Why I Am Not a Stoic

Mark Manson
17 min readApr 19, 2021

E ver since the release of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck back in 2016, many people have compared my work to Stoicism. Some have even gone as far as to say that my work is merely regurgitating Stoicism with a couple cool stories and F-bombs thrown in to spice things up.

Initially, I found this amusing. I had read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in college, as well as bits and pieces of Seneca. But other than that, I knew…

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Mark Manson

Author of #1 NYTimes Bestseller ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck’. OG Blogger. Psychology Nerd. I enjoy cats and whiskey. But not at the same time.