Stoicism and Thought Leadership

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1:30Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

2:10Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Sunday episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. You know, many of you know that I am a college dropout. Maybe you know that I went to UC Riverside. I went there. But I think some people think because I dropped out, I didn't like it. I, of course, loved it. And not only did I not really want to drop out, just the opportunity to work for Robert Greene and do this other stuff was so exciting. I felt like I couldn't say no, but my wife continued to go there. So I'd go back on the weekends. And then I probably spent more time in the Tomas Rivera Library, the big library on the UCR campus, after I left than I did while I was there.

2:52I wrote a good chunk of Trust Me, I'm Lying There, but a good chunk of The Obstacle is the Way There. I went there on some trips while I was writing Ego is the Enemy. I just knew the library. I was comfortable there. There was a running route that I used to do as I went back around. And of course, there were people that I knew there, although they dwindled away as they eventually graduated. My wife moved to Los Angeles to me. Anyways, I have very fond memories of UC Riverside. And so several years ago, I was delighted to get an email from someone I went to UCR with. His name is Fabian. And he said, I don't know if you remember me here.

3:28Let me, you know what? I'm even going to pull it up. Let me, let me get this email. Cause it was awesome. He said, Hey, my name is Fabian. We were in the Pentland dorms together at UCR. He said, you know, maybe you remember my old email. He, and he was pointing out, he said like, I don't, I don't know if you remember me? And I was saying, of course I remember you. I remember that he and I would share illegally downloaded music. I remember he turned me on to King Crimson and a bunch of other bands I'm trying to remember. But every once in a while, they'll come on the shuffle of my phone and I'll go, oh, Fabian gave me this.

4:04I remember that. So anyways, he and I have stayed in touch over the years. And he shot me a note back in 2020 that said, hey, I'm working at the RAND Corporation now, which is this sort of big nonprofit think tank. It's a policy center. It's where Daniel Ellsberg worked when he leaked the Pentagon Papers, if I'm remembering correctly. The point is, big organization influences the world in a lot of different ways. Lots of really smart people. Fabian, who actually graduated, of course, would have a job there. And he wanted me to talk stoicism to these scientists and academics and policy wonks, and that's exactly what I did.

4:45And that's what I am going to bring you in today's episode. So here is me talking stoicism at the Rand Institute with a little full circle-ness from an old college doormate. I hope you enjoy. Oh, and I forgot to say I couldn't fly out for this one. So it was a remote talk earlier in the pandemic when remote talks were mostly a thing. I do miss doing all the remote talks because now when I do a talk, I have to get on a plane and I do get to meet some cool people in person and go cool places. But there was wonderful. There was so much less disruption back then. So just to be clear, this is me talking on Zoom to the folks at the Rand Institute.

5:26too.

5:29I'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine, which is I take them over to Whole Foods. 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.

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6:17This is a smart audience, so I don't think we need to get too in the weeds or in the basics of what Stoicism is, a philosophy that begins in ancient Greece around the time of the death of Alexander the Great. It makes its way to the Roman Empire. I don't need to tell you who Marcus Aurelius was or probably even who Seneca was. But what I want to talk about is what does this philosophy have to do with you, right? How does an obscure school of ancient philosophy, How does it matter, not just for you as human beings, but how does it matter to you in the world with what you do? The thing I like the most about the Stoics that I find the most both relatable and inspiring about the Stoics is that they weren't academic philosophers.

7:06They weren't talking about philosophy in the abstract. This wasn't about theory. This wasn't about big, unpronounceable words. This was a set of tools and strategies and ideas that helped the Stoics in what they did, which, as it happened, is not all that dissimilar to what all of you do. Stoicism comes from Greece to Rome for the first time in a diplomatic mission sent by Athens to Rome in the midst of a dispute between these two empires. So Stoicism has roots in diplomacy. The Stoics advise generals. When Rome becomes an empire, the first two teachers of the new emperor Augustus, Octavian soon to be Augustus, are a man named Athenodorus and a man named Arius, both Stoic philosophers.

