This is How You Die Before Your Time

It might help you stay in the game. It might make you successful. It might even keep you alive. It worked for Seneca, right? 📚 Books Mentioned: Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/dying-every-day-seneca-at-the-court-of-nero 🎙️ Check out the full episode: James Romm on The Daily Stoic Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlLuSmSK7M8 |Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/when-good-people-lose-themselves-to-tyrants-james-romm-pt-1/id1430315931?i=1000721772928,Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0OwAF7hkhE7eg8FyuFZg15,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlLuSmSK7M8 Thenew 10th Anniversary Edition of https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10The Daily Stoic https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10is out NOW! 👉 Grabhttps://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10your copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10 🎟️https://www.dailystoiclive.com/DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail -- Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  We were looking to spruce up our, our front porch. The weather's finally getting better and we wanted to spend some time hanging out outside with the kids. So we got these awesome hammocks and we actually got them from today's sponsor, Wayfair. If you drove by our, our house, you'd see us out there with our kids reading. We've got this new kitten all hanging out in the hammocks. It's been awesome. And that's because on Wayfair, you'll find quality materials that stand up to real life. They sell furniture and decor that's built to last. And when you shop with Wayfair Verified, it's your shortcut to durable pieces that are hand vetted by product specialists using their 10-point quality inspection. They've got thousands of products at every style and budget, whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom this holiday season.

• 0:42Ryan Holiday?

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• 1:07Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 1:22Ryan Holiday?

  This is how you die before your time. It might help you stay in the game. It might make you successful. It might even keep you alive. Worked for Seneca, right? He did what he had to do. He never criticized Nero, made some money, had some influence, got some things done. But ultimately, it came at the cost of his soul. Seneca, who wrote about how we are dying every day, also died before his time in the way he collaborated and capitulated to Nero's insanity and tyranny. He was not unlike certain politicians today, who in exchange for power, give up their power to be on the right side of the regime.

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  He was not unlike certain people today who turn off their consciences to stay on top. And the saddest thing was that Seneca must have known this. His writings are replete with criticisms of old lawyers begging for another case, rich people living in slavery beneath marble and gold. These were trades, he was saying, that come at the expense of life. These were people who died before their time. It's a bad deal, okay? It's a pathetic deal. It is not worth it. And besides, in the end, you know what it got, Seneca? It got him a death sentence from Nero anyway.

• 2:46Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca spent his life writing about virtue and courage and what it means to truly live. And yet, when confronted with Nero's power, he compromised, he rationalized, and ultimately paid for it with his life. In "Dying Every Day," Seneca at the court of Nero, the historian James Rahm tells the fascinating story about this happened, how one of Rome's greatest philosophers became entangled with its worst emperor. And it's a powerful reminder that there are ways to die before our time, long before that time actually comes. You can listen to James on the podcast. I thought I'd bring you a little chunk of that. Go listen to the whole episode. I'll link to that. And do pick up "Dying Every Day," the Penguin Porch, one of my favorite books. You'll really like it.

• 3:31Ryan Holiday?

  It changed my life, changed the course of my life. And I wish everyone in Washington, or whatever country you live in, wherever your leadership is, I wish they would read it too.

• 3:44Ryan Holiday?

  So I have a bunch of traveling I'm doing through the end of the year on Daily Stoic Live Tour. I just got back from San Diego. I like to stay in the places that I'm staying. I like to book places on Airbnb so I can be like a local. I not only do some of my best writing, but I learn about things that I wouldn't have known otherwise. When I was just in San Diego, I took a walk along the water. I bumped into someone who recognized me and they told me about their favorite local bookstore, which was like two blocks from where I was staying. And I never would have known about it if it wasn't for that encounter. It was cool to me to think that I have helped facilitate that experience for many, many people coming to Austin over the years. The first house that I bought in Austin, when my wife and I first moved here, we would list it on Airbnb and it helped me make the transition from my corporate life to being

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  a full-time writer. So if you're gonna be away, you should maybe think about listing your place on Airbnb. It can be a great way to earn extra cash while you travel, can offset the cost of your trip, or maybe even go towards whatever you're doing next. If you've got travel coming up, check out Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think and you can find out how much at airbnb.com/host. We were looking to spruce up our, our front porch. The weather's finally getting better and we wanted to spend some time hanging out outside with the kids. So we got these awesome hammocks and we actually got them from today's sponsor, Wayfair. If you drove by our, our house, you'd see us out there with our kids reading. We've got this new kitten all hanging out in the hammocks. It's been awesome. And that's because on Wayfair, you'll find quality materials that stand up to real life.

