Each quarter, Stoic leaders from around the world share updates from their local Stoicism communities.
Due to COVID we have been having online meetings for the last 1-1½ year. This has shown some positive sides compared to meeting face to face. One is that it’s easier to fit into people's schedules making attendance more regular, but also that we have had people from outside Copenhagen joining us. Lately from other places in Denmark as well and southern part of Sweden by people that have some sort of relationship to Denmark/Copenhagen. All in all, the group is back to have around 6-8 attendees. We are trying a new format, which is to pick a contemporary article/blog and pair it with a Stoic text. We then discuss the article/blog from a Stoic perspective thereby distancing ourselves and our own opinion from the topic of the article/blog. This has so far led to some great discussions with a new twist.
Looking forward to the new year, platelet donations, calendar, month of service preparations and more. Intergalactic is Fremont’s all volunteer Stoic school with a Reading Program that begins in March. Sign up to read a foundational text in a group environment and pick up some Stoic fundamentals along the way: Intergalatic School plus, help us test out the new 1.0 Stoic workbook. Enrollment is free, but limited. 2022 marks the program’s fourth year helping readers.
Looking back, we´ve had quite a year. Finally, after it had to be
cancelled in 2020, we managed to facilitate Stoicon-X Hannover as an
online meeting. With about 13 participants it was also the first of
its kind in Germany. Apart from one live regulars table, we have
switched completely to online meetings, and as it seems, in Stoic
fashion, we´re going full cosmopolitan this year, since most of our
participants live all over Germany, or even in the US. Looking
forward, we will continue to facilitate a monthly Stoic Monday (next
dates: February 7th, March 7th, 6 pm CET). In addition, we will be
hosting a Stoic literature reading on each Wednesday at 7 pm CEST,
starting on January 19th. The latter will be in cooperation with
another group near Frankfurt, which is facilitated by Alexander Zock
and Robert Colter. Hopefully we will also have a live regulars table
again on April 1st. And lastly, we are looking forward to hosting
Stoicon-X Hannover 2022. This year's topic will be Stoicism in
schools, any help with suggestions to interesting speakers is
appreciated.
Details of upcoming events on:
https://www.meetup.com/de-DE/hannover-stoics/
Further information regarding Hannover Stoics on:
https://facebook.com/humanismus.lifeschool
A trio met online for the first time to share their "coming to Stoicism" stories, started an Instagram page with our Google Calendar link, and agreed to meet again a month later to discuss the short but meaningful Chapter 4 in Epictetus' handbook.
The L.A. Stoics continue to meet twice a month—every second Saturday at 9am in-person (and sometimes online) and every third Tuesday at 6pm online. The Saturday morning meetings are currently centered around Epictetus' Discourses. The Tuesday evening meetings are currently centered around Lawrence Becker's A New Stoicism (Revised Ed.) Check out www.losangelesstoics.com for meeting information. Email Justin if you have questions or would like to join the "Los Angeles Stoics" Discord server.
Monterey Stoics: We continue into our third year of meeting in a hybrid fashion on Sunday mornings at 7:30 am. We have a core group of 10 members and have found that this is an intimate way of sharing thoughts and going deeper into the materials. We are currently working through The Enchiridion. To serve more beginning interests in Stoicism, we will begin another pod-group, using Massimo’s “Handbook for New Stoics” as the year-long curriculum. We continue monthly beach clean-ups while wearing “Monterey Stoics” on bright vests. Although we receive many smiles and thanks for keeping the beaches clean, our community service is a small part of doing what is needed- rather than for esteem. If you are interested in visiting, email us.
Recently founded, it is the group and the community for discussing and exchanging ideas about Stoicism, Hellenistic philosophies, and philosophy as a way of life, in Munich (Germany) and surroundings. In English and German language. First in-person event on Saturday 22nd January 2022. Our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/munichstoics
The Nashville Stoa continues to grow and adapt. Starting January of 2022 we have set up a separate, practice based group that will be working through A Handbook For New Stoics by Massimo Pigliucci and Greg Lopez. In addition to the monthly discussion meet-up (at East Nashville Beer Works) in which we cover a variety of topics, the new group will meet on its own to discuss progress and the experience of daily practice. If you’re in the area and would like to stop by and check us out or grab a good beer you can find more info at: https://www.meetup.com/nashville-stoics/
The group has been extremely active with more than seven events each month: each Thursday evening we have meditation sessions that are inspired by Stoic philosophy quotes; on different Sundays we have Stoic practice classes, a women’s group meeting, an open-discussion philosophers cafe, and a guided meditation session. Our Stoic book club has just launched. To address pandemic needs we have a hybrid of in person/remote approach, with An increasing amount of activities taking place on Discord Check us out on: https://www.meetup.com/New-England-Stoics/ https://www.meetup.com/NESPracticeClass/
The NYC Stoics have a theme each year to try to add some coherence to our learning. This year's theme is “Before Stoicism”, where we won't be covering Stoicism itself; instead, we’ll be discussing the Greek philosophies that influenced Stoicism, starting with the Presocratics and ranging through the Old Academy. We hold both online and in-person meetings. If you’re interested in joining a meeting, check out our schedule at: https://www.meetup.com/New-York-City-Stoics/
The group has surpassed 1700 members and 750 events. We are still growing! Mondays we talk Stoic ideas, Fridays are Stoic practice, Saturdays are in-person meetings, and on Sundays, StoicDan presents new lectures. In addition, we had a mini-event 1-14-2022, when Donald Robertson visited for 1.5 hours and discussed his book “How to think like a Roman Emperor” plus future projects. We had about 90 RSVPs and 65 people showed up. It was a great conversation with a Modern Stoic! Video coming soon to Youtube in the StoicDan channel. Group info: https://www.meetup.com/Orlando-Stoics/
We have had a few online meetings since the last IQ. The covid pandemic seemed to be on a little break for a while, but now it is quite difficult to meet in person. The meetings have usually been attended by 4-8 people, which has been normal for the last year or two. The topics and approaches have varied from meeting to meeting. Sometimes we have settled on a theme and tried to find sources from the Stoic texts that discusses the theme, and other times we have settled on a specific text and read through it in entirety prior to the meeting and then discussed it at the meeting. The last meeting was about Seneca's On the Happy Life.