8:00So Stoicism has always been this way of thinking, this way of living, this set of strategies that was, if not adjacent to power, later in the empire, in the case of someone like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, was itself at the center of power. Plato, of course, talks about the idea, the fantasy of a philosopher king. And Marcus Aurelius at the sort of the peak of Stoicism becomes that. The most powerful man in the world is studying and practicing philosophy. And again, seeing this philosophy as a set of principles by which he was supposed to live. So Stoicism isn't just how do you respond to what life throws at you, But how do you thrive in the midst of what life throws at you?

8:50And how do you not just do that effectively, but remain an ethical and decent person in the midst of that? So for Stoicism, there's four cardinal virtues, sort of four virtues that Stoicism is built around that they would try to apply, whether they're advising a head of state or dealing with some difficult personal matter at home like we were talking about. And those four virtues are courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. And we'll start with courage because I think courage is the virtue from which all the other virtues descend from or at least depend on. It's long been held that there's two types of courage.

9:31There's physical courage and moral courage. My working definition of courage, as I wrote about most recently, is the idea that courage is the same in both these forms when boiled down to its essence. Courage is essentially the willingness to put one's ass on the line, to take a risk, to put one's self out there for someone or something. Physical courage, I think we have a clearer understanding of that. That's the soldier on the battlefield. That's the firefighter running into the burning building. But moral courage is just as important. We're talking about the scientist who perseveres through doubts and criticism through the wilderness to invent something new.

10:17And then, of course, in the case of Rand, someone like Daniel Ellsberg, who takes a risk not just to their livelihood and their reputation, but is willing to risk all sorts of controversy and doubts in the pursuit of what they think is right, even if that means speaking truth to incredible power. So the idea of courage to me is what is one willing to risk? What is one willing to brave in pursuit of what is right? And for the Stoics, I think courage is the essential virtue. Even if we think about the other virtues, they demand or require courage. Of course, the pursuit of truth requires courage.

11:05To be just in an unjust world requires courage. To be temperate or self-controlled in a world of excess requires courage. Because what all of these things are demanding is the courage to be oneself, the courage to be different, the courage to stand out a little bit, the courage to risk being judged or criticized or misunderstood. I think when the Stoics talk about courage, it's not always, you know, one enormous brave stand. I like to think of courage as something iterative, something we make a habit. Aristotle talks about how one becomes courageous or just or temperate or wise. He said it's by doing virtuous actions, doing those in the component pieces.

11:54One of the early Stoics says that well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. I think that's a way to think about courage, right? it's not once I get to the top, I will be courageous because once we get to the top, we've often made many compromises or sacrifices along the way. And now we're worried about risking what we have. To me, it's about those small component steps. And again, when you look at someone like Daniel Ellsberg, it's not like he wakes up one day and decides to leak the Pentagon papers. For Ellsberg, it was a slow process. It was an awakening. It was small actions that ultimately culminate in this enormous sort of irrevocable decision.

12:40But we work ourselves there. And so I think we often can build up the idea of courage in such a way that it becomes almost mythical and hard to apply in my book Courage is Calling. I sort of break it into three parts. Courage is first the battle against fear. How do we remove doubt? How do we remove the fears that hold us back? Then we get to a place called the virtue of courage itself, which is braving risk, which is putting ourselves out there. And then there's finally the sort of highest sphere of courage is what we would call heroism, when one is willing to take risks that don't benefit oneself, but benefit primarily everyone else.

13:30So this would be, again, the soldier who not just risks themselves, but throws themselves on a grenade. This would be a person who you know, is willing to pursue something at immense cost to themselves to primarily benefit someone other than themselves. The final note I would put on courage, and it's just a sort of timely thing I've been interested in when we watch how we watch courage in this pandemic. Courage is, of course, not just taking a risk or taking a stand, but it's taking a risk or a stand in pursuit of what is right. So is it somewhat bold and daring for Kyrie Irving to risk his NBA career to not get vaccinated?

14:22I suppose. But courage, I don't think the Stoics would have seen, is the virtue to willingly infect or be indifferent to the consequences of one's action. And then, of course, this is where the virtues are intercepted with each other, because to be courageous in pursuit of something that is fundamentally unwise or inaccurate, again, is a contradiction in how we see these things. So that leads to the next discipline. The second discipline for the Stoics was the discipline of temperance. Now, temperance is a particularly boring word, especially in English, because it is so associated with what we call the temperance movement, you know, the

15:09puritanical instinct to take things away from other people. I think for the Stoics, discipline even is not what we're talking about. We're talking about self-discipline. How does one manage oneself, be moderate in all things, as the Oracle of Delphi said, that for the Stoics, this idea of discipline was really important, but it's primarily looked at through the lens of self-discipline. So I think there's a great ancient expression that character is fate, meaning that character is both predictive and deterministic. So I think we can think the same thing about discipline. So discipline is predictive in the sense that it makes you more likely to be successful, But it's deterministic in the sense that it makes you great whether you are successful or not.

