Don’t Wake Up and Choose Violence | No Self-Flagellation Needed

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1:59Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from The Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

2:40Don't wake up and choose violence. People say they want things to be calm. They want things to be easy. They claim to want success. They hate stress. But look at their choices. Look at your own choices. Do we really mean it? In one of his letters, Seneca talks about people who plunge headlong into the middle of the flood, referring to people whose lives are filled with the needless trauma and conflict, the busyness and chaos. Sure, a Stoic should be able to endure difficult circumstances in a turbulent life, but they would never choose that. No, the wise man, he says, chooses to be at peace rather than at war.

3:15Think of Elon Musk, who we have talked about a lot before and happens to follow Daily Stoic on Twitter. This is a guy with a lot going on. He's got a lot of important work, yet he wakes up most mornings and, as the kids say, chooses violence. He picks fights on social media. He inserts himself into culture war issues. He makes strange decisions in his personal life. If you read Walter Isaacson's fascinating and often horrifying biography of Elon, you get the sense that he simply cannot be at peace and instead chooses the storm, chooses chaos and violence because it's less scary to him than being with his own thoughts or even enjoying his own success.

3:53Sure, he's very rich, but the Stoics would have seen this all as very tragic. We don't need to judge. We should just try to find a better way to do it in our own lives. Each of us needlessly chooses violence in our own way. All of us find ways to plunge headlong into the middle of the flood because we think we're supposed to, because we don't have the discipline to stay focused on what's essential. And this costs us. It costs us money and happiness. It burns us out. It burns other people out. And it is no way to live.

4:34No self-flagellation needed. This is the June 28th entry in the Daily Stoic, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. It's crazy to me that this book is eight plus years old, and it's done when it's done. I don't know what I thought it would do, but it's been so cool to see Stoicism become popular as a result of this. I think it's on the most read list on Amazon right now. It's just been a really cool experience, and I like to bring you an entry once a week. And so today's quote is from Seneca's Letters 5. Seneca says, philosophy calls for simple living, but not penance.

5:11It's quite possible to be simple without being crude. Marcus Aurelius' meditations are filled with self-criticisms, and so are the writings of the other Stoics. It's important to remember, however, that that's as far as it goes. There was no self-flagellation, no paying penance, no self-esteem issues from guilt or self-loathing. You never hear themselves call themselves a piece of crap, nor do they ever starve themselves or cut themselves as punishment. Their self-criticism was constructive. Laying into yourself, unduly depriving yourself, punishing yourself, that's self-flagellation and not self-improvement.

5:49No need to be too hard on yourself. Hold yourself to a higher standard, not an impossible one. And forgive yourself if and when you screw up. I'll say this as a bit of self-criticism. It's been interesting. As I said, the book came out eight years ago. So I've obviously been studying and learning a lot about stoicism since. And so one of the weird parts about reading this book back out loud to you guys is I see things that I wish I would have done differently or that I would have included or that I did know, but for whatever reason, I didn't make the connection to the time I should have put in there.

6:19There's a wonderful story about an early Stoic named Cleanthes, who's the successor to Zeno, that I should have known because I'd read Diogenes Laertes, and I don't know why I didn't include this story in that entry, because it goes so well with that quote. Cleanthes is walking through the streets of Athens, and he hears a man talking very rudely to himself, like, you know, piece of garbage, what'd you do? It's just sort of, as sometimes we all do when we screw up, that sort of negative self-talk, although most of the time it's silent. In this case, he heard it, and the man was saying it out loud.

6:49and Clientes stopped him and he said, hey, I want you to know you're not talking to a bad man. And to me, that captures this idea. Stoicism is strict with ourselves, tolerant with others, as Marcus Aurelius says, but not so strict with ourselves that we're being abusive, because who does that serve? I think what you see in meditations is, yes, Marcus Aurelius is strict and firm with himself, but he's also building himself up. There's as much positive self-talk as there is negative self-talk. And I think it's worth noting, Marcus was writing post the rise of Christianity. Seneca is writing around the same time as the rise of Christianity.

7:25He's born the same year as Christ. They would have been aware of that burgeoning Christian tradition, the idea of original sin, self-flagellation, the idea of abusing oneself literally or physically because one is not perfect, because one has sinned, because one is trying to redeem themselves. I think the Stoics are implicitly pushing back on that. They're saying that isn't the way. The gods don't want that. You don't deserve that. That doesn't help anyone or anything. And I think that reminder is important all these thousands of years later. You're not talking to a bad person. You're not a bad person.

8:06You may have made up, you know, as they say in Christianity, hate the sin, love the sinner. that applies to yourself too. And we should be nice to ourselves. We should be kind to ourselves. There's a strictness to stoicism or treating the body rigorously, as Seneca said. But he meant that in terms of like pushing yourself on a walk or a run, trying to lift something heavy, trying to do a little bit more than you can. He wasn't saying you drive yourself into the dirt. He wasn't saying you whip yourself or you pinch yourself or you hit yourself or you talk rudely or meanly to yourself because you're not a bad person and you don't deserve that.

8:40And I think it's important that we credit the Stoics with this, that it is a stern philosophy, but not too stern. There's a kindness and a softness to it, especially with regards to ourselves in there. And that's my message today. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you all soon.

8:58Thanks 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 slash email.

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