Life Is About What We Can Do For Each Other

“Why are we here? It’s an impossible question to answer, I suppose. Of course, on a fundamental evolutionary level, we’re here to pass along our genes. This is why we strive for success. This is why we lust for sex. This is what keeps the species going. But equally encoded in that evolutionary software and in our culture is another purpose, another less selfish drive: The drive for meaning. Merely to subsist, to persist—what kind of existence is that?”Ryan reads his recent article about the responsibility of service that life demands from us all. This episode is brought to you by GoMacro. GoMacro 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 http://gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping on all orders over $50. This episode is also brought to you by LMNT, the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. Right now you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. Get your FREE Sample Pack now. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked.***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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, everyone, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of The Daily Stoic. The last month or so, I've been working at a vaccine clinic here in rural Texas, right outside Austin. And it's been a pretty incredible experience, especially after such a disempowering year, where this massive thing was happening. And unless you were a doctor, or a politician, or an academic with certain expertise, there's very little that you could actually do to help people, or help yourself, right?

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  We sort of had to trust that leadership would take care of things. You could keep your family safe, which obviously, we talked a lot about here. There were sort of little duties you could have as a citizen. But this wasn't like a war where the average person could enlist or serve in the armed forces in some way. There was just so much disempowerment. And we talked a lot here about a lifetime, dead time, using that time, again, all of that taken care of. But it really wasn't until recently that there was much of an opportunity. For me to do much, we've raised money here at Daily Stoic, tried to keep my employees safe, I've tried to keep my family safe, tried to do stuff for friends and neighbors.

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  But again, there was little I could do. But what the Stoic focuses on, again, is what we can do within the constraints of the situation we had. And then, so when it became possible first to work at a phone bank and then to work at this vaccine clinic, sort of helping people come in, helping them fill out paperwork, showing them where to park, all these little seemingly menial tasks, but contribute to a big thing. We've vaccinated tens of thousands of people here in this little community. It's been deeply fulfilling. And I remember, and I'm going to touch on this a little bit in today's episode, but I was sitting there, you know, waiting to wheel someone out in a wheelchair. They were waiting for their the 15-minute observation period after they got their vaccine. And I got an email from

• 2:59Ryan Holiday?

  a friend of mine, a really smart guy, or really nice guy, who was like aghast that I was doing this, and aghast that I would get a vaccine. And that sort of inspired this article, plus a nice email I got from my friend, James Altucher. So today, we're going to talk about a really important Stoic idea, and that is about what we can and must do for other people. So this article went out to my email list on Wednesday. You may have already heard it, but it got such a great response, I wanted to read it here again to you.

• 3:38Ryan Holiday?

  Why are we here? It's an impossible question to answer, I suppose. On a fundamental evolutionary level, we're here to pass along our genes. That's why we strive for success. This is why we lust for sex. This is what keeps our species going. But equally encoded in the evolutionary software and in our culture is another purpose.

• 4:03Ryan Holiday?

  Another less selfish drive, the drive for meaning merely to subsist, to persist. What kind of existence is that? Indeed, the greatest achievements in human history are not selfish ones. It's art that speaks to what it means to be alive, that gives people hope or insight. It's a scientific breakthrough that makes things better for everyone. Was the invention of the rule of law. It was the notion that government exists with the consent of the people. It's the collective sacrifices, it's the tackling of hard problems together. It's the idea that we are here for each other, that we are here to make things better for

• 4:44Ryan Holiday?

  others, for the next generation, that makes life meaningful and worth living. Because in doing so, we find happiness and respect for ourselves. The fruit of this life, Marcus Aurelius wrote, is good character and acts for the common good. On Easter, my friend James Altucher sent me a verse from the Gospel of Mark, which reads, "Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all. For even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

• 5:27Ryan Holiday?

  There was a time in my life where that would have made zero sense to me. The language is repugnant in that sense. Servant, slave, give your life, you know, no thanks. But as I've gotten older, the logic is clearer to me. And perhaps this came from having kids, which we talk about in the Daily Dad podcast, from discovering the emptiness of accomplishments. And I just did a YouTube video about this. You can check out at DailyStoic.com/youtube. Maybe it was that it took a while for the wisdom to sink in, or maybe it was a byproduct of bearing witness to the rampant selfishness, needless cruelty, and displaced rage that has consumed large swaths of our society, over the last year especially.

• 6:12Ryan Holiday?

