Can Stoicism Fight Modern Corruption?

Corruption is everywhere, from politics and business to sports and universities. But as modern as it all feels, the Stoics saw the same thing happening thousands of years ago. So how did they resist it without becoming part of it themselves? 🎥 VIDEO EPISODE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tzZs1_uFG0| Watch this episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tzZs1_uFG0 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tzZs1_uFG0 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️ AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail See 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.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues—courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom—into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  We are living in a moment of immense and pervasive corruption. The President of the United States is enriching himself to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. A high-ranking member of his administration was seen literally accepting a bag of $50,000 cash. His teleprompter operator was caught using inside information from his speeches to bet and make money in prediction markets. And it's not just political corruption. A few years ago, there was a major scandal where actors and actresses and entrepreneurs and investors were bribing and cheating their kids into elite universities.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  We have college athletes and professional athletes and coaches and executives who are not just betting on games, but perhaps even throwing games. A special forces operator made a bet worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in prediction markets, using information on a raid he was participating in. And while all of this is unprecedented and modern in one sense, in another sense, it's the oldest story in the world. It is unfortunately a timeless story. Rome was an incredibly corrupt and dark and twisted and depraved place as well. Elections were bought and sold.

• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  Human beings were bought and sold. Conflicts of interest were everywhere. People enriched themselves, stole from the public, and the Stoics were there in the ancient world, in the thick of it. And I don't mean they were complicit in it. I mean, they resisted it. They exposed it. They tried to reform and change it, which is what we're going to talk about in today's episode. How do you resist corruption? How do you stay good and decent when it is commonplace? How do you maintain your integrity, your honesty, your goodness, when very few people around you seem to want to do the same?

• 2:21Ryan Holiday?

  We should be clear that there are multiple forms of corruption. There is the corruption of bribery, of incentives, and then there's also the most basic form of corruption, expressed in that famous line that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This is what makes Marcus Aurelius so fascinating. Here, we have someone who is given absolute power, and not only is he not corrupted, it seems to make him better. So what can we learn from the exception that proves the rule? Well, Marcus Aurelius was conscious about this idea. In fact, he speaks about it in his famous meditations. He says, "Be careful that you are not imperialized, that you are not stained purple."

• 3:06Ryan Holiday?

  He didn't want the position to go to his head. He didn't want it to make him worse, the way that it had made some of his predecessors worse, the way that it had made Tiberius had retreated into pleasure and cruelty, the way that Nero had descended into insanity. Marcus Aurelius tried, he said, "to fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make him." Now, it's easier to do this when you're a regular person, when you don't have enormous amounts of stress on you, when there's not crises happening all the time, when people aren't trying to kill you, and when people aren't trying to get stuff from you. So what we should understand is that the reason Marcus Aurelius isn't corrupted by

• 3:49Ryan Holiday?

  power, at least as much as some of the cautionary tales of history, is that he really worked for it. Although other people couldn't hold him to account, he could hold himself to account every day as he sat down and looked at the pages of his philosophy texts and the pages of his journal. He kept going to see his philosophy teachers. He reminded himself that he didn't know everything. He reminded himself that he wasn't a god, that he couldn't take this money with him when he died, that it wasn't about creating this legacy so future generations would have to admire all of his accomplishments, right? He tried to remain centered. He tried to remain human. He tried to remain sane.

• 4:33Ryan Holiday?

  He tried to remain good. He said, "The whole point of life is to have good character and do acts for the common good." And I think that's ultimately the Stoic prescription that helps us battle both kinds of corruption—the corruption of power, once you've become successful, or a CEO, or a celebrity, and then also the corruption when people are trying to tempt you or offer you money to do things that you know are not right and not good for other people.

• 5:06Ryan Holiday?

  One of the things that psychologists who study dishonesty and corruption have noticed is that corruption begets corruption. When other people are lying, when other people are cheating, when you see it happening all around you, people shrug their shoulders. They say, "What the hell?" We join in because we see other people doing it. And this is something the Stoics talk a lot about. Chrysippus, one of the early Stoics, said, "Look, if I wanted to be part of a mob, I wouldn't have become a philosopher." Like, the whole point of philosophy was to think for yourself, to have your own moral compass, to do what you think is right, to do what you think needs to be done, not letting the zeitgeist or the trends around you lead you astray. And I think we can see that looking around us right now.

• 5:50Ryan Holiday?

