5 Stoic Tips for Handling Rude People

0:04Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

0:43Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Obviously, I wrote the obstacles away about this idea of how do we turn difficulties to our advantage. But if you notice, if you look at the intro of that book, the quote, right, there's an ellipses in there. I sort of took out a piece of it to make it more general than maybe a closer reading. I make it seem. So when Mark Cerullus is talking about obstacles and difficulties, do you know what he's talking about? He's talking about rude people. He's talking about difficult people. And that's what I wanted to do a deep dive into in today's episode.

1:22But it is a constant throughout life. Jerks, assholes, rude people, people who don't understand social cues, people who attack you, unfairly criticize you, cause problems for you, people who like chaos, people who are cruel. This is just a fact of existence. And it was true in Marx's time, and it's true in our time. time. And in today's episode, we're going to take something that we put together on the Daily Stoic website. We do these sort of deep dive articles. We did one on some Stoic tips for handling rude people. It's put together by the Daily Stoic team. And then this is narrated by Kat Pichik.

2:08If it resonates with you, pass it along to a friend or a family member who's got a rude boss in their life, who's dealing with a jerk of a neighbor, who's dealing with a contractor. You know, we've been going through something like that in our house, and we're just trying to remember it's an opportunity. We don't have to let it get to us. Can't let it change us. Can't let it suck up too much of our mental bandwidth. We just got to stay focused. We just got to do our job. And hopefully this deep dive will help you do that and help you deal with some rude people in your life. Enjoy. Right.

2:45Five stoic tips for handling rude people. Today, the name Karen has rapidly become the catch-all term for unhinged, incredibly rude people. The person who calls the manager on a waiter for messing up an order. The person who screams at a person in the street for something menial and unimportant. And while this terrible behavior may well be on the rise, documented in its ubiquity through smartphones, Reality is that rude people have always been with us. In Lives of the Stoics, we mention the famous Nero, often referred to as the worst of the Roman emperors in antiquity. By the end of Nero's reign, he had ordered the death of his mother, murdered his wife, according to some accounts, his second wife as well, and even one of the Stoic pillars, Seneca.

3:33Nero was the embodiment of evil. Now, the people we come across on a daily basis may not reach Nero's level of evil, but they are little tyrants themselves, seeking to control the uncontrollable and bend the world to their own sopolistic worldview. Is a world without these people possible? Perhaps. Likely, not in our lifetimes. So the question is, how do we deal with them without compromising our character? Below, we answer that question with five stoic tips for dealing with the worst kind of people. Give people the benefit of the doubt. I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own.

4:23Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius, who theoretically had the power to ban rude people from his presence, kicked off each day instead by preparing for them, reminding himself that his fellow humans were often selfish, rude, and annoying. The point was to not let it catch him by surprise, so he would be indignant and shocked by it. But there is another part of the exercise, spending a few seconds trying to understand and sympathize with the people who behave this way. As David Foster Wallace would say in his famous This is Water speech, we want to avoid the immediate and unconscious impulse to take people's rudeness personally.

5:03We want to avoid the assumption that they are trying to hurt us, that they mean to act so selfishly. Most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating red tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness.

5:41Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know that there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-held type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred. On fire with the same force that made the stars. Love. Fellowship.

6:19The mystical oneness of all things, deep down. Think of that when you're stuck in the checkout line today. Or when you're caught in traffic. Or when someone does something that really pisses you off that makes you think, what's wrong with this person? You have no idea what their reality is. You have no idea what they've been through. And how much more empathetic and patient might you be if you did? Or better, if you gave them every benefit of the doubt.

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9:54This is the best revenge. You don't have to turn this into something. It doesn't have to upset you. Things can't shape our decisions by themselves. Marcus Aurelius. We do not want to give you the impression here that a Stoic merely accepts everything in life. The Stoics were not passive weaklings. They just knew how absurd the need to get even is. Best to take the opposite course, Seneca wrote. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog? When someone hurts us or pisses us off, that's exactly what we do. That's why when someone insulted Cato, he pretended not to hear it.

