I cried as I lowered the flag at our site today. I can’t imagine raising my daughters in this world. I don’t know what to do.
This comment showed up in my company’s online LGBTQ group this morning, where employees around the country gathered to process this weekend’s horrific shooting.
Another wounded soul had this to say:
I’ve been feeling similar waves of helplessness. This tragedy is heartbreaking and it made me linger this morning and not want to leave my wife and our young son. I hope we can take comfort in each other, knowing there are other parents like us everywhere teaching our children about love and respect and peace, and one day hopefully the love we teach today will prevail tomorrow. And I know this is silly, but I dug around my desk when I got in this morning and found my rainbow bracelet from last June. Somehow putting it on made me feel a little better.
At times like this, some Stoics also turn to Social media: “how should a Stoic respond to such horrible tragedies,” we ask. While we usually speak of virtue in solemn, respectful tones—tragedies like this shake us. “How can we—how can anyone—maintain anything resembling equanimity in the face of such, let’s call it what it is, evil?”
If you want to dissect that question, Massimo wrote a great post last year that may help you: “What would a Stoic Do? On Terrorism.”
I just want to say one thing, though: Maintaining equanimity and tranquility is meaningless if we achieve it through detachment and avoidance.
Don’t ignore the news. Don’t avoid thinking about what this massacre means, emotionally and existentially, for Orlando and for the LGBTQ community in particular. Let yourself feel the horror, feel the fear, feel genuine empathy and compassion.
A Stoic feels everything. Making “right judgments” about “externals,” moreover, is meaningless if we fail to first appreciate and engage earnestly with the human condition. There is no virtue in remaining strong and unfazed simply because we have failed to care about the suffering of others. Caring comes first.
Then, if you feel the need, you may turn to the Stoics for comfort and advice on how to respond. I recommend #91 of Seneca’s Letters, which is a summary of a consolation he wrote to Liberalis after the the city of Lyon was destroyed by a fire.
Euthyphroria 
Thanks for this, and for putting my last post up on Reddit 🙂 I know now that if I get more than a few views you must have linked to me 🙂 My traffic was up 8,217%! And viewed by people all over the world, so exciting. Thanks so much. I wrote it while in a stereotypically un-Stoic emotional state, so angry and sad–but then no one ever said Stoics were supposed to be androids. If we are to embrace our “humanness” that necessarily encompasses human emotions. But that’s just a starting point. Where do we go from there? My initial impression was that the tragedy was overwhelming and it’s hopeless to think things will change in the US. That’s a false impression, as most emotionally-driven ones are. Rationality has to prevail; the tragedy is enormous, but I can at least work to bring about change. Of course some people apparently think things are just fine the way they are . . . Seneca wrote in Letter 91 (good recommendation): “What madness it is to be afraid of disrepute in the judgment of the disreputable!”
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Hah, yes, isn’t the traffic boost Reddit gives amazing? I share my own stuff there a lot—so far nobody has yelled at me for shameless self-promoting ;). Apologies, btw, for bringing the gun rights advocates of Reddit crashing down upon your humble blog! They weren’t being fair to you—don’t pay them heed!
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