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Both Buddhism and Stoicism emphasize self-control, ethical living, and the attainment of a passionless state. However, the Indian philosophy predated Stoicism by about 500 years. Did Buddhism influence Greek Stoicism and thought, and, if so, how did it do so a continent away? Similarities between Stoicism and Buddhism: A shared path to inner peace Practitioners of Stoicism and Buddhism deeply understand life’s impermanence and the need to overcome desires. The philosophies teach mental discipline and detachment from external circumstances as paths to inner peace. In Stoicism, “apatheia” means freedom from emotional disturbance, closely mirroring Buddhism’s “nirvana,” the liberation from suffering....

US Capitol Building, which was inspired by ancient Greek and Roman architecture. Ancient Greece and the ideals we celebrate on Fourth of July greatly influenced the push for American independence. Credit: Public domain Greek Americans have one more reason to be proud on the Fourth of July each year because they don’t only celebrate America’s Independence Day, but also the great influence of Hellenism on the birth of the American nation. The ideas and practices that are celebrated on Fourth of July and that led to the development of the American democratic republic after 1776 owe a debt to the...

On this episode of “YOUR WELCOME” with Michael Malice, we are joined by Ryan Holiday, the man who reintroduced Stoic thought into American consciousness. Ryan is the author of "Trust Me, I'm Lying," "Ego is the Enemy," "The Obstacle is the Way," and most recently, "Conspiracy" about Peter Thiel and his war on Gawker.

Thomas Jefferson famously adapted key passages of John Locke’s Second Treatise in his draft Declaration of Independence. An 18th century gentleman could hardly regard himself as learned without the ability to quote a few Lockean passages from memory. Yet, what of the average colonial? Books were expensive imports. How were the yeomanry educated well enough in Lockean concepts to readily understand and accept this radical document, the Declaration of Independence? Through newspapers. Like modern Americans, our colonial forebears were also political junkies. Freewheeling editorials, letters to the editor that criticized parliamentary and colonial governments were standing features of public life....

Don't Commemorate Sept. 11 Fewer flags, please, and more grit. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, September 8, 2003, at 9:30 AM PT Unless I have badly mistaken the mood of everyone I know and almost everyone I meet, practically nobody has any particular use for the second anniversary that will soon be upon us. But it is vaguely felt in many quarters that something ought to be done by way of an observance. The first mentality is in my opinion the right one, even if people feel bad about harboring it, and the second one is defensible but somewhat sickly...

THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE WITHOUT DUALISM by Elizabeth NewmanBoth modernism's disinterested spectator and postmodernism's deconstructed self lead to the gnostic belief that we are in bondage to the world. Biblically informed myth offers an escape. That theology and science have been haunted by epistemological dualisms is an unremarkable claim. Current postmodern efforts to think beyond such dualisms as objectivism versus relativism include recent attention to knowledge as socially constructed, communitarian, and nonfoundational. Such efforts share the assumption that knowing and doing are internally related. Thus theology and science, like all knowledge, emerge from the practices of concrete, historical communities rather than...