16:00As I've been researching and writing about discipline, a few interesting characters have come to mind that I've been writing about and reading about quite a bit lately. I've been writing a lot about Lou Gehrig. You know, how do you how do you play 2000 Major League Baseball games in a row? This is physical discipline. This is pushing through pain. that she's pushing through fatigue, in his case, crippling back pain, and then ultimately, you know, the early onset stages of what we call Lou Gehrig's disease. So the physical self-discipline is, you know, managing what we eat, being active, living what Theodore Roosevelt calls the strenuous life.

16:45Physical discipline is practice. It's, you know, showing up every day. It's doing the work. But then we get to the next discipline, the next part of discipline, which is what we might call temperament. I'm fascinated with someone like Queen Elizabeth II. Two thousand games is one thing. How do you show up every day at the same job for seven decades? That's not so much a feat of physical endurance as it is a feat of temperament, of pacing oneself. And then you look, especially in the strange, surreal position of being a constitutional monarch, where you have incredible power and wealth, but you also are completely powerless and can't actually do anything with said wealth.

17:44And so how does one manage a position where they can say very little, where their primary public role is to keep their mouth shut, where, as she has said, her primary way of influencing policy is not through commands or orders, but in asking questions, in refraining from saying things, of sort of gently nudging people along. So when we think of discipline in the temperamental sense, I am reminded of an expression that George Washington was fond of. There was a play in the 18th century that was very popular called Cato about the Roman Stoic. And there's a line in that play that Washington turned into a mantra that he repeated to himself always.

18:35He said, we must look at things in the calm light of mild philosophy. That's what stoicism was supposed to be, looking at things in the calm light of mild philosophy, looking at them with a little bit of distance, looking at them with perspective, looking at them through a charitable lens, waiting, not rushing to judgment. This is what we're thinking about in the sense of self-discipline in the temperate form. We're talking about patience. We're talking about keeping your mouth shut when you don't have anything to say. We're talking about managing one's time effectively, not procrastinating. And then so when we get out of these sort of basic functions of temperance, we're led into what I think is, again, the third and highest plane.

19:31When I look at someone like Marcus Aurelius, there is this idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And that does largely seem to hold true. And yet somehow Marcus Aurelius is selected for absolute power at a very young age and goes on, as one historian put it, to prove himself worthy of all of it. He's not corrupted by this power. He's not changed by it. If anything, he becomes a better human being. He strives not just to look through things through the calm and mild light of philosophy, but generously, charitably, selflessly. and that's what I think about when I think about self-discipline and then the idea that it makes us great whether it is the shortcut to success or not it is a polish to life as Cicero said

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22:09And then that leads us to the third discipline. The third discipline for the Stoics is the discipline of justice. Now, justice, by justice, they don't, I don't think mean the legal system. And it's probably somewhat illustrative of where we are as a society that our first impulse is to when we hear justice to think of the legal system, this sort of disembodied third party, this this lawyeristic or legal legalistic way of thinking about it. for the Stoics, justice was something deeper than that. I think something closer to the golden rule. Cicero, describing the virtue of justice, said it's about giving every man its due.

22:57Marcus Aurelius, this is a great definition. This is in Meditations that I thought I would read to you. To me, this captures the kind of leadership and world that Stoics sought to create. He's thanking his brother Severus. And he says, it was through him that I encountered Thrasia and Helvidius and Cato. Those were three Stoics, Dion and Brutus, and conceived of the society of equal laws governed by an equality of status and of speech and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else. I think for the Stoics, it was about how do you care and produce value for what they call the common good.