  I suspect, in a perverse way, the ugliness of that prolonged moment, from COVID-19 to our racial reckoning, will turn out to be a gift for all of us, because it is a compelling cautionary tale of how easily one's life can go very differently, because these people are not just ignorant and unattractive, but punishing by their own way of living. If you've ever talked to a selfish or deranged person who has been radicalized by politics or untethered by conspiracy theories or found yourself related by blood or friendship to folks who have been infected with this virus, it sobers you up real quick. It breaks your heart, too. It didn't have to go this way,

• 6:55Ryan Holiday?

  and yet, so quickly and easily, it did for so many. There was a great Huffington Post headline a few years ago that captured the impotence one feels trying to discuss basic human rights or compassion or restraint to some people. It reads, "I don't know how to explain that you should care about other people." I have found myself thinking that same thing time and time again over the last year, too, whether it was after watching something on the news or talking to a neighbor or even writing and speaking to my own audience about the pandemic, the social justice and race conversations that have exploded over the summer, and the 2020 election, and now vaccines. Watching friends say things like,

• 7:40Ryan Holiday?

  "I can't wait for things to go back to normal", when social media makes it quite clear literally nothing about their habits or social life was impacted by a devastating pandemic that spreads in enclosed places and disproportionately affects the elderly and the vulnerable. Watching members of my own family seek to rationalize something like George Floyd's death because he might have been on drugs, might have had a criminal record, or that very few people are killed by the police each year. Stuck in my head is an exchange I had with a woman who took profane exception to me referring to the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery as hillbillies.

• 8:21Ryan Holiday?

  Shockingly, she seemed more upset by this than video of a man being chased down and shot like a dog in the street. Just last week, a very accomplished friend sent me a note explaining his resistance to the COVID-19 vaccines, which, by the way, mark an incredible collective human accomplishment on par with landing on the moon. "Why should I, a perfectly healthy adult in a safe age bracket, have to risk myself by taking some new vaccine?" he said to me. You know, the polite term for this is vaccine hesitancy, and I've seen it in the clinic. But I think it's more correct to call it an abdication of duty, particularly in the case of this person. It's a rejection of our collective purpose.

• 9:06Ryan Holiday?

  I'd love a chance to go back and try to explain this to my grandfather and great-grandfather who fought in World War I and World War II. "Oh, they're worried about the possibility of side effects despite overwhelmingly available information to the contrary." And yes, this is true even with the recent news about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. "They're wondering why they should have to take a tiny risk when they're otherwise healthy and could otherwise just go about their life just fine. I'm sure that the generations who lived not only through typhus, the great influenza and polio, but had to cross the Atlantic to fight in someone else's war would totally understand." Do you know what the data said about landing at Normandy?

• 9:48Ryan Holiday?

  I can imagine my grandfather saying, "It said we were all probably going to die, and it wasn't even certain that the invasion would work." Now, you might say that it's unfair for me to compare the pandemic to World War II, and it's true, it is. It took the full might of an axis of industrial powers and four years of war to kill 400,000 Americans. It took COVID-19 just 10 months. And by the way, it's a lie to say that these were all old people. A full 105,000 people under the age of 65 have perished from COVID-19 in the US alone.

• 10:32Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 10:39Ryan Holiday?

  There were certainly isolationists in America in 1918 and 1941, but by and large, people got it. The idea of ransoming oneself for the many, as Jesus said, was common. More than 6 million people volunteered to serve in the Second World War. That's nearly 40% of the entire fighting force. And the average service length was three years. And that's what happens when a generation of men and women and children get to work for a common cause. And they accomplished something incredible as a consequence, something far more impressive than any of them did as individuals when those fortunate enough to survive came back home and went about their ordinary lives.

• 11:23Ryan Holiday?

  But for the last 12 months, in the same country that melted down its jewelry for the war effort a generation or two ago, has been having serious discussions about whether we have any obligations to people who sit vulnerably in nursing homes. Look, I get it. It sucks to have your life and your business disrupted, to lose opportunities you worked your whole life for. I make my living flying around giving talks to large groups indoors. The last 12 months were quite anxious for me economically. It was stranger still having to turn down offers to speak to groups that had no business getting together during the second and third surges of the pandemic. But it was obviously the right thing to do.

• 12:06Ryan Holiday?

  I also happened to have dropped my life savings into opening a small bookstore in this town I live in in Texas, two months before the world shut down. Needless to say, it was a financial bloodbath to sit here and not be able to open as expenses carried on nonetheless. But again, what was the alternative? Put my interests over somebody else's grandma? Or some cancer patient who is already facing high enough odds as it is? Externalize the consequences of actions I freely took and make society carry my weight?

