Remarkably, not a single person checked their cellphone during a three-hour “Dialogue on Liberty and Virtue” hosted by the Free State Stoics in Weare on Tuesday.
Instead, they passed around books about stoicism, encouraged journaling for goal-setting and self-reflection, and discussed how to incorporate the virtues promoted by stoicism – temperance, wisdom, justice and courage – with libertarian political philosophy, which they summarized as “Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.”
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