What We Accept, and What We Must Never Accept

Ryan explains why why we must do everything we can to change injustice when we see it, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Pre-orders are available for Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave - check it out at https://dailystoic.com/preorderSign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  What We Accept and What We Must Never Accept. There is this pesky idea that the Stoics were apathetic, somehow resigned to the status quo politically. It's an idea that's been propagated in countless modern trend pieces as well as historical attacks on the philosophy. Like a lot of dismissals from people who are looking for an excuse not to have to engage or change, it's just preposterously off-base, like, laughably so. How can you say that the Stoics just accept the status quo when Cato gave his life trying to restore the Roman Republic? When Thrasse and Agrippinus gave theirs resisting the tyranny of Nero? When George Washington and Thomas Jefferson formed a new nation in a stroke, the boldest advances for liberty

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  and human dignity yet known on earth, largely inspired by the philosophy of Cato and those other Stoics? When Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a translator of Epictetus, led a black regiment of troops in the US Civil War? When Beatrice Webb, the creator of collective bargaining in the nascent workers' movement, was rereading Marcus Aurelius regularly? When countless other activists and politicians and change-makers have turned to Stoicism to steal them through the difficulty of fighting for ideals that mattered? Perhaps it's because people miss that to create real change, one can't be naive, nor can one be sanguine or entitled. Yet, they must also deeply believe that an individual can make a difference.

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  Successful activism and political maneuvering requires understanding and strategy as well as realism and hope. It requires acceptance and also a refusal to accept. It was James Baldwin who most brilliantly captured this tension in notes. of a native son, he said, "It began to seem that one would have to hold in mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance totally without ranker of life as it is and men as they are. In light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal

• 2:34Ryan Holiday?

  power, that one must never in one's own life accept these injustices as commonplace, but one must fight them with all one's strength. So let us forget the small-minded people who reject the philosophy that would help not only make them happier, but help make the world a better place. Instead, let us aim all our energy and effort at that seemingly contradictory idea. Accept life for what it is without even a hint of bitterness, while we do everything we can to improve and change injustice whenever it is within our collective power." Just a reminder, my new book Courage is Calling is available for preorder now. It would mean so much to me if you would support it. If you've gotten anything out of this podcast, anything out of the videos, anything out

• 3:19Ryan Holiday?

  of my other books, anything out of the Daily Stoic email, this would be the time to help support me. Just go to dailystoic.com/preorder. There's a bunch of awesome bonuses you can pick up.