The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Donald Robertson On the Brilliance and Insights of Marcus Aurelius

Episode Date: August 15, 2020

On today’s Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan and author and therapist Donald Robertson talk about the history behind Stoicism, including how the historical record treats catastrophes like the Antonine Plague and the Spanish influenza pandemic, what Marcus was feeling as he suffered through multiple tragedies while writing his Meditations, and more.Donald Robertson is a cognitive behavioral therapist and writer who is an expert on applying and practicing Stoicism in a therapeutic setting. He has written How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, one of the best and most popular biographies of Marcus Aurelius in recent years.Get How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: https://geni.us/VkqvwThis episode is brought to you by Felix Gray, maker of amazing blue light-filtering glasses. Felix Gray glasses help prevent the symptoms of too much blue light exposure, which can include blurry vision, dry eyes, sleeplessness, and more. Get your glasses today at http://felixgrayglasses.com/stoic and try them for 30 days, risk-free.This episode is also brought to you by Raycon, maker of affordable earbuds with incredibly high-quality sound. Raycon earbuds are half the price of more-expensive competitors and sound just as good. With six hours of battery time, seamless Bluetooth pairing, and a great-fitting design, Raycon earbuds are perfect for working out, travel, conference calls, and more. Get 15% off your order when you purchase Raycon earbuds now, just visit buyraycon.com/stoic.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Donald Robertson: Homepage: https://donaldrobertson.name/Twitter: https://twitter.com/DonJRobertsonYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DonaldRobertsonStoicismFacebook: https://donaldrobertson.name/facebook-group-for-stoicism/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy

in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wondery's new podcast, Disantel, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud.

From the build up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support,

it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other, and it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for?

FTX Founder Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded, with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes in Vanity Fair. DOL. Many thought Sam Bankman Fried was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air, from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings. But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse.

An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondering, comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX, and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. I don't remember when I first found out about the sort of link between stoke philosophy and CBT that's cognitive behavioral therapy. But I remember that that was really exciting to me. This idea that, oh, this wasn't just this dusty old philosophy, but it was something new that had sort of a modern application. It could be used. It wasn't just abstract ideas, but it had a real use in the real world, too.

And I've got a figure that it was through Donald Robertson, my guest today, that I first made that connection. And I'm indebted to Donald in another sense. I don't know if he knows this, but when I was writing the obstacles the way, I sort of come across this quote from Marcus Realis. He says, objective judgment now at this very moment, unselfish action now at this very moment. Willing acceptance now at this very moment, that's all you need.

And that quote, it's her struck me as the core of what I was saying, the book was about. And then I came across an article that Donald had written where he was sort of breaking those three things down and how that three-part quote corresponds perfectly with the three disciplines of stoicism of perception, action, and will. And that, if you recall, that is the breakdown of the obstacle as the way. The other person I credit with that is Sean Coine, who's Stephen Pressfield's editor, was talking to me about the importance of the obstacle is the way. The other person I credit with that is Sean Coine, who's Stephen Pressfield's editor, was talking to me about the importance of the three-part structure

in books. So the sort of two ideas crashed together, that book comes out of it. And so Donald is a great guy. He's been a source of all sorts of eye-opening insights for me about Stoicism over the years. I began reading his blog, Philosophy of CBT, and then we got to know each other. I spoke at Stoicon. I don't remember what year it was, but anyways, Donald was the one who put it on Toronto. So I got to know Donald a little bit. He had me give one of the keynotes, which is cool. And anyways, we've become friends, and my agent, Steve Hanselman, who was also the translator on the Daily Stoic and then my co-writer on Lives of the Stoics, which is available for pre-order

now. Steve ended up working and representing Donald on his first traditionally published book, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, which is one of my favorite all-time books about Marcus Arelius. It's fascinating as much as I have read and studied and meditated on Marcus Aurelius over the years. So a whole bunch of things in there that I hadn't thought about. Donald has a knack for sort of going so almost like putting on the skin of the person he's thinking about or the philosophy, immersing himself in the context of what's going on, that he manages

to come up with things that make complete sense, but you never would have thought of before. And the book is just absolutely full of those. It's a great book. You should absolutely read it if you are trying to take your study or your explanation of stoicism to the next level, or you're just looking for a biography of Marcus Aurelius. That's really how that book functions. It's a great book, it sold extremely well. I know the publisher's ecstatic about it.

And so, I can't recommend that enough. I actually read it. I believe I was on BookTour for conspiracy. Is that right? Where was I? Anyways, I have some vivid memory of reading that book alone in the dining room of a sort of a fancy hotel by myself and just spending hours going through it. It's just a great book. I can't recommend it enough.

And you'll see from my conversation with Donald, we sort of nerd out about Stoicism. Donald has a lovely accent, a very reassuring lilt, if you will. And so I think you'll like this interview with him. Check out how to think like a Roman Emperor, check out Donald's stuff. I'm sure he's got some excellent work coming in the future as well. And enjoy this conversation. We dig in to Stoicism in the modern world.

We talk about Marcus Aurelius' success and failures as a leader. We talk about how ultimately what Stoicism is designed to do is not harden you, although it should make you tough, but it should also open you up, allow you to relate to care about work for other people, because as Marcus really said, that's what we were put on this planet to do. So check out my interview here with Donald Robertson.

I didn't know you were in Athens. How did you, how did you make it out there? Well, it's a long story, but a few years ago, the least finished on the place where I was staying and I decided not to move into another apartment. I just put my stuff on storage and I planned to move around a bit. So during the pandemic, I was kind of caught short a little bit and I didn't really have a permanent base.

