Will Stoicism Save the World? The Case for Being a Stoic During the Meta-Crisis

In this salon, the steward of The Stoa, Peter Limberg asks how can we be virtuous when we are facing the End of the World? 

We are in times of crisis, and as scholars such as Nick Bostrom write, we are in an age filled with existential risks: misuse of nanotechnology, nuclear holocaust, misaligned superintelligence (AGI), weaponized biological agents, and runaway global warming.

Other globalizing concerns, such as surveillance capitalism, the meaning crisis, culture wars, and the great weirding, are all facets of what some thinkers have been calling the meta-crisis. The meta-crisis is the catchall to describe our collective issues, along with our inability to individually and collectively make sense of what to do about them.

With awareness of the meta-crisis, our collective future may seem bleak, and it is understandable that many are capitulating to existential despair. Moreover, within the complexity that everyday living during a pandemic affords, there is a great collective uncertainty of how we as individuals and collectives should live one’s life.

In this salon, Peter Limberg will deliver a short introduction on the philosophy of Stoicism, mapping the facets of the meta-crisis, in order to make the case as to why Stoicism might be the philosophy needed to respond to the meta-crisis and its dazzling uncertainty.

Please note: 

This salon will begin with a short presentation by Peter which will be recorded and posted publicly.

Good to read before the salon: 

• Stoic Virtue Ethics: http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30059463/sharpe-stoicvirtue-2013.pdf
• Weird Stoicism: https://thestoa.substack.com/p/weird-stoicism
• Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards: https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
• Existential Risk and Existential Hope: Definitions: https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/Existential-risk-and-existential-hope.pdf
• The Memetic Tribes Of Culture War 2.0: https://medium.com/s/world-wide-wtf/memetic-tribes-and-culture-war-2-0-14705c43f6b

Wednesday 19th May

• 12pm in Los Angeles / San Francisco
• 3pm in New York
• 8pm in London
• 9pm in Berlin / Paris

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