The Stoics talked repeatedly about the idea of the common good. To leave someone hanging, turning your heart to stone because there is so much pain and suffering in this world? That is to betray this philosophy.
Much of what happens in this world is outside of our control. We can’t stop a hurricane, obviously. But we do have the power to help our neighbor in the middle of one. We can’t help being scared, but we can decide to push through it—to speak up and defend someone who doesn’t look like us, to say, “Hey, not in my name” to policies that discriminate or persecute.
We take care of our own because we are all one. We are all part of the same sympatheia, as the Stoics called it—an interconnected cosmos. We are all our own part of the same large whole. We are cu