You Will Need This In Every Situation | Plato's View

Ryan talks about the importance of the four virtues, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day. The Four Virtues Pendant design, custom to Daily Stoic, was hand-sketched by Lewis Williams, an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. The mixed-metal pendants are handmade by Williams, who uses the ancient processes of carving into the wax and casting into brass and sterling silver and then sawing, engraving, hammering & soldering the metals with precision and care. Each pendant comes with a 24" sterling silver chain and is handcrafted using traditional techniques and only the finest materials. The front of the pendant features a custom-designed seal with four elements representing the Four Virtues: a lion (Courage), a man sprinkling water into a jug of wine (Temperance), a set of scales (Justice), and an owl (Wisdom). On the back, it says, “Acta Non Verba,” which is Latin for, “Actions, not words.” Learn more and get yours here! If you or someone you know is in a mental health crisis and you live in the USA, please call 1-800-273-8255 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline today. You can also text 741741 for help in a crisis. Kion Aminos is backed by over 20 years of clinical research, has the highest quality ingredients, no fillers or junk, undergoes rigorous quality testing, and tastes amazing with all-natural flavors. Go to getkion.com/dailystoic to save 20% on subscriptions and 10% on one-time purchases. 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.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Bienvenidos a otro episodio del podcast Daily Stoic. El jueves hacemos doble trabajo, no solo leyendo nuestra meditación diaria, sino también leyendo un pasaje del libro The Daily Stoic, 366 meditaciones sobre sabiduría, perseverancia y la arte de la vida, que escribí con mi maravillosa coautora y colaborador, Stephen Hanselman. Así que hoy os daremos una rápida meditación de uno de los estoicos, de Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, y luego mi análisis. Y luego os enviamos al mundo para hacer lo mejor posible para convertir estas palabras en obras. Usarás esto en cada situación. Has sido promovido, has recibido terrible noticias,

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  has sido cortado en el tráfico, has llegado al ganador en el tiempo de juego, has sido cancelado en una cadena de correo para encontrar a tu compañero de trabajo, estás siendo llevado por el autobús, tu hijo se le ha deshazido el jugo de naranja, tu esposa se le ha deshazido la puerta de su auto y ha dentado la tuya. rico o pobre, emperador o esclavo, no importa la situación, hay un imperativo universal e inconstante: virtud. No hay situación que no llame a uno o más de los cuatro virtudes: coraje, temor, justicia, sabiduría. Te mira en la cara, Marcus Aurelius escribió, "No hay una virtud tan adecuada para la filosofía como la que estás en el momento actual".

• 1:32Speaker 00

  Como hemos dicho recientemente, esas cuatro virtudes nos guían como cuatro puntos principales en un cuadrado. Te miran en la cara. También podemos decir que ninguna situación es tan adecuada para uno o todos los cuatro virtudes. La noción estoica de virtud es radicalmente diferente y más accesible que la versión de la mano que la gente parece que la virtud representa. No es algo que exigen de otros, no es un estándar que se pasan las leyes o la policía, es algo que exigen de ustedes mismos, es algo que hacen. Es algo que usan todos los días, momento a momento. Es algo que guía las elecciones que toman y las acciones que toman. Es algo que elegimos nosotros, no una vez, es un desafío diario,

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  uno que enfrentamos no una vez, sino constantemente, repetidamente. Will we be selfish or selfless, brave or afraid, strong or weak, wise or stupid? Will we cultivate a good habit or a bad one, courage or cowardice? The bliss of ignorance or the challenge of a new idea? I think about virtue a lot. Obviously, I try to find ways of reminding myself of it, too. And that's why we created this Daily Stoic Four Virtues Pendant. We've had the challenge coin for a long time, but I wanted to make a pendant that you could wear, not unlike a compass, to guide you through life. The front of the Four Virtues Pendant has the Daily Stoic seal on it. Each of the four quadrants on it representing the four virtues: a lion for courage, a man

