You Have to Care About the Most Vulnerable

"By now, you’ve probably seen the viral CNN clip of the woman heading to church in Ohio. Aren’t you worried about being exposed to COVID-19, the reporter asks? No, she says confidently, I am bathed in Jesus’s blood. But aren’t you worried about exposing other people? No, she says, angrily. I go to Wal-Mart everyday. I go to the grocery store. Those people could infect me."Ryan talks about how a Stoic looks at the idea of flattening the curve, and why the lockdowns are so important.***If you enjoyed today’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. "You have to care about the most vulnerable." By now, you've probably seen the CNN clip of the woman heading to church in Ohio. "Aren't you worried about being exposed to COVID-19?" the reporter asks. "No," she says confidently, "I am bathed in Jesus's blood." "But aren't you worried about exposing other people?"

• 0:48Ryan Holiday?

  "No," she says angrily, "I go to Walmart every day. I go to the grocery store. Those people could infect me." Now, the problem with these comments is not simply that nowhere did Jesus promise to protect anyone from getting sick. Think of all the sincere and wonderful Christians who perished in the Black Death from smallpox, from typhus, from AIDS, and from countless other pestilences. There's a reason churches were closed when the plagues hit the ancient world and again during the Spanish Flu. The real problem, and this woman is by no means alone in this, just look at the photos of people on beaches in Florida, or in parks all over the country, it's that these people seem to think only about whether they can get sick.

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  A Stoic is rational enough to look at the numbers and realize that most of us are likely to survive the coronavirus, if we do in fact get it. Most cases are very mild. If you're a healthy, relatively young person, chances are you're going to be fine. Who knows? Maybe believing in Jesus will insulate you further. But that's not why we're locked down, why we've inflicted trillions of dollars of losses to the global economy in an effort to flatten the curve. We're doing those things to protect the most vulnerable among us, people for whom the mortality rate is much, much higher. It's to protect people with pre-existing conditions, people battling cancer, people who are recovering from a lung transplant, people with only one kidney.

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  Remember what Marcus Aurelius said, "What's bad for the hive is bad for the bee. A society that is callous or indifferent to the weak and the vulnerable destroys itself. A society that betrays its elders, even if those elders have been indifferent and callous themselves, betrays itself." The fruit of this life, Marcus Aurelius wrote, was good character and acts for the common good. When we take actions, we have to always think, "What would happen if everyone did this? What are the costs of my decisions on other people? What risks am I externalizing? Is this really what a person with good character and a concern for others would do?" Jesus said to love thy neighbor as thyself. The Stoics would have agreed with that, and they would have said, "It's your duty to protect your neighbor, to help them however you can."

• 2:58Ryan Holiday?

  In fact, this is a sacred duty, and there's nothing more admirable and virtuous than a person who takes it seriously, and nothing less Christian or less Stoic than blowing it off. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you could leave us a review in iTunes, it helps a great deal. And of course, if you know anyone who would benefit from these messages, please spread the word. Thanks.