It’s All In How You See It | Judge Yourself Not Others

0:00I'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine which is I take them over to Whole Foods. and we get all our groceries for the week. Then we have dinner. It's one of their favorite things to do. It's one of my favorite things to do. And then my wife loves it because she doesn't have to take care of it. This holiday season, whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner Whole Foods Market has what you need to delight everyone at your table. They even have heat and eat sides from the prepared foods department. You can make Whole Foods your one-stop shop. Everything follows Whole Foods Market's strict ingredients standards so you know it'll be delicious and good for you.

0:33You can also order online for pickup and even delivery in select zip codes to skip the crowds. Shop everything you need at Whole Foods Market, your holiday headquarters. You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact.

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1:48And if this is your first gift through GiveWell, you can have your donation matched up to$100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to givewell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under Podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from The Daily Stoic, and you'll get your donation matched. That's givewell.org. Code The Daily Stoic to donate or find out more. Welcome to The Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do.

2:27and at the beginning of the week we try to do a deeper dive setting a kind of stoic intention for the week something to meditate on something to think on something to leave you with to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing so let's get into it what's left to value this in my opinion, acting or refraining from action as dictated by the way we're made. And here, our occupations and crafts show the way, since it's the aim of every craft that what it makes should fit the purpose for which it was made. And what else is it that tutors and teachers strive for? So that's where value lies.

3:13And if just this one thing goes well, you won't be interested in procuring any of the other so-called goods for yourself. So won't you stop finding all sorts of other things valuable as well? Otherwise, you won't be self-reliant or self-sufficient or impassive because you're bound to suffer from envy and jealousy, to mistrust those who are able to deprive you of the things you prize. What's left to be prized? This, I think, to limit our action or inaction to only what's in keeping with the needs of our own preparation. It's what the exertions of education and teaching are all about. Here is the thing to be prized.

3:57If you hold this firmly, you'll stop trying to get yourself all the other things. If you don't, you won't be free, self-sufficient, or liberated from passion, but necessarily full of envy, jealousy, and suspicion for any who have the power to take them. And you'll plot against those who do have what you prize. It's pretty fascinating to think of all these different translators sitting down and seeing the same bit of writing and having such wildly different interpretations. How much each one was a reflection of their time and place. How much room there was for personality, for recreation and reimagination.

4:34And yet also still how the same essential truth comes through. And so it goes with philosophy and with life. Nothing, not even philosophy is completely objective. It's all in how you see it. It's in what you need to see in it. It's also about what you do with it. As funny, as I was writing today's entry, I grabbed most of them right off my shelf. I have the Hayes edition here. I have the Waterfeld edition here. Obviously, I have my leather-bound edition of the Hayes translation. And that's my favorite, of course. We worked really hard on that here at Daily Stoic. You can check that out in the Daily Stoic store.

5:16I'll link to that in today's show notes. We've got the paperback edition also, of course. We've got the Robert and Waterfield one at the Painted Porch. I do not carry this 1634 translation. And then, you know, Steve's edition in the Daily Stoic. If you want that one, you can grab that also in anywhere books are sold. You can in an audio version also, but I just thought this was a cool way to look at some of my favorite translations of Meditations, a book which sits by my nightstand, which set so many things in my life in motion, including this very podcast. So thanks for listening.

5:56Judge yourself, not others. There is nothing less philosophical than being a know-it-all. This is especially true of those who use their knowledge to scold others for their mistakes while claiming the superiority of their knowledge or insight. The Stoics taught that behaving this way was to miss the entire purpose of philosophy, as a tool for self-correction, medicine for our own souls, not a weapon for putting down others. Seneca's letters twice employ the metaphor of scrubbing down or scraping off our faults. We need to see ourselves as in the care of philosophy's principles, he says, or as Epictetus put it later when referring to the philosopher's lecture hall, we need to see it as a hospital for our own therapy.

6:42So try not to write down a single complaint or problem of another person in your journal this week. Focus on what ails you. We have two quotes from Seneca's moral letters and one from the discourses. When philosophy is wielded with arrogance and stubbornly, it is the cause for the ruin of many. Let philosophy scrape off your own faults rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others. That's Seneca, letter 103. Some people with exceptional minds quickly grasp virtue or produce it within themselves, but other dim and lazy types hindered by bad habits must have their rusty souls constantly scrubbed down.

7:19The weaker sorts will be helped and lifted from their bad opinions if we put them in the care of philosophy's principles. That's Epictetus's Moral Letters 95. And then Epictetus's Discourse is 323. Men, the philosopher's lecture hall is a hospital. You shouldn't walk out of it feeling pleasure but pain, for you weren't well when you entered it. I think this is a tension here, and I've seen it. Some people maybe get it wrong, probably in bad faith when they reply to stuff I've posted or written. Who are you to criticize, I don't know, anti-vaxxers? Or who are you to say that have this political opinion or to say that this is right or wrong?

8:01You're not perfect. Of course, right? Of course I'm not perfect. Of course, a Stoic is primarily focused on their own edification, their own improvement. They're trying to look in the mirror. They're trying to scrub off their own faults. That doesn't mean that we turn a blind eye to what's happening in the world. That doesn't mean we indulge and accept and encourage ridiculousness or injustices by other people. I mean, some of the best Stoic lines are quips or criticisms of other people, right? The Stoics were also teachers. Zeno, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, they were writers and thinkers.

8:39They were responsible for teaching philosophy to people. Of course, we have to make judgments. I think what the Stoics are really talking about is not being a Monday morning quarterback at the expense of your performance on Sunday, right? When I study history, obviously, part of my job is to make judgments and communicate these ideas to you and to people and to myself. And that really is what I'm doing. And I have a chapter in Courage is Calling about why we don't judge another person's courage, right? We don't fully understand everything that's going on with them. But in another sense, we do judge their courage.

9:18But instead of criticizing them, instead of feeling better than them because they made this mistake, we try to look at them as cautionary tales, almost like we would in a Greek tragedy or a Roman play, a Shakespearean play and try to apply those lessons to our own lives. The point is when you see someone else doing something wrong, when you see something you don't like, when you see someone debasing themselves, when you see someone advocating an imposterous or dangerous opinion, you can criticize it. You can call it out for what it is. But don't feel superior for it. Try to learn from it. Try to apply lessons from that to your own life.

9:53That's the journey that we're on here. obviously as a writer and a speaker, I have to draw on examples. My work would be not very compelling if I didn't do that. So I have to walk a slightly different razor's edge. And I mean, look, that's what's so funny, right? The Stoics are saying, don't criticize other people. And yet even in this quote from Seneca, Moral Letters 95, he's saying, look, some people get this naturally, but there are other dim and lazy types hindered by bad habits, and they must have their rusty souls constantly scrubbed. So that does exist, right? And somebody has to do that job, and perhaps that's your job with a friend or a family member.

10:34Just remember that your real job is scrubbing down your own rusty soul. And if you ever think that it is not rusty, Well, that is a compelling sign right there that it is. Just a funny note, I get this all the time because if ego is the enemy, people go, what do I do about my boss's ego? What do you do about all the egos in our organization? Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. But much less often do I get the question, I have an ego. What do I do about my ego, right? The question, we often are gravitating towards solving other people's issues, focusing on other people's flaws. But as they say in the Bible, don't worry about the splinter in your neighbor's eye when you have a log in your own.

11:19So that's what philosophy is about. You are not well. Treat yourself first. But of course, you may recognize similar symptoms in other people if you need to point them out. Go right ahead.

11:46so

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