• 12:38Ryan Holiday?

  I think I'd rather get COVID than that. I love sports. I've missed all sorts of cool opportunities in the last year, not being able to go and speak in various locker rooms. But I remain nevertheless appalled at the behavior of so many people in sports. Because as always, sports are a metaphor for life. Whether it's Coach Dan Mullen demanding that the stadium be packed for Florida home games, just days before his team was devastated by a COVID outbreak, or just this month, the Rangers packing a stadium in the middle of the fourth surge of the virus. Was our governor concerned? No, he was throwing a tantrum about Major League Baseball moving its All-Star Game due to a stupid law passed

• 13:19Ryan Holiday?

  in another state. "I don't want my son's athletic career negatively affected," said the parents of collegiate athletes. "But this is my daughter's last year of academic eligibility." Okay, so we have a season of college sports and thousands and thousands of cases in the NCAA. And the athletes were mostly fine, of course, and it didn't turn out as bad as some people predicted. But it's indisputable if we, and this would be proven if we had even basic contact tracing in this country, that we could link these cases to hundreds and hundreds of thousands more people in the community. Try going to talk to those people about negative consequences. And of course, look, nobody comes out and

• 14:01Ryan Holiday?

  says, "I don't care about other people." They say a bunch of other stuff instead. And I got these emails when I sent this out on Wednesday. They say stuff like, "The pandemic is overblown." They shrug and say, "Well, I guess we all have different risk tolerances." And again, you can have a different risk tolerance about how you invest your money. You can't have a different risk tolerance about a pandemic or drinking and driving. They try to claim what they're really worried about is how this affects small businesses or lonely people. They say, "But this wedding is really important to my sister. They say my six-year-old deserves a party with their friends." Covid is not the only place that this indifference manifests either. Rather than wrestle with police brutality or the simmering rage of their black countrymen

• 14:45Ryan Holiday?

  and women, people say things like, "But what about black-on-black crime?" They say, "But what about all the property damage?" They say, "But what about Antifa?" All of this is a way of dodging the reality of the choice in front of us. Can you subjugate your own interests if only temporarily for the sake of someone else? Countless someone else's, most of whom you will never even meet or know. Can you serve them? Can you sacrifice for any of them? Can you hear what they're saying? Can you care? The religious stuff that I talked about at the beginning, maybe that turns you off a bit. I get it. I myself am not a Christian. But I use this verse not only because it's beautiful, but because it seems that Christians

• 15:27Ryan Holiday?

  have struggled more with the lesson at the core of the verse than almost any other group. The most vaccine hesitant group in America is Republicans and white evangelical Christians. There's a video I saw at the beginning of the pandemic of a woman explaining why her faith made her exempt from Covid protocols. And if you didn't see the photo, there's a photo of an Easter service attended by our former president, who quite nearly died of Covid indoors without a mask in sight. A year into a pandemic that's killed more Americans than every war the United States has ever fought, except for the Civil War, and we're giving the Civil War a run for its money. Hillel was once asked to explain the Bible in a short sentence.

• 16:12Ryan Holiday?

  He stood on one foot and said, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." All the rest is commentary. I would argue that Hillel's answer is a great answer to the question, "What is the meaning of life as well?" What we're here for is what we're able to do for each other. We're here to serve. We're here to help, to have good character, and do acts for the common good. That's not always easy. In fact, it's often quite hard. Did the pandemic or the racial events of the last year reveal the differences in privileges that some of us have? Absolutely. And this knowledge should increase our sense of obligation. We are made for each other. We forget that at our peril, and we ignore that to our shame.

• 16:58Ryan Holiday?

  Look, if you haven't got vaccinated, you should. If you're hesitant, you should. If you have been vaccinated, go try to help. Convince people that you know in your life. Volunteer at a clinic. Try to help you. Make sure your employees get it. Make sure the people you work for it. Cover them, help them. Helps your old neighbor who can't use a computer navigate signing up. Whatever you can, try to make a difference. We're here for each other. Yes, you might save your own life. But in saving your own life, you prevent yourself from taking someone else's life or harming someone else. And you also make other people safer. And each person you help inoculate against this terrible virus, you know, ripples through the community

• 17:42Ryan Holiday?

  the same way that selfishness can ripple through a community. So do a good turn. This is what Stoicism is about. As Marcus really has said, "The fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good." Be safe, be smart, be well, everyone.