Dear all,

Stay away from politics and religious matters. They are tools created by the few to manipulate the many. Throughout history, human race started to screw up when they decided to embrace politics and religion. It used to be cooperation and teamwork during the hunter gatherer society. But once agriculture took place, wealth can be accumulated and ruler can rule, the neolithic people started to squabble over issues of land, wealth and power. This was fueled by the thirst of the rulers to expand their geographical territory. So what is the best way to get the common people to give up their lives for their rulers none other than to elevate the ruler status to become divinities with the help of religion/believe system?

"Road to hell is paved with good intention" Surely it is hell when war breaks lose. What is the motive that triggers the war?  As we had seen more than often they are ignited by people who have a deeply ingrained belief that what they are doing is right. How is it that both warring sides are right? Again this boils down to their belief systems.

You think most people use their brains and able to decide what is right and what is wrong. Well don't be too sure. Many people are incapable of killing but given a religious flavor or believe system that they are fighting a just war, they will without hesitation raise arms and fight tooth and nail for what they believe in.

If only religion/politics is a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, what a beautiful world!

Stoicism believe culmination of human endeavor or ‘end’ is eudaimonia, “happiness” and “blessedness” The Stoics defined this end as “living in agreement with nature”. Compared to other animals, human beings are neither the strongest, nor the fastest, nor the best swimmers, nor able to fly. Instead, the distinct and uniquely human capacity is reason. Thus for human beings, “living in agreement with nature” means living in agreement with our special, innate endowment—the ability to reason.

The Stoics elaborated a detailed taxonomy of virtue, dividing virtue into four main types: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. Wisdom is subdivided into good sense, good calculation, quick-wittedness, discretion, and resourcefulness. Justice is subdivided into piety, honesty, equity, and fair dealing. Courage is subdivided into endurance, confidence, high-mindedness, cheerfulness, and industriousness. Moderation is subdivided into good discipline, seemliness, modesty, and self-control. Similarly, the Stoics divide vice into foolishness, injustice, cowardice, intemperance, and the rest. The Stoics further maintained that the virtues are inter-entailing and constitute a unity: to have one is to have them all. They held that the same virtuous mind is wise, just, courageous, and moderate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BC. It is a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world. According to its teachings, as social beings, the path to eudaimonia (happiness, or blessedness) is found in accepting the moment as it presents itself, by not allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire for pleasure or by the fear of pain, by using one's mind to understand the world and to do one's part in nature's plan, and by working together and treating others fairly and justly.

The Stoics are especially known for teaching that "virtue is the only good" for human beings, and that external things —such as health, wealth, and pleasure—are not good or bad in themselves (adiaphora), but have value as "material for virtue to act upon." Alongside Aristotelian ethics, the Stoic tradition forms one of the major founding approaches to virtue ethics. The Stoics also held that certain destructive emotions resulted from errors of judgment, and they believed people should aim to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is "in accordance with nature." Because of this, the Stoics thought the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said, but how a person behaved. To live a good life, one had to understand the rules of the natural order since they thought everything was rooted in nature.

Many Stoics—such as Seneca and Epictetus—emphasized that because "virtue is sufficient for happiness," a sage would be emotionally resilient to misfortune. This belief is similar to the meaning of the phrase "stoic calm," though the phrase does not include the "radical ethical" Stoic views that only a sage can be considered truly free, and that all moral corruptions are equally vicious.

Stoicism flourished throughout the Roman and Greek world until the 3rd century AD, and among its adherents was Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It experienced a decline after Christianity became the state religion in the 4th century AD. Since then it has seen revivals, notably in the Renaissance (Neostoicism) and in the contemporary era (modern Stoicism).

So what are your thoughts?

So please find your happiness.

When I look at people/politicians with fancy stuffs, I begin to wonder and ask myself how big are their debts and how corrupt they are or how ridiculous they are slogging/backstabbing each other day and night to buy things with money they don’t owned to impress people they don’t know?