Rabbi Mordecai Finley on the Value of Rationality

On today’s podcast Ryan talks to Rabbi Mordecai Finley about what he learned from his encounter with an active shooter at the LAX airport in 1978, what our obligation to the common good looks like in the modern world, the Stoic’s obligation to remaining rational and responsible within society, and more. Rabbi Mordecai Finley is the rabbi and co-CEO of Ohr HaTorah Synagogue. He co-founded the synagogue with his wife Meirav Finley in 1993. Rabbi Finley integrates into his counseling practice insights from many schools and traditions, most notably: Philosophy, Stoic and Neo-Platonism) Jung and neo-Jungians (especially James Hillman) plus a range of modern psychological schools of thought, especially Roberto Assagiolli, William Glasser, Albert Ellis and Byron Katie. He also has background in object relations theorists as well as existential and humanist psychology. List your product on AppSumo between September 15th - November 17th and the first 400 offers to go live will receive $1000, the next 2000 to list a product get $250. And everyone who lists gets entered to be one of 10 lucky winners of $10k! Go to https://appsumo.com/ryanholiday to list your product today and cash in on this amazing deal. Uprising Food have cracked the code on healthy bread. Only 2 net carbs per serving, 6 grams of protein and 9 grams of fiber. They cover paleo, to clean keto, to simple low carb, to high fiber, to dairy free to grain free lifestyle. Uprising Food is offering our listeners ten dollars off the starter bundle. that includes two superfood cubes and four pack of freedom chips to try! go to uprisingfood.com/stoic and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. SimpliSafe just launched their new Wireless Outdoor Security Camera. Get the new SimpliSafe Wireless Outdoor Security Camera, visit https://simplisafe.com/stoic. What’s more, SimpliSafe is celebrating this new camera by offering 20% off your entire new system and your first month of monitoring service FREE, when you enroll in Interactive Monitoring. Just go to https://simplisafe.com/stoic to claim this deal. Novo is the #1 Business Banking App - because it’s built from the ground up to be powerfully simple and free business banking that Money Magazine called the Best Business Checking Account of 2021. Novo makes banking easy and secure - you can manage your account in Novo’s customizable web, android, and iOS apps with built in profit first accounting and invoicing. Get your FREE business banking account in just 10 minutes at https://banknovo.com/STOICSign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Rabbi Mordecai Finley: Website, Instagram, Twitter, FacebookSee 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Anytime Steven Pressfield or Rich Roll gives me a thumbs up on a person, I'm like, this must be a legit dude, or woman, or whatever. Anytime they vouch for someone, I take that very seriously because I am a big fan of them. So when both Rich and Steven recommended Rabbi Mordecai Finley, I was like, I gotta check this guy out. I watched his amazing episode on Rich Roll's podcast, which is worth listening to. And we had an awesome interview. This is a fascinating dude,

• 1:33Ryan Holiday?

  sort of a warrior monk, if you will. He's a rabbi. He was also a Marine. He drops in the middle of our interview that he happened to have stopped a mass shooting at LAX many years ago. He is, he received his doctorate in religion and social ethics from the University of California. He also has a small counseling practice where he focuses on wisdom, virtue, and managing consciousness. He specializes in interpersonal relationships, which I think you can tell, because I got a little heated in the interview. I've been frustrated and stressed out, you know, as the Stoics say, "People are difficult. People are our proper occupation,"

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Schrulli says, "but they are also exhausting and obnoxious and stupid and selfish and mean and cruel." And I think the last year has been an exhausting demonstration of that. I don't remember exactly what was going on in my mind when that was leading up to the frustration, but certainly, social media never helps. It's never a glimpse into the best of humanity. And it was amazing. I was getting frustrated. I wasn't being particularly stoic. And Rabbi Finley kept bringing me back to a place of empathy and kindness and respect. And I appreciated that so much. You shouldn't always be agreeing with your guests, and I liked that we disagreed. But I liked how respectful he was. He was definitely a good model for me. He's got a thriving synagogue in Mar Vista.

• 2:58Ryan Holiday?

  If I lived in California, even though I'm not Jewish, I would see if I could go because wisdom is wisdom, whatever school it's coming from, whatever tradition it hails from. And I think of all the schools, whether we're talking about the Hebrew school, or the Stoic school, or the Epicurean school, or the Buddhist school, or the Hindu school, I think at the core of it, all of it, is trying to get to truth. I think they all more or less agree on the core virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. And I think you're really going to like this interview with the one and only Rabbi Finley.

• 3:37Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I'm both excited and a little intimidated to chat with you. Anytime Rich Roll tells me I should talk to someone, I take that very seriously. And then for Steven Pressfield to say it, so two people I admire a great deal, to sing your praises means a lot in my book.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Well, they're two fabulous people. I've known Steven a long time. He's one of my favorite people. And when I went on Rich Roll's podcast, we had a real connection. He's a beautiful man, and I'm very, very honored that you've asked me to be on your podcast as well.

• 4:11Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think that's Rich's superpower, is that he finds you have almost immediately a very deep connection with him because there's something going on there at sort of the soul level that he manages, that he's in touch with, and it's sort of, I think, contagious.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  That's very precise. That's exactly right.

• 4:32Ryan Holiday?

  How do you know Steven?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Well, many years ago, I was teaching on a Jewish concept called the Yetzer Harad, the destructive shape. And I think it's the foundation of Jewish spiritual psychology. In fact, my first published paper back in 1981 was on this topic. And it's not very popular because when people think about spirituality, they don't think about the inner struggle against forces of opposition and resistance. So it's something I've talked about for years. Somebody who read his book, The War of Art, also attended my synagogue. And he told Stephen about me and Stephen attended a few of my classes and then he says, "We have to get together." And it turns out that he landed on this idea of resistance,

• 5:18Speaker 01

  which reads perfectly onto the biblical rabbinic Hasidic idea of the Yetzer Harad, the destructive shape. And we found out we're both former Marines. We had a lot to talk about and every time we see each other, we dive right in. So how can I say, you know, we see each other not that often, but every couple of times a year, but it's always very real and very intense.

• 5:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, the resistance is obviously something I think anyone in art is intimately familiar with. Like you have what you know you should do. You have what you dream that you want to do. And then you go to do it or you don't go to do it because, you know, something gets in the way. And I guess I didn't think about that in a spiritual context, but I guess it makes sense.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yes, there's an oppositional force. And therefore, in learning that we have things that we're good at. I mean, you're very good at what you do. I've listened to you and I've read a couple of your books. So you're really good. And I know people also really good at what they do, but nearly everybody has something they don't, that doesn't come to them naturally. So sometimes a very efficient person can be impatient with less efficient people. Sometimes they're very good at work, are not that great as a spouse or a parent or a child. So when one has a vision for oneself, Typically, for a successful person, there are some things you do well,

• 6:52Speaker 01

  somewhat by nature, and your habits are good, and other things we don't do well. And people ask, "Why do I get so impatient with my spouse? Why do I get so impatient with my kid? Or, "Why can't I lose weight? Why can't I get in shape? Why can't I get my book done?" And the answer is, well, people say, "Well, I'm lazy," or something, and Steve and I agree, that's actually not a good answer. A better answer is, "There's resistance in me that's opposed to me." And therefore, you have to learn to work with resistance. It's actually like, it's a sub-personality. And some things it'll let you do, and some things it doesn't want you to do. It's an organized oppositional intelligence.

• 7:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I've used this quote from Martin Luther King a few times, but he talks about how, inside every person, he was obviously saying this during the Civil Rights Movement, but inside every person, there's a north of the soul and a south of the soul. And there's sort of this civil war inside all of us between, like, sort of the higher self and the lower self. And this is the battle.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are many good ways to put it. I've developed a very precise terminology, because even to say higher self, lower self, for me, it's too imprecise, although it's a really good metaphor. But when people want to know the actual mechanics and technology of transformation, I have found, the more precision, the better, because we can just

• 8:26Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  deal with all those questions in a forthright way.

• 8:31Ryan Holiday?

