a sense that life and the future are at best weary, and at worst horrific – the same spirit or mood of the times which gave rise to the popularity of Stoicism, also gave sanctification, endorsement and canonization, to Augustinian grim determinism, and his dark philosophy of worldly futility and powerlessness: a workd view which is echoed in Augustine’s philosophy, and was the very heart of the Stoicism which preceded it, and which, along with Manichaenism, gave birth to the dark philosophy of Augustine.

Nietzsche and Gibbon were wrong. Christianity is not a weakness to be overcome, and a weakness that led to the fall of the Roman Empire. But the fatalistic philosophies of Stoicism and Augustine are weaknesses and pathologies that almost certainly did contribute to the fall.

Internal decay, caused by great and excessive inequality, corruption and unresponsiveness of the ruling government, self-insulating and out of touch elites, and great suffering and oppression of the people (all of which strongly parallels what we see today), combined with hubris directed outwardly as well as inwardly, meaning, imperial over-reach, were the two primary causes of the decline and collapse, but it can be reasonably argued that the fatalistic philosophies of Stoicism and of Augustine sped the process of disintegration and fall. Apathy is not a wise or intelligent philosophy in any time, and particularly in difficult times.

It also did not help that the Roman elite liked to eat and drink from lead bowls and gobblets, and even sprinkled lead on their food as a flavour enhancer. We now know that lead causes brain damage and mental derangement. The elite drove themselves insane with hubris and the physical poisoning of their brains. The parallels are again striking. History is repeating. And, in the modern industrial world, we accept as normal the routine and systematic poisoning of our air, water, soil and food, and as a result, our bodies and our brains. With the elite self-deluded with hubris and insularity, and the people poisoned both in body by toxins, and in mind by propaganda, indoctrination, delusion, distraction, division, nihilism, illusions of powerlessness and apathy, fall and collapse can not be far off.

I would say that the best scholarly interpretation as to the primary cause of the fall of the Roman Empire is that it was a case of accidental suicide. But that makes it sound like this is an aberration in history. It is not. All empires commit suicide, unwittingly, if they are not brought down by revolution, war, or ecological collapse, which are the other three major causes.

In fact, accidental suicide is far too vague. What that really means, is that the government, and the elite who controlled it, carried out a series of actions and policies that led to the internal decay and ultimate collapse of the empire. What that means, in essence, is that they pursued a policy of imperialism abroad, and callous disregard for the people internally, until they brought the impressive house of cards down around their heads.

What caused the fall of the empire was therefore imperial over-reach – which is what all empires do in the end, because they are driven by hubris, power-lust and greed, and cannot stop themselves; and by corruption and self-serving contempt for the people on the part of the ruling elite, until finally the people began to refuse to pay their taxes, and a tax revolt so weakened the empire internally, that any relatively small precipitating factor was enough to collapse the system. The proverbial barbarians at the gate were a perfect example in history of the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It was a slow motion collapse, exactly as is happening in the late 20th and early 21st century with the global corporate-state empire, but these were the reasons: over-stretch abroad, and corruption within, leading to inevitable decay and decline, and a slow motion disintegration, before the final collapse.

The best summary that I can see to date for the primary reasons the Roman Empire fell (there were many minor and contributing causes, of course), is that a) a combination of imperial over-reach in terms of foreign relations; and b) corruption and extreme inequality within, which led to a crisis of legitimacy (then as now), and which in turn led to a tax revolt; combined with c) a deliberate policy of devaluing the currency, which led inevitably to hyper-inflation; together led to the weakening of the empire to such a state that any relatively minor crisis was enough to bring the system crashing down.

Again, the parallels are striking. The Soviet Union experienced a slowly growing crisis of legitimacy over several decades, until, seemingly suddenly and overnight, it collapsed. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the crisis of legitimacy took nearly 300 years to weaken the empire to the state that “barbarians” were able to sack imperial Rome, and trigger the final fall. But whether slow or fast, an unfolding crisis of legitimacy will bring down any nation or empire if it is ignored. Empires and nations have only two choices when faced with a crisis of legitimacy: honour the people and serve their needs; or alternately, smugly dismiss the people as irrelevant, paper over the problem with ever-increasing and ever less effective propaganda, control mechanisms and PR, and thereby, ensure collapse. The US, and the broader global corporate empire which has swallowed it whole, along with most nations in the world, seem hell bent on repeating the same pattern as the Soviet Union and the Roman Empire. The results will be predictable. The fall is coming. Hubris has guaranteed it.

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Not that the Roman Empire, or any empire, was or is worth preserving, but at least we should be clear about why that “civilization”, or to use more neutral terms, that society, collapsed and fell. It did not collapse because of Christianity – in fact, what both Augustinian misinterpretations of Christianity and Stoic religion were, one after the other, viewed by the ruling elite as being essential to the Empire.

