Honesty Without Tact is Cruelty

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$149 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$299 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

0:37Everything they sell has high standards to help you shop with confidence. Enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market.

0:50Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

1:41Honesty without tact is cruelty. They rejected pointless convention. They spoke hard truths. They weren't afraid of being punished. They didn't fear power. The Stoics said what needed to be said. Hailing from the cynic tradition, as we talked about recently, the Stoics had that dog in them. But they weren't jerks. Not on purpose, anyway. It's one of the things Marcus Aurelius admired about Antoninus, his social graces. The way, Marcus writes, he never exhibited rudeness, lost control of himself, or turned violent. The ability to feel at ease with people and put them at their ease. Last year, we did a deep dive into this topic in our masterclass about philosophy.

2:26One of the experts we talked to, Dr. Jennifer Baker, had a great line. Honesty without tact, she said, is cruelty. She was talking about the importance of how our words land with other people and not using bluntness as an excuse to inflict harm. By taking our time, by practicing empathy, by understanding that not everyone appreciates candor in the same way, we're able to effectively communicate. We can say what needs to be said without being gratuitous. Did the Stoics always get this right? No. The record records some pretty biting and sarcastic remarks. Generally, though, they tried to speak with tact and kindness.

3:09They tried to act with grace and poise. because courage without compassion isn't virtue. It's vanity. The Stoic ideal is not just to be brave, but to be good. And that means telling the truth in a way it can be heard.

3:37Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you an ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad-free.

4:24No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium. And we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.