  Like, we're in the middle of what you would call a moral inversion, where some of the worst people are getting the most attention and getting the furthest ahead. It almost looks like it's a bad strategy to be honest, to try to work hard, to try to do things at the right pace, right? Everyone's looking for shortcuts. Everyone's seeing scams and sketchiness as a success strategy, one that you can get away with. And so, I don't think it's unreasonable that some people look around and go, "Oh, if that's what's okay, then that's what I'm going to do." But this is also what gets us into really big trouble. The Bible talks about this too, right? Don't follow a mob to do evil. Just because other people are doing it, just because it's commonly accepted, doesn't mean that it's okay.

• 6:35Ryan Holiday?

  And I think the most impressive Stoics swam against the stream in this way, even if it didn't always work out for them. There was a Stoic named Rutilius Rufus, who, around 100 B.C., is sent to administer a province in the far east of the Roman Empire. And this position was considered a particularly lucrative one. Colonialism then and now has always been a way of extraction and exploitation. So Romans would get this post, and they would come home exorbitantly wealthy, because they would take bribes, they would skim off the top, and this is just how it was done. But Rutilius Rufus is sent there, and he decides he's not going to be this way. He's going to be an honest broker, an honest governor.

• 7:17Ryan Holiday?

  He's actually going to try to do a good job as the administrator of this province. Now, the problem with being an honest person in a dishonest time is that you are not only subtly indicting all the dishonest people, but you're getting in their way. So by not being corrupt, Rutilius creates a lot of corrupt enemies. And so, what do they do? Irony of ironies? They bring him up on charges of corruption. They railroad these charges through. The proceedings are a complete and an embarrassing farce, and Rutilius Rufus, instead of defending himself, just lets the absurdity and the brazenness of the proceedings speak for themselves. And ultimately, he's convicted, and he's sent into exile.

• 8:02Ryan Holiday?

  And the only mercy that the corrupt forces who drove him out of Rome were willing to offer him was a choice of where he wanted to serve out his exile. So you know where he chose? He chose the very city that he had previously been governor of. He wanted to go back amongst the people he'd allegedly defrauded. And you know what? They were happy to have him, because they knew he was honest. They actually loved him there, because in the brief moment that he had had power, he had treated them well, and he'd stopped the abuse. Now, was he broken or bitter by this? No, and he certainly wasn't dishonored by it, because he knew he had done the right thing. When he had been in power, he hadn't gotten away with what other people thought they could get away with. He did what he thought was right, which is what we have to do. Doesn't matter what's going on in the wider culture.

• 8:47Ryan Holiday?

  It doesn't matter how other people are behaving. We have to ask ourselves, "Is this how I was raised? Is this what I think is right? Is this good for the people I am supposedly serving, or working with, or for? Are my decisions making the world better or worse?" That's what we have to decide. I can imagine Rutilius appreciating another irony that Marcus Aurelius talks about in Meditations, where Marcus says that "one of the paradoxes of being a king is that you often earn a bad reputation by doing good deeds." Rutilius Rufus is a great example of no good deed going unpunished. He was honest. He was good. He followed the rules. And what happened? He got arrested and charged for doing the opposite of what he was actually doing. And so, there would have been an immense amount of, not just temptation for him to

• 9:31Ryan Holiday?

  operate it differently, but then, the attack on him was designed to make him bend, make him compromise, make him go along with what was happening, and he refused to do that. We've got to ignore the mob. We've got to ignore what's happening around us. We've got to think for ourselves. We've got to stand alone. We've got to do what's right. That's what a Stoic would do.

• 9:54Ryan Holiday?

  You know, the saying is not that money is the root of all evil. It's that the love of money is the root of all evil. If you have insatiable desires, if you have expensive tastes, if you think money says something about you as a person, you're now vulnerable because people know that's your weakness. There's a story I tell in Discipline is Destiny that I think illustrates this idea. And it's about Cato's great-great-grandfather, the famous Cato the Elder. The entire Cato family, although they were wealthy, had always, in the sort of Stoic tradition, kept their tastes and their needs to a minimum. And this wasn't just about discipline. This is also about independence. And so Cato the Elder, although he had money, lived modestly in a modest home.

• 10:38Ryan Holiday?

  And actually, this was inspired by one of his heroes, Manus Curius. At the height of this Roman politician's powers, some men were sent to bribe him. They go into Curius's home. And you know what they saw? They saw him boiling turnips. And in this instant, they know that their mission is futile because somebody satisfied with so little couldn't be tempted. Right? If you have a need, if you have a hunger, if there's something you're chasing, then people know that's a way to get to you. Meanwhile, if you have enough, you have a level of independence and insulation from what these people are trying to do. And the problem is, how many rich people, as Seneca would say, are actually poor

• 11:23Ryan Holiday?

  because they have these insatiable desires and needs? They want more and more and more. And then they're willing to do corrupt things to get more and more. Sadly, Seneca is an example of this going wrong, right? Although he wrote about living in an austere way and reducing your needs, it was clear that in Nero's service, he got used to a certain lifestyle. We don't know of him taking outright bribes, but he did accept a paycheck from a deranged maniac and became quite rich in Nero's services. He accepted gift after gift. He had piles and piles of money. And he didn't understand that Nero was slowly buying him off, slowly corrupting him, trapping him in a gilded cage.

