No One Can Give You This | Check Your Privilege

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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 Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  No one can give you this. We ask where people got their degree. We ask where someone went to school. We hope someone will volunteer to mentor us. This is wrong. And education isn't something anyone can give you. It's something you get for yourself. It's something you take. It's not somewhere you went to school for classes for a lesson, but somewhere you are going. It's not something you did. It's something you are doing. By his own telling, we're told that Seneca took to his education with gusto, that he laid siege to the classroom and was the first to arrive and the last to leave it. Cato was famous for his philosophical dinners, inviting the smartest and wisest minds of the ancient world

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  to discuss the timeless trials of everyday life. Cipio Emilianus, the great scholar warrior of Rome, was ever engaged in the pursuit of arms or his studies. An ancient historian tells us, "He was either training his body by exposing it to dangers or his mind by learning." And of course, there is a famous story about an elderly Marcus Aurelius spotted leaving his palace in Rome. "Where are you going?" a friend asked. "I'm off to see Sextus the philosopher," he replied, "to learn that which I do not yet know." It never stops. It is never handed to you. No, you must get wisdom yourself.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  Indeed, you cannot find a Stoic who did not take their education into their own hands, who did not give themselves a great education, even if they had access to find teachers, and you'll find that they all remained forever a student of life and literature. "Why do you wait?" Seneca asks us. Wisdom comes haphazard to no man. The reality is, there's no shortcut to wisdom, no app, no AI bot, no secret formula. It can't be hacked. It can't be downloaded. It must be earned through the same hard work that people have been doing for thousands of years, reading and thinking and living and reflecting. And that's what the new book from me, the final in the Four Virtue series,

• 3:04Ryan Holiday?

  I have it right here. I've been working on it now for six-plus years. I'm super proud of it. And it's now available for preorder. If you like Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, or Right Thing Right Now, this is the fourth and final book. We have not just signed and numbered first editions of Wisdom Takes Work, but we also have a special limited edition run of all four books, signed and numbered, just 1,500 of them. I'm just finishing up the signing of those now. We've got a bunch of awesome preorder bonuses for people who preorder any of the books, bonus chapters, signed pages from the manuscript. We're gonna do a special Q and A. Plus, you can have dinner with me. If you want to learn about these, grab your numbered, signed first editions. Just go to dailystoic.com/wisdom.

• 3:48Ryan Holiday?

  I'll link to it all in today's show notes. Grab that four-book series before it runs out. If you're gonna want to give some to some friends, grab some more. You can get those manuscript pages. Bunch of awesome stuff. I hope to see you at the Philosopher's Dinner that we're gonna do. And I'm really excited for you to grab this book when it comes out in October. But it supports authors in a big way if you preorder them. So if you could do that, I would really appreciate it. dailystoic.com/preorder and grab Wisdom Takes Work and round out the Four Virtues series. Thanks, everyone.

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  Check your privilege. This is the July 28 entry in The Daily Stoic. And today's quote comes to us from Musonius Rufus, the teacher of Epictetus. "Some people are sharp and others are dull. Some are raised in a better environment, others in worse. The latter having inferior habits and nurture will require more by the way of proof and careful instruction to master these teachings and to be formed by them in the same way that bodies in a bad state must be given a great deal of care when perfect health is sought." At the end of a frustrating exchange, you might find yourself thinking, oh, this person's such an idiot, or asking, why can't they just do things right? But not everyone has had the advantages that you've had. That's not to say that your life has been easy.

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  You've just had a head start over some people. And that's why it is our duty to understand and be patient with others. Philosophy is a spiritual formation, care of the soul. Some need more care than others, just as some have a better metabolism or were born taller than others. The more forgiving and tolerant you can be of others, the more you can be aware of your various privileges and advantages, the more helpful and patient you will be. And again, I think it's worth pointing out here that Epictetus was taught by Musonius Rufus. So Musonius Rufus is this teacher. He's known as the Roman Socrates. He's great and wise and brilliant. And he teaches the best and the brightest of Rome, most of which would be rich, powerful, privileged people.

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  And it somehow he makes room in his classroom for Epictetus. And you think about where Epictetus came from. He walks with a limp because of the years in slavery, because of the torture he underwent. You think about the deprivation, the struggle. Musonius Rufus finds not just a way to reach Epictetus, but make him great. He's patient with him. He encourages him. And this isn't the only evidence we have of Musonius Rufus sort of understanding his own privilege and being generous and open minded. Musonius Rufus also famously says that women should be taught philosophy, which was a remarkably progressive thing at that time. So I know like when people hear check your privilege, this was a less loaded term I used as the title of this section when I wrote the book in 2015 and it came out in 2016.

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  I get people have an instinctive reaction is, oh, it's woke or whatever. But the truth is, we are all privileged in some form or another. And how do I know this? Because you are listening to this on a podcast, which means you have a smartphone. Maybe you're driving in a car. It means you're commuting to a job in a city that has public transportation. And there are literally billions of people for whom that is not just not true, but almost incomprehensibly luxurious and wonderful to them. They could not even conceive of doing some of the things that you take for granted. And then even in the context of like, let's say you had a super hard life. And I tried to make that caveat in the thing.

• 7:23Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe you're tall, maybe you're beautiful, maybe your parents actually loved you as a child. Right? Maybe you haven't been horribly abused, or maybe you were horribly abused, but not as horribly as other people have. Right? We all have privileges in our life. We all have advantages. Right? We all have things that give us a leg up in the world. And that's not to say that the other things haven't happened. It's one, to be grateful for those things and to be patient with people that don't have those things. Right? And to try to sprinkle the advantages we have, to share it, to spread the wealth, to lift others up and to be patient and forgiving and understanding

• 8:07Ryan Holiday?

  with the people who have not been blessed the way that we have. To be like Musonius Rufus, to be able to say, Musonius Rufus was powerful and important and had access to the best and the brightest. And his greatest legacy was this former slave that he helped. And through helping that former slave, he helped not just that person, not just improve their life, but had an immediate impact then through Marcus Aurelius and through you and I today. We would not be listening to this were it not for the generosity and patience and understanding of Musonius Rufus to Epictetus. And I think that's a wonderful thing to emulate and to pay forward.

• 8:48Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.