Try Not To Be So Slow | Suspend Your Opinions

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2:28Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

2:59Try not to be so slow. In the early years, there was an excuse. Nero was just a teenager when Seneca started tutoring him. The boy was timid and coddled. He had experienced tragedy and his childhood had been strange. Besides, for Seneca, the alternative to taking the job was going back to his unfair and lonely exile in the middle of the ocean. But the viability of Seneca's excuse fell apart pretty quickly. The famous Baron Gonzalez-Edoardo statue captures how disinterested Nero was in learning from Nero. Nero wanted the perks of being emperor, but none of the responsibilities. He was not competent, which was fine as long as he was content to let others make the decisions.

3:40But when Nero started asserting control, bad things started happening. Plus, there was the fact that he kept killing people, including his own mother. Seneca watched all this happen. He watched the gifts and honors from Nero pile up, making Seneca incredibly rich. He tried to be a good influence, but it got so absurd, so malevolent, that at one point, he had to remind Nero that it was literally impossible to kill all your successors. Eventually, someone takes your place. Why didn't he try to stop it sooner? Why didn't he say anything, even in his private writings? We were complicit for monetary reasons, an account manager at Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the creators of OxyContin, later reflected.

4:21We were slow to catch on, and that might have been greed. As the fascinating book Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe reveals, it was definitely greed. Like the Seneca we see in James Rahm's equally fascinating book Dying Every Day, we are not only easily corrupted but we can corrupt ourselves we don't see what we don't want to see we turn away from the costs of our decisions whether it was the Sacklers and the wreckage of the opioid crisis or Seneca and the wreckage of Nero's regime we are slow to catch on because of what it says about us we're slow to catch on because of what it means we'll have to do unlike the Sacklers who still seem to be in denial of the terrible things their family has done Seneca did eventually turn on Nero.

5:04Moreover, he ended up paying the ultimate price, dying at Nero's hand. The tragedy is not just all the people affected in the way his hypocrisy undermined his beautiful writing, but that it could have gone differently. We contrast Seneca with his fellow Roman senator, Thrasia, in Lies of the Stokes, who actually did do something. Seneca could have seen it sooner, could have done something sooner, could have been a hero instead of being complicit. And that's the lesson for all of us. and seriously you should read dying every day by james rom fantastic book we have a great podcast with him empire of pain by patrick radden keith i picked up at a bookstore on vacation at the beach earlier this year fantastic uh it's basically about one of the biggest crimes of the 20th and 21st centuries so check that out at the painted porch we carry it and if you want more on the life of seneca and thrascia and some of the stoics check out lives of the stoics as well

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7:41Suspend your opinions. Epictetus would teach that opinions were the cause of a troubled mind. Opinions about the way we think things should be or need to be. One of the Stoic words for opinion is dogma, and the practice of Stoicism begins with a relentless attempt to suspend this dogmatic way of living, a cessation of the belief that you can force your opinions and expectations onto the world. We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and not let it upset our state of mind, for things have no natural power to shape our judgments. It's Marcus Aurelius in Meditations. Today I escaped from the crush of circumstances, or better put, I threw them out, for the crush wasn't from outside me, but in my own assumptions.

8:23It's Marcus Aurelius in meditations. There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings, arrogant opinion and mistrust. Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes that under the torrent of circumstances there can be no happiness. That's Epictetus' discourses. throw out your conceited opinions for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows from Epictetus this idea of having no opinion is man it's so powerful Epictetus also talks about you know can you be content to be seen as clueless or stupid about some things I mean look I don't think ignorance is admirable but I do think that we often sort of track in real time a whole bunch of information we don't need we have too many thoughts or judgments about other people's personal lives, the things our neighbors are doing.

9:13Life is better when you have fewer opinions because then it just is. You have fewer expectations, so you're not disappointed. You also don't take things for granted. And so I think for the Stokes, it's about getting to kind of a Zen-like place where you just see things as they are and you don't need them to be different. You don't need them to be otherwise. You didn't expect them to be this way or that way. You just went with the flow of it. And you know, when I, I think this is obviously what social media is designed to make us not do right. Facebook says, what are you, what's on your mind? What are you thinking about?

9:45What's going on in your life? Twitter says the same thing. Snapchat and Instagram say, take a video of this, share it, let other people know, give your thoughts, react to this. Do you ever feel that much better doing that? Or does it just create new problems for you? And now did anyone like it? Do people agree? Why is this idiot, responding in the comments. Why aren't people understanding? Why aren't they appreciating? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You have the power to have no opinion. That's such a beautiful, freeing idea from Marcus Aurelius. And look, he's not saying don't have an opinion about injustice, don't be involved civically.

10:18Of course, that's not what the Stoics think. Their whole lives are a testament to the contrary. But I guess they're just saying it's like, look, if somebody you know is having an affair, that can eat you up inside. It can bother you. Why are they doing this? Why do people do this? Why? You know, it's none of your business, man. It's not up to you. You're not doing it. You know why you're not doing it. Let them do them. They will face the consequences for that. You don't need to get involved. Not to get too political, but, you know, this is the Supreme Court decision after our, you know, crook of an attorney general here in Texas filed a lawsuit that tried to overturn the electoral results in some other states.

10:58The Supreme Court was basically saying, focus on your own elections, man. Texas doesn't have a say in the elections of Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Georgia. And that's a good rule for life, too. The founders are smart. They set up a system where each state does their own thing for the most part. Yeah, they interplay, they interact, of course, and there's interdependencies. But for the most part, do your own thing and have your own opinion. The amount of time I see, again, to extend this, like liberal friends of mine who are so upset that somebody over here did this or somebody over here has this dumb opinion and someone over it's like as mark cerulea says leave other people's mistakes to their makers you got enough to focus on with you you got enough that's in your control that you're not focusing on going through life in a dogmatic way trying to project enforce your opinions on other people is a miserable way to live it's also a tyrannical way to live and so we've got to practice this sort of, I don't want to call it detachment, but it's, it's, it's looking inward instead of outward.

11:59And, and I think that, that, that creates a happier life that creates a better flowing life. It also gives people the freedom to make their mistakes, to learn their own lessons, to do their own things. Something, you know, I'm learning about with my kids as well as you do, you do you man. And I'm here if you need me. And, uh, and I think that's a good way to live. And so let's focus on having fewer opinions today. Let's, let's focus on the things that are up to us. Let's leave the things that are not up to us, to the other people, to the makers, to the people they are up to. And I think that'll all help us get along, certainly be happier and certainly have more tranquility.

12:33So if you're talking about politics, upset you. It's a great opportunity to practice exactly what I'm talking about. Just have no opinion. Move on. I don't have an opinion about your opinion. And that's exactly how it should be. All right. Have a good week, everyone.

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