> Serve the virtues: wisdom, courage, justice, temperance - Create value for people and nature around you, receive value in return - Accept all events as part o

> Serve the virtues: wisdom, courage, justice, temperance - Create value for people and nature around you, receive value in return - Accept all events as part of one system (where death is closer to thermodynamics than something bad followed by punishment or eternal bliss) That's not a religion. The common people -- for illustrative purposes you may call them the proles, if you'd like -- must have a picture of the world that answers the big metaphysical questions. Religion is folk metaphysics, not folk philosophy. This is why the Mormons and Bahai have a religion -- however new and recently-developed -- and the Stoics/Epicureans have never been more than a niche and passing interest. You disparage mysticism, but it's the key ingredient, like it or not. It's ultimately too easy, too facile, to believe something like "stoicism is correct; I should become a stoic" -- it sidesteps all of the heavy metaphysical lifting.