Stoicism with Ryan Holiday - Part 2

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1:02Today on the James Altucher Show. Is Jesus a Stoic? What's interesting is St. Paul, his disciple, studies the Stoics in Tarsus, and then he gets arrested and he comes before this Roman judge. That judge is Seneca's brother. There's something about the struggle and then ultimately the falling short and the sort of bittersweetness of you got as close as you could, but some moments are lost forever. I think that's the struggle and the relatability and the essence of the book. You have to have a certain amount of self-awareness about this. Obviously, this is what we just went through with the last president.

1:40If you're not aware of your decline as it's happening and you're not able to mitigate it and you're not able to compensate for it and you're not able to ultimately know what your limitations are, you'll find yourself in an impossible situation. this isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host this is the james altucher show i would say writing is really hard to do well and a little bit of the issue right now is everybody thinks they're a writer because, oh, I could write something on and put it on LinkedIn. I could actually have AI write it and put it on LinkedIn. Now I'm the writer.

2:27But it's actually really hard to tell that story. And we see so many different examples. Let me ask you, so you write, obviously you write these great, amazing books, bringing stoicism into the modern day, and you tell it with modern stories. you know ideas I would say ideas piggyback on the stories you're telling and so you have to be a good storyteller which which you are but you usually use almost always I would say you use great historical examples that are really worth remembering and and you you tell in such a way that I remember them you don't tell as many personal stories and I'm sure you must have been asked this before but and I'm the opposite I tend when I write I tend to write personal stories some historical but some or most personal why don't you write more I want to know more personal stories.

3:13I really love the personal stories. I know you. I want to hear the personal stories. I would say it is deliberate. In some ways, it's cheating because I'm saying, I'm picking, the historical story has a significance and a weight to it that, you know, that... History has chosen those stories for you. It's survivorship bias of stories. And there's a vague sort of familiarity or myth or significance to it by the fact that it existed. It happened a long time ago. And this person accomplished X, Y, or Z. There's just, I'm starting, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants or something, right? Like I'm picking, and so I think because I'm trying to get, I'm already facing a pretty strong headwind, which is that I'm trying to persuade people to be interested in an obscure school of ancient philosophy.

4:09I'm trying to use every advantage that I can. I always find it super lame when I pick up a book and it starts with like, so I was consulting with one of my clients or I was giving a talk to 300 healthcare professionals in Cleveland. I just find it super lame. Right. It doesn't work with the idea. Because they're talking to a bunch of pharmacists in Cleveland or is it lame because it just might be poor storytelling? I think it's both. Like if I'm sitting down and I'm trying to, like my last book was about justice, right? Or ethics. Do I want to talk about, you know, me deciding a tip I'm going to leave at this restaurant that I got poor service at?

4:58Is that really the sort of the raw materials I want to use to have this discussion about how we treat the little guy? Or do I want to pick a story from history where like a great king was, you know, so I think it mostly has to do with the context in which I'm writing or what I'm trying to, the idea I'm trying to be in service of. If I'm writing a book about marketing, I put myself in there because I have real experience. I think I have interesting stories. Yeah, right. That is where you did personal stories. Yeah, so it just, I think it just, you have to ask yourself, what am I trying to accomplish?

5:34And then you think about what's the best means of doing it. And this is why ego, I think, is a problem. Because if what I really want to do is talk about myself, I'm going to shoehorn myself into things I have no business in being in. Or I'm going to act like my stories are much more interesting than they are. I think I just decided, hey, I'm more interested in these other people for the most part than I am in myself. But I think in your writing, which is much more personal, you don't just tell your stories aren't oh hey let me tell you about this conversation I had it's usually like let me tell you this moment my life was falling apart so there's a vulnerability and rawness to it that doesn't feel like you're trying to make yourself look good right that's the thing you never if you just say oh I'm the greatest basketball player in history that's going to fail as a story Unless you are the greatest basketball player in history, yes.

6:34Right, otherwise it's just like bragging. No one wants to listen to that. But I forgot who said it. I think Carrie Fisher said no one wants to watch a movie about beautiful people all the time. Yeah. But you're right. It's a smart approach where the historical stories, it's like a cheat code. So out of like the six or seven billion people who have lived in human history, history itself has chosen the 50 or 60 best stories. and you could just tell those even that have been told many times before, but you could tell it in your own angle and you know, you know, let's just take the most obvious story of all, Jesus.