And so I decided eventually just to head back to Athens short a little bit and I didn't really have a permanent base and so I decided eventually just to head back to Athens where I've been staying for a while before It must be a strange place to to to to weather out a pandemic and in the sense that I mean How many how many different plagues have have have rippled through that city over the centuries? Well, one of the funny things is from reading Marcus Aurelius and Socrates, two, the biggest, most famous plagues anyway in history or the Antonyne plague in the plague of Athens, so they affected Marcus Aurelius' Socrates respectively. Yeah, so Athens has got this long history,

but people don't really talk about things like that much here actually. It's funny. In many ways, there's a bit of a disconnect from philosophy. I think people are kind of surprised that breps in Americans are so into it sometimes. It is a bit strange too. You mentioned obviously those two very historic plagues. It's crazy though like you could read you could read all you could read books and books and books about American history about about the First World War, about the roaring 20s.

I mean, I'd only sort of vaguely heard of the Spanish flu. So it is strange, and I still talk about this a little, so I'd be curious about your opinion, but it is strange how sort of the unpleasant events of history, the really, really bad things, precisely the things we should be aware of so we could prepare for them, we sort of just tune out and pretend they never happened once they received in their rear view a little bit. I think that's a really interesting question, isn't it?

And the more you retestory, the more you realize I think, you know, like it's like that saying, you know, the more you know, the more that you realize how much you don't, you know, like it's like that saying, you know, the more you know, the more you realize how much you don't, you know, you know, you know, you study history, more you realize how big the gaps in it are. Like, and the stuff, even from eras, like you say, that we think we know a lot about, there's been chunks that are left out, huge things, like obvious things like the gender bias and history. We don't hear that much about the life of women, often, or poor people, you know, as a huge gap in history. But don't hear that much but the lives of women often are poor people, you know, as a huge gap in history. But also, the way these illnesses affect civilisation, often they're just not really recorded. For some reason, even actually the meditations,

funnily enough, is a striking example of that. Because Marcus wrote it in the middle of this huge plague that must have absolutely transformed his life, affected his friends, people around him, it's very visible as well, they only mentions it once in the whole book, and when he does mention it, it's in a very kind of off-hand way, he sort of says, even though this plague's really terrible, it's nothing completely clear to the moral plague that afflicts the minds of men. So he mentions it only to kind of dismiss it. It's remarkable. So he's an example of that.

Yeah, he mentions the plague that kills, you know, between what, five and 10 million Romans before his eyes only metaphorically. And so it's like, is that because he was so philosophical that he sort of rose above it or is it that so much of the rest of his thoughts were sort of lost to us. Although I guess that the ultimate sort of statement from Marcus on the plague is that, I mean, his like final words as he died of that plague was about the devastation and the loss of all of the people that had gone before him. That's true. Actually, in the history, there's this kind of suggestion

that he makes a remark about it as he's dying, but then in his private notes, he doesn't mention it explicitly. Although then again, you can read the meditations as I, you know, maybe it's a stretch to say that in a sense, you could read the meditations as a coping manual for dealing with the pressures of a pandemic. But everything he says in the meditations is so vague. You know, there are very few specific details. So the most famous passage, I think, or one of the most famous ones is at the beginning

of book two where he says, look, every morning when you wake up, tell yourself that you're gonna meet medleurs and traitors and try to treat this people and so on. But it's kind of vague. So I think we read that and think, oh, my mother-in-law's a little bit like that. Or that guy that I work with, yeah,

he's a bit of hard work. So we kind of project ourselves into, I think that's part of the appeal of it. He's left it so vague that you easily insert your own story into the text. But then when you think about Marcus's life, you think, but you're facing a civil war and you know, you've just been betrayed by the Mark of Man, I have broken a piece treaty with you. There are these world historic betrayals that you're talking about. Is that what you're referring to? Or are you just talking about one of your friends at core or something? It's left vague. There are passages in that that might be referring to the plague

when he talks about dealing with anxiety and general and loss and things like that. But it's never expressed in a specific way for some reason. I wonder how deliberate that is. Yeah, I mean, one of the, as I was writing the new book, Lives of the Stoics, the passage that I kept coming to is the one, and I talked to Steve Hanselman about this for listeners. Steve Hanselman is both my agent and Donald's agent in a wonderful fan of stoicism.

But this passage where he goes, you know, it's unfortunate that this happened. And then he says, no, it's not unfortunate that this has happened. It's fortunate that it happened. And it's fortunate that it happened to me. And when I think about that, it's like, that's an interesting sort of rhetorical flip. Then, as you said, he could be talking about some minor thing, like rolling his ankle or something breaking or something, or he could be talking about the Antonin plague, or

even more hauntingly, he could be talking about the loss of someone that he dearly loved. Yeah, yeah. And also, we have those letters between him and Frontal. And they're incredibly banal. And I think scholars, when they discovered them, were a bit disappointed, a bit deflated, because a lot of them are kind of marker-stained things that, oh, I had a terrible cold last night. And sorry, these really trivial things. And Frontel talking a lot about his goat, his left posterity, thousands of you know, later this record of the problems he was having with his goat that night and things. And they don't say that much about these world historic political events that are unfolding around them and stuff. It's kind of frustrating in a way that they don't say more about it.

But maybe it says something about their personalities and their character and maybe the philosophy as well. But it does like I say, it is part of the perennial appeal of the meditations. I think if he'd been more specific, then people wouldn't have been able to immerse themselves in the text as much. And kind of they wouldn't have found it as relatable, perhaps I think they, they abstract and they're a sort of is what makes everyone feel that, that they can go there with Marcus and experience what he's experiencing. Well, it's, it's like they're, they're just specific enough that they feel personal, invaluable, invulnerable and authentic, but then just vague enough that as you said,

they can sort of fit into our modern context. But what I think is where they're also approved, right, is something Marcus does seem to say in meditations, which is that sort of history is the same thing happening over and over again. And so the fact that we are still dealing with plagues and that we are still dealing with medicine people, I mean, to go back to this idea of the of the Spanish influenza, I was reading John Embarry's fascinating book about the great influenza. And he basically, like for people who've read a little bit of history, your understanding is that is that Wilson dies of a stroke, a massive stroke, or it debilitates him and then he dies. But Barry's argument is actually that this stroke was brought on by the flu and that part of the the flawed piece at the end of the First World War, which has all these sort of, you know, massive implications for the rest of history is Wilson's sort of damage judgment as a result of what's happening to him. And so you want to talk about history repeating itself. I mean, there's an argument, one, that Marcus dies of the Antenine plague,

and two, some of the mistakes that he makes at the end of his life as far as the passing on of his legacy, who inherits the kingdom. You know what I mean? It's like, so history, we think, is this totally unique, unprecedented thing, but I feel like the Stokes would tell us that it's history is just people doing people stuff over and over and over again Oh gosh, I think I was like three or four things that I want to say in response to that but one of them is just Okay, I have trivia, you know, I don't know either you might have come across this or not before but um You know that it's a very complex story about