  And so walk me through that framework.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Well, you know, when you think, first of all, we have what I would call the field of consciousness, or our neutral state when we're acting according to habit and things are going well. So I sometimes call it the A state. We're attuned, we're aware, we're awake, we're reasonably accountable, we're present.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  And if you're a relatively successful person with good habits, you don't have to put a lot of effort, a lot of focus into it. But let's say suddenly you're in traffic and then you have to be vigilant. And so you can feel your whole, your body shift. Or let's say you come home and the spouse is upset. Some people go to an ego state of defensiveness. Other people go to an ego state of anger. Or the kids not getting their homework done and there's frustration. So you realize that, that neutral, what I call the A state, at any time, another ego state can intrude. So I call the array of potential ego states, positive and negative, the unconscious ego self.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  So upon reflection, a person might realize they have maybe thirty potential ego states that are arrayed in the unconscious ego self and that get evoked by stimulus without our will, without our conscious, without our making a decision. So for me, the function of the higher self is first of all, to have a practice of observing what's happening in what I'll call the field of consciousness or the A state, however one wants to term it. Start to train yourself to be aware of it in the body, especially the negative ones, because they first register in the body. So it takes a lot of training to be aware when you're, you know, when you feel that bodily shift.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Disidentify from it if it's negative. And even some from, some from the positive ones, because of some of what we think are positive ego states actually don't do us or other people any good. That's actually a more complex issue. And then there's the, the process of, through an act of will, inserting a, a different ego state to replace the negative one. We call this the law of substitution. So for example, I might counsel someone who it turns out they have irrational fear. Now, a lot of fear is rational, it's good. But they have been sometimes an irrational fear, let's say of a spouse. They really want their spouse's or their romantic interest approval.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  And they don't even really know how much they need approval. And when the other one doesn't approve of them, they start to feel anxious. So got to calm down, go up into what I call the higher self. First level of the higher self is the observer mind. Oh, there's an ego state of fear. All right, so breathe it, feel it, understand it, be it. And then ask yourself, what's the intervention? Well, here's where stoicism really comes in handy. Where you might say, okay, I'm going to insert an ego state of resilience, of courage, of steadfastness. And you know, from a brain side, you're fusing one neural pattern with another neural pattern. On the mind side, you're using your free will

• 11:52Speaker 01

  to shift your, you know, the mechanics of the inner life. Mechanics being transfer of energy. So the, I have many stages of the higher self. But you know, for simplicity, we'll say the higher self is aware of what's happening in the field of consciousness, is aware of what aspects of the unconscious ego self are intruding into the uh, field of consciousness, is aware when a given ego state doesn't match our vision for how we want to live our lives, and is aware of what a substitution ego state ought to be, and then has the will and the skill to do it. And you have to train and train and train. Ryan, if there's one thing that I think I, you know, I stand for is you can't think about it, you can't read a book on it.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  You have to train every single day.

• 12:40Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I was going to ask you about that because, uh, and I know you talked about this a lot with Rich. But, uh, I would imagine somewhat unique among rabbis, uh, or even just academics in general, you have, uh, an interesting history of sort of physical training, whether it's jujitsu or your time in the Marine Corps. Do you feel like, uh, an intense physical practice helps one in the battle against resistance? Or the battle against, uh, you know, your ego consciousness? Or, you know, does physical training allow you to, it's not forcefully insert, but does it allow you the sort of self? Is that self mastery transferable in your opinion?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  That's a great question. So it's not transferable automatically, which means people say, well, so when you train in martial arts, does that automatically transfer to regulation of the ego self? No, it doesn't. Because there are many people who are Outstanding martial artists and not very good spouses and parents.

• 13:44Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Now, if you have it, it's a great metaphor. It's a great analogy and you've learned how to work with resistance. You've learned the skillful application of the will. You understand what it means to have a vision for yourself. So if you want to use it, as it were, the well-developed muscle of consciousness and will, it's probably better that we have something else. But you know, there are many people that are great artists and great musicians and their character is very deficient. So there's not an automatic transfer, but I can't imagine it not helping.

• 14:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think that's actually something I'm, I was just interviewing a great NASCAR racer yesterday and I was talking to him about this. It was like my, my question for a lot of elite performers is can you be great at what you do and be like a good person and be good at home? And I'm, I'm actually both scared and I don't know what the right word is, but, but and alarmed at sort of how rarely it does seem that sort of professional mastery or the physical training seems to not transfer.

• 15:04Ryan Holiday?

  My friend Austin Kleon talks about art monsters, people who are extremely talented at some artistic pursuit, but just like an utterly depraved, awful human being.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  It's more common than it ought to be and I have a theory about that.

• 15:18Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Is that when people actually achieve true mastery and it can be in a skill, it can be in wealth, it can be a celebrity, anything that more, that unconsciously communicates to them, I have everything. Otherwise I wouldn't be at the top of my game. I wouldn't be so famous. I wouldn't be so admired. It wouldn't have so much power or money. And therefore it takes a conscious act of will to ignore all of that. And then put your inner, your, your character, your spiritual and moral development as a human being at the core of your life. It's hard for people who are getting messages from the world that they don't need to do that.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  And some of the people have the toughest time are people who have psychophans around them that tolerate them because they like being near the great fire of the fame, celebrity, power, skill, and so forth. So it is disturbing. You know, in many of my, you know, over my life, I've had, I've had clients who were famous, wealthy people and estranged from their children or in horrible marriages. And the, the, the, uh, the, the rules for success in their given field that made them rich, powerful, whatever, actually are not the same rules. I mean, there is the application of the will for spiritual and moral development or refinement

• 16:45Speaker 01

  of character.

• 16:47Ryan Holiday?

  And it seems like one is actually a much more impressive, uh, sort of, and narrower field, right? So, uh, to be like, you, you think about, let's say, how many NBA champions have there been in the, you know, however long the NBA has been around, or how many Super Bowl champions have been? And then you go, okay, let's say there's a several hundred, several thousand, whatever the number is, it could fit in a, in a, in a decent sized auditorium. And then you go, okay, how many of these were, uh, crappy fathers? How many of these were, uh, you know, uh, ignorant or racist or, you know, you go down and, and all of a sudden that room gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

• 17:30Ryan Holiday?

  So, you know, it's interesting where we, I don't want to say compete, but it's interesting where, what we tend to measure ourselves against. So we'll go, oh, well, I want to be the guy or the, the gal in the room with the most rings, right? We don't think, well, I want to be in the room with the rings because I'm talented at this thing and I've dedicated my life to it. Like, I don't know anyone that writes books and they go, I hope these books sell. No copies and I am, you know, utterly irrelevant as far as the cultural detachment, you know, cultural consciousness, because obviously you want to be relevant, you want to be in the mix. But to me, I want to be like, and I think the harder competition,

• 18:13Ryan Holiday?

  again, not a perfect metaphor, but the harder race to run is to do that and not lose these other things along the way, or to lose, you know, to be good.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Sure, I'll share with you a metaphor that I use, and it's too simple of a metaphor, but it's instructive. And that is, there are three worlds, or three levels of consciousness. So I call them the temple, the field, and the fence.

• 18:43Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  So outside the fence is, let's say, the world in the outside world, where I, you know, I want financial stability all the way to wealth, and I want some power over my life, all the way to power over other people. I, you know, person depending, I want mastery, fame, whatever it is. And that's outside the fence. Then there's inside the fence, there's what I call the field of consciousness. What I, what do I want it to be like in my inner life? Do I always want to be competing with somebody? There's always going to be somebody better. There's always going to be the next person that's going to displace

• 19:23Speaker 01

  me. Or do I want to make that, that world inside the fence, the cultivation of character? And it's not really competition, since you're competing against somebody else, but there is struggle with resistance. So in, in the work with character, managing that field, finding the, you know, the toxic places and how to rehabilitate and reclaim them. So I call that the realm of the field. And then the temple is the deepest interior part of a person, where you're connected to the soul, connected to spirit. For religiously oriented people, you're connected to the divine, is the origin of your values, of meaning and

• 20:06Speaker 01

  purpose. So just using these three for now, I would say that every person should have a sense of the temple, the field, and what's outside the fence. And if we commit ourselves to this, when things don't go so well outside the fence, the deepest meaning in our life comes from the field and the temple.

• 20:26Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. Right. And which of which of those three things do you have the most control over? Right. So it's like, you know, so much has to go right. You have to get so many breaks. You know, you have to work so hard to, you know, make it into professional sports, let's say, or get a book deal, or, you know, have your company be funded. And then all these other things after that have to go right. And it's not to say that it's so impossible, you shouldn't try. Of course, you should try. It's just interesting that we spend the majority of our time and energy on the external stuff, which the Stoics would say is not up to us

• 21:07Ryan Holiday?

  versus character, happiness, relationships, et cetera, which is in our control. We just sort of like, hope that that takes care of itself, or that it's a byproduct of pursuing the stuff outside the fence. And it almost never goes that way.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  That's correct. And even, I'll reframe that a little bit. You see, inside the fence, and my interest in character, integrity, honor, and the whole list of of character virtue that the Stoic tradition has profoundly contributed to. That doesn't mean that the marriage is going to go well, because there's another person.

• 21:47Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  That doesn't mean the parenting is going to go well. But I can rest assured that at some level, I will bring the best version of my character possible to other people and to my work. You know, here's, I disagree with the Stoics a little bit in the sense of free will and determinism. And that's, that's a very arcane kind of.

• 22:10Ryan Holiday?

  I want to talk to you about that. So we'll get to that.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  So I just don't believe that. I really believe that, I believe in free will, therefore I have to believe that things are not predestined, predestined things are not. You know, when they say live accordance with nature, I would never say that to anybody, because no one is exactly sure what that means.

• 22:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I don't think the Stoics exactly define it that way.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  No, they don't. And, and, you know, it's a popular. Metaphor in, you know, in the traditional world of philosophy and religion. So I just ignore it.

• 22:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Because when I'm counseling somebody, I would never say, "Live according to your nature." That's just not helpful.

• 22:46Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  What I would say is, "What are the aspirations of your spirit, your soul, character? And what's the resistance? And let's start there."

• 22:59Ryan Holiday?

