The other day, at a protest against Trump’s wall and against his anti-immigration policies, I explained to a number of people how Stoicism can be the basis of an ideological counter to the anti-progressive terraforming that extreme fundamentalists have done to America’s ideological landscape . The responses that I got ranged from the very-receptive to the very-dismissive. However, one response that I got from someone was that person expressing concern that Stoicism might not be an effective philosophy for activists.

My response, of course, was to offer a very brief explanation of why Stoicism was the ideal philosophy for activists. However, it was a brief explanation, limited to a few sentences. Here, I would like to provide a more in-depth answer to this reservation about Stoicism.

I did not have a chance in this situation to learn what was the cause of this person’s reservations about Stoicism as a philosophy for activists. However – typically, when someone has such a reservation about Stoicism it is for one of two reasons. The first one is a blatant misconception about Stoicism, that it encourages people to support the status-quo without resistance. Obviously, Cato the Younger didn’t get the memo on that one when he resisted Julius Caesar’s rise to power – nor did George Washington when he resisted British occupation of the newly-forming United States. Nor did a number of other movers of change in our world’s history who were guided by Stoicism.

The other reason is an all-too-prevalent model of activism that is founded on the use of anger as a means by which to mobilize activists on the grass-roots level. This school of thought teaches that anger is a powerful tool that unites people in an effort to demand change.

However, while it is true that anger can be powerful tool to motivate people to take-up activism in the first place, anger-driven activism has serious drawbacks. Anger-driven activists are susceptible to various forms of burnout – and also prone to being emotionally motivated to make self-defeating decisions that can have serious consequences – some sooner, and some later.

The solution to this is to offer the activist an upgrade of sorts in which the anger is traded in for something much more powerful – a resolve to properly do their part in the effort to effect change. When activists make this upgrade, which is what they achieve through Stoic philosophy, a number of benefits are realized.