• 12:08Ryan Holiday?

  And ultimately, when he breaks with Nero, it's too late, right? Nero had too much control over him and his life. Seneca wanted to leave and Nero said, he said, "You can't give the money back. That's not how this works." So for a Stoic, this form of dependence was ultimately a form of corruption. There's a line from a famous photographer named Bill Cunningham, who said, "If you don't take the money, they can't tell you what to do." And I think that's the trap that Seneca got in with Nero. Seneca should be a cautionary tale. And ultimately, the Catos should be an inspiring tale. There's a similar story we actually hear about Diogenes, who was very poor, even begged for his food. And he's talking with Plato one day in Athens.

• 12:53Ryan Holiday?

  And Plato says to him, "Hey, you know, if you went and worked for this guy that I've worked for, who was actually a corrupt tyrant, you wouldn't have to beg for your food." And Diogenes looked at him and said, "I beg for food so I don't have to go work for that guy." What Diogenes understood was that his independence, his self-sufficiency, was ultimately a form of wealth greater than the money, right? Money is cheap. Your freedom is what is expensive. That's what few even rich people have. And so when you begin to make this trade, you are corrupting yourself and ultimately limiting yourself. Many of the Stoics were quite wealthy. So money isn't itself inherently corruptive. And Seneca talks about this. He actually has a great line that I think is a good standard.

• 13:37Ryan Holiday?

  He says, "It's okay to be rich, even as a philosopher, provided that your money is not stained in blood." Now, the line is good, but from what we know about Seneca's life, he didn't apply it very well, right? His money was by definition stained in blood. It was the stained in blood of all the people that Nero killed, all the violence and cruelty and dysfunction that came from Nero's incompetence and ultimately descent into insanity. And I think Seneca saw this at some level and then didn't want to see it on another level. It reminds me of something that Upton Sinclair famously said. He said, "You know, it's very hard to get someone to see something that their salary depends on them not seeing." So this isn't just the corruption of politics.

• 14:21Ryan Holiday?

  It's, does the paycheck you get from the industry you are in blind you to what that industry is doing in the world? Are you blind to the culture of the company that you're working in and how it's treating people? Even how it's treating yourself, how it's changing you? And so when we talk about corruption, we don't just mean, are you accepting bribes or not? We just mean, how is the direction of your compass? How is your morality being changed by the scene that you are in, by the industry that you're in, by the commerce and exchange that you are taking a part in? And I think ultimately, we should ask ourselves, is the job that I'm doing making me a better person or a worse person?

• 15:06Ryan Holiday?

  It's sad to think that power and money so often make people worse. There's no reason why it can't make you better. Like, shouldn't money make you more generous? Shouldn't power make you more responsible? Shouldn't it make you more aware of how the other half lives and your responsibilities to them? Well, one of the things Marcus Aurelius talks about in Meditations, and I think it goes to the point, he feels so lucky that he's never needed to ask other people for money or favors, but that he was always in a financial position to give money and favors to other people when they asked. His point was that from his success, from his plenitude, from this abundance, he was in a position to be better and more decent.

• 15:50Ryan Holiday?

  And that this is what we should be striving. This is the opposite of corruption. It's not just, oh, hey, this person is honest and doesn't do all these bad things. But I think we should ask ourselves, hey, is what I'm doing, is the success or responsibility or influence that I'm seeking, how is it changing me? Is it changing me for the better or the worse? And Marcus Aurelius has an incredible example of this in Antoninus, his adopted stepfather. So instead of having a Nero as his predecessor or a Claudius or Caligula, Marcus Aurelius had, as his predecessor, someone who was honest and decent and hardworking and kind and generous. And we can see this simply in the way that Antoninus treated Marcus Aurelius, who he had no relation to.

• 16:35Ryan Holiday?

