Stoic Compassion: Should I Be Understanding Toward Terrorists?
Sometimes it is difficult to really practice Stoicism, or any serious philosophy or religion. Which is as it should be. If things were always easy according to one’s philosophy of life one could reasonably doubt the effectiveness of such philosophy. Rarely has my Stoicism been put through a difficult test as during and after the recent events in Washington, DC. From my point of view, a narcissistic President who is unable to comprehend that he lost an open and fair election has incited a large group of lunatics into an open and violent insurrection against the US government. The attempt failed only because Mr. Trump is far less focused, motivated, and organized than Mussolini was. Otherwise we could have seen a repetition of the infamous “march on Rome.”
But of course, the above description is, as I said, from my point of view. From the point of view of the participants to the event — judging from interviews and social media posts — it was a patriotic act made necessary by a corrupted government who had overturned the legitimate election of Donald Trump to a second term. And this is where Stoicism becomes both difficult to practice, and yet absolutely necessary. As Marcus Aurelius puts it:
“Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious…