We're planning to read “Philosophy as a Way of Life” by Pierre Hadot this year.
We stopped meeting during the pandemic. We continued with a WhatsApp group in which we share material on Stoicism and have occasional discussions on material shared. We plan to resume our monthly meetings when the COVID situation allows for it.
The main news of the Stoa Gallica association in 2021 was the organization of the first French Stoicon-x. About a hundred people gathered at ESSEC Business School on Saturday October 16 for a day dedicated to the study and practice of contemporary stoicism. Conferences, round tables, workshops and free discussions punctuated the day, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. This day had two main objectives:
And these two objectives have largely been achieved. The richness of the presentations and the quality of the exchanges allowed not only novices to discover Stoic philosophy, but also people who were already interested in the Stoic way of life to deepen their knowledge and reflect on the best way to implement, right now, certain exercises, certain principles of the Stoic philosophy. This day was also and perhaps above all the occasion for new philosophical encounters. It was an important moment in the constitution and in the life of a French-speaking community of Stoic students and practitioners (see Une journée pour découvrir et pratiquer le stoïcisme contemporain: retour sur la Stoicon-x Paris 2021 for more details). Our association also aims to become the showcase for the movement to update Stoicism in France and to provide a practical guide for anyone wishing to embrace this philosophy of life. The work of the association in the coming months will aim to finalize the creation of a training course, both on the theoretical and practical aspects, of Stoic philosophy.
2021 was a year of great growth and great experiences at Stoa Madrid.
We could summarize it as follows:
Our core group stabilized at 40 people who attend the activities
regularly, also our social networks grew organically as well interest
from new participants around our activities. During this year we did:
Meetings and talks: 20 theory and practice official meetings via Zoom,
8 talks from the group about varied topics and 11 talks from visitors
to the Stoa: Donald Robertson gave us a talk about his book How to
think like a roman emperor, and general stoicism, Kai Withing and
Leonidas Konstanstakos gave us a talk about their book Be better and
sustainability according to Stoicism, Massimo Pigliucci and Gregory
Lopez gave un a talk about their book A handbook for new Stoics;
Miguel Ortueta gave us a talk about Astronomy and stargazing; Dante
García Gave us a talk about the philosophy of the Camino de Santiago;
Paulo Castillo gave us a talk about Virtue, Procrastination and
Sports; José Millán gave us a talk about astrology and stoicism; David
Hernández de la Fuente gave us a talk about Myths and Classics for a
good life; 2 psychologists Natalia Ferrero and Catalina Vargas talked
to us about ERBT and CBT and tools to manage emotions. Dr. Julio Zarco
talked to us about stoicism in the medical profession.
Reading group: we read 3 books together: How to think like a roman
emperor, The man in search of meaning and A handbook for new stoics
(ongoing weekly)
Stoic group challenges: Some challenges we did as a group were:
24-hour fasting, 2 barefoot walks of the streets, 1.000 Stoics
challenge, The grey rock exercise, our weekly virtue exercise, a group
social service activity with homeless people (the case of Joshwa). We
did the Stoic Week together in october 2021 and other 5 times during
the year.
Group walks: 4 group walks and outside activities including the Camino
de Santiago (7-day hiking/pilgrimage trip) and an astronomy &
philosophy stargazing activity.
A small monthly group, which is now discussing the works of Seneca. Learn more: https://www.meetup.com/stoics/
The group has 1 monthly discussion and 1 hike / field trip. Read more: https://www.meetup.com/Tampa-Stoics/
We are continuing with monthly Introduction to Stoicism meetings for newcomers on Zoom. We also continue to have monthly meetings on the books Being Better and A Guide to the Good Life. Our weekly Stoic practice group is still going and meetings include discussing The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot. In continuing to work toward becoming a 501c3 non-profit corporation, we named officers and acquired a group mailing address in an office building. We are creating content for our website in preparation for its launch.
The Redwood Stoa continues with its monthly-topic-based meetings, still online although we did have one in-person meeting back in October (socially-distanced, etc.), which was at least a nice change - and it was out among the redwoods themselves, at that! January’s topic was “Rational by Nature”, a Stoic tenet that is (always a generator of debate. Some minutes of that meeting will eventually be available at our old Wordpress site, https://redwoodstoa.wordpress.com. If my math is correct, we are beginning our 9th year in 2022, nearly a decade.
Primarily online due to the pandemic, but we are trying to keep monthly meetings going. Topics have been going between reading the classics from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, but we are also going to look at incorporating a bit more from Cicero, Musonius and others as well as modern thinkers. https://www.meetup.com/trondheim-stoics/
Newly formed of a consistent 4 members and a few spot visitors, we have started a weekly book study of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Our format has been via zoom on Thursday evenings PST.