But What Will We Do IF? | The Cost of Accepting Counterfeits

“A few days ago we talked about this paralyzing fear—the “preemptive whataboutism” that holds people back from doing the right thing. It’s why we don’t speak up about somebody on our side. Why we won’t take that career risk. Why we don’t see enough real leadership.”Ryan explains why you can't let the concept of the future disturb you, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is also brought to you by Scribd, the e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one million titles. Scribd uses the latest technology with the smartest people to recommend you content that you’re going to love. We’re offering listeners of The Daily Stoic a free 60 day trial. Go to try.scribd.com/stoic for your free trial. That’s try.scribd.com/stoic to get 60 days of Scribd for free.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Bienvenidos a otro episodio del Podcast Daily Stoic. El jueves hacemos doble trabajo, no solo leyendo nuestra meditación diaria, sino también leyendo un pasaje del libro "El Daily Stoic", 366 Meditaciones sobre la sabiduría, la perseverancia y la arte de la vida, que escribí con mi maravillosa coautora y colaborador, Stephen Hanselman. Y así hoy os daremos una rápida meditación de uno de los estoicos, de Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, luego un análisis de mí. Y luego os enviamos al mundo a hacer lo mejor posible para convertir estas palabras en obras.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  Pero, ¿qué haríamos si...? Hace unos días hablamos de este miedo paralizador, el preemptivo "¿qué pasa?" que detiene a la gente de hacer lo correcto. Es por eso que no hablamos sobre alguien de nuestro lado, por eso no toman ese riesgo de carrera, por eso no ven suficiente liderazgo real. Fue Seneca quedando con Nero por temor a que el próximo emperador pudiera ser peor. Es el derecho promoviendo el iliberalismo por temor al iliberalismo de la izquierda. Es la izquierda rompiendo las normas porque temen que el derecho lo haga lo mismo. ¿Cómo lo superas? ¿Cómo resistes el pullazo de esta lógica pasiva patética? Con este pequeño recordatorio de Marcus Aurelius. "Nunca dejes que el futuro te moleste", dijo.

• 1:24Ryan Holiday?

  "Lo enfrentarás si tienes que hacerlo con las mismas armas de la razón que hoy te arman contra el presente". Es absolutamente cierto, el futuro puede ser malo. Nunca podríamos saber las consecuencias inintendidas de una acción. Pero, ¿esto nos excusa de hacer lo malo ahora? No, no lo hace. Podemos manejar lo que el futuro trae. Si la cuestión se pone, nos encontrará en casa. Porque, como hemos dicho, tenemos un corazón por cualquier destino. Eso es lo tan extraño de la decisión de Seneca. Ya había sobrevivido, expertamente navegado, de hecho, a otros emperadores antes de Nero. ¿Cuál era el otro? Tenía las armas para hacer lo correcto, para soportar las consecuencias que podrían haber venido de ella. Sólo se le dio a sí mismo de no usarla. No lo hagas. Eres mejor. Tienes armas. Lo tienes.

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  The Cost of Accepting Counterfeits. When it comes to money, when we feel our clear interest, we have an entire art where the tester uses many means to discover the worth, just as we give great attention to judging things that might steer us badly. But when it comes to our own ruling principle, we yawn and doze off, accepting any appearance that flashes by without counting the cost. That's Epictetus's discourse in today's entry, "April 8th," from the Daily Stoic. "When coins were much more rudimentary, people had to spend a lot of time testing them to confirm the currency they had just received. There's a Greek word which means to assay or check the quality of a mineral ore.

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  Merchants were often skilled enough that they could test coinage by throwing it against a hard surface and listening to the note that it rang. Even today, if someone were to hand you a hundred-dollar bill, you might rub it between your fingers or hold it up to the light to confirm that it isn't fake. All of this for an imaginary currency, an invention of society. And the point of this metaphor is to highlight how much effort we put into making sure money is real, whereas we accept potentially life-changing thoughts or assumptions without so much as a question. One ironic assumption along these lines, that having a lot of money makes you wealthy, or that because a lot of people believe something, it must be true.

• 3:37Ryan Holiday?

  Really, we should be testing these notions as vigilantly as a money changer. For, as Epictetus reminds us, "The first and greatest task of the philosopher is to test and separate appearances and to act on nothing that is untested." And you know, it's funny, just a few days ago in the Daily Stoic, we had, this is on April 5th, we had "Trust, but verify." As Epictetus says, "First off, don't let the force of an impression carry you away. Say to it, 'Hold up a bit and let me see who you are and where you are from. Let me put you to the test.'" So I think that's really what today's entry is about. It's this idea that we have all sorts of impressions, knee-jerk reactions, opinions. We get told something, we are taught...

• 4:21Ryan Holiday?

  Something, we witness something, but we have to check, is this real? Was it an optical illusion? Do we have an implicit bias? Is there an emotional sort of force acting on what we are seeing or not seeing? And, and the Stoic has to work always against the reality of, of our sort of irrationality. To me, this is what's so great about Robert Greene's book, The Laws of Human Nature. He's trying to help you notice what things are acting on your perception or perspective around the world. So much, and I think all of this is particularly true today when we are awash in misinformation

• 5:06Ryan Holiday?

  and bullshit and propaganda. It, it is imperative that you develop the ability to see through things, to get to the truth of matters and, and to not be fooled by your own biases, your own emotions, the impulse to outrage, or judgment, or mobocracy, you know? How can you be rational? How can you say, I'm not going to rush into this. I'm not going to have an opinion right away. Remember Marcus really says, you always have the option of having no opinion? That's true, but maybe it's just don't rush into having an opinion. Stop for a minute, as Epictetus says, put this up to the test, verify, make sure that it's real.

• 5:50Ryan Holiday?

  And then, once it's real, then you can take action based on this, but don't react before you know. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.