Religion can be a source of strength, or of languishing and decay, but it is like technology, or science, or philosophy, in that sense: it depends entirely on how we relate to them. They can be opiates that blind, or beacons that illuminate and inspire. Don’t blame religion if people sometimes, in some places and some eras, relate to it foolishly. Science, technology and philosophy have been used foolishly many times, but we would be fools to reject them carte blanch and in their entirety, just as we would be foolish to reject all of religion in the same way.

Religion can give us luminary figures such as Jesus, the Buddha, Shankara, Lao Tzu, Moses and Mohammed, Gandhi, Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, St. Francis, Tommy Douglas, Archbishop Romero and Martin Luther King; or it can just as easily give us jaundiced, neurotic, scraping and groveling, boot-licking apologists for empire and preachers of the virtues of apathy, fatalism and grim, pious resignation, such as Augustine. Philosophy can offer us beacons of light and basic sanity, such as Socrates, Spinoza, Emerson, Thoreau, Montaigne and Thomas Paine; or it can lead us into a rotting bog, as it has done with Machiavelli, Spencer and Hobbes, and with the Stoics, the Sophists (nihilists, is a better and more accurate term), and the new Sophists, who are called post-modernists. And science and technology can bring us the telescope, Galileo and Einstein, or just as easily bring us thalidomide, Monsanto, Agent Orange, nuclear weapons and DDT. The problem lies not in religion, philosophy or science per se, but in how we relate to them. To dismiss any of the three – religion, philosophy or science – in their entirety, would be foolish in the extreme, and very highly self-defeating and self-injuring, if not outright madness, since it would be an act of self-blinding, and the gouging out of our own eyes.

As to the fall of the Roman Empire causing a dark age, to meander and return to an earlier thread, as all good thinking and all good conversations do, we should note that the Roman Empire could in no reasonable way be called civilized, since it was an imperialist project and a slave-based society that enjoyed blood sports and venerated itself on the self-indulgence, hubris, insularity and oppressiveness of its rulng elite. The Roman Empire was part of a longer dark age, as the ancient people of Greece, India, China and Tibet all knew very well, but we moderns in our “sophistication” have forgotten. If the collapse of the Roman Empire led to a temporary further darkening, prior to a rebirth and renaissance, which was also due in large measure to its fall, then that new temporary darker dark age was due to the collapse of a system – not, emphatically, a civilization. We should be perfectly and absolutely clear, or at least as clear as possible, in our thinking, and in the terms which both reflect and shape, and often constrain our thoughts.

Another aside, but a profoundly important one, is this. Who were the real barbarians? The Celts, for example, who have been called barbarians, or the Roman aristocracy and the Empire it created? I am not trying to idealize Celtic society, but to simply correct a 2,000 year old bias, prejudice, and deep confusion. Unless we worship power as a value in itself, which is a spiritually, morally and intellectually bankrupt attitude to take, or place an absurd and greatly excessive value on mere engineering and legalistic bureaucracy, which would be equally vacuous, blinding, and spiritually and intellectually bereft, we should view the Roman elite and their empire as the real barbarians. When the Roman Army, after centuries of attempts, finally subdued and conquered the Celts, there were an estimated three million Celtic people in Europe. The Roman Legion slaughtered an estimated one million, and enslaved another million. How is that in any remote sense something that can be called civilized, and not barbaric? Empires always corrupt the people, the society, and the elite in particular. We should not venerate them, if we have any sanity or sense at all.

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More side notes, I offer you, the reader, in this unusually meandering essay, on what began as an essay on Stoic philosophy, and expanded to include its historical and religious context, and now, other, broader points of philosophy as well. But that is fine. We will return to our more narrow focus momentarily. It is good to broaden our minds, and our scope, from time to time.

Listening to history and philosophy podcasts, which are sometimes excellent, and far more often mediocre to abysmal, a point on tone and deliver, aside from content, comes to mind. (And yes, there is no replacement for books, however valuable a very small minority of podcasts and video documentaries may be.) We should note here the wide divergence and great difference in speaking, listening and dialogue between a fairly representative Brit of the older generations, such as Rupert Sheldrake, who never rushes in his speech, nor, presumably, in his thought, and hence communicates, and thinks, with uncommon clarity; and on the other hand, what has become the norm in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and especially in North America, which is to rush through everything, talking as if on crack, speed, crystal meth, or simply too much caffeine, or more often, simply a habit of rushing through everything at all times, as if the goal were to reach the end, which is death, and not to enjoy the journey, or to learn something along the way. If you value learning, teaching, communicating effectively, or you value life, slow down. Unless your objective is a frenzied intellectual entertainment merely – which is useless and only clutters and clouds the mind – and not thinking, learning, communication or truth, slow down.