10:40When someone said something offensive to Epictetus, he told himself that if he got upset, he was as much to blame as they were. He also joked that if they really knew him, they'd be even more critical. When someone attacked Marcus Aurelius' character, he reminded himself, the best revenge is to not be like that. And that's what you must remind yourself also. You don't have to have an opinion. You don't have to turn things into bigger things. You don't have to be like that. Step outside of yourself. Think of substance in its entirety, of which you have the smallest of shares, and of time in its entirety, of which a brief and momentary span has been assigned to you, and of the works of destiny, and how very small is your part in them.

11:32Marcus Aurelius We have all fallen victim to the heat of the moment. Someone cuts us off on the freeway, or speaks to us rudely, or is simply unpleasant to be around. In these moments, we become so irritated and so emotional that it's hard to recognize ourselves in the mirror. We become someone else entirely, consumed with the belief that we've been wronged in some way. In these situations, it's helpful to zoom out, to take the view from above, as Marcus Aurelius wrote. The stoic principle of sympathia is our best friend in dealing with unpleasant people. It's the idea of seeing the bigger picture.

12:13In the heat of the moment, when faced with a rude person, there's this compulsion to get even or to put someone in their place. But this isn't us talking, it's our inflated sense of self-importance. and it's not worth damaging our character. Strive to be indifferent. To live a good life, we have the potential for it if we learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. Marcus Aurelius Emotions are powerful. There is a reason why most of us tend to give in to them. But the price we pay for stooping down to another person's level is far greater than if we learned to control ourselves. We always talk about control in Stoicism, and it is almost always in relation to controlling ourselves rather than other people.

13:06In Lives of the Stoics, we told the origin story of Zeno, the founder of the great philosophy we practice today. Zeno began his study of philosophy as a young man, under the famous cynic Crates. The story goes that after Zeno endured a nearly fatal shipwreck, he wandered through the city of Athens with a great deal of anxiety. He was constantly worried about what others thought of him, and Crates knew just how to fix that. One day, Crates asked Zeno to carry a clay pot full of lentil soup through the busy crowds in the potter's district. Zeno was worried about standing out and tried to conceal the pot underneath his cloak.

13:45Crates took notice and promptly walked up to Zeno, smashed the pot of soup with his staff, and watched as it splattered all of Zeno's cloak and undergarments. Courage, my little Phoenician, said Crates. It's only a little soup. Seneca would say that it's obviously better to be rich than poor, tall than short, but the Stoic was indifferent when fate actually dealt out its hand on the matter. Because the Stoic was strong enough to make good of whatever is thrown their way. This has to be top of mind whenever we deal with people. Expectations that people will always treat us with respect will inevitably lead to disappointment.

14:24Instead, we ought to prepare ourselves for reality. We should choose each day, as Marcus once said, to be unharmed. So as long as we remain indifferent to what others say, we can't be. Accept that rude people are inescapable. When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. Marcus Aurelius It's remarkable to think that even as an emperor, Marcus dealt with rude and arrogant people. It illustrates the most important point of all, that rude people have always existed, and they are everywhere. So you have to ask yourself, Marcus wrote, is a world without shameless or stupid or mean or insensitive people possible?

15:20No, of course not. Then don't ask the impossible, he says. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members. The bottom line is, we have to accept that there will always be unpleasant people. We have to take the high road and respond to rudeness with indifference and empathy. How hurt must someone be to inflict rudeness on another? How insecure are they to belittle or insult someone whom they do not know? This is the mindset we must adopt.

16:07Anything else, getting even, getting angry, or getting physical, it only makes the world a worse place. As Stoics, we're charged with doing the opposite. What it comes down to is remembering that you have a choice. Every event has two handles, Epictetus said. One by which it can be carried, and one by which it can't. If your brother does you wrong, don't grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other, that he is your brother, and that you were raised together, and then you will have a hold of the handle that carries. So now you know there are always two handles.

16:51Which one will you choose to grab?

16:56Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.

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