  No, that's an interesting way of putting it. I think, uh, you know, we, we tend to know these things sort of intuitively. Or, or one might say, "This is the voice of God." We sort of know what we should be doing, what our purpose is, why we are here. Even people go like, "How do I know what my passion is?" If you really talk to them about it, they know what it is. It's then, as Stephen says, you know, the resistance gets in the way. Stuff gets in the way, uh, and we don't do it.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. And my sense is, because I, I teach a path that goes from virtue, which is restraining resistance in the behavioral realm, rationality, which is a great focus of the Stoic and, and other traditions, wisdom, uh, which for me means the wise understanding and managing of the inner life. And then there's a realm called depth. And many people don't know how to connect with their depth. And I think, for example, in one's depth is where meaning and purpose get worked out, somewhat unconsciously. So when a person says to me, "I want to have meaning and purpose in life,"

• 24:13Speaker 01

  I say, "I want to give you a different metaphor." Meaning and purpose have you. It's not an object you have, something that claims you. And the deeper you go into the soul, you start to know what claims you. It's like art. You know, when I look at a piece of art, or I see a great movie, or I hear a great song, I'm not using my rational faculty to, uh, to assemble a theory and then it's beautiful. Beauty grabs you. And I think the soul works that way. So I think cultivation of depth actually is a skill. And a person says, "Well, how do I do it?" I say, "Well, do you have the will? Are you willing to learn skills to cultivate depth?" So even depth is something that requires vision, will, and skill.

• 25:00Ryan Holiday?

  I'm in the middle right now. The first book will come out probably shortly after this episode. I'm doing a four book series on the four virtues, the cardinal virtues. So I'm starting with courage and then self-discipline or temperance and then justice and wisdom. And what's been interesting to me as I've, so I've written the first one, I'm on to the second one, but this is the first time I've had to really think about like what the book, each book in the series, because usually I've done all my books sort of as one-off things. I haven't had to think about interrelationality to other projects. But it's been interesting to me to see just how dependent the virtues are on each other. So courage

• 25:44Ryan Holiday?

  obviously requires an immense amount of willpower and restraint and dedication and endurance. So that's willpower and self-discipline. But then, you know, how much courage it takes to do the right thing, which would be the virtue of justice, and then how empty courage is if not in the pursuit of justice. And then finally, the wisdom required to know what to resist and what not to resist, what to be courageous about, you know, what is the right thing. It's kind of wonderful that, you know, 2,000 years ago, someone comes up with this idea of, you know, basically the good life is these sort of four ideas. And, you know, the most brilliant minds in history,

• 26:29Ryan Holiday?

  whether it's Aristotle or whomever, have tried to add a few here or there, but it really just comes down to these sort of four virtues, almost across all religions, traditions, schools of thought, east, west, you know, secular, spiritual. At the core of it, you know, Marcus really says, if you find anything better than courage, temperance, justice, or wisdom, it must be an extraordinary thing indeed. And I think he's right.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yes, and they are intertwined in what I would call the temple. And this is, you might say, the mystery, because that which you discover is the common foundation, let's say of the fourfold path or the eightfold path, however you want to enumerate it. Buddhism has a nice articulation, aspects of Hinduism have a nice articulation.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  But let's say one settles on those four, and then you find they're all entwined, exactly as you're saying. I mean, when does courage become courage for its own sake? For example, a defiance against the odds, full heartiness. And so then you have to say, well, then we need temperance and then courage, not in a just cause. So you're 100% right. They're deeply intertwined. And therefore, I think the whole person, you know, let's say when they come out of that mystical region of the temple where they are assembled in the soul and then articulated in, let's say, four different words, which leads to, you know, an intertwined wisdom

• 28:07Speaker 01

  path. Then you're out in, as it were, in the field and you're trying to work all of this out. And I think you're writing a book on this is great because people actually haven't thought enough about courage, temperance, wisdom. And that's one thing I recommend is that people actually think about these things, read books on them, look them up, cogitate, reflect, because language is the interface between the soul and consciousness. And therefore mastery of the linguistic articulations of this in a way help you apply them into

• 28:44Speaker 01

  your life. That's a wonderful endeavor. And you certainly have encountered the mysterious unity of these great virtues that then branch off into, you might say, different concepts.

• 29:01Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and I try to talk to Stephen before I start just about any book project. He's always very, very helpful. And I was talking to him at the beginning of the courage book and what he sort of really helped me with. And it ultimately is going to end up applying to all the virtues is that, and perhaps he's borrowing uncredited from you, your idea of the temple, is that, okay, so you say, you take something like courage. So at The primary level, it's about fear, right? We are besieged by fear. I was surprised to learn that be not afraid is like the most repeated phrase in the Bible, or close to the most repeated phrase in the Bible. So at this fundamental level, it's about fear, right? We are afraid of things.

• 29:47Ryan Holiday?

  So first level is sort of you get over fear. Then there's just this sort of ordinary courage, doing scary things, you know, chasing your dreams, you know, jumping out of an airplane, whatever it is, right? Doing a scary thing, standing alone about an idea.

• 30:06Ryan Holiday?

  But above courage, we have this idea of heroism, right? This is when courage is pursued in the pursuit of something not just just, because it's not really courageous if it's not just, but when it's when something just is pursued with sort of real selflessness. So something like, as Stephen writes in Gates of Fire, something like the 300 Spartans going against, out in a battle, they will almost certainly lose for the sole purpose of buying the time for the Greek alliance, for the Greeks to get together, right? So we have these virtues, but then also the virtues operate at different levels, right?

• 30:51Ryan Holiday?

  Sort of ordinary self-control, like getting up and exercising, or focusing. These are great, but I think what a lot of spiritual practitioners find is that, you know, first off, it's discipline, then it's routine, but above routine is like ritual. This is where you get to some sort of higher level. This is where you have access to the temple, or you're speaking with the divine. When you pursue these virtues, first you understand them, then you study them, then you apply them, but as you really turn yourself over to them, you can reach kind of a transformational level,

• 31:30Ryan Holiday?

  or insight, or plane, that just isn't accessible under normal conditions.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and therefore, let's think about courage for a moment. I mean, those Spartans trained continuously in martial arts.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  And they talked about dying. And they, like, you know, when I was in the Marine Corps, you know, we, we would oftentimes, you know, there's a, there's a mythology of the, let's say, the Battle of the Chosen Reservoir. Sure. When the First Marine Division was surrounded and they had to pull out. And so, you know, one regiment at a time, and then the last regiment, and the last battalion of that regiment, and the last company of that, of that battalion, and then the last platoon. And suddenly, B, you know, Third Platoon, B Company realized, they're the last one, and they're all gonna die. And when you read the stories of the pullout from the Chosen Reservoir, when they looked

• 32:29Speaker 01

  at Third Platoon and said, well, okay, so you're it, and they, what'd they do? They went, oh, well, is it? And they walked back and held the line. And the, the, you know, the, the company held the line, the battalion held the line. So I know in the Marine Corps, the idea is, um, you will be called upon to die. Understand that now. Now, we're gonna train you how to make sure you take more of them than they take of us. So we're gonna bring it to them and make sure they pay for the privilege of killing a Marine. And, you know, once you got that through your head, I'm here to die. I'm not here to run, I'm not here to be afraid, you know, there's a transformation within.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  So, uh, that kind of heroism, I think, takes a lot of training. I'll tell you when it kicked in for me. So I never saw combat, I served from seventy-three to seventy-six, but I was in an active shooter incident, uh, once at the, um, LA International Airport, nineteen seventy, must've been eight or nine. Wow. And, um, you know, without going into the whole, actually wrote about it in, uh, in my blog in the LA Jewish Journal. So in any case, I hear gunfire. And so, you know, I dived under a bench like everybody else, and then my training kicked in. I'm not gonna get shot here lying down. So I got up, I saw the shooter at a distance, person walked out onto the sidewalk. And I thought to myself, you know, it wasn't that I thought about it, I wasn't being a hero.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  It's just that you go toward the sound of gunfire. Right. You don't hide, you don't run, where's the gunfire, go toward it. And then I hid behind a pillar, the person came, had a confrontation with a gun in my face, took the person down and people said, well, that's courageous. I said, I never even thought about it. All I did was, you know, I'd been out of the Marines, I got out in seventy six, maybe three years out. So when you go through this kind of a training, you're trained to be that when the moment requires, your training kicks in and you've already conquered the fear from constant training and constant attitude and adjustment. But Ryan, I'll tell you where it comes in day to day. When I teach people the virtue practice of de-escalation in a conflict with a spouse

• 34:43Speaker 01

  or kids, and I, when I, I say, look, you just gotta de-escalate. Say, yeah, okay, sure, um, oh, all right, just, you know, in boxing, we call it deflecting punches, not hitting anybody, but you're not gonna land any punches either. And people say, well, I don't wanna be a doormat and then they just get anything they want. I think of that as lack of courage. That, that, the, the, the assertion of self, when you don't make anything better, that's actually not courage. Because courage ever means, I'm gonna fight my resistance to being a rational person and de-escalating these things. So, so where does the courage come in?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  In fighting your yetzirah, which says, be defensive, yell back, take a stand, and a higher part of you says, they're in a bad place today, I don't need to exacerbate this situation. So it's interesting that when we look at something like courage, temperance, wisdom, et cetera, they're intertwined, but in the, in the field, as it were.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  The dragon is resistance. The dragon isn't jumping out of the airplane. That's for an elite few. The dragon is resistance. And people don't want to train to fight inner resistance. And so I think, you know, I was trained, you know, in the military, you know, to be in a gunfight.

• 36:08Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Martial arts to be in, let's say, a fist or grappling fight. The greatest fight is with resistance.

