How To Create Change | Made For Working Together

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1:43Welcome 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.

2:23How to create change. Rosa Parks wasn't just some lady who happened to make a stand on a bus one day. She was trained. She had attended NAACP meetings for years. She had gone to the Highlander Folk School, which cultivated a generation of activists. In his fascinating book, Waging a Good War, Tom Ricks, who has a must-listen-to episode on the Daily Stoic podcast, he explains that each Highlander training session of one or two weeks began with a strategic question. What do you want to do, they asked, and then it ended with a tactical discussion of how to reach that outcome. What are you going to do?

3:00Rosa Parks took pages of notes during her training. Friends would remark how much gutsier and confident she was after she left. And when that fateful day came, when the bus driver said, all of you make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats, she was ready. She knew what she wanted, which was equality and respect. And when the police officers came, she knew what she was going to do. She would go to jail over it. The woman met the moment exactly as Epictetus said, we must be able to meet it with the reply, this is what I trained for. One mistake that we make when we're looking back at these activists is focusing only on the moral legitimacy of their grievances, accepting almost as a given that they would triumph because they deserved to triumph.

3:44As we discussed on a more recent episode of the Daily Stoke podcast with Professor Jennifer Baker, in fact, it was the incredible discipline and training of the civil rights activists that allowed them to win. Most people simply did not agree at the time that Blacks were equal, that the laws that tyrannized them were unjust, that they were capable of changing their place in society. It was only through moments of great bravery and poise and restraint, like Parks' stand on the bus or the defiance of the Freedom Riders, that they were able to make this case public time and time again. Despite beatings and fire hoses, illegitimate arrests and barbaric bombings, they never deviated from their training.

4:24Their courage and temperance as it happens was what made the most compelling argument for justice. Rosa Parks wasn't born with the courage and discipline to stand up for herself on that bus in December 1955. She prepared herself to respond to the unfairness with calmness and clarity. So if you find yourself facing unfairness, bad news, or just plain bad luck, you must remember you trained for this.

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6:29made for working together. This is today's entry, July 21st in the Daily Stoic. And the quote comes to us from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 812. Whenever you have trouble getting up in the morning, remind yourself that you have been made by nature for the purpose of working with others. Whereas even unthinking animals share sleeping, and it's our own natural purpose that is more fitting and satisfying. If a dog spends all day in bed, your bed most likely, that's fine. It's just being a dog. It doesn't have anywhere to be, no other obligations other than being itself. But according to the Stoics, we have a higher obligation as humans, not to the gods, but to each other.

7:10What gets us out of bed each morning, even if we fight it like Marcus sometimes did, It is to render works held in common. Civilization and country are great projects we build together and have been building together with our ancestors for millennia. We are made for cooperation with each other. So if you need an extra boost to get out of bed this morning, if you need something more than caffeine can offer, use this. People are depending on you. Your purpose is to help us render this great work together. and we're waiting and we're excited for you to show up. Let's look at the Hayes translation of that real quick.

7:49Hayes says, as part of 812, Hayes says, so when you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that you're defining characteristic. What defines a human being is to work with others. Even animals know how to sleep and it's the characteristic activity that's the more natural one, more innate, and more satisfying. And then let's look at the great Robin Waterfield translation in his annotated edition, which I highly recommend and enjoy quite a bit. You pull up 812. He says, whenever you find it difficult to wake up, remind yourself that doing socially useful work is proper to your constitution and your humanity, while sleeping is something you share with irrational animals as well.

8:32And anything that's proper to an individual's nature has a greater affinity to him and is second nature to him, and moreover is more refreshing. I love that. So when the Stoics talk about politics, I don't think they always mean running for office. And when they talk about the common good, I don't think they necessarily always mean charity. They mean socially useful work. Are you contributing to society? Are you making the world a better place. There's a sign over on this track that I like to run on that was put up by Hollywood Henderson. I think I've said this story before, but he put up a sign that says, leave this place better than you found it.

9:13And I think that's a great rule for life. It's interesting though, to me, and Marcus talks a lot about struggling to get out of bed in the morning. It's clearly a common theme. And then he also talks a lot about working with difficult people. So maybe the difficult people are like, oh, I got to go do this again. He was an introvert. He preferred philosophy, preferred ideas to people necessarily, but he knew that it was inescapable, that as a human being, as a philosopher, as a leader, as a politician, his job was to work with these difficult people, to find a way to contribute, to find a way to make them better, to find a way to put them to productive or socially useful ends.

9:55And that's what we have to remember today. Obviously, you're up or you wouldn't be listening to this, but how are you going to provide socially useful work today? How are you going to make do with difficult people? How are you going to put up with them, as Marcus Aurelius says? We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, that even the famous obstacle is the way passage is about that, is about dealing with the people who obstruct us and annoy us and frustrate us and finding a way to make a positive contribution to the world in spite of, with, through, because of them, for them. That's what we're here for.

10:35That's the work that we're here for. That's our purpose. Animals can sleep around. Maybe some people aren't going to seize that potential, but that's their call. We're not going to reject the opportunity. We're going to take advantage of it. We're going to make a positive contribution, a socially useful contribution, big or small. You don't have to be Winston Churchill or Gandhi to make the world a little better, to leave this place a little better than you found it. Be nice to someone. Write something. Help someone. Teach your kids something. Pick up trash that you see by the side of the road.

11:12Vote, right? Contribute to a cause. Donate time. whatever it is, do some socially useful work today, make a positive contribution, and realize that this is what you got out of bed for, this is what you were put here for, this is the work of a human being, the Stokes would say. So go to it, seize it, love it, appreciate it, fucking crush it, man. That's my message for today. I wish you all the best. Talk soon.

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