This Helps You Be A Better Person | Ask DS

Both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington profited from slavery, but both knew it was wrong. Yet at the end of their lives, it was Washington who freed his slaves, not Jefferson, who had written far more eloquently about human equality as well as the eternal shame of slavery. Why was that?---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions in a virtual Q&A about how he gets interested in and inspired by new ideas, why the classics endure, and balancing the needs of the team with those of the individual, and more.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more, including Discipline is Destiny.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. While on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:45Ryan Holiday?

  This helps you be a better person. Both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington profited from slavery, but both knew it was wrong. Yet, at the end of their lives, it was Washington who freed his slaves, not Jefferson, who had written so eloquently about human equality, as well as the eternal shame of slavery. Why was that? It's because Washington, far more disciplined and stoic, could afford to manumet his slaves. Early on, he hadn't been able to afford to run Mount Vernon without them, but he was secure enough at the end to do what he obviously should have done and what his conscience knew he should have done years earlier. Jefferson, the Epicurean,

• 1:29Ryan Holiday?

  was more than $100,000 in debt when he died. He ransacked Europe for antiques and finery. He had expanded Monticello multiple times, sparing, no offense. He had loved wine and the best foods, and now he could not remotely afford redemption. He was scared of leaving nothing to his children. He could not afford to do the right thing. Discipline as a virtue is related to the other virtues. By controlling our urges or wants or lifestyle, we're actually in a better position to be courageous or just. Financial security, independence, these things free us up in ways that other, more irresponsible or conflicted people cannot be.

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  When one looks at the range of Stoic responses to the reign of Nero, this played out. The more austere and disciplined Stoics, Agrippinus and Thrasse, they did far better than the high living Seneca, which you can read about in Lives of the Stoics. But a far more better example is found in John Adams, who, like the other founders, had read all of the Stoics and lived a far more frugal and laborious life than either the manor-born Washington or Jefferson. His self-discipline intersected with his ethics. He made an honest living as a lawyer, and then a diplomat, and then finally in elected office. He never owned another human being. He never exploited anyone. He didn't crave fancy things or grand houses.

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  And when he died on the same day as Jefferson, his state was the exact inverse of his old friends. A $100,000 bequest to his family. Discipline, it makes you better in life or death. I actually have a chapter about discipline and money and finances. Indiscipline is destiny. Basically, money is a tool. It can make you better or worse, right? You can use it for good, or it can be used against you. And this is something, I think, timelessly that the Stoics struggled with, that the great human beings have struggled with. When you are more disciplined, when you live within your means, it makes it easier for you to make better and more just and more honorable decisions. And that's what we're riffing about today. If you haven't read Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control, I would love for

• 3:39Ryan Holiday?

  you to check it out. It's available everywhere books are sold. We've got signed copies at store.dailystoic.com. If you're listening to this, maybe you're an audiobook person, so check that out as well. Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control, the newest in my Stoic Virtues series. I hope you like it.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  You had a, you mentioned once, it's impossible to learn that what you think you already know.

• 4:08Ryan Holiday?

  Uh huh.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Um, and so based upon how you got to where you were and knowing that these days with the internet and YouTube, it's so easy to think we're learning something and going down a rabbit hole of like disinformation or, you know, um, so I guess it's a two-part question. Number one is what, how do you validate your sources that you're, you're getting a lot of information? The other part is you seem to be an expert, I'll say, on, uh, cynicism. So how do you like get interested in something to learn? Like what's your kind of, what's the next thing?

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you know, YouTube is a, is an incredibly powerful platform. I was just, I was just in, in Las Vegas and you know, you walk around a casino and we, of course, we all know a casino is a scam, right? The reason they can build this huge building that looks like the Eiffel Tower or Caesar's Spouse or whatever is because, uh, uh, they make enormous profits, uh, by all the money that everyone loses gambling, right? And so we understand that an enormous amount of, uh, insight and psychology and manipulation all goes into making this thing so addictive and fun, even though you're guaranteed to lose money, right?

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  I think we have struggled as a society, you know, things like YouTube, YouTube's, uh, you know, not even 20 years old. So we have, we have struggled, I think particularly older people, uh, by that I mean anyone who's not like a millennial. With wrapping our heads around just how much science and persuasion and psychology and outright manipulation is not just the content itself on the site, but the sites themselves. They are designed to exploit our basis instincts. Even something like autoplay, you watch a video and what happens right as you're about to finish and go do something

• 6:16Ryan Holiday?

  else, it's like, here's another one, here's another one, here's another one. And what it's suggesting is not just things that things are good, but things that the data says will suck you further and further down that rabbit hole. So when we see people have been radicalized or fallen prey to conspiracy theories, they usually didn't get to these conspiracy theories from reading big, thick books by academics, right? It's from YouTube, right? When the people go, I did my own research and they go, oh, you know, so you did some academic studies, you got a degree in it? It's like, well, no, I mean, I watched a lot of videos and looked at a lot of Instagram posts about it, right? That's what doing

• 7:00Ryan Holiday?

  your own research has come to mean. And so I guess one thing I would start, and this is why I was saying earlier about just the power of reading and books, is there is just so much working against you on these patterns, on these platforms. And I say this as someone who has a large following on Instagram, on YouTube, and it makes content for those platforms. Because I feel like we have to fight in that battle of ideas against these sort of manipulators and deceivers and just in other cases, just outright, outright crazy people. They did one study that found that almost all of the vaccine misinformation on the internet can

• 7:42Ryan Holiday?

  be traced back to eight super spreaders. Eight Facebook accounts are responsible for the vast majority of COVID misinformation out there. So I guess first and foremost, I would say like, consume as much information offline as possible, use online to go deeper on something that you've, you know, already gotten. And of course, you know,

• 8:09Ryan Holiday?