• 36:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's a story. I wasn't sure if I was going to put it in the courage book or ultimately in the self-discipline book. And I think I'm going to put it in the self-discipline book. But where Martin Luther King was giving a speech on stage and some sort of deranged person came up on stage and physically attacked him, like with his fists. And someone who was there was talking about how everyone in the room gasped, not just because they didn't want Martin Luther King to get hurt, but they gasped because here was the true test of a supposed man of nonviolence. Right? And what is Martin going to do?

• 36:55Ryan Holiday?

  Is he going to defend himself from getting hit in front of people? Like, imagine just all these eyes on you. You don't want to be, as a man, you don't want to be humiliated. You also just don't want to be, who wants to feel physical pain? But they said, there was this, they watched, like, it was like time slowed down and they watched Martin drop his fists as the man approached him. And so in a sense, you know, if you're thinking about it superficially, this is an act of cowardice. He just lets himself get beaten by someone. And then you think about the incredible, both courage, justice, and self-discipline it required to not fight back.

• 37:39Ryan Holiday?

  When the validity of his movement is intersecting with his physical safety. And to me, that's not just ordinary self-discipline or ordinary courage. It's an elevation of, it's approaching something somewhat divine. And when you watch them marching in Selma or in Montgomery, the discipline and the courage required, it's not more or less than the physical courage of running into a burning building, or as you did, facing down a gunman. But it's somehow a slightly higher spiritual level.

• 38:24Ryan Holiday?

  Although I would argue you stepping out and stopping a gunman is also heroic in that sense, because it's not jumping out of an airplane, which requires you to master your skill and requires training. But there's something, because other people are involved, because there's something on the line, it means something more.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yes. And that's a great example, because I know that the Committee for Nonviolence, they trained and trained and trained not to get in fights with the police. And he was part of that training. So his training kicked in. But just as an outsider, I would say, what if they would have attacked his wife or his kid?

• 39:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  You see, then it wasn't, I'm training against racists. I would hope he wouldn't say, well, I'm going to let someone attack my kid. I would hope he didn't know how to get in between and push the person back and say, you got to back off. So that was very case-specific in a movement that strategically used nonviolence. And there are other times when you have to train to be able to match or subdue somebody.

• 39:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, Gandhi was asked, Gandhi said, if I had to choose between cowardice and violence, I would choose violence. So I think that is something we don't quite, in our understanding of the history of these nonviolent movements, we don't. We don't, we don't give them enough credit for how strategically they were using nonviolence as both a spiritual as well as a physical weapon.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yes. You know, when the Jews were being persecuted in Europe, somebody asked Gandhi, what should the Jews do? And he said, practice nonviolence. They said, you know, the Nazis aren't the British.

• 40:12Ryan Holiday?

  Right. It was not, it's not the same thing.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  It's not the same thing. So this is where wisdom comes in. Like, what exactly is the context? And what am I trying to do here? So, you know, I had, you know, my, my former wife and, uh, you know, and, and family, my mother was there. I mean, there was a whole luggage area filled with people and everybody was frozen. And I just thought, not on my watch. You know, just, I had to get out there. Uh, by the way, it was a woman. She was bigger than I was. Uh, she had a massive revolver, but it was, uh, uh, it was actually a deranged woman who was denied entry, uh, to a, her, her church, uh, tour of somewhere. And she came and they wouldn't let her on. And she pulled out a gun and started shooting people.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  And then she walked down the sidewalk to shoot some more people. And then that's where it happened. Uh, but yeah, there's a, here's a great example. Um, courage is, uh, you know, Falstaff says in Shakespeare, he says, I'm going to get it wrong, but something like, uh, um, uh, oh, prudence and discretion is the greater part of courage. Now, he, he's a fraud.

• 41:23Ryan Holiday?

  But discretion is the better part of valor, right?

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, valor, exactly. Discretion, you know, and of course, when you read it, it's, it's, it's written humorously because he's, he's covering his tracks by saying semi profound things. But on the other hand, at some level.

• 41:37Ryan Holiday?

  It's true.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  I'm sure that Shakespeare was quoting some well-known, uh, epigram that discretion is the better part of valor at times. So this is where, you're right, they're all, they're all entwined, courage, temperance, wisdom, self-discipline. They're all entwined with each other. They all have a common core. And I'll put wisdom above them all because wisdom, you know, with its greatest tool, rationality, is where you figure all this out.

• 42:02Ryan Holiday?

  Of course. There aren't, well, none of, all the virtues are intertwined and inseparable, but wisdom is the key with which you unlock how much and when to apply any of the other virtues.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's exactly right.

• 42:20Ryan Holiday?

  So, you know, speaking of the four virtues, I thought you might be an interesting person to talk through this with. I think one of the things I've struggled with over the last year and a half, I'll give you an example. I got an email from a Christian just the other day. So I have this bookstore here in Austin and right outside Austin and this, we have two young kids who can't be vaccinated. So we've kept a sort of a mask policy on the whole time we've been open because for self-protection and then also because it

• 43:01Ryan Holiday?

  would be unconscionable for me to know that like an outbreak started in my store or affected someone I lived near or cared about or worked for me or whatever. So this lady sends this super nasty note. She comes in, she was asked to put on a mask, she storms out and she sends this really mean note about it. And I posted the note online. I didn't like it or name or anything. I just posted it and it kicked off this whole sort of set of news stories about it. Anyways, you know, this person is sort of anti-vax, anti-mask, you know, why should I be inconvenienced by, you know, a pandemic that has a 2% death rate, you

• 43:44Ryan Holiday?

  know, the whole sort of litany of nonsensical objections that we've been dealing with for the last 18 months. Anyway, somebody sent me an email and said, you know, how could you do this? You know, I'm a Christian.

• 43:59Ryan Holiday?

  We're supposed to love our neighbors, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and it's actually something I, I believe, you know, I believe, which is precisely what's motivating my sort of actions in the pandemic is my belief in our interconnectedness and our obligation to each other. I've had a really hard time grappling with not being made jaded or bitter with the sort of abject selfishness and cruelty of, you know, what is, at this point, like, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of our fellow countrymen and women. And I, I understand that, you know, people have been misinformed.

• 44:41Ryan Holiday?

  I understand that people don't always react rationally to things. I understand that people have been manipulated. I understand that people project on things. But it's been hard for me to unsee what I've seen.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:56Ryan Holiday?

  And how do you think about that spiritually and morally?

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 44:59Ryan Holiday?

  Something I'm wrestling with philosophically.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Happily, happy to address it. So the first thing I would ask you is, can you distill your motivation in precisely your motivation in posting it?

• 45:12Ryan Holiday?

  In posting it?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And look, I think this is less about the posting. I'm more talking about just sort of the general philosophical disagreements about the stuff. But my, my, my thinking in posting it was, we, I believe as a society, we have sort of been trucking along with this, this naive belief that if we're just really nice and really patient, we can convince people to do the right thing.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's irrational.

• 45:43Ryan Holiday?

  And that is, that is, that has come at the cost of hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths over the last 18 months. So I was trying to, to show people, because I don't think people who are not actually up close and personal, especially people in like, I don't know, a city like San Francisco or New York or, or LA, where you think everyone's on the same page as you, I wanted to show people like, this is the profound, excuse my language, brain fuckedness of people that we're dealing with.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. So as I think about, you know, I would distill your motivation in this way. At some level, it's an affirmation to those who agree with you. Isn't this crazy behavior?

• 46:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  And then there's a group that you're putting up a mirror that they will actually, they actually might think those things, but they never actually saw how crazy it was until they saw what it looks like in a fully articulated form. So then you change a few minds. For the people that agree with her, it's not going to make any difference.

• 46:47Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  So then you might say, if I could change a few minds for people could see the mirror

• 46:52Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  of this toxicity from someone supposed to love their neighbor as themselves, and that's what they stand for if they're a devout Christian or anybody in, you know, in the tradition that reads the Bible. How much they're in violation of it? And therefore, which, which principle is it? You know, is it, I am offended by the mask? Is that your main principle? Or is it the principle of love your neighbor as yourself? Which, you know, Jesus brings the entire teaching down to two things. Love your neighbor and love God. So now we're going to put that aside.

• 47:18Ryan Holiday?

  I think Hillel says, uh, "Love thy neighbor as thyself. All the rest is commentary."

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Um, what Hillel says is, "Do not do to others that you would not be, want done to you." "Mashas sanui ala al ta'as laachrim." That which is, "Would be hateful to you, don't do to other people." So it's not so much do to others as you would want to be done, as don't do to others. It's more minimal. But, but yes, and it, it's certainly derivative of, uh, love your neighbor as yourself. See, what I try to do with these things, because remember, as a rabbi of a congregation, and I'm glad to say it's a pretty diverse congregation. And so, uh, because I'm a law-abiding citizen, the people who are really believe this is a big hoax and to wear a mask is to drink the Kool-Aid, they, they've left.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Because, you know, I, you know, they just feel I've somehow betrayed the truth. So we're going to put them aside. In every dispute that I think about, I try to understand what's the inner motivation of the other side? If they take a stand, which upon reflection, upon, you know, some sustained reasoning, I know they're wrong. They don't have a mastery of the facts. Or what they've done with the facts produces a theory, uh, that doesn't hold up. So I see this all the time.

