We Have to Care About the Little Guy | A Stoic Reset for Right Now

0:00Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14We have to care about the little guy. Cato was powerful. Cato was a traditionalist. Cato was conservative. In many ways, he was an elitist. But the most important thing about him is that from an early age, he hated bullies. As we talk about in Lives of the Stoics, at a birthday party for a friend, a group of boys were playing a Roman version of the game Cops and Robbers. One of the younger boys was caught and shut into a dark chamber by one of the older boys. Scared, the child called for Cato, who threw aside the boy blocking the door and took the scared child home to his parents. As a teenager, Cato was invited with his tutor to the house of Sulla, who then ruled Rome as a cruel dictator.

1:00As the tutor explained to Cato, everyone feared Sulla, and he watched as Cato's entire countenance changed. Why then don't you give me a sword, Cato said, outraged, so that I could free my country from slavery. And as he got older, maybe that's why Cato hated the corruption in Rome's provinces, because it victimized the inhabitants who deserved better. Cato and many of the Stoics had a North Star that pointed them into opposition to anyone who tried to intimidate them or take away their rights. This is the Stoic virtue of justice. They hated those who abused power and wielded it against the weak.

1:43In fact, the expression sic semper tyrannis, thus always to tyrants, traces all the way back to Scipio Aemilianus, one of the great Stoic generals before the turn of the millennium. George Washington modeled himself on Cato his entire life, but his view on justice, on the goal of good government on a just world, was captured in a line that he borrowed from the scriptures. Everyone shall sit in safety of his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. His vision of America gave bigotry no sanction, he said, and persecution no assistance. Here, Washington is talking about tolerance.

2:27He's talking about freedom and love and hope. He was talking about sticking up for the little guy. Now, Washington and the founders, nor the Stoics, were perfect at this, slavery being the foremost of the examples. They fell short, but they set down a powerful ideal for us to aspire to today. As Marcus Aurelius writes, it was from the Stoics Thrasia, Helvidius, Cato, and Brutus that he learned the importance of a society of equal laws governed by equality of status and speech, and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else. Tyrants, bullies, and jerks are the enemies of justice.

3:10They cannot be accepted. They cannot be accommodated. Whether it's an online mob or an economic system that exploits the impoverished, the belittling boss, or the masked government thugs, tyranny is tyranny and it puts us all at risk. Put aside party. Put aside everything. we must speak loudly and with one voice against those who intimidate, those who violate, those who abuse and discriminate. We must not turn away when the meek and the vulnerable are being mistreated or scapegoated. We must stand up to hate and violence, aggression and cruelty. Because if we are not willing to fight for the little guy, for the other, and to do what we can for them, who will?

3:57And if we allow them to be hurt or exploited or left to suffer, what does that say about us?

4:17We should always expect disruption and change and surprise. So the question then for us as Stoics, as citizens, as human beings, is not how do we avoid these challenges, but how do we prepare for them, right? How do we set ourselves up not to be broken and destroyed and disrupted and thinking about how to future-proof myself? What the Stoics can teach us about how to prepare, not with panic and paranoia or some sort of escape plan, but with some practical, timeless ideas that the Stoics, by the way, tested in crises and circumstances, both very different and very much the same as ours, and how these strategies can help us with our turbulent times, just as they have helped people in turbulent times throughout history.

5:16For starters, you know what I'm doing? I'm focusing on what I can control. Epictetus, who was a slave in the Roman Empire, who experienced exile and torture and about every other form of difficulty you can imagine. He said that our chief task in life is to separate things into two categories. What's up to us and what isn't up to us. He said we have to get clarity on what's up to us and what isn't up to us. And so like a way to think about this, like what Putin does, inflation, tariffs, my mother's health, weather, like none of that is up to me. But you know what is up to me? Like my attitude, my emotions, my wants, my desires, my focus, my response to all those things, what those other people do and say, the consequences of what they do and say, how I respond to that, that is up to me.

6:08Who I am is up to me. So that's what I'm focusing on. And that's what the Stoics want us to focus on. One of the things I'm doing is I'm reading old books and I'm reading old books instead of watching the news. As I was saying, like, if you want to understand current events, often the best way to do that is not via breaking news. It's to find a book about a similar event in the past, like read history, read psychology, read biographies. biographies, go for information that has a long half-life, that's not going to be contradicted in the next week by the next scientific breakthrough, by the next bit of investigative reporting.

6:51That's something I think the Stoics are really good at, right? The Stoics have endured for 2 ,000 years. So the chances that they're going to become irrelevant in 2026, suddenly disproven, is very unlikely. The chances that the insights that Epictetus uncovered about the human condition in torture or that Marcus Aurelius discovered about power and fame and success, it's very unlikely that by 2028, none of that is going to hold up. And what this means is there are lots of books, lots of ideas, lots of history that can help us with what lies ahead because it'll rhyme with what lies behind. And this is something Churchill talked about as wars breaking out into Europe, he was working on this big epic history that he was doing.