But you know, it's a very complex story about Marcus' succession and what happened with Comedis. People often ask about that, but there's a whole bunch of complexities around it. I mean, one of them is that initially he must have expected Lucius Varis to be his success Arcus. He was a bit 10 years younger, and he was ruling alongside Marcus. So they probably expected that Marcus would have died first and that would have left Lucius Varis as a sole emperor, and maybe and maybe communist was going to rule alongside him. Is it genuine or something like that?

But the... Lucius and for people listening, Lucius Varis being Marcus's adopted step brother. Adopted step brother. But also kind of his... what, his son-in-law? Also, so, you know, there's this kind of weird ambiguet here, but like typical Roman nobles, he's sort of his brother, but he's also kind of like a son to him, as well, weirdly. Well, I think that that's often not explained,

but that sometimes a relationship was seen more like a father-son relationship. But Marcus, according to one version, wanted to point one of his generals, Pompeianis, his Caesar to act as a kind of interim ruler. So it's like he was, you know, things kept changing partly because of the plague, and he was looking around for someone to be a kind of mentor to come with us and to help kind of stabilize things.

And we find out later there's a story that Pompeian S.R. Ledgerley was invited to, or maybe even three times, to become Caesar and turned it down each time. And later when he turned it down, he's excuse was it, his eyesight was very poor. And that's one of the symptoms of the Antonine plague, of small damages, the eyes, because the postures that develop on the skin also develop sometimes on the surface of the eyes and can lead to impaired eyesight or even blindness. So maybe that Marcus thought, well, Pumpeanus is going to solve things. Like, if I can appoint him as Caesar, then, you know, when I die, he'll become an interim ruler and he'll act as a mental to commoner, but maybe he couldn't do that because he was going blind because of the plague. You know, the way that illnesses may have affected some of these historic events, and, you know,

I, as a therapist, you know, one of the things I noticed over the years was there are things that people keep secret. So, you know, one of them is just the prevalence of mental health problems, you know, the most recent prevalence study by the National Institute of Health in America found just over 50% of people, about 52% of people in the states had a history of diagnosable mental health problems. And that freaked out psychologists because traditionally psychopathology, psychiatric conditions is considered to be a branch of what we used to call abnormal psychology. So people had a field day saying well it's not abnormal anymore, like it's now normal to have a mental health condition in your history at least if it's not

currently affecting you. But people keep that to themselves often, they don't broadcast the fact that they have mental health problems. And the same is true of chronic health conditions. So people naturally tend to underestimate how common chronic health conditions are, because the simple fact that it's the sort of thing that people tend to keep to themselves often, unless, except for Frontal, obviously, he's the kind of thing that people tend to keep to themselves, often, unless, except for on tour, obviously, he's the kind of example I'd like to tell everybody about his go. But a lot of people don't tell people that they've got these things, and so it affects their behaviour.

And, you know, I often think a lot of the relationship problems and put into personal conflict is partly, at least to some small extent, down to the fact, that people may be experiencing physical issues or psychological issues that they don't feel able to share with the other person. So someone might be really cranky with you. Someone who's really rude to me and a londre, the other day in Greece, that there was a woman that can really flew off the handle at me.

And I thought, but I don't know why, maybe something's maybe something's just happened to her, or maybe she's feeling really ill or something, you know. Like often when people have got chronic health problems, it can make them really cranky, but we don't always see as a behavior where we don't really understand what they're experiencing inside. And like you're saying, things like that could shape historic events by influencing the behavior, the mood, the performance of politicians, and you know, we wouldn't necessarily think about it because But I'm just a little bit more about the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the story talks about that in meditations. He says, ask yourself when you have behaved like that. And Epic Tita says, how do you know what they did was evil until their reasons and all that. That was an interesting thing for me having kids. And my wife is much more intuitively good at it. But it's like, okay, your kid is, my one son is biting the other son. I'm

focusing on the behavior. Why is he biting him? And then it's like, oh, it's actually because he feels uncomfortable. Or why is he throwing this temper tantrum? It's because he's tired. And so with kids, you're really understanding. You're always trying to think about why are they behaving the way that they're behaving.

I want to address this root cause. But then with people, we only see the behavior. And then we decide because of the behavior that we should write this person off entirely. And I think the idea of probing the why makes you much more patient and empathetic. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would openly admit that I was never the best at the empathy part of therapy. I was more of a technique, skills training guy. And so it fascinated me when I read the stories to see that they put quite a lot of emphasis,

particularly Marx, it really is, puts quite a lot of emphasis on entering into the minds of others, trying to understand their character as a whole, imagine what that day's been like, you know, really trying to empathize with other people as a psychological strategy. And I think you're also right that when you have kids,

