There Are No Banned Books | We Are a Product of Our Habits

“One way to get a sense of how powerful something is is how scared people are of it. Why have governments gone to such trouble to ban various books over the years? Why do people try to censor things they disagree with? Because they’re scared of meeting ideas on an open playing field.”Ryan explains the powerful impact that books have on culture, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is brought to you by GoMacro. Go Macro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping on all orders over $50.***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/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic See 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. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:35Ryan Holiday?

  There are no banned books. One way to get a sense of how powerful something is, is how scared people are of it. Why have governments gone to such troubles to ban various books over the years? Why do people try to censor things they disagree with? Because they're scared of meeting ideas on an open playing field. Would Nazism, or Stalin's Communism, or even slavery in the American South have been possible if people had more access to information? Possibly, but it would have been harder. There's a reason they tried to keep contradictory books out of the hands of people. Today, most of us don't live in totalitarian regimes, and if you did, you probably wouldn't be listening to me right now. But that doesn't mean that these forces of censorship

• 1:19Ryan Holiday?

  don't still exist. Indeed, that's the plot of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. In it, firemen burned books in that novel at the request of people, because no one wanted to be offended, or to offend anyone. In America, this trend continues. The Left wants to ban certain books, or certain ideas, for being politically incorrect, for supposedly being racist, or from being from racist eras, for expressing dangerous ideas. The Right gets upset when books are immoral, or transgressive, or when they are critical of power. The Stoic must have the courage to resist both these impulses, whatever their political persuasion. Think of Seneca reading Epicurus like a spy in the enemy's camp. Think of Epictetus reminding himself

• 2:02Ryan Holiday?

  that it's not possible for anything to offend him. Being offended is a choice. Think of Marcus Aurelius saying that there's nothing wrong with being proven wrong. In fact, he welcomed ideas that challenged his thinking. Think of the biggest failing in Stoicism, it's the persecution of the Christians, and think about what that was rooted in: ignorance, closed-mindedness, suppression. For us, there should be no such thing as a banned book. In fact, the more controversial a book, the more open we should be to reading it. We should always have our mind open. We shouldn't hide from offensive or even stupid ideas. We should try to understand them, to see how the enemy thinks, Aseneca said. You can't learn what you think you already know. Remember, that's from Epictetus.

• 2:45Ryan Holiday?

  How can you get better, smarter, and more wise if you only read books that you agree with that stay within your comfort zone? Read widely, read dangerously, read courageously, and remember, where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too. We are a product of our habits. This comes from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living. Journaling, of course, is a critical exercise to the Stoics. It's really hard to separate journaling from Stoicism. Meditations is Marcus Aurelius journaling and talking to himself. And so today's entry

• 3:27Ryan Holiday?

  comes from the prompt and the sort of meditative part of the Daily Stoic Journal for this week's, and it's all about habits. The Roman Stoics put a heavy emphasis on dealing with habitual behavior in order to make progress in the art of living. The great Roman Stoic educator Musonius Rufus, he's Epictetus's teacher, held that all the theories in the world couldn't trump good habits, and they couldn't overcome bad habits either. Epictetus followed Musonius in this focus on habit with an eye on not reinforcing bad habits, such as anger, and finding a way to replace them with better ones. We all recognize bad habits when they see them in others, but it's harder to see them in ourselves. So

• 4:10Ryan Holiday?

  this week, meditate on the habits and recurring behaviors that are holding you back, and even ask others around you for their view. And the first quote comes to us- From Epictetus, he says, "Every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking and running by running." You remember, we talked about this earlier in the week. "Therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it. If you don't want to do that, don't, but make a habit of something else instead. The same principle is at work in our state of mind. When you get angry, you have not only experienced an evil, but you've also reinforced a bad habit, adding fuel to the fire." It's Epictetus's Discourses 2:18. Then he also says, "If you don't wish to be a hothead, don't feed your habit.

• 4:55Ryan Holiday?

  Try, as a first step, to remain calm and count the days you haven't been angry. I used to be angry every day, and now every other day, then every third and fourth, and if you make it as far as 30 days, thank God. For a habit is first weakened and then obliterated. When you can say, 'I didn't lose my temper today,' or the next day, or for three or four months, but I kept my cool under provocation, then you are in better health." That's, again, Epictetus's Discourses 2:18. And then, this is the funny one. He says, "What assistance can we find in the fight against habit? Try the opposite." The point is, the Stoics thought a lot about habits. They had to, right? It's not just enough to think philosophical thoughts to sort of have high principles

• 5:38Ryan Holiday?

  or standards, but how do you make them real in your life? How do you turn them into muscle memory, right? An athlete can watch videos, can be coached, can review painstakingly their swing, or their shot, or their throw, and then they're going to get tweaks and thoughts, but then that has to become habit, that has to become part of the routine. That's why they sit in the gym and take, you know, 1,000 free throws, or 1,000 jump shots. That's why they practice doing this or that, so that, under immense amounts of pressure, under the stresses of life in the game, they can revert back to that training, they can do what they need to do. And I love this little expression from Seneca about how bad habits, the old way of doing

• 6:23Ryan Holiday?

  it, first we weaken it, then we obliterate it. You don't just magically do the new thing, you weaken it. And he's saying, "One way to weaken it is to try the opposite." You know, it's like you have a piece of paper with a crease in it or a bend in it, you can fold it the opposite way and it kind of flattens it out. I just think that's an interesting way of thinking about it. But look, habits make the man, right? The habits that you do, the things you habitually do day in and day out, this is what we're talking about earlier in the week. That's who you are. Who you say you are, who you want to be. Who cares, right? Who the habits you habitually do, the choices you regularly make, that's what make you who you are. That's what make you beautiful. As we also talk about from Epictetus.

• 7:08Ryan Holiday?

  We are a product of our choices, our routines, our habits. As a writer, how does it work? You create a routine, you create a structure, you follow it every day. Work comes out the other side of that. It's not about fits of inspiration. It's not about genius. And I think this is true for all crafts that one seeks out to master. It's about habit. But I've also found even as a parent, if you want to do good, if you want to manage this or that, you create habits, you create routines, you create structures, and then you stick to it. That's the key. We are a product of our habits. The Stoics believe that. And I hope you are working on your habits. You can check out the Daily Stoic Habits Challenge at dailystoic.com/habits, which you get free if you're a Daily Stoic Life member.

• 7:52Ryan Holiday?

  But the point is habits will make you happier. They will give you a better life. I'm not saying they're easy. They're very difficult, but habit is everything. And it's also the hardest thing. But let's keep working on our habits.