If Stoicism licenses both positive and negative practices, maybe there's no such thing as Stoicism.

In my articles I'm talking about the essence of Stoicism as far as anyone can know it from the core writings. I'm not talking about how an ideology can be fudged in a globalized, eclectic, cherry-picking, late-modern society in which we prefer to build our own pastiches.

Maybe those who use Stoicism for the better are adding something else to Stoicism.

Anyway, I'm not saying Stoicism is entirely useless. Hackneyed centrist propaganda can be useful, and even that kind of propaganda can pass for wisdom if the bar is set very low, as it is in consumer culture.