This Is Demanded Of You | 5 Stoic Secrets From The Ultimate Man Of Principle (Cato The Younger)

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1:29Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

1:54This is Demanded of You. Seneca tried to teach it to Nero, but Nero couldn't grasp it. To be fair, most leaders, most powerful people, most governments and civilizations struggle with it. In fact, up until Seneca sat down to write his essay on clemency, there wasn't even a word for such a thing. Clemency, as Seneca explains it, is basically how a powerful person treats a person they have power over, particularly when the less powerful person has done wrong. Clemency was what Marcus Aurelius tried to offer Avidius Cassius when the general attempted a palace coup. Clemency was what Marcus insisted the Senate maintain.

2:31His reign would not be stained by a single drop of blood, he said. Clemency was what Ulysses S. Grant offered at Appomattox. Clemency and something more was what the U.S. offered Japan and Germany after the Second World War, by not only not destroying them, but rebuilding both countries after. It's worth pointing out just how remarkable the concept of clemency was when Seneca first articulated it. Rome was a country that slaughtered its enemies and sold the rest into slavery. Seneca himself was cruelly exiled for some made-up crime sent away from his family and his friends because he had offended the Emperor Claudius, a tale you can read about in Lives of the Stoics.

3:13Today, society is less violent and has more robust legal protections of human rights. but clemency is still too rare, not just for the conquered, but also between colleagues, between spouses, between rival political parties to say nothing of our legal system here in the US. When someone has wronged you, deceived you, betrayed you, stolen from you, do you get your pound of flesh or can you be merciful and restrained? Can you be generous? The ability to forgive, to let go, to not extract a full measure of punishment from someone, This requires self-control. It requires decency. It requires wisdom.

3:52It is the mark of leadership and also a virtue. Do you have it? This idea of what the Stoics can teach us about leadership, something obviously think a lot about here at Daily Stoic, and it's what we built the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge about. I think one of the best challenges we've done, certainly one of the longest and biggest and most ambitious. It's six weeks of leadership lessons from the Stokes, but also from the leadership experts that we interview. We talked to a GM of a sports franchise. We talked to a two-star general in the Air Force. We talked to entrepreneurs. We talked to business experts, bunch of interesting people.

4:33Plus you get to talk to me as the head of my own small little business here in Bastrop, Texas. Anyways, I'm super proud of the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge. I would love to have you join us in it. Thousands of students have gone through it over the last couple of years and it's getting better every day. You can sign up at dailystoic.com slash leadership challenge. I'll link to it in today's show notes. And you can find out a bunch more about it in the Daily Stoic store. And also, as always, remember, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, where you get the weekend emails and much other awesome stuff, you get this challenge and all the challenges for free.

5:05So check that out at dailystoiclife.com.

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6:14The Stoic that all the Stoics admired was Cato. In his last moments on Earth, Seneca is thinking of Cato. Thrasia is modeling his life on Cato. George Washington, for his part, makes Cato his hero. It's the basis of his whole life. So of the Stoics, Cato has always been the hero. But what's fascinating about Cato is that Cato didn't write anything down. He's not a hero because of his philosophical writings. he's a hero because of the towering example. His philosophical contribution was his life, who he was as a human being. There's two Cato's in ancient Rome. There's Cato, the elder, who's Cato's great, great grandfather.

6:53And then Cato, the younger, comes later. And he's the one who's explicitly the Stoic. And that's who we're going to talk about in today's episode. And I'm going to give you some tips and strategies and lessons from Cato's life that you can apply in your own. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got came when I got my first job in Hollywood. I sat in this meeting with a bunch of important older people and I remember I spoke up about something. I didn't really know what I was talking about, but I just said something. And then afterwards, one of my mentors took me aside and he said, why did you say that?

7:22Did you feel like it really needed to be said or did you just want to have something to say? I was speaking out of ego, really speaking out of insecurity. I didn't actually have anything I want to say. So when I heard Cato's advice that he only speaks when he's confident that what he has to say is not better left unsaid that's the advice that i was getting and it's this timeless amazing piece of advice the idea that you don't just have to talk for the sake of talking you can keep your mouth shut you can listen two ears one mouth as the stoics say that's the way to think about it somebody once asked cato the stoic philosopher why there was no statue of him in rome and he said i'd rather you ask that question why there is no statue than ask why there is a statue of me.

8:05Point is, it's better to be obscure. It's better to be underrated than overrated. And I think about that with my books. I'd like to be, I heard this great expression from a friend. It said, you want to be your favorite rapper's favorite rapper. You don't need to be the most popular. You don't need to be the most famous, the most well-known. You want to be the person that the people in the industry are fans of because you're legit, because you actually do it. So in my book, Perennial Seller, I talk about this. Don't chase fame. Chase the real tastemakers, the real people who are doing the real shit.

8:36That's who you want to impress, if anyone. That's where you want your work to resonate. You don't want to be the person who's got an inflated reputation. You want to be a person who's underappreciated but actually great. That's who's going to stand the test of time. And Cato is a great example of that. Cato walked around Rome bareheaded. He walked barefoot. He wore thin toga. Even though he was quite wealthy, he dressed as if he was not. And he was okay standing alone, looking different, being judged, being misunderstood. And this wasn't just for fun. This wasn't just kind of tourism in a different way of life.

9:13What Cato is actually doing, I think, is preparing for the moment when it really counts. When he has to stand alone against Caesar. When he has to stand alone against corruption. When he has to stand alone against the decadence of his time. He's practiced this. He's prepared for it. It's how he's lived his whole life. He doesn't care that he's getting sideways glances. He doesn't care that people are criticizing him. He doesn't care that people are doubting him. He doesn't care that people are saying what he's doing is pointless and silly, and it doesn't mean anything that he should just go along with everyone else.

9:40No, he's practiced this. He's prepared for it. He's made it a daily habit, which is what we have to do to prepare for a moment like that in our own lives.

9:54All the great moments in Stoic history involve standing up for the little guy. Cato stands up for the little guy. Rutilius Rufus stands up for the little guy. Marcus Aurelius passes laws that not only protects Rome's slaves, he even gives wooden swords to the gladiators so they won't get hurt in the arena. We're all privileged. We all have advantages. And at different times, we're going to see ourselves in positions of power or influence where we can do something for someone. And a huge part of Stoicism is using that power, using that privilege to lessen the burden, to make life easier and better for other people, right?

10:32A stoic virtue of justice, right? Justice is a core stoic virtue, just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. The fruit of this life, Marks really says it's good character and acts for the common good, which especially and particularly means speaking up and standing up for people who can't stand up and speak up for themselves.

10:54Hillel's famous question was, if not me, then who? And then he said, if not now, then when? And I think this is a really important Stoic question. And this is why you see the Stoics stepping up in moments of crisis and difficulty throughout the history of Stoicism, because they knew that if they didn't do it, if Cato had simply rolled over, then no one would have stood up. If Marcus Aurelius had declined being the emperor because what he really wanted to do was be a philosopher, then who would have taken his place? I think even Seneca realizes this in Nero's service. He says, if I don't do this, someone else worse will do it.

11:31And I think this is just such a key question. If you're not going to do it, who's going to do it? And if everyone backed out, if no one stepped up, where would that leave us? If not you, then who? And if not now, then when?

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