I think maybe not for everybody, but potentially, you know, having a little girl is one of the things that really transformed my life. And I felt that it gave me an opportunity to try and understand another human being in a whole different way. It changed the way that I see adults in response to them. I think it made me naturally more empathic

because I felt that I was making more of an effort to understand what my child, what my little girl was experiencing. But I think how many people who are listening would not associate the word stoicism with empathy, right? Right. But it's a big part of it Right, but it's a big powerful thing. And no, it's a huge part. And I think weirdly where it's taken me some time

to apply empathy back to the Stoics is exactly what you're just talking about. And my favorite part of your book was actually, I feel like a lot of people have speculated as to why does Marcus allow comedists to take over the throne. It's kind of, if you're just looking at the behavior, and if you're just looking at the consequences, it's inexcusable. It's a profound moral failing of his regime, especially today when we find hereditary, sort of hereditary kinships to be also, you know,

incomprehensible. But when what I read in your book, which was just how much Marcus was trying to find a different, that, that, that, Commodus was the outcome of like 10 other failed likely superior attempts to responsibly and ethically sort of guide the state from one leader to the other. And it kept failing over and over and over again. And it ended up being, you know, you wouldn't think it'd be the least bad of the solutions.

But I mean, the alternative was some sort of civil war, and Marcus is kind of doing the best he can, and it just doesn't work. Yeah, I mean, this is a whole kind of story in itself, isn't it? I mean, again, the abbreviated version is right. The big thing that we know the Romans were really scaled of with civil war, and they had a whole bunch of them already, and they were like, we don't want to go through that again, but it kept happening to them. So one of the Senate's main concerns is how can we stop another civil war? Because the bigger fear

is if we have a civil war, maybe the Empire will fragment, like, you know, we, you know, there always on the verge of that happening. So, and we see that almost happening with a Videscaseous. So, you can see them thinking, look, maybe, maybe even a bad emperor could be better than having, you know, a civil war in the Empire splitting into, into the East and West, perhaps. Maybe, even if we are, maybe he might not be the emperor, but maybe we can kind of keep him under control, somehow perhaps they were thinking, or maybe, you know, one account is that it was a while before it became obvious how bad

the common this was going to be. I think it's Herodian that says to begin with, he was more just gullible, and he wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, and he was sort of manipulated over time, and particularly after Marcus, it died and then he degenerated into power and oil. But I wonder, you know, so one alternative would be a civil war to his empire apart, and then another would be maybe the of the deus Cassius succeeded in seizing power.

And I do wonder a bit, I can see there are obviously some reason why they'd be concerned about that, but I wonder why they were so opposed to that. Maybe there's a little bit more to that story, but certainly I think Marcus seems more like a dove in military terms and I think part of the reason for the Civil War is that a Videos Cassius portrayed as being more hawkish and maybe wanting to pursue a more aggressive strategy on the northern frontier to suppress the barbarians as they called them. What I took from your book, and again, let's look at this empathy piece, is Communist is Marcus's only surviving son.

He loses what? Five other male heirs, is that correct? Like, that was the other thing that I didn't quite wrap my head around until I was a parent. Like, no parent should ever have to bury a child. And Marcus buries between seven and eight, some from the Antenine plague, some from just the appalling the Antonin plague, some from, you know,

just the appalling infant mortality rates of the time. And then others just from what sounds like plain sort of tragic fate, but I can't wrap my head around one, what it would be like to lose eight children to how one could lose eight children and still manage to maintain decent parental supervision strategies on your remaining children. I mean, that would just wreck a person. And then third, how does Marcus continue doing his job and continue to hold, I mean, like, we talk about someone who was religious and then something really bad happens to them and they sort of throw religion out, they blame, you know, God

for what happened, that Marcus could manage to hold true to his still of philosophy given just the almost inhuman amount of tragedy he was subjected to. Yeah. It really blows your mind if you think about it much. Yeah. I mean, even to lose one child would be devastating, right, from our perspective today, and to lose two would be like, you know, almost kind of inconceivable to many people, but to lose like seven, we're just, you know, it's like, you see, it's hard to wrap your mind around that. But then if you think- Yeah, how do you keep going? Yeah, how do you keep going?

Yeah, how do you keep going? But the implications of it as well are so weird. Like, for example, I mean, I think one of the things with Commodus is that he was probably quite scared of dying. At least he's also portrayed as being a lot more afraid than Marcus. He leaves another frontier partly because he's frayed. He might contract the plague and die, whereas Marcus was more willing to expose himself to the risk. But one of the things that we contribute to that are from plots and stuff. It's just

imagine being calm with this as a little boy growing up and looking around and thinking, half of my siblings aren't dying. How would that affect him? We think about the effect on the parent, but how would it affect the children to think they are 14 others and half of others have died? He must have been growing up with his own mortality. I think it is almost like that can take you in one of two directions. Either if you are exposed to a lot of danger and a lot of loss and bereavement, you kind of adapt to it and it's like this idea of post-traumatic stress disorder versus post-traumatic growth, like either trauma can kind of destroy you, psychological, or you come out of a more resilient. It's like Marcus kind of comes out of a more resilient, who is communist just descends into paranoia,

as a result of a hiccups with it very badly. It seems, or maybe that's one possible reading of things. But I suppose the other thing I would say is it wasn't unusual for people to have a lot of kids back then, and for there to be a high mortality rate. So many people living in that period would have had a lot more exposure to death than we do and it was less hidden from them as well So I think they had a lot more opportunity to kind of come to terms with their own mortality and with the concept of

Arievement than we do today. So I kind of see them becoming in a sense more habituated to it and that Being more part of the society, although, you know, I mean, again, to come back to Fronto as an example, there are never less clearly people in Roman society at that time who are devastated by loss. And Fronto as an example in his letters, he talks about losing his grandson and how it's just destroying him, you know,

he's traumatized by it and, you know, he can't sleep and, you know, it's really destroying him, he's traumatized by it and he can't sleep and it's really shaking him. There seems to be a slightly selective, he was particularly attached to this one young grandson where he probably lost other people as well. In fact, even if I think the loss of his wife happens around the same time, but it doesn't seem to affect him as badly as losing his grandson. No, and for people who sort of want more, and not want more in this genre, but are exploring sort of that grief and loss, I think one of the most, it's not quite still,

but certainly still, it inspired, Plutarch writes a consolation to his wife after the loss of their daughter. And it is interesting, yeah, as more prevalent as death was, people were still people and loss still really hurt. And so they were struggling with the exact same things that people are struggling with now, whether they're losing a grandparents to COVID-19 or, you know, you know, they've lost someone to suicide or whatever it is, like shit hurts.