Thoughts, readings, conversations and discussions, as with life and its events, should be fully present to us, and we to them, and they should be digested and reflected upon, and not simply fly past us in a blur. It may seem impressive to talk fast or to read fast, or to live in a perpetual frenzied rush, but we are only fooling ourselves, for it is foolish and self-defeating. Slow down.

As Thoreau and Trungpa both said, the first thing to do is to cut the speed. Slow down. It cannot be emphasized enough.

The French have said of the Americans that they are so perpetually in a mad rush, and so unduly venerating of action over reflection, that they fling themselves into what they think is a solution before they have properly examined or understood the problem. This, of course, is a recipe for disastrous solutions, which compound the problems many times over, rather than solving them. And this too, is exactly what is happening now, and not just in the United States, but around the world. Slow down. Pause to reflect. Otherwise, our solutions will be the death of us all. Our safety measures in particular are killing us, and are killing our democracy, freedom, human rights, and common sense. Such solutions deserve scorn and firm rejection, not praise and pious self-congratulation. Slow down, pause, and reflect, or it is a true dark age ahead for us all.

But we have digressed…or rather, not digressed, but we have widened our scope beyond the initial focus of this short essay. To return to Stoicism….

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That grim philosophy of fatalism, determinism and powerlessness which Stoicism represents, has captured the minds of many recently, just as it did roughly 2,000 years ago, as the Roman Empire was beginning to collapse. It is as foolish and addle-minded now as it was then. It is the rationalization of despair, and the turning of a cult of impotence, into a virtue.

In its determinism, or the view that all things are predetermined, Stoicism echoes Augustine, or rather, was echoed by Augustine, the deeply neurotic and deeply jaundiced “philosopher” who the new imperial “Christian” church adopted, foolishly, as its primary and over-arching patron saint and guide – sadly displacing Jesus and the prophets in the process.

Augustine held that all things are predetermined. Not surprisingly, he viewed the world, nature, human beings and all life, as futile as well as utterly degraded, wicked and vile, and essentially pushed a philosophy of fatalistic resignation and of powerlessness.

Both Stoicism and the Augustinian heresy, as it should be called, worked wonderfully for the empire, and for the new, hierarchical church powers that were lining their pockets, while aligning themselves with the Empire. It is the same now as then. Demoralize your enemy, is principle number one, according to Sun Tzu and the Art of War, the unrivalled master of strategy, and his major work. Tell them they have no power, and convince them of that, and the war is won before it begins.

“Shut up and know your place, and do as you’re told, because you have no power, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.” This is Stoic philosophy, in its brainless, or for emeror’s use, deceitful, core.

Stoicism is very much akin to Confucianism, which, unsurprisingly, is linked deeply to authoritarian neo-Maoist/Leninist/corporatist technocratic and totalitarian contemporary Communist China. Stoicism is also akin to the caste system of India. Both say, is essence, “Know your place, do what you are told, and shut up.” Except that Stoicism and Augustinian philosophy are vastly darker than either Confucianism or Hinduism, which look beatific and pure geius by comparison.

In any event, either one, Stoicism or Augustinian “Christianity”, suited the Empire perfectly. And yes, Stoicism and Augustine’s “Christianity” are not only deeply linked, but are almost interchangeable – because both told people that everything is predetermined, and therefore they have no power, and therefore told them resign themselves to obedience, and taught them that obedience is virtue, and that believing you are powerless is a virtue. It is madness, of course, but the emperors and bishops and popes loved it.

Marcus Aurelius, who is considered a “good emperor” (which is an absurd oxymoron, suitable only for morons) even considered Stoicism as politically essential to the empire, and said so. A short time later, its mirror image in Agustinian “christianity” would likewise be considered as indispensable to the empire: because both fostered conformity, obedience, and illusions of powerlessness among the plebes and slaves and conquered peoples, and even among the landed aristocracy and the patricians. The Empire is the natural and inevitable, heaven-sanctified, unalterable order of things, and resistance is futile. Of course emperors love that sort of thing. But saner minds should not, and should reject it entirely.

So, when someone advocates Stoicism, tell them you don’t want a philosophy of fatalism, powerlessness, repression, submission and servility, thank you very much.

I could think of worse philosophies than Stoicism – fascism, nihilism, cynicism, totalitarianism, for example… but then again, both Stoicism and Augustinian philosophy both, feed into all of these dark states of mind, ideology and world view, perfectly well, like hand to glove.

Stoicism offers some glittering nuggets of sound advice, but it is fool’s gold, because it comes as the outer wrapper and pretty packaging for a dark seed within, which is the philosophy of futility, powerlessness and despair. Reaching for Stoicism, therefore, from all the many philosophies we could choose from, is truly scraping the bottom of the barrel. It is the dregs of the Western mind. We can do much, much better.

J. Todd Ring,

April 5, 2021