• 48:37Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  So therefore, something in their temple and field has gone awry.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  So when I look at the anti-maskers, and you know, so who are the two groups that don't want to get vaccinations, for example, you know, at least in LA, it's the both the black community and the and the and the right, you know, they're both don't want to get vaccinated. So what's the what's the connection?

• 48:59Ryan Holiday?

  They're likely coming at it for very different reasons.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  For exactly, they don't trust the government.

• 49:04Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  They really don't trust the government. And so what happens is people find symbolic ways to express not trusting the government. So not wearing a mask is a way to say, I don't trust my government, I don't trust the science, the science is flip-flop on this all the time. You know, when they say, you know, if you said it began in the lab in Wuhan, oh, you're a crazy nut conspiracy theorist until you're not. You know, hydroxychloroquine was, you know, like a crazy Trump theory, and then people actually found out actually it does reduce the symptoms. So some people say the science is in the hand of the pharmaceuticals, in the hand of the government, all in each other's hands, it's a big hoax. So I say, look, do you want to have a rational conversation? Yeah, people make mistakes, but let's get down to the basics.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  But many people, when they look at all this going on, they get a, you know, a fixed idea. And the fixed idea can be, it's a scam, it's a hoax, I won't wear a mask, and to ask me to wear a mask is to make me subservient to this, you know, this this usurpation of citizens' rights. I hear that a lot.

• 50:08Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  That, you know, there's this incredible overreach. And by the way, I actually think there's been some some overreach, but I'm a law-buying citizen. If the law doesn't ask me to do something clearly immoral, I'll obey the law.

• 50:22Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  So when I talk to people about it, I say, let's go inside. And what I try to do is find the field in the temple. And at least someone says, look, I'm hearing your story, can you calm down? I want to find the core value that's shaping your reasoning that has produced this behavior. So in posting it, you you were taking more of a, I'll say, political in the sense of, how should the polis, how should the city live?

• 50:50Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  And you've decided this kind of behavior is not right, and I want to show everybody what it looks like. So I fundamentally would agree with you, some of them had the, you know, the disrespect to do that to you, you're gonna, you didn't put their name up, you showed it. But you're asking me as a spiritual teacher, some with a spiritual philosophic dimension.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  I prefer empathetic understanding. Find out where they are. And if I think there's a better way to reason, I'll try to lead them toward it.

• 51:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I guess in, I guess, I guess what I'm, what I'm talking about is, you know, how do you, how do you make sense of, how do you come back from, how do you not be sort of permanently altered by this glimpse we've had? You know, Burns's line about man's inhumanity to man. We basically have, you know, a good chunk of the population that's just sort of said, like, I don't give a shit about anyone else. Right? And they've expressed this in different ways, whether it's, you know, I'm young, why do I need to get a vaccine? Or who are you to tell me what to do?

• 52:06Ryan Holiday?

  Or I don't believe it's real. Or, you know, the potential consequences of the vaccine, which are nonexistent, you know, in truth, to me, don't outweigh the benefits. You know?

• 52:22Ryan Holiday?

  Down the line, what we're, what we're talking about is, is an, an abject rejection of this idea that we should love our neighbor, or that we have a responsibility to ourselves. I think, you know, I guess I didn't have any sense that we were all like sort of kumbaya on the same page, but it has been sobering to see just how much people struggle with this.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  It's a really great point, and it's complex. I'll tell you why it's complex. When you look at fascism, both National Socialism on one hand, in Italy and Germany, and Communism on the other.

• 52:59Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  What was their appeal? Let's all pull together.

• 53:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Let's all pull together. And what that means is, the government will set out the goals, and all the people pull together. And if you're not on board, we will hurt you. We actually might even kill you.

• 53:13Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  So there is, I think, in many people, a natural anti-fascist tendency that says, when people says, hey, let's all work together, everybody get on board, well, who are you to be talking for me? And when did we vote? Has anybody ever voted? Was this ever put to the citizens? Now, I'm vaccinated. However, when I see a person says, I don't want to get on board until we put it to a vote. Right. And I demand a vote. I think to myself, I wish more people in German Soviet Union would have said that. But what did they do? I mean, they were terrified to to to to to to sign on. Second thing is when people say it's never been this bad. I think I say 1942 was a bad year. Just look at what's happening across the globe in 1942.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  The Nazi advances into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, beginning of the of the of the Holocaust. The Japanese had been in China murdering hundreds of thousands of people. And I think, and and this is it's never been this bad. Well, it's never been that bad in America. I say, let's go to 1862. And so for many people, when they they don't really understand the struggles of the human condition without a strong sense of history. And Ryan, as you know, I'm just picking a couple of things. We could talk about the Armenian genocide. We could talk about Mao killing 30 million of his people, if not more. Stalin killing 30 million of his people. You know, so I say we have to put things in perspective here.

• 54:41Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. No, no, the perspective is is key. I'm not saying it's in any way the worst thing that's ever happened. I I would, I guess I would push back in two in two things to you there. So number one. It's hard to, it's hard to buy if if the most resistant group in America to sort of COVID preventative measures has been white evangelical Christians, who overwhelmingly supported a candidate who

• 55:08Ryan Holiday?

  let's just say was a proto fascist. I I can't, I can't buy the argument that this is rooted in some sort of instinctive anti fascist movement. And then I guess what I would say is, is that something like the Second World War, which now COVID has killed more people than the Second World War. American citizens in in the Second World War in less in far less time. Or civil war slavery. All those things were sort of massive geopolitical events that required. It was sort of man battling man. Or man battling, you know, some sort of political gridlock or something.

• 55:52Ryan Holiday?

  I think what's what's, I think the hardest thing to countenance about our pandemic response is been.

• 56:00Ryan Holiday?

  How sort of preventable and then also how little is being asked of the of each individual, right? And so this is the Stoic idea of like, look, we, you know, you don't have that much power, but you have a little bit of power. What matters is do you use that power? And when you watch people sort of abdicate that duty, Marx really says, the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. It seems like we have really struggled with the idea of like, what is our obligation? I'm working on a piece right now. And we have the Statue of Liberty on the West, on the East Coast, and Viktor Frankl proposed a statue of responsibility on the West Coast, the counterpart to virtue,

• 56:42Ryan Holiday?

  or the counterpart to liberty. It seems like we've, we, we have spent a lot of time emphasizing what our freedoms are, what our liberties should be, but we've struggled with this idea of what is, what is the flip side of that? What is our obligation? What's our duty to the common good?

• 56:59Speaker 01

  That's, that's very well put. I think you and I are actually addressing two separate questions.

• 57:04Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  You see, when a person, let's say, supports Trump or is an anti-vaxxer, I start with love my neighbor as myself. I really want to understand them. I want to understand their reasoning core. I have my political commitments that are rooted in responsibility. But I also want to start, I don't want to start by saying, well, you're wrong, you're stupid, you're not responsible. Because they're actually a human being who lived their entire life to get to this position. And if I'm in conversation with them, what I want to say is, I'd love to hear your story. So I think what you're saying is on the, on the policy level, and I'm talking more about what would I say to such a person?

• 57:46Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  And I really do believe that on the responsibility side of things, part of what we're responsible for is deeply respectful dialogue with people whom we differ greatly.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  And and sometimes when you have that deeply respectful dialogue and the person doesn't feel that you think they're stupid or irresponsible, that you actually care about their story, sometimes that shifts people. You know, the greatest example of this is, I'm spacing on his name, but the, I think, is a black guy down in Georgia, Alabama. And so he talks to Klansmen. Have you heard about this, right?

• 58:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  So, and they end up giving them his robe. And people say, how could you talk to those people? He says, well, how many robes did you get?

• 58:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  So, see, that's a model for me.

• 58:30Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I will, I will support reasonable policies. I'm, I, I think we should teach responsibility. And it's a, it's a tragedy that our school system doesn't teach more virtues, starting at the spiritual and character levels and all the way up to the ethics of civic responsibility. You're talking about what I think is a, is a reasonable political stand of our interresponsibility as citizens. And I'm speaking about more of the spiritual moral path of the encounter with a person with whom you disagree.

• 59:00Ryan Holiday?

  I guess I, I've, I've found it interesting, you know, having a public platform that's about one thing, and then you occasionally sort of talk about issues and people go, oh, you know, you're being political. But I think what I'm actually talking to you about is sort of basic social contract stuff. So it's kind of interesting to me that as a society, you know, we have become so polarized that even some of these issues of, you know, love thy neighbor, or, you know, that, that, that we owe an obligation to the country or the nation, or the, the ideals that made us here, that we, we owe an obligation to that. That

• 59:40Ryan Holiday?

  even that is sort of up in the, you know, up, up, up for debate, that that's just another political issue. So I think-

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:50Ryan Holiday?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. And you see, but then you look at, you know, American history. You look at the labor movement. You look at the, um, the cultural, uh, struggle, you know, 1960s. So there's always been, I mean, you go all the way back. You go generation after generation, you go back to America. There's always been dissidents. There's always been people that thought differently. Now, I think, and I write, write my conclusions. But as a good American, I realize there's always been a strong culture of dissidence in our country. And then people polarize, right? And people take stands and, you know, people say, this is what's best for our society. So I've chosen not, in general, to be an advocate for my position.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  I've, in general, been an advocate for the way we reach a common, move toward a common center. The way we move toward common responsibility is to lower the temperature, stop polarizing, and really listen, and first of all, teach the ethics of dialogue. Because, I mean, there are different theories of what it means to be responsible, a responsible citizen. One says not to drink the Kool-Aid on this virus stuff. The other says everybody get vaccinated. They both think they're being responsible and that's best for society. My goal is, can we just all calm down, listen to each other? Because I think minds are changed when people don't feel defensive and, uh, and under threat. So this has been my position.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  So if a person is of a different position, unless it's truly egregious and teaches murder or something, I'll, I'll hear the person out and I'll say, may I respond? And I'll say, what are your premises? What are your axioms? What are the facts as you see them? And you know what, Brian? Sometimes people realize, I don't know what my premises are. I don't know what my axioms are. I really don't have a good master of the facts. That doesn't come from me saying to them that you're a crappy person with crappy premises and crappy axioms. I just do a rational practice of, of, you know, can you bring it out to me? And then sometimes people realize themselves. You know what I sometimes do for people, Ryan? I say, let me give you the best case of your position.