And it hurts very deeply. And like what I think about was something like communist. Like if you were talking to someone and you said, you know, like, why do you have a drinking problem? And they said, oh, you know, I have a drinking problem. My father worked a lot or, you know, my parents split when I was three.

Or if they said, you know, I lost my twin brother when I was a child. Those would all be reasons that you would go, oh, that must have been very painful. That gives me some insight into why you behave the way that you behave. And then, yeah, when you try to wrap your head around what it would be like to lose seven,

potentially eight siblings, you're sort of like, yeah, how did you even get out of bed in the morning? And as a father, you know, how does Marcus show up for work every day? How does he continue to write these notes to himself? It's a testament, I think, to the extreme, you know, sort of resiliency in the philosophy, it's a test of his character, ultimately, that he doesn't just kill himself. I mean, it's, it's a test of his character ultimately that he doesn't just kill himself. I mean, it's incredible. Oh, I think actually the other thing I should mention that's often not really mentioned,

but you know, like once you've pointed out, it's maybe obvious to people that when the Civil War broke out, which is, is about five years before Marcus died, so Commodus was about 14 at that point. He must have been terrified that the civil war would have led to his death, because he would have assumed that if Cassius had won that he would have had a purge and probably have killed other possible rivals to the throne. So, like, Commodus would have thought, if he wins this war, I'm going to be executed. And that would have been going through his mind when he was 14. And he wasn't with his father at the time, he was in Rome. Like, so Marcus hadn't sent for it immediately and brought to the northern frontier. So that little bit of the drama also, I imagine, Commodus. Panicking, he was a

Rome maybe surrounded by Senators and Courteers, and you know, people a room maybe surrounded by senators and courtiers and you know people that he didn't know if he could completely trust in this situation. So you know for a 14-year-old kid, you know, I think that probably scarled him as well. Well no, and I think it's also a testament again to Marcus Aurelius' character, you know, we read these sort of, and I talk about the Evidius Cassius' plot, a little bit in the conclusion of the obstacles, the way you talk about it quite a bit and how to think like a Roman Emperor.

But Cassius deciding to assert his ownership of the throne is not like one presidential candidate campaigning hard against another presidential candidate. It's not like being primaryed or something. I mean, this is a brutal assertion of power. And so Marcus' response, which is sort of defined by its restraint, you know, he doesn't, he tries to think if Cassius will kind of come to a senses, he tries to see if he can avoid a military conflict.

He plans on granting clemency to Cassius. He's doing all that. He's turning the other cheek as the other person is quite literally attempting to kill not only him, but his entire family, by definition. When we talk about these philosophical ideas, Marcus wasn't talking about them as a pen and ink philosopher. I mean, he was talking about them as in the ultimate testing and proving ground, the loss of a child, the ultimate testing and proving ground, the loss of a child, you know, your family being endangered,

your own life being endangered, it's magnificent how true he's able to state the ideas from what we know. Yeah, and actually I remember reading the obstacles away and that's one of the few places where I'd seen any real reference to the, this of a war and of the DSCAS, yes. And it's also, of all the events in Marcus's life, you know, we have these, I think also I should say a lot of people, I

think, assume that we don't know anything about Marcus's life. So I should just pause for a minute and explain. We've got quite a lot of material because he was what I like to refer to as a big deal back in the day. So unlike a lot of philosophers, we have these histories of his reign or his role. We have at least three major ones, Herodian, Cassius, Dio, the historian, Augusta, and then a bunch of other scattered references and then some archaeological evidence and stuff. So we know more about Marcus than we do, but most ancient philosophers in terms of his life. But you know, that often it can be difficult at first

to see connections between the philosophy and the events of his life, but one of the most obvious ones is in Cassia's deal gives us this whole speech that he allegedly gave to the troops in response to the Civil War and the shocking thing about it is that he pardons the usurper and everyone associated with it, which is the opposite

of what the Senate did. So there's this kind of delayed reaction, right? This happened in Egypt and Syria and then the news reaches Rome and then Marcus isn't Serbia somewhere at the time so it took maybe like another three weeks for the news to get him but by that time the Senate had already freaked out and condemned Cassius as a public enemy which meant that anyone that tried to take his life would have been was being given permission to do that. He's like, you know, it's open season on him, like basically in the seized his assets and everything. And I think Marcus was shocked by that. He thought they should have pursued the mod diplomatic solution. They thought you guys have just escalated things and he did the opposite and it should have pardon effectively in front of, in front legions publicly, which seems like a really

paradoxical thing to do, right? And what I think is weird about it, you're right, we do know so much about Marcus, and we know so much about his philosophy. What I think is interesting is this idea. To me, when you look at the historical record of Marcus, and then you look at the philosophy, there's sort of this, the dog that didn't bark kind of a look you have to do, which is we know enough about him that if he were a raging hypocrite, if the book was just this sort of work of propaganda, you know what I mean? I think it's like from everything you know in his life, it's very hard to find even a single example

of where he was doing the opposite of what he said. I mean, common is sort of, common is is like the one big thing. You look at it and you go, hey, how does this square with what you said? But I think it is profound that here you have a man wielding essentially absolute power for most of his adult life. And before that was an extremely powerful

sort of prince in waiting. And there's no evidence that he ever abused this, that he ever indulged himself, that he ever did any of the things that we associate powerful people using their power to do? Yeah, and the, you know, I guess the thing is that without the histories that we have kind of don't frustratingly, don't really answer this, I guess motivational or psychological question

directly, but they don't say much about how they think Marcus is philosophy may have directly influenced his actions. But what they do say, what they're unanimous about is a side that everybody knew he was a philosopher and everybody perceived him as being a kind benevolent ruler, like exceptionally wise, you know, and so again that fits with what you're saying, like nobody for a second a second would have thought that he was corrupt or that he was an evil man or anything. It's clear that they all admired him.

