Your Obligation Remains The Same | Why Did You Choose Stoicism?

Our job today and tomorrow is the same as it’s always been—to be good, to be wise, to stand up for what’s right, to resist what is wrong and evil. Nothing changes that. 🎟️https://www.dailystoiclive.com/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/ Boston, Massachusetts - November 16 https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0100648FA1C21706 Nashville, Tennessee - November 20 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daily-stoic-live-onstage-with-ryan-holiday-tickets-1991992836196?aff=oddtdtcreator Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - December 8 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daily-stoic-live-onstage-with-ryan-holiday-tickets-1987339339462?aff=oddtdtcreator Washington D. C. - December 9 https://www.unionstagepresents.com/shows/daily-stoic-live-09-dec 🎙️AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: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 athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:14Speaker 00

  Today, as the dust settles on the US election, you may find yourself glued to the TV screen or refreshing your social media feed. Even if you feel some relief, the truth is that none of us know how this will shake out. What does it all mean? You're not wrong to think about this, but you are mistaken if you think that what has happened, or what will happen, or who was elected, changes anything. This is not to argue that elections don't matter. They absolutely do, as we have said many times. It's, it's just that as a Stoic, nothing in an election changes what is asked or obligated of you. It doesn't matter if a tyrant or a philosopher king comes to power. It doesn't matter if you yourself are the person who comes to power. You are still expected to be good.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  You are still expected to be a person of virtue. "Whatever anyone does or says, for my part, I am bound to the good," Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations. "In the same way an emerald, or gold, or purple might always proclaim, 'Whatever anyone does or says, I must be what I am and show my true colors.'" Whatever happens in life, in world events, in politics, our job is our job, our duty is our duty. "How can anything stop you?" Marcus asks elsewhere in Meditations. "How does this stop you from acting with courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom?" So it went for Helvidius, a senator who we profile in Lives of the Stoics, when the Emperor Vespasian tried to stop him from criticizing him.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  "It is in your power not to allow me to be a member of the Senate," Helvidius replied, "but so long as I am, I must go in, and I must say what I think right. But if you do," Vespasian replied, "I shall put you to death." "You will do your part," Helvidius said with immense courage. "I will do mine." Our job today is the same as it's always been, and this is true tomorrow, too. Our job is to be good, to be wise, to stand up for what's right, to resist what is wrong and evil. Nothing changes that. Nothing exempts us from that. Nothing prevents us from doing that. The consequences and the costs and the stakes can change, but the obligation remains.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  The duty remains. So do it like a Stoic.

• 3:40Speaker 00

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• 4:24Speaker 00

  And it's been great. It goes right in the suitcase, easy to fold up. And, you know, ski season being here, you can gear up now the way locals do. Go to stio.com/stoic for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash stoic. S-T-I-O dot com slash stoic. Designed and tested in Jackson Hole. Today's sponsor is 80,000 Hours. You have 80,000 hours in your career. 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for 40 years. That's a lot of time. Your career is the biggest opportunity you have to make if you want to make a positive impact on the world. Because like, look, if you're a talented person, if you have talents, how you direct

• 5:07Speaker 00

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• 5:47Speaker 00

  And basically, what they're trying to do is help people have not just meaningful careers, but impactful careers. How to have positive impact on the world. And you can find all episodes of the 80,000 Hours Podcast over at 80000hours.org/stoic. That's eight zero zero zero zero hours dot org slash stoic.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Basically, my question is around the why. As I was starting my Stoicism journey, I struggled a lot with the discipline. You know, I liked the idea of it, but I didn't have this driving passion. And so that's when I, you know, looked into the why, the Simon Sinek talk about finding your why.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  I was recently acquainted with a special force operator, and they live life like it's their last, because it could be. And it was quite a life-changing, refreshing thing. A lot of us spend hundreds of dollars to have the same perspective and like life that they live, you know, without the PTSD, obviously. So I, through lots of practice, kind of figured out what my why was, which was peace. I want peace.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  I want peace. And I was curious to know if you've actually have a why, why you started Stoicism? What was your why in pursuing this philosophy?