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  They sell furniture and decor that's built to last. And when you shop with Wayfair Verified, it's your shortcut to durable pieces that are hand vetted by product specialists using their 10-point quality inspection. They've got thousands of products at every style and budget, whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom this holiday season. Wayfair's got great reviews as well, so you can find more than 20 million verified five-star reviews from real shoppers. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5% back on every purchase. Head over to wayfair.com to shop all things home. W A Y F A I R dot com.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  With public political figures, one can never draw a fine line between what's their authentic philosophy or their authentic point of view and what is crafted for public consumption.

• 6:18Ryan Holiday?

  So is that a type, you think, that gets like, does politics turn you into that person? Or is it that those people are attracted to politics?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  You know, that's a great question, especially a pressing question in Plato's case, because he had never thought of himself as a political player and he'd never been involved in politics until he went to Syracuse. And he's at great pains to explain his motives for going there as non-political, that he didn't want to meddle in the rulership of Syracuse. He wanted to, A, protect his protege, Dion, and B, convince people that he was not all talk and no action, that he had enough conviction in his beliefs to try to, to act on them.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  But he went reluctantly, he says, and he got out as soon as he could. So I think in Plato's case, it's especially that he was not naturally interested or certainly adept at politics and his participation there bears that out because it became a disaster very quickly.

• 7:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's like a sort of, you, you would think that they would be really good at reading people, but there's kind of a, a lack of savviness, like an inability to see what is so obviously a flaw in someone's character or approach. Or maybe it's an ability to be persuaded in the room. There's a line in Meditations, a remark to Schrille, "Thanks, his philosophy teacher, for teaching him not to fall for every smooth talker." And then you think Aristotle falls for Alexander, Plato falls, Seneca certainly falls. There is this seduction that happens. And it's, it's almost not, it's not the seduction in the way that those tyrants seduced

• 8:16Ryan Holiday?

  everyone else, which is, I'll make you rich and famous and powerful. It's, it's almost another level of it where it's like, this person's flawed, I can see that. And I'm not going to be one of the enablers. I'm not going to be one of the, I'm going to be above them, using them for my purposes, or that I can reform them, or I can control and contain them in a way that other people can't.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. And in Plato's case, the seduction was that if he could convert a young man to philosophy, so Dionysus the Younger, at the time when Plato arrived at his court, was only 30. Plato was already in his 50s. And if, he says in his letter, "If I could convince this one man to follow philosophy, that would start a chain reaction that might save the whole human race."

• 9:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  So the grandiosity of that, I mean, it's, it's off the charts.

• 9:15Ryan Holiday?

  That's what I was gonna say. There's this sort of martyrdom, grandiosity sort of thing that's happening, where they, I don't want to do this, it's gonna be hard for me to do this, it might end badly for me to do it, but also I alone can fix it. You know, I, I am the last line of defense. And it, it almost never ends well. And it, in retrospect, is clear that they enabled that person far more than they constrained that person.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, true. Now, in Plato's defense, you could argue that he had seen enough of the disasters of Athens by the time he went to Syracuse, that he could legitimately think that democracy was failing, other systems of governance were failing, Greece was falling apart, was deteriorating rapidly, economic life was going downhill, and something had to be done to stop the slide.

• 10:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, Seneca's making the same bet. He, he idealizes Cato, but he's like, that Rome is gone. We've got an emperor now. It's my job to make the emperor not as bad as they might otherwise be.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Exactly. And we've seen this in our own times, you know, people who've attached themselves to recent presidents and, and current presidents have thought, you know, I can at least mitigate the harm.

• 10:37Ryan Holiday?

  I can snatch papers from the desk.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. I can stop the worst things from happening and that justifies my participation. Even though I'll be forced to collude with things I really don't believe in.

