The point of stoicism isn't to make you more productive. It's not to make you richer. The Stoics believed that the purpose of the philosophy was to make you a better person. Stoicism isn't just about what it can do for you. It also asks a lot of you.
I think a lot of people assume that the common good means finding the kind of least common denominator that we can agree in like just splitting the difference or kind of finding like going down to the basics. I think that is a huge mistake. The philosophers that I study and love the ancient Greeks like Aristotle believe that the common good the good itself is something that you're moving towards. It's like a common goal and nobody is there yet.
And that his philosophy would ultimately be about freedom and the triumph of the human spirit is a testament to not just his character, but the truth of the ideas he was writing about.
Senica 2,000 years ago in one of his letters is lamenting just people totally missing the point of the Odyssey. He's saying like if what you're debating about the Odyssey is not the philosophical questions, then you're just engaging in culture war nonsense.
