I saw a post recently about how the family cartoon Bluey was very good at showcasing Stoic behavior, even though it wasn’t labeled as such. What are your favorite novels, essays, songs, or movies that showcase Stoicism in the modern or postmodern eras?
My answers in the comments.
The Johnny Cash song “Guess Things Happen That Way” is about coping with loss in a very Stoic way, recognizing that you don’t have to like it, you just have to live it.
The book “Getting Real” by 37signals founder Jason Fried is a set of short, sharp lessons –not even long enough to be called essays, in most cases– about entrepreneurship; how it speaks to Stoicism is the focus on concentrating effort on doing what you can right now and not worrying about what’s out-of-reach. Second, and I know this sounds a little odd now that we know how much of an asshole Fried is to his employees in the present, but at the time of writing he emphasized avoiding a growth mindset and focusing instead on doing right by those you employ and those using your product.
One more book: “Ignore Everybody” by cartoonist / ad man Hugh MacLeod. Ostensibly writing about creativity and how to practice it, MacLeod has a lot of insights about the psychological traps of the postmodern, globally-conected world. As the title suggests, there’s a strong emphasis on not trying to please others in favor of following your own arrow; while he’s writing about art, most of the advice applies just as well to the pursuit of virtue, to farming, to programming, and what-have-you. Though I doubt he’s familiar with Stoicism, he seems to have independently reinvented the principle of “action rather than reaction” that’s core to Stoic philosophy.