And that the legions at first thought, who is this guy? He didn't have any military experience when he took command of the legions. So firstly, we're a little bit wary of him. But we can see that over the years years they come to absolutely idolise him. Like, you know, he goes from zero to hero and the eyes of the the legends and the Danube, basically, somehow, but again, but it's not really fully explained how that happens, but something happens. This guy who seems like a real fish out of water in the military, he's a nerd, like, he's a bureaucrat, basically, like, he's a philosopher, you know, he's a nerd, like he's a bureaucrat, basically, like he's a philosopher, you know,

he's not the kind of career soldier that they were probably hoping for, but years later, like they're completely loyal to him. They attribute these battlefield miracles to him, which again, is a sign that they think this is their guy, you know, they're 100% behind him. So the people love him and the legions love him as well. And I think we would see some kind of hint of it if they thought, no, the guys are hypocrite. Like no one ever really suggests that. Now there are two things that I should mention that people just because Leston's will probably, you know, just to preempt the criticism, right? So one of them is the Christians, right? So when we talk about Marcus, people say, but he persecutes Christians, so he could not have been a good emperor. Now, without kind of, that's a whole

other podcast, right? So I wish I, I wish I could spend more time on that, but some people might be dissatisfied, dissatisfied with my answer about this. But my view is that the evidence concerning the persecution of Christians, first of all, none of that actually accuses Marcus of directly being involved in persecution. And secondly, the evidence of why would widespread persecution of Christians during Marcus' reign in my view is extremely unreliable.

And because some of the testimony of the church father or others is quite contradictory, contains documents that we know are fake, like, and also glaring in consistencies, right? So some of the most dubious historical evidence that we have, and then there's also stuff that contradicts it, too, the church fathers explicitly say that Marcus was a protector of Christians. So that kind of flies in the face of this account. So, you know, that's one thing, I say, I don't believe that he did persecute the Christians. I think at least not systematically on a large scale.

You know, I'm sure that it happened in the provinces, for example, and there were probably isolated incidents, you know, like possibly the trial of Justin Martyr, which only really involved a handful of people. But this idea that Mark has just kind of was throwing loads of questions to the lions is, I don't think, really fits with the evidence. And then obviously, the obvious thing to see is also it doesn't really fit with what we know about his personal moral values and his character. Yeah, it's a obviously no one could rule over an empire as complex and morally, you know, contradictory as Rome and not have some flaws, you know, even his wars against

the so-called barbarians, you know, it doesn't look great from a modern lands. And, you know, the existence of slavery doesn't look great. But the point is, within the context of his time, and given the egregious crimes of his predecessors and successors, I think he holds her pretty well, I was curious, you mentioned sort of his personal philosophy. What do you think of the argument, which I think Gregory Hayes puts forth in his translation of meditations, which is my favorite? You know, he says, like, we don't actually know that Marcus Arelius was a stoic because Marcus Arelius never says, I'm a stoic. He says, you know, Marcus, probably would identify more as a

philosopher. That strikes me as, you know, splitting hairs a little bit, but as someone who's delved so deeply and I'd be curious what your take is. I've come across this question before, I love these questions. So I do wonder sometimes when people say things like that, if, you know, you feel obliged sometimes to point these anomalies out, but I wonder if Gregory Hays really means this is a serious assertion. I don't think there's a cat in Hell's Chance, the Marcus wasn't a stoic, right? I think it's beyond question that he was a stoic. And it's true that nowhere in the meditations,

does he say, I am a stoic? But why would he? Right? He'd try to himself. Yes. He'd try himself. He'd be like, really, we're trying for him to say. He mentions the stoic once.

He mentions a bunch of people that we know are stoics. It's his main tutors. And he, but more importantly, he uses the slogan of stoicism, living in a quad with nature, many times throughout the book. So I would say for a bunch of reasons, even based on the internal textual evidence, I think it's pretty clear that he's a Stoic, but also the histories make it clear

that he was everyone knew he was a philosopher. And in fact, you know, for example, I think it's a history of Augusta, which isn't completely reliable, but you know, it example, I think it's a history of Augusta, which isn't completely reliable, but you know, it's the best that we have as this ever. But they, you know, it describes as being a kind of fad, as you might guess, right? It became trendy to be a philosopher during the rena-mark as a release, and lots of young men went around dressed like philosophers and stuff and jumped on the bandwagon. So everybody everything new, he was the philosopher emperor.

And, you know, they all knew that it was stuicism that he was into. I don't think there's any question about that, but there is this little anomaly that nowhere does he really choose to spell it out for us in the meditations, but then again, why would you expect me to do that? It's also, I don't know about you, I'd be curious, your reaction, but I feel a bit cringy calling myself a stoic. I think philosopher is a, because this isn't a religious dogma. I mean, even Seneca is quoting liberally

from all these different schools. To me, it's a philosophy that influences you, that guides you, but you're not like swearing in allegiance to. And so it's kind of weird. The equivalent I always give people is like, you don't just call yourself a writer. It's more something other people call you because it's what you do.

And so it always struck me as like, it almost would have been antithetical to Marcus's personality to be pounding his chest and Talking about how stoic he was Yeah, and you know like the to just to complicate things even more epictetus says this to his students Like notoriously. There's a bit you know where he's doing these typical like semi-ran at them and Call them slaves or whatever. And he says, don't call yourself a stoic, which I always thought is kind of weird, right? Because if somebody was in Nicopolis and they were like, what way is it to the stoic school from here?

