We Have To Help Each Other | Honesty As Our Default

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1:04Welcome 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 in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. And 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.

1:45We have to help each other. If there's anything redeeming about tragedies and disasters, it's the way they bring out the best in us. Whether it's volunteers like the Cajun Navy rushing into flooded streets, they're headed to Florida right now to provide hurricane relief, and you can actually donate to their Amazon wish list of supplies. Or it's firefighters charging into burning buildings. These terrible events remind us how in our darkest moments we can still rise to take care of each other, that courage isn't dead yet. This spirit of mutual aid was found in ancient times, too. In 64 AD, during Nero's reign, a fire ravaged the city of Rome.

2:26In response, a city in Gaul sent a generous sum to aid the victims. Just a year later, tragedy struck that same city, a devastating fire consuming it. Nero, in a striking gesture of reciprocity, sent an equal sum to support the recovery of its citizens. Seneca wrote to a friend reflecting on these events, noting some of the bitter irony of it, that one city extended help to another only to be struck by a similar disaster soon after. To the Stoics, such moments were a chance to live out their philosophy. When calamity befalls someone, it's our duty if we can to offer support. But we should also take these moments as a reminder.

3:06There but for the grace of God go I. There but for the grace of God go the people we cherish, goes our stuff, our homes. We must recognize how easily, how inevitably, fate can in turn place us on the receiving end of misfortune. Being unexpected adds to the weight of a disaster, Seneca wrote, and being a surprise has never failed to increase a person's pain. For that reason, nothing should ever be unexpected by us. There are so many things outside of our control. We can't stop a hurricane or prevent an earthquake, but we can help our neighbor in the midst of one. We can take care of our own because we are all one.

3:44We are all part of that same sympatheia, as the Stoics called it, an interconnected cosmos. We are all our own part of the same large whole. We are all cut from the same cloth and breathe and think and live the same, no matter what superficial differences or geographic distances may exist between us. Every one of the four Stoic virtues teaches us this and demands we act accordingly. I've always a big fan of Habitat for Humanity, and you can support those affected by Hurricane Helene and Milton by donating to Habitat for Humanity's Hurricane Recovery Fund following the immediate response after everyone's health and safety is taken care of.

4:25This organization is dedicated to long-term recovery and building initiatives in communities like the ones that have been affected by these. You can donate today. I'll link to that in today's show notes.

4:42Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I can't believe it is October 11th already. It's just absolutely insane to me. Today's entry in the Daily Stoic, I am holding a cloth-bound edition here in my hands, 366 Meditation on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. Got a cool leather-bound edition if you want one. And got a nice big chunk from Meditations 11.5 here, one of my favorite passages from Marcus. It says, how rotten and fraudulent when people say they intend to give it to you straight. What are you up to, dear friend? It shouldn't need your announcement, but it should be readily seen, as if written on your forehead, heard in the ring of your voice, a flash in your eyes, just as the beloved sees it all in the lover's glance.

5:36In short, the straightforward and good person should be like a smelly goat. You know when they are in the room with you. You know, it's funny. I actually use this passage in Right Thing Right Now in the Tell the Truth chapter. I make this important distinction. A lot of whistleblowers actually don't like that term. They're like, I'm not a whistleblower. I'm telling the truth. That's my job. Let me give you a chunk of that.

6:05Ernie Fitzgerald, who exposed cost overruns and$500 hammers and$7 ,000 coffee makers in his civilian role at the Pentagon, saw it this way. He didn't like the label whistleblower, preferring instead to be called a truth teller. He preferred to see it as what he was paid to do as an employee and expected to do as a citizen. His wife, Nell, agreed. On the night before he was to testify before Congress with his bosses pressuring him to play dumb, She told him, I don't really think I could live with a man I didn't respect, and if he went over there and lied, I'd have no respect for him. Whistleblowing is an aggressive form of truth-telling, speaking up with a twist of personal and professional risk.

