Problem With Stoicism

05 May 2024

There are good ideas/thoughts in this philosophy. But I don’t like the fact how they keep mentioning “do what nature has assigned you to do” or “do what is natural” or “don’t try to go against what is natural or what nature has intended”.

The whole idea of “natural” doesn’t make sense to me. Over the course of history, human beings keep altering the definition of what is “natural”. Flying on a plane is pretty natural these days but some hundred years back, it wasn’t so natural. If humans beings just come to acceptance on everything around them and never try to change anything, how’s the world ever going to progress? It’s the retaliation against, what is perceived as “natural” that progresses the world forward.

It’s becomes even more evident if we rustle through the history pages a little bit. Be it the history of computers, internet or technology in general. Or be it the social history, how it was that people couldn’t choose their place or role in society and used to practice the same profession that their family used to practice. Because at that time it was considered as “natural”. How it was considered “natural” for women to be only good for caring for family and household stuff.

If nobody ever questioned the current consensus of what is “natural” and if nobody ever dared to go against what is “natural”, would the world have ever reached its current state?