Hand in hand with smugness goes hypocrisy. This is a glaring vice of Seneca, who preaches poverty and abstinence not mentioning his own exorbitant wealth

Only a few pages into Tom Hodgkinson’s guide, I was reminded why I’ve always hated Stoicism. This was the philosophy promoted by the sadists who ran boys’ prep schools, who encouraged eight-year-olds to stop blubbing and “behave like men” when they were abandoned by their parents and left to the devices of eccentrics in freezing country piles. This was the philosophy of “grin and bear it”, the world view of the elderly English couple I remember on a London bus in the grim winter of 1983 who in response to a comment about the weather turning cold replied, “Can’t really complain”. Oh yes you can, I felt like shouting.

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