6:48It becomes necessary when one has discovered a lie or a fraud, when one has witnessed or been a victim of some foul deed that the world does not know about. You'd think that this kind of courage would be appreciated, but it isn't. While we can sometimes come to respect and admire whistleblowers long after the fact, more often than not they are doubted, pressured, criticized, and attacked. Their motives are impugned, their personal lives are scrutinized. Even with considerable legal protections for whistleblowers, which in the United States date back to 1778, this act of public service is not an easy one.

7:26Ernie Fitzgerald's reward for committing his act of truth, he became the most hated man in the Air Force. Secret recordings caught Nixon telling his aides to get rid of that son of a bitch, and then he had him fired. It's a reminder that for all the lip service we pay to the truth, in fact, honesty is often a radical, even dangerous act. It may well be one of the rarest things in the world. How many truly honest people do you know? People who tell the truth when it's inconvenient, who make it clear where they stand, who don't equivocate. Could you honestly put yourself in that category? Marcus Aurelius, later emperor himself, came to despise those who could not be honest as a policy.

8:07Particularly grating to him were the people who would begin a remark by claiming that they were going to give it to him straight, implying, as we all so casually do, that most of the time we're not doing that. Honesty should not need a preface. An honest person should be like a smelly goat in the room, Marcus Aurelius would say. You know when they're there. An honest person keeps their word. They don't hide behind jargon. They don't sneak around. If there's going to be a delay or a problem, they'll tell you. If they have concerns, they'll voice them. They won't nod their head only to say, I told you so later.

8:43They won't fool themselves with wishful thinking or the desire to be well received. They accept that, like Cassandra or the messengers in Antony and Cleopatra, that they won't always be appreciated or believed. Not that they're a jerk about it. There's a distinction between telling the truth and attacking people, between saying what you think and giving people your unsolicited opinions about how they should live or look or act. Speak the truth as you see it, Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, but with kindness, with humility, without hypocrisy. The truth hurts enough by itself. You don't have to try to be hurtful.

9:19Which brings us back to the whistleblowers. Often they are accused of seeking attention or trying to make themselves famous. This is laughable because they have almost always attempted to first politely, privately address what they have discovered. They have exhausted every internal and official and unofficial channel. Sometimes over the course of years, they have given their boss all due respect. They tried to keep the laundry in-house, trying to clean it instead of washing it in public. It was only after this failed, after every good faith effort was rejected, that they sought the attention of the media or the law.

9:53But ultimately, they did what they had to do. They didn't shy away from that either, because they knew it was right. They followed the timeless advice that the poet Juvenal gave a Roman politician named Ponticus back in the second century AD. Be a good soldier, he said, a good guardian, an incorruptible judge, if summoned as a witness in some dubious and uncertain case, even if the tyrant Phalaris himself should command you to life. And bringing up his bull to dictate the perjury he would have you tell, count it an abomination to prefer life to honor and to lose for the sake of living the reason to live.

10:30In matters big or small, public or private, convenient or inconvenient, whether it will be rewarded or punished, tell the truth. Be a bastion of truth in a time of lies. Say, not through me. It's not just the right thing to do. It is your job as an accountant, as an officer, as a receptionist, as a spouse, as a human being.

10:59look we've all used that language before right i'm going to be straightforward with you here i'll be honest no disrespect but empty expressions or not they do prompt the question if you have to preface your remarks by saying you're being honest in this case what does that say about all the other times that you didn't say that instead we should cultivate a life and a reputation in which honesty is as bankable as a note from the U.S. Treasury, as emphatic and explicit as a contract, as permanent as a tattoo. It will save you from needing these pointless reassurances, and it will also make you a better person.

11:36You can grab The Daily Stoic anywhere books are sold, of course, and Right Thing Right Now, Good Character, Good Values, Good Deeds, is available everywhere books are sold. What you just heard was a chunk of the audiobook, which I recorded here at the Daily Stoic studios. And I'm really proud of that book. I hope you like it.

11:58Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com slash email.

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