Stoicism is unworkable in postmodernity.

Where it is not the body but the mind that is oppressed, the 'macho-paternal' strength of will alone will not suffice. Psychical problems require psychical solutions. (The word 'spiritual' or 'ideological' works here, too.)

Even the 'maternal' comfort of therapism and self-love will not suffice. In postmodernity's rebellion against the tyrannical Father, Mother is the refuge to which we have escaped, but an over-mothered society only produces infantilised children who are entitled, docile, confused.

What postmodernity needs is a new form of 'paternity': an ideological reframing of what it means to be dutiful, what to serve, what to become. Like Prodigal Sons, we who have rebelled against Father must find our own way back to him - and rediscover the fatherly refuge.