Stoic AF.

Welcome back, weary traveller, to the demon-haunted hellscape of our modern politics. I stepped outside for a little while, not knowing how long I would be gone, but all the devils are here now, and so I resolved to return. I understand you are exhausted by this shit. You are despairing. You’re wondering if you should take up drinking before noon because you already tried drinking before breakfast, and to be honest, it wasn’t quite so bad as all of the censorious and judgmental health pamphlets made out, so why the fuck not double down?

Because if you give into madness, desolation and despair, you’ll miss out on the fun and moral improvement to be had, giving these chuds an absolute kicking.

Stop. Breathe. Put down the breakfast gin.

I’ve had a wonderful time these last few months catching up on my pile of unread novels and unwatched TV. I got back under the iron at the gym, took my dogs for some long walks, and discovered in doing so that the local bowlo has very cold beer at very reasonable prices and that if I limit myself to a single pint of my favourite lager, the calories thus consumed are a shade under the calories I burned walking the dogs there and back in the first place.

Yes, my friends, I found out how to make icy cold delicious beer a weight-loss supplement.

But now it's time to get back to the important work of punching Nazis in the face.

Not literally, of course. Punching anyone in the face is wrong because it could damage the bones in your hand quite severely. Instead, consider the many open-handed strikes of the traditional koryu schools of martial arts, which advocate the striking of hard with soft and soft with hard. If that’s just not your thing, though, let us entertain conjecture of Stoicism.

Yes, Stoicism—the favourite intellectual fidget-spinner of red-pilled crypto bros and libertarian superchuds. It’s also a pretty solid survival guide for those of us staring into the abyss of lunatic neo-stupidity, and I’m interested in stealing it away from a bunch of incel drama queens who couldn’t come to grips with classical stoicism’s basic philosophical tenets if they were tattooed on their dicks in three-point Comic Sans.

But first, the origin story. Stoicism kicked off a couple of thousand years ago when a guy named Zeno of Citium lost everything in a shipwreck and, after thinking on it for a while, decided to invent an entire worldview based on not giving a single ethereal fuck about the uncontrollable chaos of life. It may have reached its zenith under Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor who spent his free time writing meditations on chill while half the empire was dying from plague and the other half was busy stabbing each other for sport.

The golden nut holding Stoicism together is simple: Fate is a fiery cosmic dumpster lashed to a deranged war elephant, charging down Mount Olympus, and you have precisely two choices—scream helplessly as it flattens you, or flex like a bronze statue of Zeus and ride that motherfucker for the championship.

Yes, it is more than a little droll that this should be the philosophy taken up by the modern manosphere, which seems entirely composed of fragile grievance goblins who treat every minor irritation as an epic vengeance play written by the Lesbian Furies.

But that’s the thing about the goblin cargo-cult version of Stoicism—it’s a contradiction so potent it could be bottled and sold as an irony concentrate. These fucking guys love to screech that they don’t care about the opinions of ‘soyboys’ and ‘feminazis.’ Yet, they spend every waking moment constructing elaborate discursive shrines to their proclaimed victimhood. They don’t cultivate resilience; they cosplay it. Stoicism doesn’t teach you how to be an ‘alpha male’—it simply offers a path to modest stillness and humility. And if the modern male supremacists understood that, they might spend less time howling into the void about ‘female hypergamy’ and more time figuring out why they cry every time a lady barista doesn’t flirt back.

However, coherence is not one of their virtues.

The Stoics, on the other hand, laid out four sacred virtues: prudence (as in, make good choices, don’t be an idiot), fortitude (suck it up when life tries to suplex you into submission), temperance (maybe don’t snort the whole bag of hedonism at once, Elon), and justice (don’t be a raging asshole). They practised these virtues not because they thought it made them better than anyone else (though, let’s be real, it kind of did) but because these were the only things that actually mattered in the end.

Everything else? Meaningless.

Wealth? A distraction. Power? A fool’s errand.

Throwing a giant tanty over things you can’t control? The knitted condom of emotional dysregulation.

Epictetus, a former slave turned philosophical Final Boss, preached that true freedom wasn’t about seeking status or power but about being unshakeably chill. This absolute unit was so fucking chill that when his master deliberately snapped his leg, he just shrugged it off like, “Break the other leg if you want, champ, but even Zuess can’t break my spirit.” There’s a reason his name was Epic.

I might be wrong, but I think that the Stoics, like old mate Epic here, can offer some hard-won pro-tips for navigating a world ruled by a gigantic sentient yam and his growing army of ghouls who currently rampage over everything, everywhere, all at once.

And it would be a delicious chocolate nipple on top of a giant irony sundae to take from these monstrous chuds, the philosophical plaything with which they have been toying, and turn it into a weapon against them.

But how?

The first lesson is to understand what you can and cannot control. You cannot personally alter the ebb and flow of world-historical political forces. You cannot even stop Elon Musk from eating a bowl of ketamine jelly as big as his head and deciding to invade Reykjavik dressed as Lilith, Daughter of Hatred.

You probably can’t control your reaction to that: Shock, awe, possibly some giggling.

You can, however, control your response and whether you let these things turn you into a rage-gargling gremlin who defaults to head-butting drystone walls for stress relief every time you check your newsfeed.

A reaction is organic, primal, a surge of neurochemical stimuli from the lizard hindbrain.

Your response is a choice.

One of the first lessons of Stoicism is sorting the world into two neat little piles: things you can control and those you cannot. Instead of screaming at the news until your neck veins explode, focus on what you can actually do. Vote, engage, donate, volunteer, become a menace to local fascists. After all, they’re the only ones close enough to punch. And for the love of Marcus Aurelius, take a fucking break when you need to because if and when you burn out, they win.

In essence, that’s the Stoic way: absorbing what life throws at you, taking a deep breath or three—I will confess that it normally takes me three—and choosing how you respond rather than letting the chaos of the world carry you along on the flood tide of derangement.

What does this all mean in practical terms? First, I’m begging you, stop doom-scrolling. Social media is a poison factory that was literally designed to make you miserable and addicted to your misery. Second, pause before you respond to any provocation, and if life comes at you with a two-by-four, don’t cry, don’t whine, and do not start posting about your trauma. If the enemy is thirsty for your tears, let them die in the desert of all the fucks you do not give.

The Stoics don’t promise happiness or comfort, but they do offer a Way forward.

So let us stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, and get ready to go full Marcus Aurelius on these losers, wherever they may be. The universe is chaos. But you? You’re stoic as fuck.