7:39And he said, it's helpful sometimes to put a couple thousand years between you and the present moment. So it gives us perspective, it gives us clarity, and it also gives us wisdom about this moment. So whether we're navigating personal trials or upheavals or moments of great success and abundance, books are one of the most reliable tools that we have to help us prepare for that, help us handle that. Again, I remember I interviewed Morgan Housel here when we were doing the Daily Stoic podcast, and he said something like, he thinks back 10 years ago, he can't really remember any articles, any news reports he heard from that time, but he can remember a lot of books that he read from that period.

8:20Those books had ideas that helped him over that 10-year period. And I think that's true for the books that you can read now. And that's why I'm reading more books than I am consuming the news. Read Viktor Frankl. Read Taylor Branch's series on Martin Luther King. Read the Stoics. Read fiction. Read great epic novels. Reread the Odyssey. Read the Iliad. Read Stockdale's Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot. I've been reading that recently. One thing I'm trying to remind myself of is what my job is. Because things aren't going to go the way that I want them to go. There's going to be uncertainty and upheaval and unfairness, That's what you're saying.

8:58But when the dust settles, like after a crisis, after a setback, in the middle of disappointment, as you're reacting to what's happening, as you're speculating and wondering, you're going to be thinking like, what happens next or what if it gets worse? And while these are important questions, I think for the most part, it doesn't change what's expected of you. One of the things Marcus really says is, you know, how does this stop you? Says, like, how does anything stop you from acting with courage and justice and discipline and wisdom? His point was that was your job. He said your job is to be a good person.

9:35Like, no matter what happens, good or bad or fair or unfair, whether there's order or disorder, our job is the same. It doesn't matter who's president. It doesn't matter if they're being a good president or a bad president. It doesn't matter if the economy is good or bad. It doesn't matter if unemployment is high or low. It doesn't matter if you are employed or unemployed. Your most important job is still your job. Like your obligation is still your obligation. And Marx really said that that job, he says, what anyone says or does, I'm bound to the good. He said, I'm like an emerald, right? My job is to show my true colors, to be an emerald.

10:15And he was saying that that's what our job is. But at the most basic level, though, right, like we do have certain obligations in our professions. Maybe we swore an oath. Maybe there's a code of conduct. Maybe there's a set of standards, like if you're a journalist or a doctor or a lawyer. And we have to understand that, again, what anyone says or does, whether this behavior is celebrated or punished, criticized or appreciated, our job is to do our job. There's a stoic named Helvidius, and the emperor Vespasian sort of warns him to stop speaking out and that if he didn't, he said he'd be removed from the Senate.

10:58And Helvidius looks at him and he says, look, it might be in your power to allow me to be a member of the Senate or not. But he says, as long as I am in the Senate, I have to be a senator. I have to do my job. And Vaspasian says, I don't think you understand. If you do that, I will put you to death. And Helvidius looks at him and he says, look, you do your part and I'll do mine. Our job is to do our job, which is to be good. And then also to do the thing we were trained to do, to do the thing that we know is important, as meaningful, that we promised to do when we took up this responsibility. And so, like, the consequences, the recognition, the pay, all that can change.

11:42But the duty remains, right? The duty remains. That's what a stoic would say. And obviously, we have multiple jobs, right? And one of the jobs I'm trying to do well is raise my kids well. I might be disgusted with how other people are behaving. I might be disappointed in the world. And I might despair at my ability to sort of impact, shape the future. But I have the opportunity to have multi-generational impact in my own home. Like I think about the way that my life is shaped by choices that my father made, things that he taught me, and then things that he should have done and didn't do. And I think about how his father shaped him.

12:21I think about how on a daily basis, my life is shaped by things that my grandfather did and on and on. Right. This is our chance for multigenerational impact. And one of my favorite things to do is I write the Daily Dad email. I do the Daily Stoic. We also do Daily Dad. I do videos and I write this sort of bit of parenting wisdom every day, drawn from history and science and literature and ordinary people to sort of pass along a parenting lesson every day. It goes out to almost 100 ,000 people all over the world. But mostly I'm doing the Daily Dad for myself because I'm always researching and writing and collecting ideas on how I can be better at what is really my most important job.

13:01Because I want to be more patient. I want to set a good example. I want to help my kids become what they're meant to become. And that's something I don't control it completely, but it's somewhere where I have a lot of influence. Right. And raising our kids is one of the most important things we'll ever do. And yet how many people just sort of trust their gut? They just kind of go along. They're so caught up in the day to dayness of it. They're not consciously trying to to do what they can do. And so I try to study it the way that I study philosophy or history or business because I want to do it well.

