The Daily Stoic

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Remind Yourself Of This Feb 21, 2024

Show notes

It doesn’t always feel like it. Not when you’re regularly screwing up. Not when you keep losing your temper, not when you’re not as patient as you should be with people. Not when you keep doing selfish things. Not when you’re still dealing with scripts from your childhood. Not when you hear the things your ex says about you. Not when you compare yourself against the greatness of the people you admire—be it a mentor or some historical figure, a Cato or a Marcus Aurelius.

But it’s true.

You are good inside.

Even if you have done bad things. Even if you have drifted off the path. Marcus Aurelius tried to remind himself that there was a spring of goodness inside of him and that no matter what he or anyone shoveled on some of it, it was still there, still fresh and new and ever-flowing.

The Stoics did not believe in original sin. They did not think we were hopelessly broken. They believed that being who we were—living well, living as our nature intended us to live—was always possible. You might be low and awful right now, Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, but in just a few days you can be worthy of being seen as a god. He was telling himself he just had to go back to the teachings, go back to his principles, go back to the spring.

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Why Stoicism is Having a Modern Resurgence | Mick Mulroy (PT 2) Feb 21, 2024

Show notes

Ryan speaks with Mick Mulroy in the first of a two-part conversation about the simplicity of Stoicism but the difficulties people have in practicing the philosophy. They also discuss Marcus Aurelius’ character and the traits we seek for in modern leaders, and more.

Mick Mulroy is the Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Middle East Institute senior fellow, retired CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer and U.S Marine. After leaving the Pentagon, he co-founded the Lobo Institute, became a Special Advisor to the United Nations, an ABC News National Security Analyst, and the co-president of End Child Soldiering. Mulroy’s post-service efforts focus on educating people on global conflicts, combating extremism, and the philosophy of Stoicism.

Click here to learn more about Lobo Institute, End Child Soldiering, Third Option Foundation, Aurelius Foundation, and the Plato's Academy Centre.

X: @MickMulroy

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You Ain’t Got Time | 10 Habits That Made Marcus Aurelius Great Feb 20, 2024

Show notes

People are out of their minds and always have been. You get the sense in Seneca’s writings that Rome drove him crazy. You see the same in Epictetus’ writings, perhaps more so. Both men looked at what was happening in Nero’s court and were baffled. People were currying favor with Nero’s cobbler to try to get ahead in the world. People were bankrupting themselves to impress people they didn’t even like. And things were no different by Marcus Aurelius’ time, that’s for sure.

But for as long as there have been these wack jobs out there, the Stoic response has been the same: Tuning it out. It’s saying to yourself: I ain’t got time for that, ain’t got time to argue, ain’t got time to change you, ain’t got time to even try to understand. That’s what Marcus is effectively opening Meditations with! He’s saying, look people today are going to be remarkably dumb but I can’t let them implicate me in their ugliness. I can’t get bogged down in it. I can’t try to reform them. I just need to do my job. Things are not asking to be judged by you, Marcus says later in Meditations, leave them alone.

Life is very short. Too short for silly arguments, too short for beating your head against the wall, too short to try to understand things that don’t matter, that are not asking to be understood by you. Leave them alone. Focus on what you have to do. Don’t get implicated in ugliness.

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We Can Find The Gift In It | Reduce Wants, Increase Happiness Feb 19, 2024

Show notes

We wrote an email over at Daily Dad (please subscribe if you haven’t!) recently which notes Robert F. Kennedy’s troubled childhood in the troubled Kennedy household. His family mourned the loss of his older brother. They put their hopes in his brother John. They fretted about his sister. His father thought that Bobby had little potential, that he wasn’t everything a young Kennedy should be, so the boy, as one Kennedy aide observed, was “overlooked.”

That was unfair. It must have been painful. Yet Kennedy’s biographer, Evan Thomas, would write that this turned out to be a gift, arguing that he “had been saved by neglect.” Because it meant Bobby didn’t have to deal with all the pressure. It let him develop at his own pace. It also allowed him to develop a conscience and an ability to empathize that most of the rest of the family lacked.

When we look at the life of Marcus Aurelius (if you want a biography try Lives of the Stoics or How To Think Like a Roman Emperor), we can see a similar pattern. His early days as a boy were defined by loss. His father, Verus, died when he was just three.

If you want to do more reading on these topics, we highly recommend Dying Everyday by James Romm (and we have a podcast with him on this topic). Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe is a great modern read on one of the biggest crimes of the 20th/21st centuries. And for more on the life of Seneca and Thrasea and some Stoics who did resist Nero, check out Lives of the Stoics (signed copies here).

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Preparation Makes You Brave | Courage is Calling Feb 18, 2024

Show notes

On today’s weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, Ryan reads a chapter from his book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave. This excerpt comes from one of Ryan's favorite chapters Preparation Makes You Brave. This chapter is about practice, training, and doing the thing over and over again.

Grab a signed copy of Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave

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Mick Mulroy on the Beauty of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and the Collective Need For Philosophy Feb 17, 2024

Show notes

Click here to learn more about Lobo Institute, End Child Soldiering, Third Option Foundation, Aurelius Foundation, and the Plato's Academy Centre.