23:42Mark Surrealis in another passage of Meditations talks about how what's bad for the hive is bad for the bee. I think one of the unfortunate realities or offshoots of our legalistic society is that we think about whether something is legal or not, Not about whether something is decent or not. Not about whether something is right or not. Not about something, whether something is the kind of person that we want to be or not. So for the Stoics, it was about our affinity, our connection, our obligation to other people, as well as the standards that we hold for ourselves, the standards by which we want to operate.

24:28Honesty, goodness, fairness, connection, selflessness, duty, responsibility. These are the virtues that the Stoics try to live by. One of my favorite sort of little historical anecdotes about the Stoics is Seneca finds himself advising the emperor Nero, probably not the ideal job for a philosopher, but he finds himself writing for Nero. And he writes one of his most beautiful essays on clemency. And the argument on clemency is about, he says, what the obligation of the powerful is to the powerless. Specifically, what is their obligation to someone who is beneath them, who perhaps has wronged them or done wrong?

25:14And he actually creates the word clemency, this concept of generosity, mercy, kindness, fairness, forgiveness comes to us through the Stoics. This virtue of clemency, I really enjoy and think quite a lot about how does one who is privileged, who has been gifted, who has gotten so much, how do they pay this forward? How do they sprinkle this out into the world? To me, this is a critical part of the Stoics' duty. And then the last, I think, Stoic quote, this is kind of an interesting paradox in Stoicism that I thought I'd meditate on real briefly as we talk about justice. Now, the Stoics say that what matters is what's in our control.

26:02So a lot of world events are outside of our control. you know so there's kind of an insularness to stoicism the idea that some things are up to us some things are not up to us sort of focusing inwardly and yet Marcus Aurelius says in meditations he's reminding himself remember that it's always possible to create to commit an injustice by doing nothing and so for the stoics I think it can be easy to think of this sort of individualistic, resilient, but also circumscribed philosophy as somehow being indifferent to world events, not being engaged in political or civilian life. But the Stoics don't see it that way.

26:53The Stoics are engaged in politics almost from the very beginning. Seneca says that the distinction between the Epicureans and the Stoics comes ultimately down to, although they're both believers in self-improvement, in enlightenment, in pursuing truth and philosophy, he says that the Epicurean will become involved in politics only if he has to. And he says the Stoics will not be involved in politics and in civic life only if something prevents them. And so, yes, the Stoics were about individual self-improvement. And yet they also believed deeply in contributing, in being a part of things, of stepping up, of making a difference, influencing what's happening in the world insofar as that is possible or in one's circle of control.

27:51And knowing that to disengage, to disconnect, to not be involved because you're busy, because you have your own things going on, because you're disgusted with how things are, is to also commit an injustice. We can very much see how Seneca in the time of Nero would have liked to retire to his estates, would have liked to return to his library, would have liked to thrown up his hands and say, this is not how things should be. And yet he tries his best to be engaged, to make as much of a positive difference as possible, to do as much as possible. And as a result, I think can be credited with at least limiting Nero's evils as much as possible for as long as he was able to.

28:41And then that leads us to the final and the fourth discipline of Stoicism. This would be the discipline of wisdom, a lifelong pursuit, one that is a little uncomfortable to even talk about because it feels like to describe wisdom is to claim that one has it. But perhaps that's the paradox too, right? Going all the way back to Socrates. Why was Socrates considered so wise? You know, coming back from the Oracle is that Socrates' wisdom was rooted in his awareness of what he didn't know. And this rings true for the Stoics. Epictetus, a slave-turned-Stoic philosopher, would say that, you know, it's impossible to learn that which we already think that we know.

29:31So to me, the path to wisdom begins with and is impeded by a lack of humility, right? What we, when the scientific method, academic inquiry study inherently starts from an admission of ignorance, comes from a place of curiosity, comes from a place of uncertainty versus certainty. And I think the beauty of what we do, the beauty of study, the beauty of philosophy is, as the physicist John Wheeler said, the more our island of knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance. So if we think of wisdom as a lifelong pursuit, if we decide to remain forever students, apprentices in a craft that have no master, as Hemingway said of writing, of focusing on how far we have left to go, how much left we have to learn, I think this gets us closer to wisdom.

