It's the sixth day of Christmas, William.

I mean, Chrysipus Kringle.

Chrysipus Kringle here, yes, number six.

Number six, and we get to talk about what you actually said you wanted to talk about before the end of yesterday, which was oikiosis and the circles of concern.

And I'm excited to talk about those because, first of all,

I think these are terribly misunderstood by a lot of, let's say, newbie contemporary Stoics.

I think that the way that a lot of people interpret these oikiotic, which is a term I think I'm coining, because I don't know that that was actually a term that an oikiotic, that these circles of concern put forth by Hierocles in the second century CE, I think, so he's a little bit of a later Stoic, that they start in the middle.

They're concentric. And I think originally the center used to be mind, soul, but we now call it

the self. And then after the self is the family and then friends and then community. And then

it goes out from there to the whole cosmopolis, the biosphere,

the whole cosmos, everything. And I think that when most people first come across these circles

of concern, the idea is that I must look after myself first before I look after the next group of people, my family, before I look after the next group of people.

But what Oikiosis actually describes is a kind of emotional development, a maturity, an evolving that happens to us naturally as we come to understand what is appropriate for us to appropriate as ours to be concerned with.

So it's more so like an order in which we become aware of our responsibilities to all those circles,

than it is a priority of concern in those circles.

Do you think I have any of that wrong?

No, that's exactly right. Very well said.

It's a developmental process. So let's start with the word itself because this I think might

put or confuse people because it's a weird word, right? This is not an English word. This is a Greek word,

and it's very specifically coined by the Stoics to mean what it does, right?

So Oikoioius is in translation, it's very difficult to translate.

It can be translated as appropriation or recognizing something that's belonging to you.

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