  Antoninus saw himself as a steward of the empire and as a temporary occupant on the throne, and that his job was to prepare his successor. Like, how many people actually care about who comes after them? Antoninus is the opposite of the famous line from King Louis XV. "After me, the deluge," right? "I don't care what happens to me." Or sometimes they'll say in Wall Street about some deal that has bad terms way down the road. "All be gone, you'll be gone," right? Antoninus is the opposite of that. And we think that one of the reasons that Hadrian, who has to choose his successor, chooses Antoninus is because in a private moment, when Antoninus didn't know that Hadrian was watching,

• 17:18Ryan Holiday?

  he saw Antoninus help his elderly father-in-law up a flight of stairs. And this is particularly poignant to the Romans, that the founding Roman myth has Aeneas carrying his father out of the wreckage of Troy, ultimately to found Rome. And so this unguarded moment of kindness and decency convinces Hadrian that Antoninus has a good core that perhaps can last through the temptation and disorientation of power. So with Marcus, we see him not only not be Caesarified, not be stained purple by the purple cloak of the emperor, but we see, as the French writer Ernest Renan says, that the throne was actually an aid to virtue.

• 18:03Ryan Holiday?

  He says, "Marcus Aurelius could not have been who he was had he not exercised that power." And so one of the things we want to think about is that actually, the corruption of our time, the temptation of our position, what everyone else is doing around us. Although, look, ideally, everyone would be doing the right thing. That this is actually the test, right? This is the choice. This is the so-called choice of Hercules. If it was easy, if everyone was doing it, it wouldn't be that impressive. It's actually when it's not necessarily in our financial or career interest to do the right thing that doing the right thing matters so much, that it says the most about us. We should be wary of power. We should be suspicious of it. There should be checks and balances. But if we find ourselves in that spotlight,

• 18:47Ryan Holiday?

  in that position of leadership, this is a gift and it's a challenge. Can we be good despite it? Can we be honest despite the dishonesty around us? Can we hold ourselves to standards that other people aren't holding themselves to? Can this power be an aid to our virtue? Can it reveal what's really in there? And can we rise to that occasion? The famous chronicler of power, Robert Caro, you know, would say that it's actually too simple to say that power corrupts. He says, "What power truly does is reveal." And I think what we see in Antoninus and we see in a Marcus Aurelius is that there was a goodness there. And that was what was revealed in the unique scenario that each found themselves in.

• 19:33Ryan Holiday?

  Look, these, these stands that we take, these morals that we have, these principles that we adhere to, they're gonna cost us, they're gonna be difficult, they're gonna be painful. And so, some people might go, well, what's the point, right? Wouldn't it be better to be more flexible? The great James Stockdale, who has taught the philosophy of Epictetus at Stanford before he shot down over North Vietnam, and he spent seven years in a Vietnamese prison camp. I talk about him in Right Thing Right Now. He has this great line. He would say that, that too often, people put integrity, he says, in a drawer labeled "too hard." He says, "But, but actually, a person's integrity can give them something to rely on when their perspective seems to blur, when rules and

• 20:15Ryan Holiday?

  principles seem to waver, when he's faced with hard choices of right and wrong. It's something to keep him on the right track, something to keep him afloat when he's drowning." So imagine you're there in that prison camp, and, and not only are they torturing you, but they're also trying to tempt you and lead you astray. Do you want to go home early? Do you want special treatment? Do you want us to stop? Well, all you have to do is betray your fellow prisoners. All you have to do is say something bad about your country. All you have to do is break the rules, the, the, the orders that you were given, and embarrass your country as a result. But people like James Stockdale and John McCain didn't do that. John McCain, on numerous instances, was offered a chance to go home early, because

• 20:57Ryan Holiday?

  his father was the theater commander. North Vietnamese wanted to, to humiliate him and show that all Americans were, were selfish hypocrites. And so, they offered him this chance to go home early, and he declined it every single time. They asked him at, at one point to, to sign this confession, to admit to these things that he hadn't done. And they said, "Just do it. No one will know." Along the lines of what Stockdale was talking about, he said, "But I would know. I would know." So when Stockdale is faced with this unimaginably difficult situation, when he is getting hit from all sides, when other people are coming to him, asking him what they should do, what he resorts back to are these kind of basic principles, this kind of moral clarity, this idea of integrity. What's the right thing? What are my obligations to the people that

• 21:42Ryan Holiday?

  I'm here with? What is my duty? What is my responsibility? Not what's expedient, not what's easier, not what's gonna make my life less bad, but what is right? There was a Stoic philosopher in the time of Agrippinus who was asked, you know, "Why aren't you playing ball with Nero? Don't you want to come to this dinner he's inviting us to?" And, and Agrippinus says, "You know, you should go because you're thinking about going." And he says, "But for me, it's not even a question," right? He had the clarity of his integrity. And so, instead of that making his life more difficult in the time of Nero, it actually gave him a true north. I think it's interesting that just as we refer to the cardinal virtues, we also refer to the cardinal points on a compass. And I think that that's what virtue is. That's

• 22:25Ryan Holiday?

  what integrity is. It is the points on the compass giving us clarity when we are otherwise confused and disoriented.