30:35It's when ego starts to creep in. It's when certainty starts to creep in. It's when we try to simplify things, when we try to remove nuance, when we try to lock things in. This is where stupidity comes in. This is where arrogance comes in. And one of my favorite stories about Marcus Aurelius, he's as an old man, he's seen exiting the palace and one of his friends stops him and he says, Emperor, where are you going? And Marcus Aurelius says, I'm off to see Sextus, the philosopher, to learn that which I do not yet know. The man marvels and he says, even as an old man, the emperor is still picking up his tablets and heading off to school.

31:20This idea that we are always students, that we should always be learning, that even the thing we've studied our whole lives still has much to surprise us about, still remains much to learn, to me is a critical part of Stoicism. and it's the path that I'm on. You know, this is, I guess, a decade and a half now of studying stoicism. I was probably in my dorm room next to Fabian when my copy of Meditations arrived from Amazon. I remember Amazon Prime didn't exist yet, so I had to buy some other things and then wait a few days because two-day shipping wasn't there either. But I remember just being hit by this book and Mark Sebelius' Meditations.

32:05I just remember being hit by the simplicity of it, the straightforwardness of it. And yet when I picked it up this morning to prepare for this talk, I was still being struck by things, sentences that I've touched a hundred times, sentences that I've written about, I've written whole books about, you know, remain ever fascinating to me and always remain capable of teaching me new things. For the Stoics, it wasn't just that we read, but that we reread because we never step in the same river twice because we change even if the words stay the same. And so for the Stoics, it was about a lifelong study of the same ideas, but also integrating and bringing in new ideas constantly.

32:48Which leads me to the last part I would say about this pursuit of wisdom. It's a quote I heard from General James Mattis, who is himself a practicing Stoic. he was writing to young soldiers and he was saying that, you know, reading is the greatest tool that's ever been invented. You know, he said human beings have been fighting wars for 5 ,000 years and writing about them. And so to not study them, to learn by trial and error, he said it was a massive betrayal of the people he led. But then he said, he said that, you know, if you haven't read hundreds of books about what it is that you do, and if you don't continue to read hundreds of books about what it is that you do.

33:29He said you are functionally illiterate. This idea of being functionally illiterate, I think, captures, unfortunately, where a lot of experts and writers and thinkers and politicians and leaders are these days. They can read, they have read, but they are not nearly literate enough in what it is that they do. And that island of knowledge and shoreline of ignorance, it's stagnant. It's ossifying. And that makes them very vulnerable. That's where we are. I think that's a result of why we are where we are in the middle of this pandemic. why we can't seem to solve many of the vexing problems of our time, and why I think the work that you all do is so important.

34:13The pursuit of knowledge, particularly uncomfortable knowledge, particularly challenging knowledge or new knowledge, is the grease on the wheels of progress, of civilization, and the Stoics believe that the pursuit of wisdom was essential. So to review the four virtues of Stoicism, we have courage, risk, bravery, putting oneself out there. We have temperance or self-discipline, self-control, you know, moderation in all things and some things not at all. And then we have justice, how we treat others, our commitment, our duty to the common good, our service of others, the golden rule, giving each and all their due.

34:55And then finally, wisdom, the pursuit, the unending pursuit of knowledge, the commitment to remaining a student of all that we do. Mark Cirilius, writing of the four virtues, to conclude for all of you today, you know, he says, if ever in your life, in whatever you're doing, he says, you manage to come across something better than courage, temperance, justice, or wisdom, he says, that must be an extraordinary thing indeed. And that's why these four cardinal virtues appear to us, not just in Stoicism, but in Christianity, and countless other philosophical schools and religions. that cardinal virtues, as we call them, doesn't have a religious connotation at all.

35:35It comes from the Latin word cardos, and cardos means hinge. These are supposed to be the pivotal virtues, not just of progress and personal development and growth, but also they are the pivotal virtues of a good life, of a good society, of good leadership, of good governance, and I think good human beings, period. and that's why I'm excited to talk to all of you about them today. It's why I'm writing what is a four-book series on these cardinal virtues, and they're ultimately why I struggle with, but I think valiantly attempt to live by them each and every day, and I hope that all of you will as well.

36:21Thanks for listening to The Daily Stoic Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoic store. You can get them personalized. You can get them sent to a friend. The obstacle is the way you go as the enemy. Stillness is the key. The leather-bound edition of the Daily Stoic. We have them all in the Daily Stoic store, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com.

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