• 7:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I do agree. Having, having a why makes the, the discipline easier or clearer. And I think the more sort of bigger the why is, the less the why is about you, the more motivating it ultimately can be. My personal sort of study of Stoicism is, I think, very much connected with, with why. A lot of people come to it wanting to sort of, you know, be at peace, as you said, be calm, not be sort of roiled by forces inside and out, to, to, to be directed, to be productive, to be, you know, all the sort of kind of self-mastery elements of it. And I think it's had a huge benefit in my life in that way.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Now, my, my sort of writing and speaking about Stoicism, I feel like my why there is I'm paying forward this thing that was sort of gifted to me, that I was, you know, had a chance exposure to 20 years ago, that sort of opened my eyes, that lit me up to this stuff. It was, I just was so excited and intrigued by it. And, and I do feel like one of the gifts of what I get to do is, is sort of to create that experience for other people. So that's like a big one for me is, is like, how am I paying forward this thing that, that I didn't invent, that, you know, was created thousands of years ago, but, but chanced into my life? And how do I pay that forward to other people?

• 8:35Speaker 00

  So that's, that's sort of the why of like Daily Stoic and, and the work that I do.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Hey, Ryan, my name's Logan. It's a great to finally meet you. I've been a longtime fan behind the screen.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Awesome. Thank you.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  For years now. But kind of piggybacking off of the insightful gentleman that just spoke was, I wondered if you had a specific moment in which you decided to dive into this? Or was it more of this magnanimous desire to contribute to your peers and those around you?

• 8:59Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I read it as a, as a 19-year-old, and it just kind of blew my mind. I was interested in it, and I, I loved it, and I was fascinated by it. And it, it set in motion, you know, this sort of process by which I was reading about it and talking to people about it. I had no idea it would, it would go in the direction that it did. You know, things look clear and obvious in retrospect, but in the moment, you're just sort of following your interests or following what, what excites you. I mean, it was many years between, you know, sort of my first exposure to the Stoics and the first book that I wrote about the Stoics, which I thought was probably going to be a one-off. This month is the 10-year anniversary of both the Daily Stoic book and Daily Stoic sort of website, the newsletter.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  When I, when I started that newsletter,

• 9:47Speaker 00

  You know, I had no idea, you know, 10 years later, it would go out to a million people all over the world every day. I don't think I could have possibly anticipated it, but I think, you know, you're just sort of following what, what excites you and is interesting to you and challenging to you. And, you know, sort of cumulatively, over a long period of time, that can turn into something really cool.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Hi, Ryan.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  Hi.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Wanted to ask whether there were any philosophers or philosophies outside of the Stoics, outside the classical world and outside of kind of the European tradition that you found particularly provocative or compelling.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Okay, that's kind of two things there. I would say many outside the Stoics are interesting to me, including Epicureanism, which is much closer to Stoicism than people think. Obviously Aristotle is interesting and Plato is interesting and Socrates is interesting. Diogenes is really interesting. I, I'm fascinated with all the sort of pre-Socratic and then post-Socratic philosophers. And I think the Stoics would urge us to, to read widely, you know. One of the interesting things that Gregory Hayes points out in, in his intro to Meditations is that nowhere does Marx really say that he is a Stoic. He certainly studies and speaks a lot about philosophy, but would he have ascribed to a singular school? We don't know. Can't ask him.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  But we can take a page from Seneca, who, who quotes Epicurus, probably more than any other philosopher. So I, uh, in the Western tradition, uh, read, have read very widely and, and sort of talk about all of them in the books. Outside the Western tradition, I'm still exploring and reading. You know, obviously in my book about stillness, I, I drew a lot from the Eastern tradition, which I think has, um, a bunch of interesting stuff there from, from Confucius to the Bhagavad Gita. What I love is when you find different philosophical schools sort of circling around the same ideas, even though they have no real connection.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Like if they came to the same idea independently, that's really interesting to me and really of value. So, uh, I'm always trying to read and always taking recommendations and then trying to pay those forward when they, when they excite me as well.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Hello, Ryan. How would you go about approaching, introducing Stoicism to somebody who seems to cause themselves a lot of suffering without having any real sense of awareness around it? Or perhaps at moments of breakthrough, they revert back to a victim mindset that inhibits them from having the agency and hence less suffering?

