We Must Beat Back The Mob | Where, Who, What and Why

Ryan talks about the high stakes of America’s political climate, the Stoic's responsibility to uphold justice, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. For a limited time, the Daily Stoic ebook is $1.99 in the US and UK this week only. We have a premium leather bound version available at dailystoic.com/leather. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  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. We must beat back the mob. The overthrow of the Roman Republic didn't just happen. It wasn't just Julius Caesar. It wasn't just one man's ambition that undid some 450 years' worth of work. As Mike Duncan writes in his fabulous book,

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  The Storm Before the Storm, and as we talked about our interview here on the Daily Stoic, which you can listen to, many events in the decades prior contributed to the Republic's fall. There was the crisis in 133 B.C. over a land redistribution bill, which escalated into an armed attack and the first political murder in the Republic's history. In 100 B.C., when it became clear that one leader was going to lose an election, his supporters stormed Capitoline Hill, murdered the man who won the consular vote, and barricaded themselves in the Capitol. And then, in the 80s B.C., troops formed factions, and Rome's first civil war broke out. The mob, then, to the Romans, symbolized the breakdown of their political order.

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  Political violence was something to be abhorred, to be feared, never to be tolerated. Cicero's greatest moment as a statesman came when he stared down the Catiline conspiracy. Just as 2,000 years later, two of George Washington's greatest moments, when he nipped the Newburgh conspiracy in the bud and then put down Shay's Rebellion. Lincoln would give one of his best speeches before the Civil War, warning against the rise of mobocratic spirit, which had infected both the South and the North alike. It would have been no surprise then to anyone paying attention, at least, that Lincoln had no tolerance for the slave owners who, having lost a legitimate election, attempted to overthrow the US government by force and violence.

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  If you are in the United States, you are listening today to a message on a date that will forever live in infamy, January 6th, the day that armed insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol, smearing the Temple of Democracy with feces and blood, wearing clothes that celebrated the Holocaust, waving the Confederate flag, a banner of traitors to freedom and traitors of flesh, looking to murder elected officials in an attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power. One Republican congressman, a student of Stoicism, who has appeared on the Daily Stoic Podcast no less, was trapped in his office where he broadcast live on social

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  media a plea to the then-president of the United States, Donald Trump, to call his goons off. A plea we have recently learned that was also made by some of his staunchest supporters in the media, even members of his own family. Instead, Trump called his supporters very special, and thus, the push into the Capitol Rotunda gained force. This happened. It was very terribly real, and it cannot be denied or forgotten. Sadly, that was not the only event of political violence we have seen in recent years. Gangs have beaten up peaceful protesters. Protesters have turned into rioters, looting and burning private property. People

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  have brandished weapons at protests. Maniacs have driven cars into crowds of people they disagreed with. Covid deniers attempted to kidnap the governor of Michigan. A GOP lawmaker in Oregon knowingly let far-right demonstrators breach the Oregon Capitol. Extreme groups, be they Antifa or the Proud Boys, now look forward to heading into cities in anticipation of verdicts or news events to bring mayhem and destruction. There is no question that there is much at stake politically in America and all over the world. There is no question that factions on both sides, pretty much every issue, have been polarized and radicalized and set at each other's throats in the struggle for the soul of the world that both sides

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  view in black and white terms. But as citizens, as decent human beings, as lovers of justice, we cannot tolerate, rationalize, excuse, or accept this sort of political violence. We cannot cater to or join with the mob. Chrysippus, an early Stoic, said that the whole point of being a philosopher was to separate yourself from the mob. It was to be above chaos and destruction, to appeal to and to demonstrate, as Lincoln said, "the better angels of our rational and civic nature." Cato worshipped and even died protecting the moors and traditions of the Republic, the very same norms that were shattered in the decades leading up to Julius Caesar's

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  rise, and whose brittleness and precariousness were easily exploited as the Republic crumbled and tumbled into empire. Those old ways that Cato fought for, they must be similarly protected in America and wherever you live. The peaceful transition of political power today is both the most important of those old ways and the most under threat by the mob. As philosophers, and citizens, and politicians, it is our job to stand for the former and beat back the latter. And anyone that violates this, or any of its related principles, deserves

