There’s no question that we are facing a number of pressing issues as a planet: Public health dangers. Homelessness. The rise of authoritarian China. Police brutality. Failures of the regulatory state. 

It’s an interesting question: Are these crises suddenly coming to a head now? Or is it that we’re just finally noticing them? 

When the Stoics talked about slowing down, about stillness, we have to realize that they weren’t talking about checking out. What they were talking about was tuning in. It can’t be argued that the murder of innocent people or racism are somehow new events in American life, for instance. All that’s changed is that people—because of the pandemic—are a little less busy and finally able to see what’s happening. Nothing new is happening in China, it’s just the noise of other issues is falling away and now it’s impossible to ignore what has been growing all the while. And so it goes for all the other major issues of our time. They’ve been here for some time…we were just too blind to notice, too self-absorbed to care. 

Marcus Aurelius said we had to stop being bounced around by life. He said we had to concentrate. He was saying—as philosophers have said for all time—that we have to see the here and now. This is the hardest thing, but the most important thing. No one who is frenzied, who is jerked around by social media, who is doing way too many inessential things, has the time or the quiet necessary to do deep thinking. Their minds cannot compute what is obvious to those who are still or have perspective. No one who is roiled by anxiety, stress, distraction, or anger can develop the insights required to solve these difficult problems. 

We have to slow down. We have to see. We have to do the work.

P.S. This was originally sent on June 11, 2020. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.