Stoicist

So here I am again, establishing an online presence after an absence of nearly four years. I used to be the proud owner of internalforce.com, which was basically a collection of stories from my daily life with a few insights into my thoughts and observations of the day. I decided to let it die a quiet death in 2004 when my posting frequency became virtually nil. I managed to archive all my posts to my hard drive, but that was subsequently lost to the abyss in “the great hard drive crash of ‘05″. My journal, written during my college years, has been erased from existence. It’s not entirely a bad thing, as I was a young adult back in those days and would probably cringe if I read some of the things I wrote about publicly back then. I’ve since adopted the virtues of tact and discretion. Unfortunately, I lost all my music and photos at the same time, and I am infinitely more morose over those losses.

The internet is a great tool, and a lot of my free time is spent on it for a multitude of purposes. News, public opinion, entertainment, work, thought, socializing, and creative media are just some of the things that I feel I should keep documented for posterity. I’m not entirely sure who will benefit from this site other than myself, but I feel like I need a little slice of teh intarwebs to call my home. It’s a series of tubes, you know. God, I hope I get that reference thirty years from now when I come across this, the online journal I am keeping from age twenty-seven onwards.

So welcome to Stoicist.com. I realize that it is not really a word. In attempting to come up with some clever (but short) name, I found that damn near every word in the English dictionary is taken as a domain name. Most two-word combinations are taken as well. In recent months, I have been reading up on different philosophies that I may identify with. As humans, we’re always trying to find the answer to the question “why are we here?”. Also, as humans, we like to place ourselves into categories that align thought processes, ideals, and how we identify ourselves as individuals. A person that practices Determinism is a Determinist. Someone who believes in Fatalism is a Fatalist. Recently, I came across Stoicism. A person who believes in Stoicism is a Stoic. Stoicist is a little play on words, and I actually think it’s kind of fitting. Evidently, it has been around since the 4th century BC, and ironically squashed by Justinian I for being “Pagan”. Well… I’m resurrecting it in my own benign way.

I guess the basic tenet of Stoicism mixes Buddhism with Determinism. It’s a clever little combination of releasing oneself from extreme emotion, and at the same time, understanding that the universe itself is God and there is a causality between past, present and future - all based on reason. That is to say, everything that is made is meant to be made. Thus, Stoicist.com exists. I would elaborate, but wikipedia was invented for a reason.

So in the future, I imagine I will post my thoughts on news stories of the day. Lately I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about such topics as Technological Singularity, Simulated Reality, and a bunch of “big picture” “futuristic” ideas. I can’t claim to be an expert on virtually any topic, but it’s my intention that after reading my posts, I hope the reader comes away with a new perspective and new understanding on something he or she may have never thought about before.

I’m fairly confident I won’t always be this same person. My thoughts, ideas, opinions, and categorical bubbles will invariably shift over time. I just hope I can provide insight into new topics previously unknown, or help the reader understand the inner workings of my mind. I spend about 16 hours every day talking to myself. Stoicist.com shall contain the highlights of that endeavor.

This will also be a repository for all my digital creations. After all, if I made it, it was meant to be made. It doesn’t necessarily mean I will have an audience. So if you came across this site and dig it, good for you! Let’s be friends. And to the billions of people who will never experience the joy that is Stoicist.com, I will see you at the Big Crunch.