Here's How To Be Right

“It must have been hard to be as smart as someone like Marcus Aurelius or Seneca. They had the best tutors. They had quick minds. And then, as now, they were surrounded by people who were misinformed, often aggressively and arrogantly so. A feeling of condescension must have always been there. Their positions of power must have made it tempting to win arguments by force or authority as well.”Ryan explains why you should do your job without any sense of superiority. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow 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.

• 0:04Ryan 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?

  Here's how to be right. It must have been hard to be as smart as someone like Marcus Aurelius or Seneca. They had the best tutors, they had quick minds, and then, as now, they were surrounded by people who were misinformed, often aggressively and arrogantly so. A feeling of condescension must have always been there. Their positions of power must have made it tempting to win arguments by force or authority as well. And yet, we have from Marcus Aurelius's acknowledgements and meditations, a sense of how he tried to comport himself. It's worth applying to our partisan and social media-driven times as well. From the literary critic Alexander, Marcus says that he learned not to be constantly correcting people,

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  or in particular, not to jump on them whenever they make an error of usage, or a grammatical mistake, or mispronounce something, but just answer their question, or add another example, or debate the issue itself, not their phrasing, or make some other contribution to the discussion, and insert the right expression unobtrusively. Just because you're smart doesn't mean you have to be or get to be a dick. As we've talked about before, it's easier to be clever than it is to be kind, but it's kindness that matters. That's what the virtue of justice is about. The virtue of wisdom comes to play here, too. The more you know, the humbler you should get, not the other way around. It doesn't matter how bright you are.

• 1:53Ryan Holiday?

  It doesn't matter how educated you are, how right you are. You don't need to go around wielding it like a weapon. Just make your contribution kindly, unobtrusively. Do your job.

• 2:09Ryan 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.