7:12We know that billions of people think that this is the best story ever. So if you write about it, you're not gonna, you know that history's already chosen this story for you. Like it's gonna be good depending on your angle. But whereas if you just write about yourself, like you said, it's a very hit or miss. You've gotta be careful and you can have more, you can have more wider range of reaction. And I think it's about the medium. When I'm sitting down, and this is my point about books versus some of the other ways. If I'm sitting down and writing a book that I'm going to try to make a very difficult argument that I want you to pay for and then give hours of your life, I'm going to pick the best, most interesting representations of that idea.

7:52If I'm shooting this shit on a podcast, I'll talk about myself. Or if I'm doing a social media video, or if I'm writing an article that I'm going to send out to my emails, those are very different. You know what I mean? Yeah, like I remember when, maybe this was 2016, or it was right before the 2016 election, you wrote an article about you and your dad having a political disagreement, and we did an entire podcast about just that article, because that was important to me, like, as, or that was interesting to me, because you're someone I read and pay attention to, and how you dealt with this disagreement with someone very close to you, who you love, that's something that everybody goes through that.

8:31And it's interesting. And so I want, as opposed to you writing about, you know, Dwight Eisenhower had a disagreement with his dad and this is how they resolved it. Like some categories are more interesting to be personal. No, no. And I think I learned from Robert that even when you're picking historical stories, you have to be super selective. And just because you know this one doesn't mean it's the best one. And so I just try to go like, hey, here's the argument that I'm trying to make. What is the best way to illustrate that or persuade people of that? And you have to sort of do that work. And that's what separates like a okay book from a really good book or a book that lasts and a book that doesn't last.

9:13I think that's true. And it's particularly interesting now that because books aren't lasting as long now, like people don't really read Hemingway anymore for pleasure. I mean, I will, but I also grew up on classic books, so maybe that's why. But I feel like the next generation, certainly the generation after that, when it exists, will not read Hemingway as much for pleasure. I don't know. I would be curious what the sales say. Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if they're basically stable. Yeah. You know, let me ask you a question, like, sort of related to what we were just talking about.

9:48Is Jesus a Stoic? well uh what's interesting is saint paul his disciple studies the stoics in tarsus and then he's uh when he gets arrested and he comes before this roman judge that judge is seneca's brother so like yeah so these things are like there's a i do every christmas i do this um this email and i i go like he was born in a province of the roman empire you know he speaks and writes about philosophy. It reaches millions of people. He talks about loving your brother. He talks about treating people with kindness. He talks about controlling your desires. I sort of go through all the sort of philosophy of it.

10:31And then I go, obviously, I'm talking about Jesus, right? He's put to death by the Roman state. He goes bravely. He doesn't hold any grace. And I go, no, actually, I'm talking about Seneca because they're born. They have almost the exact same story. They're born in the same year in different parts of the Roman Empire. And they come at odds with sort of sovereign power and then are forced in their dying. They're given this sort of ultimate test of their philosophy, which is like, do they disavow it upon pain of death? And so I think what's interesting to me sort of studying and writing a lot about that period is it sort of changes my opinion on the Bible because you read the Bible and there's parts of it that make sense.

11:16And then parts of it, you're like, what is this? This is weird and strange. And why don't they just say what they mean? And then if that's the only book of ancient literature you know, you could go, oh, that's just how they were back then. And then you read Seneca or any of the Stoics or Socrates, and they're just normal people talking about regular life. They're not speaking in riddles. They don't claim to hear voices. And you go, oh, actually, Jesus was weird. And it's very discordant. And it makes it harder for me to appreciate that message in some ways. In other ways, I appreciate it more.

12:01But do you know, I go, this isn't the only philosopher talking about this stuff. There were other people who are much more accessible, much less mystical, maybe even more helpful to people. And we just went with this other myth instead. I've always found that strange. I wonder if it's because back then, Stoicism, let's say, what was the Greek religion, what we now call Greek mythology, there was a distance of many centuries from the beginnings of the Greek religion to Stoicism. So maybe people were kind of like, okay, those are good stories, but what else? And I feel like now in modern society, now, of course, there are a lot of literalists who take the Bible literally, but probably most people are secular.

12:54and they believe in turn the other cheek, but they don't necessarily believe in every miracle and so on. So I wonder if now we're at that point where religion needs to be more philosophical because it's hard to take it literally. And maybe back in zero AD, people like Seneca were similarly, okay, well, obviously Zeus doesn't create all the lightning storms. And I need to understand what the actual philosophy is here. Well, it's also weird. So Hadrian has this like boyfriend, lover, who drowns in the Nile River or something, right? And he's so bereft and full of grief that he sets up this temple and this cult to his, he anoints him as a god, and he set up this cult that worships his dead boyfriend.

