Nonsense article. The point of Stoicism isn't to avoid feeling bad about living in a failing Empire. It's acknowledging that you can't control the world. You

Nonsense article. The point of Stoicism isn't to avoid feeling bad about living in a failing Empire. It's acknowledging that you can't control the world. You can only control your reaction to it and your own actions. And putting your faith in large institutions doesn't give you that control. It just creates a illusion of control. Large institutions can embody knowledge and procedures to reduce the incidents of failures to a significant degree, but whem they do fail they amplify the effect of that failure. For example if two people get into a dispute over land there is the potential it could devolve into violence. Most of the time this doesn't happen, but the potential is there. One or both of those people may end up being killed. They may accidentally hurt or even kill people by unhappy accident as part of their conflict. But by and large the violence and damage is limited to the people that made the decisions. However when large governments get into conflicts over land and become unreasonable then the potential damage is massive. Millions of people can die. Mostly innocent people who have no stake or choice in conflict and will not benefit from any outcome can be slaughtered in mass mumbers. And what is worse is the people that make those decisions are not personally affected by it. In the last century hundreds of millions of people died at the hands of their own governments. Far exceeding the number of victims of individual violence and criminality. And almost none of the "leaders" that made those decisions ever faced punishment or even significant personal consequences. Most died while still in power living in relative luxury of old ages or natural diseases. Making large institutions to try to control the world does not result in control over the world. It creates a illusion of control coupled with a potential for extreme levels of destruction. You only want as big of a institution that is absolutely required. Nothing more, nothing less.