• 1:01:58Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  And I make their case for them. They said, wow, I could never say it so well. I said, now I'll tell you why I disagree.

• 1:02:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, steel manning, as they call it, instead of straw manning.

• 1:02:08Ryan Holiday?

  Steel Man, it's called Steel Man versus Straw Man.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, yeah, make them stronger. That's exactly right. I've never heard that phrase before. But I find it's a great way, first of all, the humanity of dialogue, which I think, you know, Frankel would be very much

• 1:02:23Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  in praise of, that ultimately I have a responsibility to the soul of the human being sitting across from me. And not a responsibility to say that that my conclusions are better than theirs. Let's start with, you're a human being with a story, I'm a human with a story. I'd like to elicit yours, I'd like you to elicit mine, and come away respectful of each other. I have simply found that if I happen to be, you know, if my axioms and premises have the ring of truth to them, and my theories move from those axiom and premises into policies that make sense, and I can display that in a non-hostile way, I change more minds by doing that than starting out the other way. Now, you're in a different position. You have a public voice.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  You are a, you know, person on the stage in the cultural conversation of America. You take a stand. You know, and I have good friends who have taken stands. Their life is somewhat about, you know, I mean, on one hand, you're a deeply philosophic person, but you, there's some advocacy there. So you're talking to a person who decided very young, I can be an advocate for my political positions, but I'm going to be an advocate for something else. And, and this is very much, by the way, rooted in the Talmudic tradition.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  You know, one wouldn't think that there are, there are profoundly different interpretations of what it means that God gave the law to Moses on Mount Sinai. So the ancient rabbis had sometimes very bitter conflicts about what the law meant. I mean, they agreed that the sentence is in the Bible, but what it meant, I mean, they actually had violent fistfights about this stuff.

• 1:03:55Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  And so there was a moment when, you know, somebody says, well, who's right? The school of Shammai or the school of Hillo? And you know, a miraculous voice comes from heaven and says, "God prefers the school of Hillel." Why? Because they presented the theories of Shami before their own, and they comported themselves with dignity and respect. So, the voice from heaven doesn't say, "We support Hillel on the merits of his argument." It says, "We support Hillel on how he conducts debate." So it says, "These and these are the words of the living God." Which one does God prefer? The more respectful one? The more careful one?

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  The one who decides that if we're gonna argue about something, "I wanna do the steel man," as you're saying. "I wanna give the best version of you, and then I'll respond, and we're gonna work these out." Because the only way we're gonna come to, I think, a sense of civic responsibility and hold the center together is with an ethics of dialogue. Now, this is one guy. My friends who take advocacy positions, I'm saying, "I'm glad you're taking advocacy positions, so I don't have to." So I don't mind that people take advocacy positions, but it leaves room for me to teach the respectful dialogue position.

• 1:05:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, I like what you said about this being a struggle that goes way back, because if you think about it, yeah, this is, it goes to your point too about the individual struggle, which, you know, Lincoln talking about, you know, the better angels of our nature, Martin Luther King talking about, you know, living out the true meaning of our creed. But then also, as an individual level, you know, we've had the moral and spiritual instruction from God or from philosophy for thousands of years now. The struggle is actually living it. You know, Epictetus says, "Don't talk about your philosophy, embody it." It's, you know, this sort of constant battle and journey to

• 1:05:56Ryan Holiday?

  apply the ideas that we heard about, that we've learned about, that we care about, and then trying to get a little bit closer to it. Not to moral perfection, but just to, just to, um, spiritual progress, I guess.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's challenging. I mean, people walk away from that fight, to fight their resistance to be loving. The person could have written you a different email. And said, first of all, you're a human being. I don't assume I'm right. I'm assuming you're wrong. I want to share with you my take on this thing. And I want to, as a fellow citizen, I respect your take. This thing's going to end. Let's just not fray our country. What I try to imagine you would have gotten that email.

• 1:06:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I suppose I suppose at the end, though, the implications are. I don't think there's any way of saying other than the implications of it are monstrous, which is this this virus has a 2% death rate. And so we should just let it happen. We shouldn't have as individuals, we should be able to decide whether we give a shit or not.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:08Ryan Holiday?

  And whether we have an obligation. That's the inherent problem.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you can say that. And you can advocate that position. Right? I would not use the word monstrous. I would really want to understand what they're saying because remember, people are thinking, you know, is there a cost to protecting everybody? I'm not saying that their algorithm is correct.

• 1:07:29Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  What I'm saying is, you know, when we look at the history of our country, I just I feel a little bit of resistance that there's some point of view that I will call monstrous. Because what do you do with monsters? You kill them, you exile them, you marginalize them. You know, we you euthanize them. Okay, we sterilize them. So what you're hearing in me, Ryan, is just from having studied so much of human barbarity and and the history of dissidents. Something me just wants to be cautious and hear what a person has to say without calling them a monster. Now, you might be right on this. It might it might be better to say it's monstrous. And so I'm not saying you shouldn't be that.

• 1:08:14Ryan Holiday?

  I'm not saying the person is a monster. I'm saying the implications that we like, like you always have to think about. I guess, was it the sort of categorical imperative? Like, what would it be like if everyone acted like this? Right? What would what would it mean if this became sort of the law of the land? And so I think we have struggled as a society to, whether it's climate change or gun control or these issues where people are sort of like, but what about what I want to do? It's not that that's not valid or real. Of course it is. But I think what we've struggled with is. Going, okay, let's sketch this out. What does this mean in real sort of human cost?

• 1:08:59Ryan Holiday?

  What is the consequences of this position? So it's not that the person is a monster, but what they have picked up on the internet or whatever has an inherently, it's, I mean, when you think about freezer trucks full of bodies because hospitals are overloaded, or the fact that like, you know, I have to, I have to wake up today, right, and think there are zero available children's ICU beds in central Texas. And I really hope my kid doesn't fall and hurt their head because those are all taken up now by unvaccinated, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're not, we're actually, we're not actually debating anything here. Meaning, I think we agree. The best thing for our country is to be extremely careful, get vaccinated, live responsibility, you know, have a civic response, a civic ethic of interresponsibility. We both agree. The only thing you're hearing from me is if I were to sit down with one of these people, how I would conduct the conversation. And I think as I, as I present my side, I think what happens is I trigger something in you that goes back to the advocacy.

• 1:10:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  And then I say, well, I'm not talking about advocacy, I'm talking about dialogue. And you go to advocacy, I go to dialogue. So here's where I would say, let's just move on because I agree with you, but I'm talking with something else.

• 1:10:33Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, I get what, I get what you're saying. I do see how when you're, when you're trying to debate with a specific person, what is, what is the entry, where is the path of least resistance? As you're trying to connect with someone or communicate with someone. Where are they going to be most open? And I've got to imagine your sort of practice of doing this over many decades now, you, whether it's a couple thinking about divorcing, or it's, you know, someone who's become addicted to drugs, or someone who's fallen away from the faith. You've had to really craft an ability, probably not unlike your jujitsu skills, to get access

• 1:11:17Ryan Holiday?

  to them without triggering precisely what would make them unwilling or unable to hear what you have to say.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  That's very well put. And it is like jujitsu. When I work with a lower belt, I don't want them to freak out. I don't want them to panic. I want them to know you're in good hands, everything's okay, and I'm only here to teach you. So let's, I mean, you go back to some fall away from the faith. If someone says, "Well, I've left religion, I've left Judaism," I don't start with my conclusion, like, "Oh, I gotta get you back." I don't, I require myself not to think that. I require myself, let me hear their journey of faith, and try to understand their decision. And is it a decision that's best for them, their inner life, and their family? And leave what my opinion out of it. Now, I have my opinion, right?

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  But that's not what you do when you're caring for the soul of another person. And when you're caring for the soul of another person, you have to start with, what are their axioms? What are their premises? What's their starting place? And then see how they view the world. So in these different political issues, here's one thing I've found. The different sides of political debate profoundly misunderstand each other. So if you were to talk to a person on the other side, and we would say, "Well, it's just rampant individualism." When I've talked to them, that's actually not their story. I don't want to say their story is, because, you know, I don't want us to start talking about what their story is.