You know, obviously they'd be like, for what school? We don't call it that around here. You know, I just, I think there's a time when it becomes confusing if you try and avoid the label too much. And I think, I think with epictetus often we shouldn't take him too literally. I'm hesitant to say that. But I think sometimes it's clear that he doesn't mean it completely literally. So I think he's saying what he really means is don't go around bragging about being a stoic, right? But yeah, if someone asks you what way is it to the stoic's goal, then maybe it would be reasonable to point them

in the right direction. Right, you know, obviously, you know, like that's what we're talking about here. And it better maybe that, you know, epictetus says don't call yourself a story, and then maybe that's part of the reason that Marcus doesn't say it. So to sort of wind down, and this,

as we can chew on this for a little bit, but I'm curious what you think. So when I kind of look at my trajectory in stoicism, I think originally as a young man, I was very attracted to the resiliency, to the bluntness of it, to the toughness of it, and then I, it sort of matched well with my ambition, and I was curious about the productivity of it,

and the adaptability of it and the flexibility of it, not as a productivity but the philosophy as a way to operate in the world. Tim Ferriss calls Sturrs as an operating system. And I think that was initially what I was attracted to. And as I've gotten older, the other elements of it have become much more pronounced both in my reading of it. I realize I had some tunnel vision, but also in my life.

Let's call it, if the first is sort of the courage and self-discipline, now I'm much more fascinated with the justice and the wisdom of the four virtues. But what's been interesting to me, and maybe I'm just leading the audience a little bit, but what's been interesting to me the last three or four months is, and maybe you get this with your audience,

I've been, I don't want to say disappointed, but I've certainly been surprised and sobered by some of the moods and themes. I see coming out of people who are ostensibly fans of the Stoics, whether they're commenting on Instagram or Facebook or sending me emails, it seems like part of this modern Stoic movement is having trouble wrapping their head around

some of the important themes in today's culture, whether we're talking about social justice, we're talking about something as practical as like, wear a mask so you don't spread a pandemic to an innocent, unexpected, unsuspecting person. Do you get what I'm saying? Oh yeah, like, so you know, that's just, I do wonder though if the ancient Stoics School

like in Greece and Rome were a little bit like that as well. I'm sure even back in the day, there were people struggling with different interpretations of it. And I think you're right, Stoicism has these different aspects to it. And people's appreciation of it really does seem to mature over time or it

goes in different directions. It would make fuller slightly different paths. And also, I may be imagining this, because I haven't read Tuscall and Disputations for like a decade or something, right? But as far as I can remember, there's a bit in the Oasisaroo says that people are often attracted to philosophy initially as a therapy or as a way of building resilience. And then it's over time that they begin to, once they've gotten to appreciate the moral dimension of it more and the idea of the philosophy as a whole world view. So I think that's often the case. The initial appeal is maybe more as a

kind of bam to to serve a troubled mind and then people get deeper into it or to put it another way you know people read Marcus are really this and I'm surprised that they see all the stuff about toughness and resilience and all that and it but they don't notice him going on and on and on about social virtue and natural affection and ethical cosmopolitanism and all that stuff, but he told me that on almost every page, right? And you know, again, the other nerdy thing is if you want to do a word to count on, he mentions love far more times than he mentions virtue, right? And you know, I think one of the major themes of the book, so I'm often surprised that, you know, William Blake once said, we both read the Bible day and night, but you read

black where I read white. And I find that with the meditations, like some people read it and they seem to have a blind spot for the fact that on almost every page he's mentioning, this kind of the touchy feel inside of stoicism, if you like,, the, this kind of more connected, you know, more pro social aspect of it. And that's just completely missing from it for a lot of, like, the people today that are initially getting into it. So it is kind of puzzling in a way and I wonder if it's almost like a stage, but it's also, it can be problematic because people maybe arrive at misconceptions about the philosophy. And it is also connected to this distinction between lower case stoicism and stoicism with a capital S. So this idea or that stoicism, you know,

had become a word that just describes a coping style that's having a stiffer lip or being unemotional. And that's very interesting. I just as an aside, to psychologists, because we already have well-established measures for lowercase storcism, and it's pretty robustly established that it's psychologically unhealthy, right? So when you talk to a psychologist, it's about,

they'll, yeah, don't do that, don't do storcism. And then you have to kind of explain to them, no, the Greek philosophy is quite different from this coping style that you're talking about. And the Greek philosophy is the basis for cognitive therapy, right? So that's healthy. It's a good thing.

So paradoxically, there's two forms. And one is unhealthy, and that was healthy psychologically. But I think these people that miss out bits of markets, they're confusing it with low-case stoicism, right? Yeah, it's like stoicism is not supposed to make you a better sociopath. It's supposed to do the exact opposite. It's supposed to connect you,

like it's like, I don't, maybe on the first read of Marcus Aurelias, it can make you a bit more unfeeling, you know, closed off, but I think if you really read it and you really get it, it should have the exact opposite effect, which it should open you up. And it's like, there's this great Huffington Post headline that I think about all the time and the headline is, I don't know how I'm supposed to tell you that you have to care about other people, or I don't know how to tell you that you're supposed to care about other people. And I feel like,

in a way, that almost summarizes Marcus Aurelis, is he saying, over and over and over again, you have to care about other people, you have to care. You cannot do this alone, you cannot be in this for yourself. And in fact, you are here precisely for other people. I mean, he says that over and over again, like the fruit of this life is good, is works for the common good and good character. You know, like that's what the philosophy is about. It's supposed to make you want to put on a mask, not, you know, sneeze in someone's face. It's supposed to make you want to help someone who's struggling, not close your heart off to them, because they're outside of your control. Yeah, actually, another little bit of trivia for you.