• 12:22Speaker 00

  That's a good question. Well, I'm supposed to do a thing tomorrow where I have to explain Stoicism to a group of five-year-olds. So I've been thinking about this. You know, to, to me, the core idea in Stoicism is that we don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens, that things outside us are objective, but our opinions about them are not, right? Epictetus says it's not things that upset us, it's our opinion about things. And I think when you talk to someone who's, who's sort of always either causing problems for themselves or always feels like they are dealing with problems, I think one of the things we can help them do is step back and, and get them to see, not so much how

• 13:03Speaker 00

  much these problems are their own creation, like it's their own fault, but how much the problem is based on their perception of there being a problem, right? That person insulted me, you know, I've been humiliated, I'm ruined. Like, these are not objective facts, these are interpretations, these are stories we're telling ourselves about something that happened. And I think what the Stoics are trying to get us to see is that, who's telling us that story? Sometimes it's society, sometimes it's other people, but a lot of times it's us. This is a totally self-contained thing here and we have decided to see it this way, which means we also have the ability to see it this way.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  And if we see it this way, if we tell ourselves this story, does it change how we respond to it? It doesn't change the thing itself, but it chooses, it, it changes how we might respond to it. And, and to me, that is like the core function of Stoic philosophy.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  I still have to figure out how I'm going to explain that to children, but.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Hello, Ryan. Yeah, I've been following you for a while, great fan. I want to change a little bit, talk about death, memento mori.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  You've interviewed a lot of people, uh, you know, been working on this death thing as well. What tools would you find useful for someone who's lost someone close, a son, daughter, brother, whatever?

• 14:31Speaker 00

  I think sometimes people hear the Stoics talking about memento mori, that, that life is short, you know, they, they, they hear the Stoics talking about mastering your emotions. So they, they take that to mean, well, a Stoic would just shrug off, you know, loss or pain, or, or be unsympathetic to someone who is struggling with those things. And we know this is not the case for many reasons, but, but the most obvious is that Seneca writes three essays that are called his consolations series. One of the consolations is to his mother after she's been exiled. She's basically mourning, but, you know, potentially the permanent loss of her son. And then he writes two essays to grieving, uh, children, one as a spouse, one as a child,

• 15:16Speaker 00

  of someone who just lost someone. And I think what's interesting about these essays is how patient and kind and understanding Seneca is. And he's sort of walking them through, just as I think Stoicism does best, of like what the assumptions underlying so much of the pain or the, the, the emotion they're feeling. Like in this, in this consolation, he's writing to a, a daughter who's mourning her father, you know, she's talking about how every time she thinks of her father, you know, she bursts into tears, she feels all this pain. And he says, you know, is that what your father would want? Like, obviously your father would want you to remember him, but would your father want his memory to be so painful to you that, that you break into tears every time you think about him? No, of course not.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  And so he's helping her sort of walk through how to think about this. He's, he's not saying that we just sort of quench our emotions, that we feel nothing, that we turn it all off. He's just like, how do you kind of think through this? And, and I, I think that's what the Stoics help us. I've, I've turned many people on to these essays over the years. I, I reread them myself whenever, you know, I, I have lost someone. I, I think to me, what Stoicism is, is not you feel nothing, but you try to go, hey, is me being debilitated by this thing? Is that who I want to be? Is that who they would want me to be? Is that, is that making anything better? Is it making me feel any better? And I, I just find those essays to be, you know, some of the most beautiful things I've,

• 16:44Speaker 00

  I've, I've ever read in, in my life, are very powerful. But, but certainly the Stoics would not, you know, just tell them to deal with it. In fact, we have another story about Marcus Aurelius. We have a lot of stories about Marcus Aurelius crying. I think it's worth pointing out. The supposedly Stoic emperor was, was not emotionless by any means. And, um, uh, he, he's brought news that, that one of his, his teachers has died and he breaks into tears and another, perhaps a Stoic in the emperor's court, you know, tries to sort of chide him for doing this. And Antoninus steps in and says, you know, let the boy be human for once. And, and so I, I, I think Stoicism is about sort of processing the emotion, understanding

• 17:27Speaker 00

  the emotion, and then ideally, uh, moving forward as opposed to being, you know, paralyzed or overrun by the emotion to, to the, you know, sort of point of, of degrading your quality of life. That's kind of how I think about it.

• 17:56Speaker 05

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work, around the work, and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.