Stoics still believe it’s reasonable to prefer health to disease, wealth to poverty, and so on. They argue, however, that we deceive ourselves when we invest too much value in external things. They also trained themselves to gain cognitive distance by understanding that events don’t seem the same to everyone: our own perspective is just one of many. For instance, the majority of people are terrified of dying, but, as Epictetus points out, Socrates wasn’t afraid of death. Although he may have preferred to live, he was relatively indifferent to dying as long as he met his death with wisdom and
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