How a Stoic Becomes a Saint

We exist to behave decently in an indecent society

Becoming a Saint

If you’re familiar with the work of Kurt Vonnegut, you’ll know he had a wonderful knack for crafting beauty out of very simple words.

He did this not just in his books, but also when giving talks (this one is my favorite) and recounting conversations.

Another source of this beauty — and an example I think is relevant to anyone interested in practicing Stoicism — comes from a letter Vonnegut wrote to Robert Maslansky in 1992:

I am off to the city tomorrow, Thursday, and then to the outskirts of Chicago, to Harper College, where I will tell my audience about the pregnant woman who asked me in a letter if it was wrong to bring an innocent baby into a world as awful as this one. I told her that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me was all the saints I met almost anywhere, people who were behaving decently in an indecent society. I will tell the audience that I hope some among them will become saints for her child to meet.

The relevance of this thought to us is that it speaks directly to the prosocial nature of Stoic philosophy.

In a society that can so often seem, as Vonnegut put it, indecent, there will always be “saints” who…