X: @MickMulroy

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They Felt This Weight | Don't Make Things Harder Than They Need To Be Feb 16, 2024

Show notes

It’s easy for academics and critics to dismiss the Stoics as depressing or dark. They’re not wrong, exactly, because it’s true: There are some dark and depressing passages in Meditations. Seneca is not always cheerful. Both writers seem to dwell on death, they paint life as something that can be painful and tragic, they speak of Fortune as something not to be trusted—that the ground beneath your feet can shift in a moment, shattering everything around you.

But what’s unfair about this criticism, insensitive even, is that it totally ignores the context and the experience of these men—of all the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius buried six of his children. Six! Seneca lost a child and was exiled to a distant island on trumped up charges all at once. Can you imagine what that must have been like for them?

“Grief from the loss of a child is not a process,” a mother is quoted as saying in the fascinating book Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe which examines the opioid crisis. “It’s a lifelong weight upon one’s soul.” Marcus Aurelius and Seneca bore that weight—of course it shaped what they wrote and thought. There was an exchange between Marcus and his teacher Fronto about how he felt “suffering anguish” in his bones from the loss of Fronto’s grandchild. When we interviewed the philosopher and translator Martha Nussbaum on the Daily Stoic podcast, she spoke quite movingly about the loss of her own daughter. She pointed out that Cicero, a philosopher who wrote extensively on the Stoics and buried his daughter Tullia, was transformed by grief. It changed him. How could it not have?

One book on this topic we’ve recommended over the years has been Death Be Not Proud by John Gunter, who was similarly trying to make sense of the short but inspiring life of his son Johnny. Paul Kalanithi’s book When Breath Becomes Air is also worth reading. And Seneca’s writings on death have been collected in an interesting edition called How To Die.

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Do This. It’s Enough. | Ask Ds Feb 15, 2024

Show notes

As John Adams (detailed in David McCullough’s amazing biography) wrote in his own old age, “You are not singular in your suspicions that you know but little. The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously inquire, the less I seem to know…” Yet, Adams, like Marcus, still found himself returning to a set of ageless, universal principles. They found themselves boiling things down to their essence, into real and practical ‘epithets for the self’ as Marcus called them. Adams came up with these three commands, which he passed down to his granddaughter Caroline: “Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough…”

P.S. “Summum Bonum” is a phrase from Cicero that means “The Highest Good,”which for the Stoics meant pursuing a life of virtue. “Just that you do the right thing,” Marcus reminds us, “the rest doesn’t matter.” In a world full of selfishness, corruption, and pain, we need that reminder now more than ever. It’s why we created the “Summum Bonum” medallion for you to carry around in your pocket and remember that no matter the circumstance, no matter how dire or desperate the situation, virtue is always the answer. Grab yours today!

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Get Narrow Before Life Does Feb 14, 2024

Show notes

It’s interesting that these three great Stoics spent their final moments not as lone wolves but as friends, as fathers, as people who loved their fellow human beings. On a recent episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast (a great 2-hour episode you can watch on YouTube, by the way), the comedian Christina Pazsitzky told a story of an experience that led to a related insight:

“I broke my ankle two years ago. The truth is, they gave me a shit ton of ketamine. I was tripping, and I thought I was dying. I really did. I was like, ‘I think this is it.’ And I wasn’t thinking about my career. I wasn’t stoked that I had so many specials on Netflix or that I was successful at anything. I was literally only thinking about my children and my husband. My children and my husband. It got real narrow real quick. And I came out of that and anytime I catch myself getting on this kick of, ‘I should be bigger,’ ‘I should be more successful,’ ‘I should be selling out arenas’—I go, ‘I’m going to die. My kids and my husband are all that matter.’”

This is not to say that you shouldn’t strive to be successful. It is not to say that you can’t be ambitious.

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Colin Elliott On The Art Of Navigating Lessons From History To The Modern World Feb 14, 2024

Show notes

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with economic and social historian Colin Elliott. They delve into the complexities surrounding the societal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing parallels with the ancient Antonine Plague. Elliott criticizes the lockdown measures and emphasizes the need for a nuanced and science-oriented approach. He highlights the decentralized nature of society and the diverse capacities within it, including healthcare, communities, and various institutions. The discussion touches upon the importance of accountability and learning from past mistakes, along with his book, Pox Romana, offers a comprehensive, wide-ranging account of the world’s first pandemic: the Antonine plague.

Colin P. Elliott is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has published interdisciplinary research on the economic, social and environmental history of the Roman Empire, and his next project explores intersections between its economy and the environment. He has a PhD in Ancient History from University of Bristol and a BA in History from University of Oregon. He also received the David and Cheryl Morley Early Career Award for Outstanding Teaching (2021) and a Trustees Teaching Award (2016).

Check out Colin's books: Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World and Economic Theory and the Roman Monetary Economy

Check out Colin's podcast, The Pax Romana Podcast. The Pax Romana Podcast is available everywhere podcasts can be found.

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