Have you ever heard the phrase, “a stoic expression”? Most of us probably have and most of us probably understand it means to have a blank expression — quite useful in a poker game. It does go far beyond here though. The phrase regarding stoic expressions comes from the principle stoic belief that they are above emotions.Stoics believed that being subject to emotions, therefore showing emotions, was a weakness and the only way to overcome this was to eliminate emotion entirely. The religion, or philosophy depending on how you want to look at it, still goes further than that. The main aim for stoics was living in a virtuous way and all else did not matter. In fact, anything that was not virtuous was essentially against the religion and things that were not virtuous was nearly everything that could possibly reflect poorly on the person.Things that could easily reflect poorly on a person would be negative behavior and emotions. One of the easiest ways to do away with this is to void all expression. The emotion of joy was just a bad as anger. Either deviation from expressionless was negative.
