You Don't Need Everyone, Just More

“It’d be wonderful if we could get everyone on board. If evidence and data and civic duty convinced people to do the right thing, the smart thing, the selfless thing. It feels like we’re living through a unique era for this kind of dissonance and denialism, but the reality is that since even before Marcus Aurelius' time, getting everyone on board for the right thing has been impossible.”Ryan explains why you can’t expect everyone to do the right thing, 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 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, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom, designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday 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.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  You don't need everyone, just more. It would be wonderful if we could get everyone on board, if evidence and data and civic duty convinced people to do the right thing, the smart thing, the selfless thing. It feels like we're living through a unique era for this kind of dissonance and denialism. But the reality is that even before Marcus Aurelius's time, getting everyone on board for the right thing has been impossible. As Marcus writes in Meditations, "When you meet a shameless or selfish person, you have to understand: A certain percentage of the world is made up of such people. You don't have to despair. You don't even have to try to change them. You can just take some solace in remembering that this person is one member of a minority."

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  And today, as America and the world rush to safely vaccinate against the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, these vaccines, the result of exactly the kind of collective brilliant work for the common good that the Stoics cheered, it's inevitable that we will bump into some folks who are resistant to participate, and sometimes even downright aggressive with their ignorance. The polite phrase for this mindset is "vaccine hesitancy." But it really doesn't matter what you call it or what people's reasons are. "A certain percentage of the world is made up of such people. We don't have to despair. We don't have to try to convince the unconvincable, move the unmovable, or change the unchangeable."

• 1:52Ryan Holiday?

  Remember, the Stoic focuses on where they can make a difference, where their efforts register. Why beat your head against the wall trying to convert everybody when there's plenty of somebodies, the elderly, the technologically challenged, the disabled, who want a vaccine but need help? Getting one. There's a young woman in Texas who helped 600 people get their vaccines. There are two other women in Austin who did the same. Less newsworthy are the countless people who drove their parents, who gave their employees paid time off, who texted a friend who showed their neighbor. Did they convince the recalcitrant? Did they persuade the selfish not to be selfish? No, not yet anyway, because in the meantime, there are plenty of willing people you can make a difference for.

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  A stoic doesn't need to get everyone on board with stoicism, with the four virtues, with anything, really. We focus instead on those who want to be reached. We focus on helping as many people as we can, instead of despairing that we can't reach everyone. After all, herd immunity doesn't require 100% participation, whether it's against a virus, a panic, or plain old ignorance, just requires enough. And luckily, if we work hard enough, we can get there. So please, do the work, get your vaccine, help other people. Don't despair just because there's some ignorant folks out there, but try to reach and help the people who want to be reached. It makes a difference.