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  the most ancient of civil punishments: not cancellation, but permanent exile. Where, Who, What, and Why? This is from today's, I'm actually holding it right now, this is the leather-bound edition of The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which, if you hadn't heard, I think only one more day, is $1.99 on Amazon, or wherever you get your eBooks right now in the US, so that's exciting. But let's open with today's quote from meditation. "A person who doesn't know what the universe is, doesn't know where they are. A person

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  who doesn't know their purpose in life doesn't know who they are or what the universe is. A person who doesn't know any of these things doesn't know why they are here. So what should we make of people who seek or avoid the praise of those who have no knowledge of where or who they are?" That's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 852.

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  The late comedian Mitch Hedberg had a funny story he told in his act. Sitting down for an on-air interview, a radio DJ asked him, "So, who are you?" In that moment, Hedberg had to think, "Sky really deep? Or did I drive to the wrong station?" How often are we asked a simple question like, "Who are you? What do you do? Where are you from?" And we consider it a superficial question, if we consider it at all. We don't bother with much more than a superficial answer. But, gun to their head, most people couldn't give much in the way of a substantive answer. Could you? Have you taken the time to get clarity about who you are? What you stand for? Or are you too busy chasing unimportant things? Mimicking the wrong influences?

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  And following disappointing or unfulfilling or nonexistent paths? This idea of not knowing who you are, or where you come from, or what you stand for, I think this is, you know, a huge problem. Obviously, one of the things I have, I have this taped on my computer screen. It's actually from one of the Daily Stoic challenges like several years ago. But, one of my favorite passages in Meditations, Marcus realist, gives some epithets for the self. These are like rules for who he is, sort of virtues he's trying to abide by. These are in addition, I think, obviously, to the four virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. But Marcus has his list, I have my list.

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  I put honest, calm, fair, father, brave, generous, still. And so, the idea is like, that's who I want to be. That's what I'm trying to become. And so, that's how I sort of see the world. And so, if you don't know who you are, where you come from, what the world is, what matters, what makes the world operate, you're sort of spinning. If you're familiar... With Plato's allegory of the cave, right? It's this idea that people are chained down in a cave. They can only see these shadows in the wall. So they think the world is shadows. I think that's unfortunately how a lot of people are.

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  Not only do they think things are shadows, but then you could, you could say they're chasing ghosts. They, they, they don't know who they are. They don't know what anything is. They've got this skewed, artificial, circumscribed understanding of reality. And then of course they make bad decisions, right? Of course they follow the wrong things. Of course they get off track. And so you've got to know that. And so as you start off this year, I want you to think a little bit about that. Who, where do you come from? Not like just literally, that's not that interesting. But like, what tradition are you hailing from? Like, what is the universe? How does things, how do you explain how things work? Why they work, right? Who are you? What do you stand for? What are you trying to be, right?

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  You've got to answer that question. But then I think there's another key part of this quote that honestly, I feel like I missed the first couple of times I read it. Marcus is saying, "So what do we make of people who seek and avoid the praise of those who have no knowledge of where or who they are?" This is the other part. When you don't know who you are, when you don't know what you stand for, when you don't know how things work, you are really susceptible or vulnerable to charlatans, to misinformation, to disinformation, to, to the wrong influences, the wrong people, false idols, false gods, et cetera. Right?

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  So he, he's, I think he's expressing a certain amount of sympathy or at least understanding. These are people, they don't know how the world works. They don't know who they are. They don't know where they're from. And so of course they follow the wrong leader. Of course they follow the wrong ideals. Of course they put the wrong things first. They don't know any better. They're, they're, they are helpless. Their compass is broken and that's not a good place to be. So, uh, who are you? What do you stand for? What matters? That's the message today. Really think about it, right? Don't have the glib answers. Don't have the literal answers to these questions. Try to get to the bottom of it. Try to really understand. It makes an enormous difference.

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  You might say it makes all the difference in the world. Talk to you next week. 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. Just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.