The Whole Point Is To Not Fit In | with No Time For Theories, Just Results

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2:15Welcome 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.

2:55The whole point is to not fit in. The Stoics stood out in Athens. They stood out in Rome. Whether it was Cato walking around barefoot or Cleanthes proudly doing manual labor. Whether it was Seneca practicing his poverty or Marcus Aurelius reading during the gladiatorial games, the Stoics were different. It was obvious and it was intentional. If I wanted to be like the mob, Chrysippus once said, I would not have become a philosopher. I want to be like the red thread, Agrippinus told a friend, the thread that stands out and makes the garment beautiful. The Stoics knew that each of us was born inherently unique.

3:30Well before an understanding of the science of DNA, they explicitly grasped that never before and never again will our combination of genetics exist, that we are singular. So why would they try to become like everyone else? Why would they unquestionably do what everyone else did? Why would they mute their colors, conform their thoughts, fearfully submit to someone else's rule? They stood apart. They stood tall. They stood proud. And so must you, because you are you, never to exist again. Not part of the mob, nor the crowd, but a philosopher.

4:16No time for theories, just results. This is the August 11th entry in the Daily Stoic. I hope everyone is doing well. When the problem arose for us, whether habit or theory was better for getting virtue, if by theory is meant what teaches us correct conduct, and by habit we mean being accustomed to acting according to this theory, Lusonius thought habit to be more effective. That's an excerpt relayed to us from Mussonius Rufus, which is listed in his lectures. But I prefer the quote from Hamlet. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. There is no time to chop logic over whether our theories are correct.

5:02We are dealing with the real world here. What matters is how you're going to deal with the situation in front of you, whether you're going to be able to move past it and on to the next one. That's not saying that anything goes, but we can't forget that although the theories are clean and simple, the situations rarely are. Mark Surreale says a version of this, waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. He says, don't go around expecting Plato's Republic. You don't live there, right? We live in reality. And I talk about this a lot on the podcast. So often philosophers ask these abstract questions.

5:38I just talked about this in my episode with Paul Bloom, which is coming up. He talks about how we discuss the trolley problem or do we live in a computer simulation. We talk about these ideas when in reality, it's much more practical, life and stoicism. You get accidentally CC'd on an email and one of your coworkers says something not nice about you. Are you going to let that go or are you going to blow it up? Your order's messed up at a restaurant. Are you going to try to think about the person who did that, what their life is like? or are you going to go full Karen, right? You're tired and exhausted and your kids are being a nightmare.

6:16How do you respond, right? That's what Stoicism is to me. There's no room for these, like there is an element of physics to the Stoics and there's logic too. But the Stoics tried to apply the philosophy to what they actually did to their lives as people, which is what we're trying to do. I've talked about this before too. You watch what's happening in the news and you go, oh, why can't this politician, why isn't this person voting this way? They're just trying to keep their job, blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, when was the last time you ever risked your job, right? How often do you do things that are in your financial best interest, but maybe not in the interests of the world?

6:59It's there that stoicism is supposed to be applied, right? Stoicism is not a standard we hold other people to. It's not a game. It's not a lens through which we debate things. This is not like a sports show where they go, who's the best? Is it LeBron James or is it this? Is Kevin Durant good because he only won a championship with Golden State and hasn't anywhere else? No. How are you as a teammate, right? Are you achieving and doing your best? Are you a team player, right? It's about you. You can spend all your time thinking and debating and questioning. You can waste your whole life doing that, but who cares?

7:46You have enough problems in your own life. You have things you should be dealing with. That to me is what stoicism is, right? That's what we're trying to do. That's what I want this podcast to be about. That's why I pick up meditations by my side of my bed. Oh yeah, I was doing that today. I don't want to do that anymore. That's what I flip through. That's what, when I'm writing, I'm not only writing to accomplish that, hopefully for other people, but that's what I'm looking for as a writer. That's what I'm trying to do. And I hope that's what you take from this podcast too. No time for theories, just results.

8:25Is habit or theory better? Habit is better, man. have it. Make the stuff a habit. That's what we're trying to do. Make it a practice. Build it into the muscle memory. Make it part of who you are. Try to get to a point, ideally, where nobody even knows that you study philosophy. But when they look at your actions, they go, that lines up, right? That lines up with the code. And I think if you look at Marcus Aurelius' life, you don't have to know he studied philosophy to get the sense he was a philosophical guy. that he lived according to those four virtues. That's the most powerful thing he said about courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, is how he lived.

9:05And so it goes for you. And so I tried to make it go for me. None of us are perfect at it. The theory is much more interesting. The theory is easy. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter one bit compared to the actions.

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