13:35And so if you are frustrated with the direction of your country, of the world, of your neighborhood, of of so many things. right? And you could feel that for a variety of reasons. Well, one place you can direct that is in your own home, right? It starts at home. So raise your kids right. Raise your kids to make a difference. I'm keeping a journal as I always have, because in keeping a journal, it keeps me. You know, the Stoics, they lived in turbulent, chaotic, dysfunctional time. There was Nero and Domitian and Claudius. There was Commodus who came after Marcus Aurelius, right? I think it's an interesting question.

14:13How did they stay clear-headed and principled? How did they not lose their minds? And the answer to that is hard work. And the place they did that work, which one writer would say of the Stokes, where they waged their spiritual combat, was on the pages of their journal. That's where they got perspective. That's where they shook off misinformation and noise. It's where they sort of boiled things down into truth. It's where they fought for control of the greatest empire themselves. Marcus Aurelius is fighting to be the person that philosophy tried to make him. And where is he doing that? In Meditations.

14:53Meditations is the byproduct of Marcus Aurelius writing a journal in a chaotic period, a period as chaotic as the one we're in now, one that made as little sense to him as this one might make to you. But he used the pages of the journal to help it make sense. Orwell said that, you know, to see what's in front of your nose needs a constant struggle. He was talking about totalitarianism and authoritarianism and state control in the 20th century. But he actually said that a journal was something that helps towards that. He said to keep a record of what you're thinking, of what's happening. It's something you can hold fast to that can help you make sense.

15:32It can even help you hold yourself accountable to your own opinions. I guess That's what I'm saying is that if you're not examining your mind, who is? If you're not dumping your frustrations out on the pages, like who are you dumping them on? If you're not using a journal to gain self-awareness, to cut through all that noise, how are you going to see what's in front of you? And you have to do this. You can use the Daily Stoic Journal, for instance, like this is mine. It has a little leather cover and it's a reminder. Make time. I want to make time every day. I want to sit down with some questions.

16:08I want to sit down and create some distance between me and the present moment. Root myself in deeper principles, bigger ideas, go to clarity. And a journal is something you've got to be doing in this day and age. And here's something that I think stands the test of time that I'm working on. I want to treat people well. I don't control the cruelty in the world. I don't control how others act. I don't care how unfair or thoughtless or selfish most people are or are being in this moment. But I control how I run my team. I control whether I show up for my family. I control how I treat strangers. The world is always going to have its share of rude people and dishonest people and indifferent people.

16:52I mean, look, Mark's realist. He opens book two of meditations by saying to himself, the people I will deal with today are going to be meddling and ungrateful and arrogant and dishonest and jealous and surly. This is what people are going to be. This is the way they always have been. We don't control that, but we control whether we're like them. He says we control whether we let them implicate us in their ugliness, right? We don't have to contribute to it. We can be kind and patient and fair. This is something that's always in my control. That's one of the wonderful things about being an entrepreneur, but also about being a consumer.

17:26You decide what you're going to do with your wallet. You decide how you're going to run your business. You decide your policies. I decide what vendors I use for the things we make for Daily Stoic. I control what companies I do business with. I control the benefits that I offer. I control, you know, my tone of voice. I control my stuff, right? We should focus on treating people well. This is where we can have a positive impact. As I said, it's a noisy, difficult, crazy world. So I'm prioritizing stillness. We need to be able to think clearly. We need to not be reactive. We can't be emotional all the time.

18:05we have to have perspective and intention. And the only way to cultivate that is with stillness, right? The time we spend with a journal, the hobbies we cultivate, the way we set up our lives and our information diet, like what inputs we allow in. Because it is from stillness that insight and perspective and contentment and happiness and clarity, all this stuff comes from. A friend of mine, Randall Stutman, who's coached some of the biggest CEOs in the history of Wall Street, he talked to me once about how he noticed that all these high performers tended to have a hobby that didn't involve a lot of voices, right?

18:42They would listen to classical music. They went fly fishing. They did long distance bike races or they ran or they did archery. These people who are perpetually busy, there was endless demands on their time. They were talking to people constantly. They had to cultivate stillness in their routine, in their life that allowed them to reflect, that allowed them to sift through things, that allowed them to connect with themselves so then they could go back out in the world and connect with other people. And ultimately, that's what stillness is the key is about. But if we're not cultivating what the Stoics call ataraxia, and I opened the book with a scene from Seneca in the midst of his life falling apart, in the midst of Nero losing his mind, you know, Seneca is trying to do some writing and he's having to tune out all the sounds around him, the chaos of the city.

19:31He's trying to lock in. And if we can't cultivate that stillness, we're not going to be what we need to be and we're not going to be able to do what we need to do. And look, you don't control the chaos of the world, but you do control whether you get sucked into it. You do control whether you have a retreat or an escape from it. You do control whether you bring stillness to it, but you do control whether you contribute to the craziness, whether you are disturbed amidst all the disturbances.

20:21This isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.