  Look at the URL of the website, right? If it's not from a significant outlet, it's probably something to be viewed suspiciously. But I would say, to go to that idea of you can't learn what you think you already know. I think what a lot of this stuff exploits is our sense of that precisely. That our ego wants to think we're smarter than everyone else, that we've figured it out, that we know better than all the other sheep out there. And we have to understand that that is a powerful, just as the desire to win, to get lucky at a casino is what the casino exploits,

• 8:54Ryan Holiday?

  so does that ego, or that hubris, or that selfish desires we have. That's what a lot of these sources manipulate. I'm sort of off-topic here, but I just encourage people, particularly people who have positions of leadership, to remember that you have to watch your information diet just as you do your nutritional diet. Garbage in, garbage out. You have to make sure you're very disciplined about what you consume, about what voices you let in. And you have to be, I think, always trying to go

• 9:34Ryan Holiday?

  towards the deeper historical time-tested truths as opposed to whatever the latest breaking trendy, you know, viral piece of information is.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm gonna go, I'm, I don't know, back here. Okay, well, actually, I'm gonna kind of piggyback on that as well. And, oh, I, um, actually, I'm going to stop my ego and my hubris.

• 10:02Ryan Holiday?

  All right.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Because I'm so excited for what you just said. Because that's something I'm always teaching our teenagers, that read stuff, figure out who they are and what they're trying to tell you, and what they're trying to sell you. Because right now, that's just a lot of times what they're doing. And actually just given the opportunity where, okay, you know, they're in college and things and I need something to text them to make sure that, you know, I get proof of life coming back to me. And I'm thinking, I'm going to have to figure out those daily laws, the Marcus Rilis quotes. It's like, what do you think about this? And so, because a lot of the things that they're

• 10:47Speaker 02

  reading, and it's not said that it's garbage. I mean, some of the things that they read from school are are great. But a lot of me think, you're pointing out all of this, the stoicism is really pointing out where it's come, where they've actually gotten their message from to begin with, some of these things. So it's, don't just read someone else's interpretation, but this point, uh, the greats, um, the old writings have kind of already been proven. There's nothing to prove. Why, why, why were they writing this? They were writing it for themselves. They weren't writing it for someone else or to make a profit or anything like that. They were, or to influence someone else. So

• 11:27Speaker 02

  go to the source in a way. So that's fabulous. So, thank you. I mean, it's kind of my question.

• 11:33Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, I, I, I, I love that. I mean, uh, there's something, uh, that they call the Lindy effect, that the longer it's been around, the longer it's likely to continue to be around. So the classics are classics for a reason. Um, and that when you sit down and you read a book that was published fifty years ago, um, chances are, uh, there's a reason it's been around fifty years and it's less likely to be disproven tomorrow. Right? Um, so again, instead of reading, and, and I say this as a person who publishes new books, instead of reading the, the newest, uh, controversial bestseller or whatever, go read something that has stood the test of time, that's, that's helped people that you admire. Like,

• 12:18Ryan Holiday?

  to me, a great question, I try to ask people, like, you know, what are books that have changed your life? People I admire, and then I try to go read those books. Um, and that, that I think is historically why certain titles have, have stood the test of time, because it's, Generation after generation really done something for someone. Um, I love the idea of, of, yeah, making sure that you're a positive contributor to your kids information diet, um, realizing that not all kids are so lucky, you know, I, I get some texts from family members that I have and I have to go, thank you for sending this. Uh, and then I know it's a, uh, I can't read it. I don't want to get infected with whatever's in there, right? Um, uh, and, and, and that, that, that what we,

• 13:05Ryan Holiday?

  what, what, what we allow into our minds shapes how, you know, how, how we think about things. And, and we've got to sort of protect that, I think. Obviously as an author, I'm biased, but I, I think books are, books are the way to do that and have been the way to do that for, for thousands of years for a reason.

• 13:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  Um, I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about, uh, Robert Greene as an author. I'm familiar with his work. Some people, and I'm not, I'm not accusing here, uh, will point to some of his writings being very Machiavellian.

• 13:37Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  And, uh, we within services really strive to focus on team and the greater good of the team versus the individual. And I, I'd just like you to speak to that for a second.

• 13:48Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I, I would certainly agree with the characterization of, of Robert Greene's books as, as Machiavellian. Um, Machiavelli is a big influence. Um, but we, we, even that, that expression Machiavellian ignores some of the historical context in which Machiavelli existed. Machiavelli, Machiavelli was a, was a Republican. He was, uh, arrested for conspiring against the princes because he thought Florence should, should, should be a republic. Um, so what Machiavelli wrote about and what Machiavelli believed were not, it's not as simple as it seems.