Don’t Get Even, Get Justice | Cultivate Indifference

“These are angry times… with plenty to be angry about. From politicians that have failed us to systemic evils that have gone on for too long. Maybe you’re someone who was conned, pressured into spending money you didn’t have with the hope of promises someone didn’t keep. Maybe you were hurt in an accident. Maybe you were wrongly deprived of your liberties or fair share.”Ryan explains why justice should always prevail over anger, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is also brought to you by The School of Greatness podcast. Hosted by Lewis Howes it features interviews from athletes like Kobe Bryant and Novak Djokovic, influencers like Brene Brown and Tony Robbins, authors like Robert Greene and Tim Ferriss, and more. Go listen to School of Greatness, it’s an amazing show and Lewis is an engaging host who really wants to help people. Subscribe to The School of Greatness on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or visit lewishowes.com/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/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 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. Don't get even, get justice. These are angry times with plenty to be angry about, from politicians that have failed us to systemic evils that have gone on for too long. Maybe you're someone who was conned, pressured into spending money you didn't have

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  with the hope of promises someone didn't keep. Maybe you were hurt in an accident. Maybe you were wrongly deprived of your liberties or your fair share. It makes sense that you're angry. It makes sense that you'd want to get even. But the Stoics would urge you to question that anger, not because they think you should accept this ill treatment, because they think that getting revenge is not the right response. First, they would say that anger rarely leads to well-thought-out responses. Second, because there's something better out there than getting even. When Marcus Aurelius wrote that "the best revenge is to not be like that", he wasn't precluding other actions, you know? Given that he held up justice as a cardinal virtue and adjudicated many legal cases, we know that he was also a strong believer in holding people accountable.

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  Musonius Rufus has a whole lecture entitled, "Will the Philosopher Prosecute Anyone for Personal Injury", which argues against holding personal grudges. Yet, he also famously prosecuted several major cases in Rome against people who had committed grievous wrongs against other Stoics. He wasn't doing this out of animus. He was doing it because he wanted justice, because he wanted to prevent it from happening again. So as we sit here today reflecting on a great laundry list of crimes and failures and misdeeds from people who are supposed to be serving the people who are charged with following the law and protecting the common good, we should remember, it's not revenge we're after. Anger won't help. What we need to get at the ballot box in the courts and public is not comeuppance, but justice.

• 2:17Ryan Holiday?

  And we need to make sure these things can't ever happen again.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  Cultivate indifference. This comes to us from this week's meditation in the Daily Stoic Journal. "Some people spend their lives chasing good things: health, wealth, pleasure, achievement. Others try to avoid the bad things with equal energy: sickness, poverty, pain. And these look like two drastically different approaches, but in the end, they are the same. The Stoics continually reminded themselves that so many of the things we desire and avoid are beyond our control. Instead of chasing impossibilities, the Stoics trained to be equally prepared and equally suited to thrive in any condition. They trained to be indifferent. And this is a great power, and a cultivation of this skill is a very powerful exercise.

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  Of all the things that are, some are good, others bad, and yet others indifferent. The good are virtues in all that share in them; the bad are vices in all that indulge them. The indifferent lie in between virtue and vice and include wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, and pain, Epictetus's discourses. My reasoned choice is as indifferent to the reasoned choice of my neighbor and as to his breath and body. However much we've been made for cooperation, the ruling reason in each of us is a master of its own affair. If this weren't the case, the evil in someone else would become my harm, and God didn't mean for someone else to control my misfortune." Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, 856. "There are things in life which are advantageous and disadvantageous.

• 3:50Ryan Holiday?

  Both are beyond our control." That's Seneca, Moral Letters, 92. This idea of good, bad, and then a sort of a third category is this interesting debate. I talk a little bit about this in Lives of the Stoics. The early Stoics were much closer to the cynics, the philosophical school, the idea that like, there's good and bad, there's virtue and vice, and everything is one of those categories. And there's a lot of argument about this. I think it's the later Stoics, the more practical, pragmatic Stoics that go, sure, but there's also stuff in between. There is such a thing as gray area, and it's impractical and unrealistic to assume that there's not. You know, Seneca talks about sort of preferred indifference, like, is it better to be short or tall? I mean, it's not good or bad either way.

• 4:34Ryan Holiday?

  He says, if you're short or tall, that's, is what it is. But if you had a choice, you'd probably pick tall, probably pick rich over poor. It doesn't mean that it's virtuous to be rich, but if you had a choice... You'd choose it. That's just like a sort of an interesting side Stoic debate. But this main thing is like, look, the Stoic is good either way. It's not that the Stoics love misfortune and the Stoics don't want success or ease or happiness or any of these things. It's no, the Stoics are ready for whatever life throws at them. This sets them up to not be disappointed when life does throw adversity. And it also puts them in a position where they're not yearning for or craving something good or ease or luck or success. They're, they're just cool with however it is. That's what Zen means, right? You're just philosophical about it. You're just chill about it.

• 5:19Ryan Holiday?

  You've got an even keel. So this idea of indifference is not like nihilism. It's actually this kind of resiliency, this ability to be good with whatever happens, with whatever life throws at you. Would I rather we not have been through this pandemic? Yeah, probably. But I managed to find my space inside of it. I focused on what I could do inside of it. Would I have loved for parts of my childhood to be different? Would I have loved to be a little bit taller? Would I have loved to be this or that? Yeah, sure. If I had a choice, but I didn't have a choice. So I adjust and I make do. You know, Seneca talks, and I think he's quoting from Chrysippus, or maybe it's Cleanthes. But he's saying like, look, a wise man wants stuff, but he doesn't need it.

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  We make do with what it is. We play the hand we're dealt. But if you're asking us what cards we want, as the cards are flipping over, is there one we would prefer? Probably. So indifference is this complicated, tricky thing in Stoicism. But I think at the end of the day, it's pretty commonsensical, right? You'd rather be tall, but you're cool being short. You'd rather have use of all your limbs, but if something happened, you'd keep going. You know, Seneca says, you'd rather see, but if you lost your eye in battle, that wouldn't be the end of it for you. You'd adjust, you'd make do. That's the power of Stoicism. We'll respond, we'll endure, we'll survive, we'll make the best of everything. And in that, we're indifferent, but we're actually quite strong and confident because of that indifference. So think about that this week. If you want to journal about it in your daily Stoic journal, great.

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  But try to cultivate the strength of endurance.

• 6:53Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.