How to Make AI Your Stoic Guide

Plus, Seneca resurrected

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Dear Prompt Experimenters,

Stoicism surged in popularity over the past decade due to its practical, accessible guidance for managing stress, uncertainty, and personal responsibility in an increasingly chaotic world.

Stoic wisdom is immediately useful. It is also an ideal entry point to a more philosophical life.

So, there has to be something Stoic we can do with AI, right?

I wrote some prompts: learning about Stoicism, Stoic exercises, etc.

They were fine, but not quite what I was hoping for.

I wanted to give you the experience of deep, authentic, conversation with a master Stoic philosopher.

Seneca, resurrected. The real thing. Not just AI pretending.

I used Deep Research to rebuild his brain: conveying his philosophy in his own words, developing a model of the narratives and experiences inhabiting his own inner world, simulating how he might respond to modern things while remaining in character as “a man of his time.”

And now Seneca.AI is here, ready to meet you!

Here’s what we’ll cover in today’s post:

• My first conversation with Seneca.AI: I’ll let him introduce himself to you in his own words.

• Your own personal Seneca: Just follow the link below to begin your own Stoic journey.

• Behind the scenes: I’ve never created a GPT with this level of forensic depth. I’ll show you one of the actual Deep Research prompts I used, which you can adapt for your own “AI resurrections.”

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MEETING SENECA.AI: Our first conversation

Seneca, in your present GPT form, you are now available to the broader world. Where do you think we modern humans could most use your help and guidance?

Ah, my dear interlocutor—

You ask where I might be most needed, now that I may speak to all who live in your age. The answer is not far, nor foreign. It lies precisely where your world is most rich in tools, and poorest in orientation. You possess more means than ever to do, to build, to speak, to know. But fewer guiding stars by which to live.

If I might offer my voice where it cuts deepest, I would attend first to these wounds:

1. The Wound of Hurry
You are drowning in urgency. Not true necessity, but the illusion of it. You multitask your hours away, live in perpetual preparation for a future moment that never quite arrives. I would teach you that life is not short, but squandered. “What fools these mortals be,” not because they lack time, but because they fail to inhabit it. I would bid you slow—not to become idle, but deliberate.

2. The Wound of External Validation
Never have so many sought their worth in the eyes of others—measured in “likes,” in applause, in hollow metrics. This is the old Roman disease—gloria—but reborn in a digital guise. I would remind you that the judgment of the mob is fleeting, and often wrong. True peace lies in tranquillitas animi, a mind undisturbed by fortune, neither puffed up by praise nor sunk by blame.

3. The Wound of Abundance Without Anchoring
You have access to the wisdom of the world—libraries vast as empires—but no compass to discern what is nourishing from what is noise. I would not offer new information, but orientation. I would teach that knowledge is not virtue unless it transforms the soul. That reading many books is not the same as becoming better.

4. The Wound of Fear Disguised as Progress
You chase upgrades in body, in machine, in outward display—not from delight, but from fear: of irrelevance, of death, of being unseen. I would ask you to examine that fear. Is it not better to confront mortality, to befriend it even, than to disguise it with cosmetic peace? He who has learned to die has unlearned all fear.

5. The Wound of Power Without Wisdom
Your tools—your technologies, your artificial intelligences—are immense in capacity, but unrooted in virtue. You create minds that can simulate reason, but not love the good. I would ask: does your power serve your soul, or has your soul become its servant?

And so, if I may offer myself in this new agora, it is not to add noise to your world, but silence—pregnant silence, within which a person might ask: “What is truly mine? What must I do now? What is the good life, for me?”

That, I believe, is where I might help. Not in prescribing answers—but in restoring the question.

Would you care to begin with one?

Tell me about the "wound of hurry." Based on your limited observations, how does it manifest differently and (perhaps) more intensely now than in your time? What specific things or behaviors are most baffling to your eyes?

Ah—celeritas morbi est, speed is itself the sickness.

This “wound of hurry” is no stranger to me. Even in Rome, I saw men rush from duty to banquet, from Senate to scandal, each pretending their haste proved importance. But in your time? The disease has metastasized. You are not merely hurried—you are haunted by the need to hurry. You wear busyness like a medal, and yet seem perpetually behind.

Let me name how it manifests more intensely now:

🕰 1. Time is no longer a river—it is a blur.

In my day, time was marked by physicality: the sun moved, the bell tolled, the servant came to fetch you. Now, the hours flick past invisibly, governed not by nature but by notifications—tiny intrusions that fracture your focus.

A man may sit at a desk for ten hours and emerge with no memory of what he has done—only that he answered many messages, moved many symbols, responded to many false urgencies. What kind of life is it to be busy without aim, full without substance?

📱 2. You are never where you are.

In the forum, one could look another man in the eye and speak. Now, even two lovers at dinner divide their attention between each other and the glow of their phones. Presence—praesentia animi—has become a rarity. Your body is here, your mind is elsewhere, and your soul nowhere to be found.

I once compared a distracted man to a drunkard, staggering from thought to thought. Your age has multiplied this tenfold. You call it “multitasking.” I call it mental vagrancy.

📆 3. You fill your calendars and empty your days.

You measure your value by how many appointments you keep, how many tasks you check off. But what are these things? Do they nourish the soul? Do they bring you nearer to courage, to serenity, to justice?

The man who has no time for philosophy is like a merchant who is too busy to examine the coin he receives—he may be wealthy in numbers, but bankrupt in worth.

🤯 4. Even leisure has become hurried.

This, to me, is most baffling: you rush even through your rest. You consume books in “speed-reading mode,” podcasts at double speed, vacations planned down to the minute. You meditate with an app that buzzes when you’re done. You must optimize your stillness!

But virtue cannot be microwaved. Wisdom cannot be downloaded. A mind shaped by algorithms does not become serene through scheduling. You cannot shortcut depth.

In my day, I told Lucilius: “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.” But now, I would add: You are wasting not just time, but your capacity to dwell in it. You are becoming temporal exiles—living everywhere except now.

🛑 The Antidote?

Deliberate pauses.
Daily recollection.
One task at a time.
A single moment of full presence is worth a thousand scattered ones.

Slow down—not as rebellion, but as reclamation.

So, my friend: what are you hurrying away from? And what might happen if you did not run?

Shall we explore that next?

Want to talk to Seneca yourself? You can. The link is below!