There’s Always Been a Darkness on the Edge of Town

"It feels a little bit like things suddenly got really bad. Like the political order is not working. Like government agencies are failing. The stock market is falling. The economy turned out to be not nearly as robust as we thought. And it’s true, these things are happening. It’s just important to remind ourselves that this is not new. It’s just that the darkness from the edge of town, the one Springsteen sang about—the bad luck, the poverty, the struggle, the pain—shifted a little bit. Now that it’s your problem, you’re suddenly taking it seriously."Ryan describes how these problems have always been around, and how we must change our behavior to reckon with this fact, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good 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. There has always been a darkness on the edge of town. It feels a little bit like things suddenly got really bad, like the political order is not working, like government agencies are failing, the stock market is falling, the economy turned out to be not nearly as robust as we thought. And it's true, these things are happening. It's just

• 0:49Ryan Holiday?

  important to remind ourselves that this is not new. It's just that the darkness from the edge of town, the one that Bruce Springsteen sung about, the bad luck, the poverty, the struggle, the pain shifted a little bit. Now that it's your problem, you're suddenly taking it seriously. When 50 Cent was being interviewed for his book, The 50th Law, with Robert Greene, he made a pretty interesting observation. A reporter asked him about the then-new and alarming financial crisis that was rippling through America. He said something like, "You know, where I'm from, it's always been a recession." So before you throw yourself a pity party about this global pandemic and the knock-on recession it's causing, remind yourself, this is not new. This is not some tragedy that's only

• 1:32Ryan Holiday?

  affecting me. This is a timeless fact of existence. This has been happening to people for years. It just wasn't evenly distributed. When the Stoics talked about Sympathia, they wanted us to realize that we were all tied up with each other, that there was a real cost to letting the hive or a fellow bee be harmed. Did they fall short of their own ideals by tolerating slavery and imperialism? Yes, no question. But Marcus Aurelius strove to do everything he could for other people. He didn't allow his privilege to blind him to the fact that other people had it much worse. We are being reminded today just how interconnected and interdependent we are. Those warehouse workers we refuse to support a better minimum wage for.

• 2:15Ryan Holiday?

  Those people we didn't think deserved health insurance. Those people we wrote off as deplorables. Well, turns out that they are a lot more important than you thought. Turns out that their health and security is more related to your own than you might have realized. Turns out they were the canary in the coal mine. Your suffering is real. It's unfortunate, but it's not new and it's not special. And maybe one way to lessen it and prevent it in the future is to care a little bit more about your fellow members of the hive. Hey, thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. You can sign up to get our daily email at dailystoic.com/email. I also encourage you, if you want to take your practice of Stoicism to the next level,

• 2:59Ryan Holiday?

  to sign up for Daily Stoic Life, which is our members-only program. It's got all sorts of awesome benefits. You can check that out at dailystoiclife.com.