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  sprinkling water into a jug of wine that's temperance, a set of scales, justice, and an owl, wisdom. And on the back, it says "Acta non verba," which is Latin for actions, not words. This design, which was custom for us here at Daily Stoic, was hand-sketched by Lewis Williams, an artist based in Brooklyn. And the mixed metal pendants that we settled on were handmade by Williams. He uses this ancient process of carving it into wax and then casting it with brass and sterling silver, and then sawing and engraving and hammering and soldering the metals with precision and care. It's really, really cool. Each pendant comes with a 24-inch sterling silver chain, handcrafted using traditional techniques and the finest materials.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  You can head over to dailystoic.com/virtuespendant to get yours, to wear, to feel its weight, and hopefully to help you remember virtues courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom in any and every situation. You can check out a link in today's episode, or again, just go over to dailystoic.com/virtuespendant. Plato's view. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic, "366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living," by yours truly and my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store. Over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it spend more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks, on the bestseller. It's just an awesome experience, but I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoic.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. "How beautifully Plato put it," Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations 748. "Whenever you want to talk about people, it's best to take a bird's eye view and see everything all at once of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings, and divorces, births, and deaths, noisy courtrooms, or silent spaces. Every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets, all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites."

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  And actually, let me give you the Hayes one today, too, because if I recall correctly, he renders this quite beautifully. "Plato has it right. If you want to talk about people, you need to look down on the earth from above. Herds, and armies, farms, and weddings, divorces, births, deaths, noisy courtrooms, desert places, all the foreign peoples, holidays, days of mourning, market days, all mixed together. A harmony of opposites." And there's actually a beautiful dialogue by the poet Lucian, who is Seneca's nephew, I believe, in which the narrator is given the ability to fly and see the world from above. Turning his eyes earthward, he sees how comically small even the richest people,

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  the biggest estates, the entire empire and entire empires look from above. All their battles and concerns are made petty in perspective. In ancient times, this exercise was only theoretical. The highest that anyone could get was the top of a mountain or a building a few stories tall. But as technology has progressed, humans have been able to actually take that bird's eye view and greater. Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut, was one of the first people to see the earth from outer space. And as he later recounted, "In outer space, you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks

• 6:31Speaker 00

  so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles away and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.'" And then I add, many a problem can be solved with the perspective of Plato's view. Use it. I'm about to, you know, I just got off a plane. I'm getting on a plane again shortly. And, you know, you look out the window and you see, and sometimes when I fly into Austin, I can actually see where I live. And, you know, forty acres, suddenly, very small. A thousand acres, very small. The Tesla factory, one of the biggest buildings I've ever seen in my life, very small. Skyscrapers, very small. People, miniscule.

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  I think what Edgar Mitchell is talking about is a sort of paradox of it. Everything seems very small, but everything also seems very connected. Right? And so wars and international boundaries, these all seem, you know, so insignificant, such artificial and petty distinctions. I was telling you, I was recently down in Big Bend National Park and, right, you look over this vast expanse and it humbles you in that sense. And then also you're like, here is the United States, here is Mexico, here is the United States, here is Mexico. You're walking on the one side of the river and then it's just a, and we don't have to get into some complicated discussion about immigration, but it's just a reminder, it's like how arbitrary.

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  Someone born over here gets this kind of life, someone born on this side gets this kind of life. And, and they'll shoot you if you, if you come across the border with this intention, but me splashing around in the water with my kids, that's totally fine. Right? You realize that all these things we take very seriously are not that serious. And what matters, I think Marcus is saying, when you take Plato's view is like our connection to other people, our obligations as human beings, being good, being decent. You know, Alexander the Great's empire looks very enormous and significant and powerful and important up close, but zoom out, it doesn't seem that different than anything else.

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  And the immensity of the damage that he did in creating it suddenly comes into view as well. So Plato's view is about getting perspective and it's, it's a reminder that our technology helps give us that view.

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  And that we should appreciate. I know if you ever watched the Daily Stoic videos, sometimes we use drone shots and it's been fun to learn how to fly this drone. But this drone has also expanded my perspective. It's allowed me to see things, even myself, right? From different angles. I never saw what I looked like running from 30 meters above me. Right? I haven't seen what the angle of the road that I like to run on looks like that way. And it helps you appreciate things differently. It gives you that bird's eye view. And I think it's really important. I think time lapses can do this too. Of course, just sitting there and looking at it, climbing up to a high spot. Looking at the stars can give you this too.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  But the Stoics were trying to humble themselves. They were trying to get perspective. They were trying to remember our obligations and connections to other people. They were trying, as Annie Duke says, to get to the outside of their problems, outside of the insularity of their viewpoint and their urges and their desires and their emotional reactions. And I just think it's so important. And please do avail yourself of that knowledge. It's very powerful and important, as Marcus says, as Plato does, as Lucian does. And I'll leave that with you now to chew on for the rest of the day.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com/email.