This Will Make You Stupid | Ask Daily Stoic

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.

0:55This will make you stupid. It doesn't matter how smart you are. It doesn't matter where you studied. It doesn't matter how much you have accomplished. In the moment, if you can't control your emotions, you will be stupid. Your excitement will blind you to obvious problems. Your anxiety will distract and consume you. Your lust and envy will make you rash and reckless. Your anger? This is one of the passions that the Stoics were most worried about because anger makes you dangerous. People think that the Stoics were emotionless, but as we've said before, this is quite wrong. The Stoics were human, so they had emotions.

1:36They just also tried to layer a certain self-awareness, wisdom, on top of these emotions. As we emblazoned on our popular daily Stoic medallion, the Stoics knew that they needed pausa et reflecta, to pause and reflect. You have the emotion, and then you have to ask yourself, is this helpful? You have the impulse, and then you have to ask yourself, is this really the best idea? And if you don't do this, you will get in trouble. You will make needless mistakes. You will make yourself stupid. And the idea of the pause and reflect medallion, I have one here in my pocket right now, is that it's designed to be meaningful and durable.

2:18When you feel that heat in your chest or those harsh words forming on your tongue, you touch it, you run your fingers over it. it can help you pause and reflect before you do something you might regret. The weight in the palm of your hand is a physical reminder of the weight of your reactions. The front side says delay is the remedy. A nod to Seneca's famous line that the greatest remedy for anger is delay. And then it's encircled with all 24 letters of the alphabet inspired from that line that the Stoic Athenodorus told the emperor, he said, whenever you find yourself getting angry, Caesar, do not say or do anything until you've repeated the 24 letters of the alphabet to yourself.

3:02Then the front side is a mirror, right? Because again, as Seneca said, we want to catch ourselves in the mirror and see how silly and ridiculous or ugly we look when we're getting ourselves upset. So we don't do anything stupid. And if you want one, you can head over to dailystoic.com slash pause right now to grab it, and I will link to it in today's show notes.

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6:30Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, on Thursdays, we do Q &As. This is an interesting episode because it almost didn't happen. So every once in a while, I'll get a media request like, would I come on this radio show or this TV show? And back in mid-November, Boris Sanchez and CNN reached out to ask if I would come on and just sort of talk about some of the themes in the wisdom book. And I said, sure, I would love to. I didn't have to go to New York or go anywhere. I could just do it from the Daily Stoic studio. So as I went on, I think I was supposed to go on at 2.30 and I got in there, you know, they report it at 2.10 or whatever, and they do the sound check and all this and they go, okay, slight problem.

7:13The president is giving a talk live and we have no idea how long it's going to go. So there's a couple of segments before you, but basically it was like sitting in traffic, right? We're going to have to wait for him to finish. And then this, and then this, and then this, you know, like when you're at the airport and there's like five other planes in front of you. So I had to sit there and watch the news for a while. And then we had a lovely little talk about some of the themes from the wisdom book. And I thought I would bring that to you now. I hope you like it. Boris Sanchez has been a wonderful supporter of the book.

7:45and he's great at what he does. I texted him a while ago. I won't put him on the spot, but one of the guests had sort of really gone at him. And it was interesting. I was saying I was admiring his self-control and poise on live television. So I tried to be patient and not get anxious or nervous as I did this thing. Being on live television is quite stressful. I'll let you decide how I did and hopefully answering some of these questions might be of interest to you. Thanks to folks at CNN and talk to you tomorrow.

8:22Tucker Carlson and his friendly interview with Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have criticized Fuentes and Carlson, saying that this kind of dialogue has no place in civil society. President Trump, though, last night shared a different view. We've had some great interviews with Tucker Carlson, but you can't tell him who to interview. I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don't know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out. Let him, you know, people have to decide. Ultimately, people have to decide. Let's discuss this and more with Ryan Holiday.

9:01He's the author of the new book, Wisdom Takes Work, his latest on stoic philosophy. Ryan, thank you so much, as always, for joining us. Given that we've talked about the dangers of suppressing certain ideas before, I wonder what your take is on this. If the president has a point that in a free society, you can't restrict who can be interviewed or the ideas that we find heinous. Do you think, though, that platforming and normalizing hatred and bigotry crosses the line in this regard? Well, there's a line in the legal community that that everyone's entitled to a lawyer, but that doesn't have to be you.

9:35So, in the abstract, sure, free speech is great. We should hear divergent opinions. And then you, as the person who has a podcast, who has a platform, who has influence, you know, you should sit down and go, hey, do I want a platform? Do I want to sit across from a rabid anti-Semite and neo-Nazi? And I think that's the interesting thing about where we are now. These aren't abstract or theoretical debates about free speech. These are... What are you doing with your platform and your audience? Who are you endorsing co-signing by putting them in front of millions of people? And I just think with power, with influence comes responsibility.

10:18And we're dealing with the consequences of a society where that seemingly basic premise is not shared by everyone. Yeah. To that point, I wanted to ask you about the idea of working toward wisdom in an era where truth itself is elusive, not only because we're drowning in information and disinformation, bombarded by propaganda and brain rot, but also because of the notion, this like post-structuralist, postmodern idea that truth is ultimately subjective and largely determined by authority, by those in power. So if wisdom takes work and we're seeking it, how do you know what's true? Yeah, I think we have a recency bias in most of our information diet.

11:05Obviously, we're talking here on television. You guys break all sorts of important news. But I think to be able to make sense of what's happening of the present moment, you have to root your understanding. You have to root your perspective in history and truth. I think it was Truman who said the only thing new in the world is history that you don't yet know. And so I think too many people are consuming the latest speculation on social media, the latest breaking headlines, but they struggle to make sense of it to separate, you know, speculation from truth, information from misinformation or disinformation because they don't have the historical basis or they don't understand even, you know, sort of human nature, human psychology, or even just how the government works.

11:50And so I think it is imperative that we all try to remain informed. I just would urge people to remember that getting it as it happens is not always the best way to do it. And it's hard to do it if you haven't based it on this sort of historical perspective. That's a really important point. It's also interesting because Stoic philosophy also encourages us to take control of our perceptions, to own that our mindset is a choice and that it shapes how we experience the world around us. You often quote Seneca, you know, I'm a fan. We dye events with our own color. So then where do you draw the line between that sort of cognitive training, that reframing, and then delusion or denial or delving into ideas that may feel good but are harmful, not only to yourself but to society?

12:44Yeah, at the core of stoic philosophy is this idea that events are objective and our opinions about them are not. Our responses about them is the important thing. And so I think I would urge people, especially if you find yourself getting triggered, getting upset, despairing, getting ecstatic about what you're hearing on the news to ask yourself, hey, is this actually the right response? You know, how can I step... Do I have to have an opinion about this? So philosophy is the idea that you have the initial reaction, the initial emotion, and then you put that opinion, that reaction to the test.

13:20And you ask yourself, is this healthy? Is this constructive? Is this based on anything real? The Stoics said that a great philosopher could tell the way a money changer by banging a coin on the table can hear if it's real or counterfeit. And I think we have to cultivate this ability, especially in not just in a world of a lot of information, but a world of AI and deepfakes, you know, the ability to suss out, hey, is this real? Is this true or not? And is my reaction, is that what they were trying to provoke in me? These are all really important skills, discipline, really, that we have to cultivate if we want to have wisdom and truth.

13:59The book is Wisdom Takes Work. It is worth your time. Ryan Holiday, we always appreciate yours. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.

14:29This isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

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