• 10:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. I read Dying Every Day when I was at American Apparel. I had come back, they'd fired the CEO and they were, we were trying to save the company and, and I was sort of wrestling with more minor version of the same sort of temptations. And I was, it was thinking back to how had this person who was sort of unstable and reckless and made all these terrible decisions, how at every step of the way had he, he managed to convince the smartest people to give him more and more money? I think it's fascinating that sort of after everything, Trump managed to go to Silicon Valley and, and convince these people who are primarily a venture capitalist, your job is, most of the

• 11:31Ryan Holiday?

  ideas turn out to not be good. Your job is to bet on founder. Like their job is to read people and see which person is worth giving millions and millions of dollars to and can successfully build and run a company. And Trump manages to convince them that he's not what he obviously is. And then promptly, you know, tanks the economy, doing exactly what he said he was going to do. And these same people are like, we didn't think he would actually do it. Right? And I think that's the timelessness of, of the, the seduction, which is like, over here, I'm saying and showing you

• 12:07Ryan Holiday?

  this. And then over here, I'm saying something different. And the human capacity to hear which one of those we want to hear.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And for Plato to have gone back to the court of Dionysius a second, a second time.

• 12:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Five years after departing in a terrible debacle, the first time, and having caused a rift in the royal family that resulted in his protege Dion getting exiled. That is really, it's another stunning example of self-deception.

• 12:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. The mental gymnastics that humans are capable of will never cease to surprise you.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  That's right. And Plato says that he devised a test, you know, this is really a testament to his naivete. He devised a test to see whether Dionysius was a suitable student, that he was going to tell him exactly how hard it was going to be to become a philosopher.

• 13:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  And probably he had in mind years and years of study, starting with geometry and astronomy and higher math and going up to dialectic. And he was going to see whether, how he would react. So he lands in Syracuse for the second time, well, the third time, but the second time under Dionysius the younger, and presents him with this scenario. And Dionysius says, oh, well, I already know all this stuff because other people have told it to me. And at that point Plato is sort of done.

• 13:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  But the fact that, after having lived with him five years earlier for months and months, and seeing exactly what kind of person he was, you know, a drunk, a libertine, unstable emotional figure, that he still thought, well, you know, maybe he'll pass the test and I'll have a true student on my hands.

• 14:06Ryan Holiday?

  I like, I imagine Seneca, you know, he's, he's somewhere in one of his villas and the messenger rushes in, you know, we have news that Nero's tried to kill his mother. And, and Seneca's grabbing his toga, you know, and rushing over to the palace. I'm going to tell him this time, you know, it's, this has to end. You can't do this. Like, I'm really going to confront him. This is it. You know, it's like, we're going to have the come to Jesus conversation, which maybe he literally could have, he could have used that expression.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 14:37Ryan Holiday?

  Jesus having overlapped with Seneca. But, but, you know, we're going to have it. And he's walking there. I'm going to confront him. I'm laying on the line. I'm giving him the ultimatum. And then by the end of it, you know, Nero has talked himself out of it. Right? And then soon enough, he does kill his mother and does, crosses the next red line and crosses the next red line. And, and the, the, the real skill of the Nero's, of the, of the tyrants, of the Trumps, et cetera, is their ability to read those people and to know what they have to say to them and what their levers are and how to manipulate them. That at, at some level, they see through them and they,

• 15:21Ryan Holiday?

  they know how to get them in their pocket.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah. There's a great phrase that James Comey used in the, in the first Trump administration. He eats your soul in little bites.

• 15:33Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  That was a description of what he saw going on in those closed rooms.

• 15:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Where people were, you know, huddled with the, the decision maker.

• 15:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Cause didn't he say, like, the first day, they all get called into his office and Trump basically forces them to all say that it was the biggest inauguration crowd they'd ever seen. That that's really the test is like, can I get you to accept an absurd premise? And if I can, then what you have told me is, I think people think it's about loyalty, but it's more about, you have shown me a glimpse into your soul, which is that you want the job more than you care about your principles or notions like the truth and honesty, et cetera. And if I, if I can

• 16:26Ryan Holiday?

  get you to make that little compromise, or if I can get you to show me that that's who you are, then this is going to go well.

• 16:44Speaker 02

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