• 1:12:44Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  But I want you to know, in nearly every one of these issues, they, their axioms, their reasoning is not what the other side thinks. So I actually, even when I talk to them with whom I disagree, the honor of being brought into their inner life, that they trust me enough to help them figure out what their actions and premises are, because no one's ever been curious. And to say, okay, so show me how your axioms, premises, facts, produce theories that produce policies. And they say, I've never heard about that. I said, well, let me show you what it's like. And they walk away saying, I've become a better thinker by sitting this with this man, because I'm skilled, like I'm, you know, I'm skilled in

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  the mechanics of the mind, like I'm skilled in jujitsu. I'm a black belt. Here's the other thing that happens, Ryan. They say, if you're so skilled at this and you think differently from me, maybe I have to think twice. Sure. Because you're so respectful, so careful, such a good teacher, and you landed on the other side of this thing? Sometimes that's an opening. And I truly hope I'm right about things. I thought about many things very carefully, and I think my conclusions at least are defensible. I'm not saying I'm right, but they're defensible. So, you know, as you, as we engage in the, you know, Stoicism, which is very much rooted in rationality and good thinking and the logos of the universe, you know, as a spiritual person rooted in a tradition that starts with,

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  love your neighbor as yourself, the ethics of responsibility, respect for humankind,

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  and my profession, which is mostly dealing with the souls of other people. You might say, I've developed a path in life which sounds like it's different from your path. And I honor your path. I mean, you're doing great work. I wouldn't, I wouldn't want you anything different.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  You know, you might say, the, the world is made better because there's the inner path of dialogue, and there's the path of reasonable advocacy.

• 1:14:48Ryan Holiday?

  Well, yeah, I actually think, and then I've got a couple more questions, but if you have to go, you tell me at any time. What I think is, what I find endlessly fascinating about Stoicism as a philosophy, and where I think it diverges in the historical tradition from Epicureanism and from all the other schools, is that, even though they all develop roughly around the same time and in the same place, is that Stoicism becomes a political philosophy. And I don't mean that it has so much specific policy, like planks or anything like that, because it's 2,000 years and all the issues in the countries and the people and places have changed.

• 1:15:31Ryan Holiday?

  But I think it was Seneca talking about the Epicureans. He says, you know, an Epicurean says, "I will not be political unless I have to be." And a Stoic says, "I will be political unless something stops me." Right? So in Seneca's place, he's involved until he's exiled. I think, you know, to me, what I love about Stoicism is that it is inexplicably intertwined with political engagement. This is why the founders, you know, Washington and Jefferson are both, you know, sort of proponents of Stoicism. This is why at the outbreak of the US Civil War, you have this sort of resurgence of Stoicism. This is Stockdale in Vietnam.

• 1:16:13Ryan Holiday?

  What I love about Stoicism is that it is engaged. I get your point that sort of, let's look at the soul. What I find fascinating about Stoicism is it's tend to your own soul and, you know, we have an obligation to contribute to the soul of the direction of the state, the nation, the community, the business, whatever it is.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  So let's break that down just a little bit. You see, I think the core of Stoicism in caring for the polis, let's say, political means you care for the city, the well-being of the city, and the citizens living together. And the main path of Stoicism is rationality.

• 1:16:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  That what's happening in the city, what are the facts? And let's not ignore facts that don't fit our theory. Let's start with the facts. What are my theories? What are my axioms? So I do engage in politics. In the same way that I care for the souls of other people, I'm not talking about caring for my soul right now, I'm saying what it's like for the souls of others. But you see, to the point that I am engaged, and you know, now and then I will, you know, I will make a political statement, meaning I care for the moral character of the polis. I will make a statement, but I make sure to back it up with, here are my axioms, here are my premises, here are the facts, I understand them, here's the policy I'm recommending, here's why it lines up, I encourage you to challenge me.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  So yes, we should care about the polis, we should, but here's the thing that's sad.

• 1:17:41Ryan Holiday?

  I'm not implying you don't, by the way.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand, I just want to be emphatic that, that in caring for the souls of others, I do care, but here's the thing that makes me sad. Whenever I end up talking to somebody on what we'll call a political issue, which means one side or the other.

• 1:18:00Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  I'm saddened how poorly people are informed, even the people who agree with me, how ill thought out they are about their premises and their axioms, their relative lack of mastery with the facts, that their premises, axioms, facts, theories, and policies actually don't line up, and they agree with me. So.

• 1:18:20Ryan Holiday?

  Well, this goes back to the virtue of wisdom, which is not, which is the most difficult of the virtues to attain and requires incredible commitment and dedication.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Yes, and so that's, since you mentioned Vietnam, some people will say Vietnam, Vietnam. I say, look, I was alive during this time. I say, do you know anything about the Korean War? They say, they know nothing.

• 1:18:43Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  And I said, our country was traumatized, first of all, by the communist takeover of China and the mass murder that produced, the sudden North Korean invasion of South Korea, and the constant barbarity that accompanied it, and a nation unprepared. And suddenly this idea, wow, no one's gonna do it if we don't, so this is Kennedy. I mean, if you look at Kennedy's policy is, we have to be involved in the world. And so that was the American sense of self. It goes completely awry in Vietnam.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  But was was it was motivated by a Kennedy-esque idea that we have to prepare ourselves to sacrifice ourselves for the right and the good. And communism, as it was lived at that time, under Mao, Stalin and others, was, I think, you know, factually evil.

• 1:19:34Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, I mean, I don't think there's any debate. It was monstrously evil.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  But when people look at the American involvement in Vietnam, they say imperialism. And I said, you know, that's actually after the fact it looks like it.

• 1:19:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  And so when I actually break down what happened in America, world and American history between 1945 and 1964, and let's understand why we went, why it went badly. I find that even though we might agree it was a mistake to go in, people are judging from their conclusion, and therefore they think they understand the history.

• 1:20:08Ryan Holiday?

  So they're judging from hindsight, and it's very easy to make very clear and clean conclusions there when when at the at the moment, you know, it was hopelessly muddy. I think, yeah, I think I had H R McMaster on the podcast a few months ago, and he wrote a fascinating book about the leadership in Vietnam, one of the sort of how it goes so wrong from sort of the strategic standpoint. I think the real tragedy of Vietnam is not so much going in because the intentions, as you said, were both relatively noble and

• 1:20:45Ryan Holiday?

  at the time relatively limited. The tragedy of Vietnam, and this is a key part of wisdom, was as the assumptions changed and as the information changed, we had a government and a and a population that was unable or we had a government and a military complex that was unable to acknowledge the change and change in accordance with that. And we

• 1:21:16Ryan Holiday?

  became sort of hopelessly trapped in this thing, which is and then the ultimate tragedy on top of it is that we then make the exact same mistake in Iraq and Vietnam.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  And so what would the story do?

• 1:21:31Ryan Holiday?

  What would the stoic do as far as Vietnam?

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  Well, let's think about, look, the military did not want to go into Vietnam. The military said, never fight a war on the Asian landmass. But the military doesn't make the decisions. That was a very political decision. The military, if they're set, go to war, they want to win the war. When the government just pull out, they pull out, they follow orders. So when the military is giving an impossible task, that's a decision made by our civilian leadership. It gets very, very complex.

• 1:21:59Ryan Holiday?

  Well, there's an interesting story about Marcus Aurelius. So Marcus Aurelius is this philosopher king, and yet he spends the vast majority of his reign battling not just a plague, but also a series of battles on the frontier of the Roman Empire. And sometimes I'll get emails from people and they'll go like, if Marcus was such a great person, you know, why, why did he fight the Parthianians? Or why did he fight, you know, this tribe or that tribe? And what I try to remind them, I go, imagine you're the president of a country or the ruler of a country, and your border is invaded. No president can just simply not respond to that. If a president doesn't respond to it, you know, you're essentially, you almost immediately become a failed state, right?

• 1:22:41Ryan Holiday?

  And, and so there are, and I think this is what's interesting about Stoicism. Stoicism is, for all its idealism, is still also a pragmatic sort of fact-based philosophy. Marcus Aurelius is, don't go around expecting Plato's Republic, right? We live in, in the dregs of Romulus, as Cicero says. And, and so Marcus is forced to go to war, but he negotiates almost immediately a series of truces. He fights in the conflict, but understands that, you know, what isn't palatable is both the expansion of the empire and endlessly defending the empire. And so Marcus is known for his subjugation of these tribes.

• 1:23:25Ryan Holiday?

  But really, as I understand it, what he was actually brilliant at was, was more in the field of diplomacy or the idea of finding and brokering some form of peace. So obviously, there's not perfect comparisons, but the point about Vietnam is great.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  So the, see, so my, my exercise is...

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  When I look at a historical moment, and let's say we're ask ourselves metaphorically, what would a good Stoic do? Yes. Without the benefit of hindsight? Meaning, what were their axioms and premises? What facts did they know? What policy did they recommend? And when would they have said, "I made a mistake"? So, therefore, I agree that the, that, that good people with good values have to be engaged. But when we study history, we understand that some of the most terrible mistakes were by people that had good values, thought they mastered the facts, created policies, and they were disastrous. So, you know, so there's no panacea, you know, to the, to the broken timber of humanity.