13:41And it becomes enormously popular, rivaling Christianity in the early days. Well, who was it? I'm forgetting his name. But yeah, the point is you never even heard of it. This was just like a thing that happened, which is like these different cults or different sort of adherence to these different deities or figures would sort of take on popularity. And then some of them kept going and some of them didn't. And so I always think that's interesting that like we just sort of choose which ones. Thousands of years later, it seems like it all makes sense. But at some point, it was kind of a new thing.

14:19Yeah, it'd be interesting to see why different things survive. Like why did, why did Judaism and then Judeo-Christian-ism survive? Like it was just the, the, the Israelites were just one tribe of people in Israel and they were all just like fighting it out. And I guess around 900 BC for a brief period for several hundred years, the Israelites won. They won all the battles, killed all the other people. And then they wrote down there about their gods. And that's the one. Then they were invaded. And only one small group, the Judea, the Jews, lived and survived and organized. And somehow that group became everything.

15:02Yes. And so it's interesting. And like you say, though, every tribe, there's thousands of tribes that we never know about again. Yes. So like what happened? Or like the Odyssey is the myth that survived, right? Somebody wrote that one down. It was an oral tradition that somebody wrote down. And then it's not just that they wrote it down and it survived. It's that it maintained its popularity for 2 ,000, 2 ,500 years or whatever, right? Like we only discovered Gilgamesh, which is a similar epic myth. Also really interesting. Also a foundational cultural idea for a group of people. But it was basically lost until the 1850s.

15:40So it's only had 150. It's not that it's however old that it is. it's however old it is and has remained in circulation right so it's it's that we've been telling and retelling like matt damon's going to star on the odyssey and christopher nolan's a bad choice christopher nolan is great but okay but you know what like and and then there was a like um uh ralph fines is is also in a movie about odysseus that is coming out like we've just been retelling this story for thousands of years in every medium possible, right? And so it's not that it's old, it's that it's perpetually made new that's made it so powerful.

16:19Whereas Gilgamesh for 2 ,000 of the years was obscured and unknown. And then for the last 150 years, some people have been reading it. I wonder though if it's, I mean, I would say Gilgamesh is less a story about survival than Odysseus and Jesus and Buddha. It's still the hero's journey, I'm just saying. But what I'm saying is that because school children weren't taught Gilgamesh from the year one to the year 1850 is why it's not as culturally salient. It's not that it's better or worse. it's just it wasn't told and retold and retold and told and retold and reinterpreted and mean something new to each generation it missed 18 generations take a quick break if you like this episode i'd really really appreciate it would mean so much to me please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast email me at alcatra gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed thanks

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19:34Please visit the Rougiette website for full safety information. Being an entrepreneur is a 24-7 job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates.

20:12And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small and medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

20:46So then take your books on Stoicism. They are using this idea of what you just described, which is, okay, how do I take this beautiful philosophy that you personally believe in and bring it into a modern context so perhaps it is taught and so that it does at least bridge from this generation to the next. And so you tell these modern stories, like here's Harry Truman, here's John McCain, and you kind of... And by the way, which are good choices because you have Democrats, Republicans, you're kind of neutral there. And you bring these stories together to tell this, to talk about this philosophy, which really is a modern philosophy.

21:27It just previously has been told in these ancient ways. Like it's not that obscure, the idea of being a virtuous person and overcoming hardship and, you know, doing these. But let's stop saying it in terms of Socrates, you know, taking hemlock and let's put it in terms of, you know, a prisoner of war. in the Korean War and so on. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to take the ideas and illustrate them and demonstrate them and put them up for discussion, which is what philosophy is supposed to be, but sort of isn't anymore. And so, yeah, you're supposed to agree with some of the stories, disagree about some of the stories, raise different questions.

22:05Well, what about this? Or, you know, okay, Rockefeller is interesting here, but isn't he also a shitty person? Like, it's supposed to generate those kinds of questions. It's not supposed to be definitive. Which Robert Greene is like such an expert at. Like, because he'll take all these historical stories, some you know, some you don't. And when you don't know them, you're like, oh my God, Xi Shu was the Empress of China in 400 BC. Like, and there was a war. And like, you know, like all these stories that are, so you get this sense that he is such an amazing historian, but then he's bringing it into these, discussing these laws of power.