And I think this might be in herodian, but there's a passage that says, when Marcus was dying of the plague, his family visited him, and he told them to keep their distance and not to stay too long because he didn't want them to be exposed to the disease. So he was doing social distancing. We had like, they, yeah. Even though the Romans had very confused ideas about what caused plague and stuff like that, incense could protect them against it.

But you're absolutely, you mean there are so many things we could say about this, but here's another little example, one of my favourites, at the beginning of the meditations. He's talking about his stoic teachers, and so describing the stoic ideal, he says it's to be free from the passions, like the irrational, the unhealthy passions he means, and yet full of love. Full of love that one. Yeah, and then you think that's clear as crystal, right? He says the goal of stoicism is to be full of natural affection or full of love to put it more bluntly. Like how much more kind of on the nose do you need it?

And that's at the beginning of the book. And then throughout the rest of the book he goes on and on about if you ignore other people, if you're angry with them, if you turn your back on them, then you've alienated yourself from the rest of nature. Like you've become like an alien in your own homeland by doing that, like an abscess on nature by doing these things. And so you have to fundamentally keep battling against this.

Stoicism is all about being one with nature and one with the rest of mankind. You know, that was one of the earliest formulations that Xenoc came out with really. It's got to do with this. The idea of living in agreement with nature also kind of implies a kind of oneness of being in harmony with nature. And the stoics thought of that as being something takes place at three levels. So being more at one with yourself, with your own inner nature, which means living more consistently

and according to reason, and your moral values, and being more at one with nature as a whole, like with fate, and that the cosmos, if you like. But also, the third level, being more at one with the rest of mankind, and that's where all the ethical cosmopolitanism and stuff

comes into play. And just as another aside, to go back to where we started from, I said there were two things that people often bring up. And one of them is Christians. Another one you mentioned, which is this idea that we must have killed lots of barbarians in the Northern Frontier. But again, we don't know exactly what was going on there.

And there are some violent scenes on there, really, in column. But we're also told things that, for example, Marcus tried to resettle tens of thousands of capturged northern tribesmen within the Roman Empire, and that means he didn't have them killed, he didn't enslave them, he tried to assimilate them. Well, he couldn't just let them run wild because they would have just attacked again and bringing them into the empire, meant that he could potentially disarm them. So it looks like he was trying to find a more peaceful solution and struggling against the political problems that that created. But again, nowhere, I think one of the striking things in relation to that first of all, there's a comment

in the meditations and this relates to slavery as well. And it's an annoyingly cryptic, but he mentions these tribes once. He says, someone that takes pride in capturing a surmation is like a spider catching a fly. They have the mind of a brigand or a robber. So that implies that he thinks capturing some nations and enslaving them, like a fly in a net in a web, is a form of injustice. It's kind of tantalizing, he doesn't really expand on that. You think, how can that possibly be the case for a Roman Emperor to view capturing the enemy as slaves as a form of injustice.

But then in the histories, we're told repeatedly that he tried to assimilate these guys into the army or he tried to resettle them in the Italian peninsula. So it kind of looks like maybe he was trying to find an alternative to slavery and slaughter and a more peaceful way of resolving things and not under no them frontier. But the other thing I wanted to had to kind of support that is if you read the meditations and then think about him writing it in the middle of this war, he very seldom mentions being a Roman citizen and he mentions it once or twice, but all the stuff about ethical cosmopolitanism, all the stuff about being a one with other people, he says other people, he says other people.

He doesn't say other Roman citizens, which if you think about it as Roman Emperor, that's quite striking, because it has to include the enemy. No, I think that's exactly right. And it's why to me, he is the sort of prescription for our time, because he's replacing, you know, sort of nationalism with internationalism, selfishness with collaboration, sort of nationalism with internationalism, selfishness with collaboration,

sort of excess with modesty and self-discipline. And then, yeah, I think ultimately replacing anger, frustration, you know, and all of these extreme emotions with the one emotion that matters most, which is sort of love and fairness, which would give us justice. And to me, that's why he's such an endlessly fascinating and ever-relevant figure. And what I do mention that is a kind of way to wrap things up, maybe, is that, you know,

we look at the world we're in, right? We have the pandemic. And also, we have, I think, this kind of rising tension and anger, a lot of it driven by social media and the news media trying to break us out and bombard us. I like to say people, at first I thought those socrates and the Stoics, they're kind of struggling with the surface, but those guys died off. We don't really have a model or a equivalent in a way. And then I thought, actually, one day it dawned on me. The softest are alive and well. And we have a digital softest now, Facebook and Twitter. And CNN and Fox News are the modern equivalents.

And we have the same challenge. The softest used to try and flick people up. They used rhetoric to manipulate their emotions. They wanted to be as popular as they could, and they used language to try and manipulate people often into making bad political decisions. The media do that to people today. The keepment of constant stay of nervous arousal and agitation, they're constantly frightening them and making them angry. And still,icism really is our best remedy for that, perhaps. You know, or it's one of our best remedies for it, I think. You know, we need to look at Stoicism as a solution to that anger and fear, that's kind

of ripping society apart, a social level, a political level these days. No, and look, if you want to affect those sort of global overwhelming forces, the Stokes, I think, and this is probably where it should close, the Stokes would say the best way to do that would be to start in your own home with your own emotions and your own issues. And that's, I think, what's so inspiring

is that's what Marcus was doing on the pages of meditations. If we can change ourselves, you know, the stories also believed 100% in leading by example. You know, for all that they left as these books, they say repeatedly, you're much better off learning from a mentor, from a living person. And they thought the best way to teach, likewise, is by becoming a living example of the virtues, the qualities that you want to exemplify. They thought it's useful to write books and give lectures, but it's more important to try and exemplify the principles

that you believe in. So I think you're right, that's absolutely where we have to start. And dealing with our own anger, like towards the things that are going on around us hopefully, you know, by overcoming them within ourselves eventually it filters us into the world and has a way to socialize. Donald, thanks so much for the best. Thanks. Thanks, Ray. It's been a pleasure.

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