Only The Wise Are Free | A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous

0:05Welcome 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.

0:55Only the wise are free. Epictetus was born into slavery. This would have been a profoundly painful experience that left many scars and many disadvantages. His 30 years in bondage left him with a limp for the rest of his life, courtesy of a sadistic owner who tortured him. In Rome at that time, many people believed that only free people were capable of being educated. But the indisputable truth that Epictetus saw every day in the moral disorder and dysfunction of Nero's court, where his master served as a high-profile secretary, was that it was, in fact, the opposite. Only the educated, he said, were free.

1:41And this is something that Seneca points out about the same period in Rome, how profoundly unfree many of the richest and most powerful people are. And this is true 20-odd centuries later. Most people are enslaved and controlled and directed by their ignorance, their impulses, their temper, their desires and delusions. What Epictetus came to understand is that wisdom is freedom. from the things that have enslaved and controlled and directed people for all time, from ignorance, from stupid opinions, from immature emotions and childish impulses, from desires and delusions, from bitterness and frustration and resentment.

2:21That's the point of wisdom, he said, to argue less, to rage less, to be upset less, to enjoy, Epictetus said, a smooth flow of life. But the Stoics also believed that wisdom is something we have to work for, not something that were given. It didn't matter then if you were a slave like Epictetus or raised as royalty like Marcus Aurelius. Wisdom was something you had to earn. And how did you earn it? Through hard work, through reading and thinking and reflecting, through mentors and teachers, through painful trial and error, through opening yourself to experiences and knowledge outside of your comfort zone.

3:00And look, if you want to get serious about that work, well, boy, I have a book for you. That's what the new book, Wisdom Takes Work, which I have here on my table. I am looking out over the Mediterranean Sea, not far from the Temple of Poseidon. I have a copy of Wisdom Takes Work with me, and I'm really excited to share it with you. It's out in 100 days from today. But if you pre-order it now, and you can, by the way, order all four books in the series, signed, numbered these special editions. We sold out last time on Courage is Calling. We sold out on Discipline is Destiny. We sold out on Right Thing Right Now.

3:40I will definitely sell out on Wisdom Takes Work, but I'm just really excited for you to read this book. As I said, it's full of part one insights from wise people, like all the books. Stoic ideas illustrated by stories from history. And it's mostly about what we can learn from them, what they can teach us. And if you want to pre-order it, I would love for you to support the book. As I said, they almost certainly will sell out. You can grab them right now at dailystoic.com slash pre-order. As I said, I think if you pre-order all four, you can get a signed page of the original manuscript. We're going to do a live Q &A.

4:11If you order a bunch of books, you can even have dinner with me and a bunch of Stoics across from the Painted Porch. I was just visiting the actual Painted Porch here in Athens. We can go to the Painted Porch Bookshop in Bastrop, Texas. We'll have dinner together. It's a bunch of awesome stuff, and all that is only available If you pre-order the book, it helps authors basically more than anything you can do to support a writer is pre-order that book. So if you pre-order it now at dailystoic.com slash wisdom, it would mean a lot to me. And I hope you're enjoying Epictetus Month. We'll get right back at it.

4:49Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastrop County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove in Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

5:34We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

6:14Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. I'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.

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7:11A little knowledge is dangerous. This is the July 14th entry in the Daily Stoic. Every great power is dangerous for the beginner, Epictetus says in Discourses 3.13. You must therefore wield them as you are able, but in harmony with nature. Great teachers are usually hardest on their most promising students. When teachers see potential, they want it to be fully realized. But great teachers are also aware that natural ability and quick comprehension and can be quite dangerous to the student if left alone. Early promise can lead to overconfidence and create bad habits. Those who pick things up quickly are notorious for skipping the basic lessons and ignoring the fundamentals.

7:55Don't get carried away. Take it slowly. Train with humility. In Lies of the Stoics, I talk about Musonius Rufus quite a bit, Musonius Rufus being Epictetus' teacher. He was called the Roman Socrates for what a great writer and thinker he was. But he was also a very difficult teacher, I take it, from the anecdotes we have from Epictetus. I'm just pulling up this little page. We're told, for instance, that when Mussonius Rufus spoke, he expected rapt attention from his students. If they were reacting or clapping or cheering for the audience, he's like, you're not getting it. I'm not blowing your mind enough.

8:36He was just a strict teacher. And then we're told this story about Epictetus making a mistake. And he tries to blow it off to Musonius. He says, hey, it's not like I burned down the Capitol. Musonius Rufus says, who says you didn't? Right? The point being, I think Musonius realized, as Zeno said, that conceit is the impediment to knowledge. Epictetus would say it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know. I think what they were taking from Musonius is a kind of key intellectual humility. That when you start to get arrogant, when you start to think you've graduated, that you've arrived, this is precisely when you cease to learn and stop improving.

9:20When I sign Ego is the Enemy, I often sort of riffing on Epictetus, I say always stay a student. because when we stay a student of philosophy, of a great master, it humbles us, keeps us quiet. Whenever I'm around Robert Greene, I get this same sense. Robert's very kind and patient and would never sort of humiliate or rebuke, but he has a way of catching you if you're lazy or imprecise in your language or the assumptions that you're making. And it is a good experience because it keeps me in the right headspace. And I think that's important as you learn. Maybe you're familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect.

10:03The problem with being stupid is that you're often not aware of just how stupid you are. Maybe the converse of that is the problem with being smart is that smart people often are aware of how smart they are, or they think they're smarter than they are, and this is a problem. So I don't know. I guess today's message is to leave you with a little intellectual humility. Don't think that you've arrived. Understand that knowledge is power and it's a power that has to be taken responsibly, has to be taken humbly, has to be part of a lifelong and ongoing pursuit. You do not arrive. You do not graduate.

10:38You never do. This is the famous story about Mark Surrealis leaving the palace. Some man asked him where he's going. He says, I'm off to see Sextus the philosopher to learn that which I do not yet know. Focus on that. Focus on what you do not yet know. So it's like in the way that a gun, you always act like a gun is loaded. That keeps you safe and honest with it. You never point it at something that you don't intend to kill or destroy. The same thing goes with knowledge, right? Treat it as something that is always insufficient. It's always a little bit dangerous. Point it towards what you have yet to learn and focus on that.

11:15And it keeps you honest, keeps you safe, keeps you smart. And that's today's message.

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