22:39But then there's the opposite side of each story, like the opposite of each law of power, which also could apply. It's just his books are genius. Well, the big breakthrough moment for me when I was Robert Crean's research assistant is, so he talks a lot in the 48 Laws of Power about the Peloponnesian War and what predates it, obviously. But I was curious, he has this great chapter in the 48 Laws of Power on the Battle of Marathon. And I saw him one day and I said, Robert, what book did you read to write about the Battle of Marathon. And he recommended some book by some academic. And I went and I read it.

23:16And so I read his thing. And then I went and I read this, you know, big book about... And then I, when I finished it, I was, I saw what he did. Like I saw how this book became these pages. And like Brian Koppelman talks about like the moment, like the moment you realize you can do it or how it works. that was like a huge breakthrough moment in my career and my understanding of sort of history and writing where I saw the finished product and then the source material. And I just realized like, oh, that's the magic trick. It's not actually magic. This is how the magician does it. So what was the bridge between the source?

24:05I think there was even, oh, I saw how like these five sentences became one sentence or that Robert read this, like this academic studied this thing for 30 years and Robert Greene read it and realized that the critical, like he distilled it all down to the, he took, he had a take on what this guy's sort of historical explanation and Robert reduced it all down to this very specific lesson. And then he used the raw materials to tell that story in a way that demonstrates that lesson in a couple paragraphs. And that's basically the same magic trick that I do in my books. I have a story about Lincoln in my new book, and I thought I'd already read a lot about Lincoln.

24:48And I went down to write it, and I realized it didn't have the material that I needed. And so I went and I probably read 10 ,000 pages on Lincoln. And that is maybe a 7 ,000 word chapter in the book. In this coming book, this next book. Yeah. So 10 ,000 pages to 7 ,000 words. 7 ,000 words is still a lot. It's longer than I normally do. But yeah, the process of going like I stacked all the books up. It's like taller than me. like from the floor to much taller than me. And what I was looking for is the sort of essence of like, not Lincoln, every biographical detail and every place and thing that he ever said, but the argument I was making about Lincoln as this sort of man who fused both sort of pragmatism and wisdom and understanding of human nature with also this sort of aspiration, this sort of belief in something better, that's what I was trying to get at and I had to go consume all this material to get the pieces that I wanted to make to take the reader on a journey from here to here and that's yeah that's what I read reading this book that Robert recommended and seeing that that's how it became two paragraphs I just did some that's what I do every day is I am reading and finding and developing stuff and then you know trying to put it in some form or some story, but that's the magic trick.

26:26And it's, it's not that easy because you always have to have a unique take. Like if it's not unique, then don't, then no one should read your book. So like, and, and Robert does it very well. You do that very well. It's, it's, it's, even though it's a cheat code to take these historical stories that have survived, it's to turn it into your own story about this person is still very, very difficult skill. Well, every writer or every sort of filmmaker or whatever has like their sort of, like, it's very clear to me that what Michael Lewis does is he finds characters. Like he wants to write about the financial crisis, but he doesn't sit down and tell you about the financial crisis.

27:07He finds a handful of weirdos who are his way in, or he doesn't want to talk about a pandemic. He talks about, you know, a bunch of different public health officials, or he wants to talk about bureaucrats. and he finds, it's very clear that he must go look. He has an idea for a story he wants to tell. And then he doesn't start until he finds the people, right? And you have to, so that's his thing. He's a character driven. His magic trick is he finds a group of people who you and I would probably not think are that interesting or pass right over. His skill, what he's honed over tens of thousands of hours is like he can identify who those characters is.

27:49He wants to talk about football. He finds the story of the blindside kid, and how that position in football explains everything. And that's his genius. Malcolm Gladwell is, he finds sort of counterintuitive scientific research. And then he finds stories that illustrates the research. But every person kind of has their... And Michael Lewis is interesting because his first book, which arguably might be his best book. It's hard to decide, but I loved his first book, Liar's Poker, is about him. That is the personal story. Yes, it's less character-driven, but all the other guys are these weird maniacs.

28:29Yeah, yeah. Yes, he's more of a character in that book, but he's more the Nick Carraway of that book. He's not actually, Nick Carraway is not the main character of The Great Gatsby. He's looking up at Gatsby, and that's what Liar's Poker is. Yeah, that's true. I enjoyed Liar's Poker. But it inspired a generation of people to work on Wall Street. To do the opposite of what he was trying to say. Yeah, even though he portrays the worst kind of world in Liar's Poker, it's like everyone reads that, and that's it. I'm working on Wall Street. I gave a talk at this thing yesterday, and this guy came up to me, and he was like, I read your book, Trust Me, I'm Lying.