Is it better to live a life following a set of philosophical ideas / religion...

Depends on the person desu

Indeed, the sentiment is backwards. It's far better to reign in Heaven than to serve in hell.

he mean that you off yourself and back to >>>/reddit/books with it

Stoicism is not Nihilism, user.

Best of luck to you with whatever philosophy (if any) you end up following, though.

Redpill my on Stoicicim

I tried reading Meditations and it was fucking terrible. Basically said that nothing matters but we should be responsible and well behaved even though we all end up dead regardless.

Explains why he raised a freak show son that fucked up Rome...

you can't live a life free of philosophy or even a life free of religion. If you think you are, you are probably getting cucked by unexamined and unacknowledged ideology

It indeed isn't. Instead, it's Nihilism for _meek people_.
That you can't understand the difference is indicative of something. ;^)

ignorance and rejection are not the same thing

Define "better"

Nihilism for [insert group here] is presumably still a version of nihilism, otherwise it's no longer nihilism for [insert group here]. If you'd like to explain how/why stoicism is a form of nihilism, I'm willing to listen.

Aurelius' Meditations are a simplistic and high-level introduction to Stoicism, and aren't really representative of Stoicism itself. His main 'contribution' to Stoicism was the idea that it doesn't matter whether or not it's providence or atoms that make up the universe, which is, I suspect, where you're getting "nothing matters" from. Stoics preceding Aurelius accepted divine providence as a given.

I would give Epictetus a shot - he is a better source than Aurelius.

Does choosing to live a life without philosophy or religion mean choosing to live a life without purpose?

>presumably
don't presume stuff, user.
nihilism attempts to solve the fact that nothing is meaningful by letting you create your own destiny, stoicism presumes that you've already let other people create your destiny for you and are waking up to this way too late to do anything about it, and attempts to solve that fact by asserting that oh well nothing was meaningful anyway

clearly there's only a small tonal difference between the two philosophies and it is measureable in a single dimension along a spectrum of meekness

>stoicism presumes that you've already let other people create your destiny for you and are waking up to this way too late to do anything about it, and attempts to solve that fact by asserting that oh well nothing was meaningful anyway

This is incorrect. Stoicism neither asserts that other people create your destiny, nor does it assert that nothing was meaningful anyways.

It instead asserts that you *always* have control over your response to the external things, and that your response to external things is profoundly meaningful.

why are you here asking about how to live your life? that's something you decide on your own

Thank you, I will read him.

Any other good Stoics to start with?

What should it matter just bUrself

M'whom*

>are you trying to say that I'm "crazy"??
>no, we don't use that term around here
ok f a m

Epictetus is probably the best source of extant distillations of Stoicism. There are some fragments of his teacher Musonius Rufus around too. Seneca is worth reading as well.

I'm startled that no one knows Paradise Lost's most famous line.

...

just live

WOAH DUDE

If you don't read philosophy then you are being cucked by whichever random philosophies are visibly embedded in your culture.

bump

It is better to live your life as an actor within an literary movement context. I, for one, live an imagist lifestyle.

HOLY FUCK.

This. You're going to be cucked no matter what you do. Might as well review all your options.

thisthisthisthis

Holy......I want more............

yes

Okay, Lucifer.

>follow a few rules, and if you follow them you can live an eternal blissful afterlife
>don't follow those few rules, you have a bit more fun on the Earth, but you'll end up in literally the worst place in existence FOREVER

Nah, it's better to serve in Heaven. Fuck Lucifer.