The polar opposite of snowflake culture? That's why Stoicism is so popular

ONE of the oddest features of the culture right now is that the philosophy of Stoicism is a big thing. There's a group called Modern Stoicism which runs a Stoic Week, that asks participants to live like a Stoic and it turns out that it makes them feel good. In fact, living like a Stoic for a month is even better.

- Melanie McDonagh

There's a Daily Stoic podcast by the American, Ryan Holiday. There's an annual gathering called Stoicon for modern Stoics. There are several popular and short guides to Stoicism. And today there's the launch of the second series of the podcast Brave New World, presented by this paper's proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev, with an opening episode on Stoicism. It features the US academic, Bill Irvine; it'll be followed by an interview with Holiday.

It's hard, on the face of it, to think of anything less like the spirit of the age than Stoicism. It's the opposite of snow flakery, and the cult of being perpetually offended by other people's speech and the general embrace of victimhood.

Because the essence of Stoicism is that nothing external to you can adversely affect you. Not really. What matters is your judgement, how you respond to things. And the equable, rational mind accepts things as they are with the proviso that you can do your bit to make things as they are.