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  So, therefore, my question is, how do I make sure, let's say, to use the metaphor, I'm not a mistaken Stoic? Right. The way I'm not a mistaken Stoic is engage those who disagree with me, because if my position is rooted in values and facts and good theories, I can withstand the engagement of someone who thinks differently, even when we discuss the past. So anytime someone says, "Well, let's talk about, you know, this thing, or this thing, or this thing," I said, "Let's talk about it." Because we're going to engage our premises, our understanding of the facts, and that takes some time, you know, it's a sacrifice of time to master facts, which many people don't want to do.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  So, this idea of what we'll call Stoic reasoning to be engaged, it requires a lot. So, I'll say the last thing on this topic, unless you want to ask me more questions, is sometimes when I engage with a person, and I just bring up facts, I say, "Well, this," they say, "Well, how do you have time to, like, look all this stuff up?" And my response is, "I will not let myself have an opinion if I don't." Well, it's your job, you know? It's all of our jobs. Well, it's, I think especially my job. Sure.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  Spiritual leader who's, you know, with a doctorate and therefore I know how to look stuff up. So what I find with many people, they have very strong opinions and passions and a meager grasp of the facts, including historical facts, very hazy premises, but very strongly passionate about something. So I think what you're hearing me say is if you and I decided to talk about anything, the first thing I would do with you is let's not talk about our conclusion, let's amass the facts that we share. Okay, so at least we have a, you know, we understand what our playing field is. And then I would ask you, so what are your premises and actions that you're bringing to bear?

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  What's your value system that's shaping as we look at something? What would you have recommended and what did the other side say? And I think we would both come out wiser from that engagement.

• 1:26:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and Mark Struus talks about, you know, when someone points out that you're wrong, you know, they haven't done you an injury.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:26:45Ryan Holiday?

  The injury is to continue being wrong.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:26:49Ryan Holiday?

  And this ability to question your own beliefs is of course the root of wisdom and it's why Socrates was considered wise, is he went around asking questions and sort of generally kind of avoiding conclusions and mostly, you know, trying to find out what other people think.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so I find this, for example, so what I bring to bear is typically in families where there's so much pain, so much suffering, so much unavoidable pain and suffering. If people had what you might call the Stoic ethic of is, first of all, I'm going to bring rationality to bear. I call it the police report. What exactly just happened? You know what's incredible, Ryan? A couple will talk about something that happened yesterday and they don't agree on actually the bare bone facts of what happened. And you know, so that's the first thing is, we can't talk until we can actually recover some factual basis to talk. So this, what I call the political ethic of Stoicism, I find is also the ethic of solving

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  the great pain that occurs in families between spouses and parents and children, especially when children become teenagers. This idea of, well, let's all first master the facts first. And now let me share with you my understanding. So for example, many parents of teenagers, they've never read a book on child development. They don't understand what adolescence is. I have a class that he's called Parenting the Soul of Your Child. I said, the first thing, before you tell any kid what to do, you have to understand what their inner state is. I teach that people, children need wisdom more than they need advice. So all the hours you spend giving a kid advice would be better put teaching the child, how to gain insight, wisdom, rationality, and so forth.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  So the same things that we're talking about, for me, are the ways of bringing healing to a family. Is everybody calm down, discuss what exactly happened, what axioms are being brought to bear, what's the fact of the situation, including the fact of ongoing human development? You know, what marriages are like? They have peaks and they have valleys. What people are like as they transform. You marry somebody, that person is not a stable personality for the next 30 years. They're going through their journey, they're going through our changes. What people are usually aware of is, well, it doesn't please me, it doesn't fit me, this is not good for me. And so sometimes I say, do you understand the soul journey of your spouse? It's never occurred to them to ask.

• 1:29:17Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. Because we're obsessed with ourselves.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, naturally. It's not a bad thing. We see the world in reference to our opinions, our values, our understanding of our facts, and we're typically not interested in another person's understanding of the world. So I find that... This is a core to discuss of any political issue. But interestingly, it's also the core of working out interpersonal disputes is curiosity about the inner world of another person, how they're experiencing reality. And sometimes, you know, when I, when a parent is really upset with their teenager, the

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  teenager is like out of compliance, I say, when you calm down, go to them and say, look, I don't want to give advice, I don't want to tell you what to do. I want to, I truly want to understand you as a loving parent. So the kids don't buy it. They think it's a, it's some kind of manipulation. You have to be insistent. I'm going to be your parent, hopefully, until I die. And I don't want us to have to go through this with bitterness. I want to understand how you see the world. And you know what? Many teenagers have never had a parent ask them, how do you see the world? Because parents are too busy judging to their kids and telling them what to do. Now, this is a game changer. Curiosity about the inner life of another person opens things up that would not have

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  been possible before.

• 1:30:47Ryan Holiday?

  No, I think that's well said. Okay, last, last question for you, because I've already taken up so much of your time.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  All right, no problem.

• 1:30:52Ryan Holiday?

  What, so we can end on a, on a positive note as well.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  I think it's all positive, right?

• 1:30:56Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, I just, I just meant positive generally, not that we were negative, but it's a thing I've been thinking about. What gives you hope? Like, what makes you hopeful, given your study of history, given the people that you see, given your reading, given your spiritual pursuits? What makes you hopeful?

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  Okay. I'll answer metaphorically. What makes me hopeful is that North Korea calls itself the People's Democratic Republic of Korea.

• 1:31:24Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  Which means they have to lie. Because they know a democratic republic is the best form of government. They know they are tyranny, but they're gonna lie. See, if they said, "The thuggish fascist brutal state." Let's be honest. So I'm going with Steven Pinker here. If you look at the long view, what has happened to the world?

• 1:31:48Ryan Holiday?

  They're at least acting as if.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  Yes, no, they're talking as if, but you look at the rest of the world.

• 1:31:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, sorry.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, the rest of the world, the model of a regulated free market, a rights endowed sit-insary that ought to act with some kind of civic responsibility. Everybody knows that's the standard. So Steven Pinker's idea of you can't look at today according to how things should be. You have to look at how, in general, humanity has developed. I mean, look at China under Mao. And as much as it's not a free country, it's not like it was under Mao. So what gives me hope is, you know, again, I thank Steven Pinker for articulating so beautifully.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  Let's take a long view and ask ourselves, in general, not looking at the deplorable moments, but in general, what's the history of our of consciousness in the past 50 or 60 years? Right? And I think Steven Pinker is right, that says, the vision of, you know, of eradicating illness and poverty, the vision of feeding everybody, the vision of of people having rights. That vision seems inexorable. I mean, there are downturns. But look, I remember when the Philippines threw over, overthrew Marcus. I remember Solidariat in Poland with Les Valence.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  So, you know, I remember, you know, when Solidariat came into being. I mean, the world was abuzz. Someone's pushing back? And we were asking, what's gonna happen next? Nobody could predict that in 10 years, the Soviet Union would fall. And you know, what I thought was a part of the world I'll never see, Eastern Europe. And I saw the Berlin Wall come down. And then I actually went to Berlin for a month. Ryan, my life has been filled with miracles of watching human progress. And I don't want to get lost in the bad moments and not see this miracle that I've witnessed in my lifetime.

• 1:33:56Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's well said. What's the, to quote Martin Luther King again, who I think he was quoting someone else, about the arc of the moral universe, sort of bending towards truth. And I think it was Obama, as he's leaving office, you know, he's dealing with all these sort of despondent aides who are, can't believe that Trump's just been elected. And he goes, look, it bends towards truth, but it also zigs and zags, right? And I do think that is always really important to keep in mind. Cause if you, you know, Stoics talk about zooming out and taking Plato's view. If you look at it too close, you'll lose heart. Actually, this is one of my favorite, one of my favorite, I don't know, I don't know what they're called in Judaism, but I learned about it from my friend, Aaron Thayer. He has a book with the same title.

• 1:34:40Ryan Holiday?

  But he says, it's like a Jewish hymn or something that the world is a narrow bridge. The important thing is to not be afraid.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a saying of Rabbi Duffman at Bratslow, exactly.

• 1:34:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, if you look at it too close, if you look down, you'll lose all heart. But if you can zoom out a little bit, it's not so, it's not so bad.

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's well put. And that's what gives me hope is the, the arc of history moving toward truth and justice. And you know, and so my question is, how do I keep that arc in that direction? And I've chosen my path. I'm really honored that you brought me on and let me share my path. And it's been a delight talking to you and hearing yours.

• 1:35:17Ryan Holiday?

  No, thank you. And yeah, I would say that still, what you just said, that last part to me is the most imperative part. It bends towards truth, but it doesn't just happen. What are you as an individual doing about it in attending to your own soul, tending to the soul of the people around you, tending to the soul of your community? Like, this is what I love about Stoicism, which is like, yeah, the great man of history theory exists, but what role are you playing?

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  There you go. Exactly. Well put.

• 1:35:45Ryan Holiday?

  Well, Rabbi, this was a wonderful conversation. I appreciate the extra time and, and, and I'm so glad that we got connected. And I hope we can meet in person one day.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  I, I hope the same. It's been an honor. Thank you.

• 1:35:57Ryan Holiday?

  Remember Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave is now available everywhere. You can go to your local bookstore and pick it up. You can come to the Painted Porch and pick it up. We are still offering the preorder bonuses. We've extended it to the end of this week, so you can get that at dailystoic.com/preorder. But you can also get Audible, you can get eBooks, you can get whatever you want from wherever you want it. But I would very much like you to support the new book Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave.