HIGHLIGHTS

• Deep dive into Buddhism
• Growing communities around stoicism 
• Most things in life happen by chance
• How the stoics viewed Indifferents
• The Discipline of Passion
• Rein in your passions and focus on rationality
• Stoics want be better, not just feel better
• The Discipline of Action
• Only the true sage is a good friend 
• The Disciple of Ascent
• Decline of Stoicism in favor of Christianity in the ancient world 
• The value of Stoicism in the modern world 
• Stoicism should not be used to exploit people

QUOTES

Gregory: "An indifferent  is something that is in your life that will not necessarily make it better and could make it worse. That's all it is. A lot of things consider good, such as health and wealth, are indiffirents to the stoics. And that seems shocking to a lot of people. Of course, I need to be healthy to be happy. Of course I need some amount of money to be happy and things like that. But if you understand the argument I think it makes a little more sense."

Gregory: "The stoic argument of these things being indifferent means that anything that comes into your life through luck  can only be put to good use if you have a good enough character. If you are brave enough, if you think about what's really good in the world, if you care enough about others and you care enough about yourself in certain ways, then you can put things into good use."

Gregory: "We are beyond any animal that's out there, being able to think abstractly and use language. And these passions push reason to the side. We cannot reason when we are in a passion, and so it makes us literally less human when we're doing these kinds of things." 

Gregory: "The goal of the discipline of desire is to temper these passions so that we can become better humans more generally. Not to feel better but to become better."

Gregory: "You're not ready at this first stage to desire what is desirable. If you don't have a hold to your passions to some degree, you're not ready to be ethical. Because these strong emotions will push reason to the side and turn us against each other."

Gregory: "Maybe Stoicism won't be picked up by a lot of people and it may die out again. And I think in terms of compromising some basic principles like between Stoicism dying out again and Stoicism being turned into a life hack that makes factory workers a little bit more happy in the eerie smiley sense but still living lives that are painful in a lot of other ways, then I'd rather Stoicism die out."

To find out more about Gregory, please see the links below.

• Website: https://greglopez.me/philosophy/
• Book: https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-New-Stoics-Week-Week/dp/1615195335

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