• 22:38Ryan Holiday?

  I said earlier that, that Rome was a dark and twisted and corrupt place. And it was. But when you look closely, you see that there are always exceptions to that rule. Just as basically all kings are corrupted by power, we see an exception in Mark Schurles and Antoninus. So yeah, Rome was corrupt and awful, but Cato was a person that you could trust. He's actually sent to clean up corruption in a notoriously corrupt province called Cyprus. Rutilius Rufus was that. Agrippinus was that, right? Marcus Aurelius was that. There are always these exceptions. One of the things I talk about in Right Thing Right Now is, is Harry Truman. Harry Truman comes from one of the most corrupt political machines in American history, out of Kansas

• 23:23Ryan Holiday?

  City. It's controlled by a political boss, offices are bought and sold. And yet, from his reading of Marcus Aurelius, he has a moral compass. We actually know, because he showed it to a journalist, that Truman read Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, and we know the passages that he underlined. He loved the passage that said, "If it is not true, do not say it. If it is not right, do not do it." He underlines a line that says, "First, do nothing thoughtlessly or without a purpose." And, and then the next part that he liked is where Marcus says, "See that all your acts are directed to a social end." Truman goes into politics, he says, because he'd failed in all these other aspects of his life, and he needed to eat. If there was ever an origin story for a corrupt politician,

• 24:06Ryan Holiday?

  it would be a guy who served his country honorably, and life kicked the shit out of him, and then went into politics and could have said, "This is where I get my peace." Truman would write to his wife around this time that everyone else in the county got rich in politics, except for him. And he didn't get rich, because he said he'd been taught as a kid that public money is a public trust. And he said, "I never changed my opinion about that." He said, "No one has ever received public money that I was responsible for unless they gave honest service for it." In fact, Truman was so frustratingly honest, like Rutilius Rufus in, in, in the dishonesty of his time, that one of the reasons he became senator was because the political machine,

• 24:50Ryan Holiday?

  knowing that Truman was popular, wanted to get him out of Missouri. They sent him to the Senate so they could be more corrupt locally, and Truman could be somebody else's problem. And you know what? One of the first things that Truman did as a national politician during World War II was create a committee that investigated war profiteering and corruption from defense contractors. And they ultimately recovered billions of dollars, generals go to jail. He later says that the money that he gives away in the Marshall Plan was money he clawed back from corrupt interests during his time as a senator. Now, the unfortunate irony for Truman is that despite his honesty and his decency, many

• 25:33Ryan Holiday?

  people couldn't look past where he came from. They saw him as being a product of a corrupt political machine, and assumed therefore that he must be corrupt. He tried to be honest, he tried to be good, even though other people around him very much weren't being those things. And he was committed to doing this. And ultimately, it's what makes his reputation and makes him such a bright light in an otherwise dark situation. You know, Truman is famous for that sign on his desk, "The buck stops here." But I actually think he had a better sign. I write about it in the book. And this is a quote from Mark Twain that he also had on a plaque on his desk. It said, "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

• 26:15Ryan Holiday?

  So you want to talk about not being Caesarified? It was Truman's idea to do the Marshall Plan, but he names it after Marshall because he's aware that not putting his name on it, not taking credit for it, makes it more likely to pass. You know, Truman was most proud of his time as a veteran in World War I. And so, towards the end of his term, some congressmen tried to think of a roundabout way that they might be able to award him the Medal of Honor. Because Truman had once said, as he was pinning the Medal of Honor on, on a soldier, that, you know, "He'd rather be the man receiving the award than the president giving it." And Truman, here's of this bending of the rules, this favor that they're trying to give him. And you know what he says? He preemptively turns it down. He says, "Hey,

• 26:57Ryan Holiday?

  I want all this effort to stop." He says, "I do not consider that I have done anything which should be the reason of any award, congressional or otherwise. This does not mean that I do not appreciate what you and others have done, because I do appreciate the kind things that have been said in the proposal to have the award offered to me." But ultimately, the Medal of Honor was for heroism in battle, full stop, and he didn't want the rules bent for him. And I just think this stands out so much now, in this moment, where we have people making up awards to give to the president, where he's threatening to go to war with Europe because they didn't award him a Nobel Prize. What Truman is, is

• 27:37Ryan Holiday?

  a great reminder that decency is the best legacy, that it might not always be successful in the moment, but like with Rutilius Rufus, and Antoninus, and Agrippinus, it ages well. It stands the test of time.