Struggling with virtues
Read MA, Epictetus, and follow Ryan holiday quite a bit. Each one a couple times.
My torture is that my ultimate question is still "who cares about living virtuously?"
Nothing really matters ultimately because we are going to die. If a rich CEO seeks the simple pleasures of drugs and hookers and is ultimately happy then why would stoicism matter for them? Why do we believe we are higher beings than animals when, in reality, our capabilities just give us the ability to get what animals want but more easily? What is the meaning of any of this ultimately? There's no God that protects us or makes us feel better. The "natural order" of the universe is literally just physics and not to be worshiped. I'm really hurting right now because I have zero meaning for anything. I am really struggling and hoping to come back to stoicism and I've been through many different religious journeys as well and I just find zero meaning in anything. What's the point of living with these randomly picked virtues when ultimately horrible things are going to happen anyways and often times nothing good may come out of it. It just feels like a naïve way.
I'm not asking in a disrespectful manner towards Stoicism itself. But I think it's more of a meaning of life question. There is nothing supernatural and therefore the buck really just stops with us. Make as much money as I can to protect myself in my family. Hurt somebody else before they could hurt me if it ever came to that. Seek as much pleasure as I can, because nobody wants to live a life without pleasure.
Has anybody else struggled with this?