Indifferences in Stoicism

Everything that doesn't hurt you, in Stoicism, is an indifference. However, the Stoics had an interesting understanding of "hurt." According to the Stoics the only hurt which exists is damage to your moral character. If it doesn't hurt your moral character, then it doesn't actually hurt anything. Lose a limb? Doesn't hurt. Lose your parent? Doesn't hurt. To be clear, that doesn't mean it doesn't emotionally hurt, or physically hurt, it means that it doesn't hurt the one thing Stoics prize above all else: it doesn't hurt your character.

Preferred Indifference vs. Dispreferred Indifference

Everything external which cannot hurt your character, which is everything external, is viewed as an indifference. This means, when Stoics think about how to regard any external, when assigning a value judgement of good or bad to it, they decide to regard it indifferently because it lacks the power to compromise their character. But there are preferred and dispreferred indifferences.

An example of a dispreferred indifference is being sick. Being sick cannot compromise our moral character, but it's not exactly pleasant and so, if it can be avoided, steps can be taken to avoid it.

An example of a preferred indifference is winning the lottery. Being wealthy cannot compromise our moral character, but being wealthy could enable us to be more useful to our fellow humans, and to, ourselves, avoid dispreferred indifferences more reliably. So, if possible, so long as pursuing it doesn't compromise our moral characters, wealth can be sought and accrued.

It's also true that being sick could lend us the time necessary to reflect on something that improves our moral character, so it could become preferred. Likewise it is true that money could potentially lead to corruption, so it could become dispreferred.

The point is that an external thing only impacts your character in ways which you allow it to. No external has an organic value judgement attached to it because its value is determined by how you allow yourself to be affected by it. Externals are otherwise inert. 

This is often misconstrued for an apathetic worldview

People will ask, "Well then, I guess you feel indifferently about the fact that this terrible thing has happened to my friend Steve?" But that's not exactly what the Stoics meant when they talked about indifference or apatheia. Indifference is our relationship, we Stoics, with the things that happen to us, not the things that happen to you.

In regards to things which happen to others, Stoics still view it as, ultimately, an indifference, because it's not capable of impacting our moral characters, but that doesn't mean we don't identify dispreferred indifferences and work to minimize them. There's nothing in Stoicism, as far as I've ever read, which suggests it is "un-Stoic" to work to reduce dispreferred indifferences in the world. 

Can modern Stoics fight slavery? Yes. Do they? Yes. Can modern Stoics join the military to serve their county and fight in wars? Yes. Do they? Yes. 

It is true, of course, that different Stoics will identify different dispreferred indifferences as being in need of addressing (everyone is free to decide what wrongs in the world do and do not demand their attention) but all Stoics who put any serious thought into their practice of this ancient philosophy are encouraged by it to be in-service to their fellow human beings, and Marcus Aurelius makes no bones about this in the closing line of the first of his Meditations:

For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.