The Daily Stoic - Beware This Thief Of Time | Ask DS

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Not long ago we talked about the Stoic view on punctuality. It’s a pretty simple one: Being on time is important. It’s a matter of respect, not just for oneself, but also for others. So what do you think the Stoics would have thought of Oscar Wilde’s intriguing remark that “punctuality is the thief of time?”Perhaps they would have agreed.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan presents part 4 of an audio series in which he answers student questions at the Q&A portion of his Stoicism 101 seminar. The topics that he covers include writings by some of the less popular Stoics that you should read, why the Stoics persecuted Christianity, his ideas on using mental models to make decisions, and more.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee 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 Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners in fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are.

Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with daily stoic life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happen to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you.

Beware this thief of time. Not long ago, we talked about the stoic view of punctuality. It's a pretty simple one. Being on time is important. It's a matter of respect, not just for oneself, but also for others. So what do you think the Stokes would have thought of Oscar Wilde's intriguing remark that punctuality is the thief of time?

Perhaps they would have agreed. While it's important to be on time so as not to take for granted other people's time, it's also important to recognize and defend against how easy it is to get consumed by meeting some arbitrary standard for its own sake to lose the forest for the trees. The person who can't focus because they are anxious about an upcoming appointment who is rushed and frenzied because they feel the need to get everywhere early, feeling guilty because you were late and had to reschedule, cutting this thin short so you can start another. This is not what good self-discipline looks like.

It's waste in time while purporting to care a lot about it. It's also worth asking what is this thing that I am needing to be on time for anyway? One of Marcus Aurelius' most provocative questions to himself and meditations is am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore? We should be asking what the point is of all these appointments we're making. We should ask ourselves why we are so committed to being punctual for work things, meanwhile we constantly put off in delay our own self-development. Where is our time for ourselves? For stillness, for philosophy. Senica notes how much time we waste in life. It may

well be that we are wasting much of that time and energy thinking about things as unfulfilling and unproductive as being on time. Being punctual is important, yes. But more critical is making time for the things that really matter and then being on time for those. It's funny, I talk to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time, they've just gotten back into it.

And I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading, they're reading more than ever and I go, let me guess, you listen audiobooks don't you? And it's true and almost invariably they listen to them on Audible. That's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs, and of course, ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app, you'll always find the best of what you love, or something new to discover, and as an Audible member you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog,

including the latest bestsellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, and exciting new voices in audio. You can check out Stillness is the key, the daily dad. I just recorded so that's up on Audible now. Coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audio books, so all those are available. And new members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500. That's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500. Hi, Ryan. Thank you.

Yeah. Of course. I have more of a general question. I know. Is your outer space? I didn't have much choice in the background. I'm at work and there's a big mess behind me. So I know a lot of the ancient Stoics

did not leave a lot of written material. So we focus a lot on the big three. You know, Mark is really a sepiteetus sentica because they left the most. Whether it's written by them or their students. Are there any other Stoics that left reading material because they left the most. Yeah. Whether it's written by them or their students. Are there any other Stoics that left reading material that we should perhaps learn more about

like as we proceed in stoicism? So this book was translated relatively recently and I enjoyed it. This is Musonius Rufus, whose epictetus is teacher. And it's called that one should disdain hardships. It's basically a set of notes from different talks. And so one of them is that women too should study philosophy, should daughters receive the same education as sons,

which is more effective theory or practice, that kings should also study philosophy that exile is not an evil. He writes an essay that exile is not evil, and he's exiled four times on Trump-to-Up charges. He says, he has one on what is the chief end of marriage, is marriage, a handicap for the pursuit of philosophy, should every child that is born be raised on food,

on clothing and shelter, is one on whether you should cut your beer or not. It's really fascinating. James Stockdale did a number of short books sort of inspired by stoicism, So I would check that out. As far as the originals go, pretty much everything else is fragments. If you read Lives of the Stelix, which is my book,

it gives you pretty much everything that there is from those people, unfortunately. Almost everything else is like a letter here or a quote here. The record is pretty sparse. The only thing I do hold up some hope on is that we have now begun to develop the technology where they can take some of the rolled up papyrus that was entombed in the ashyt places like Pompeii, and they can look, they can like x-ray

inside it and read it. And so it may well be that in time, if the works haven't already been destroyed in various excavations. We may over the next 50 years discover or rediscover some of these lost works from the stills, which would be pretty awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Good afternoon.

For some of those things, thanks for your book, Egos Enemy. Yeah. Literally stopped me from, shall we say, talking back to a previous boss that I was working under. All right. Kind of helped me put some things in context at the time. Good, two questions.

You had mentioned I thought in a recent email, the one of the downsides, the Stoics, was their persecution of Christianity. I wasn't sure if you mentioned Mark as well as a particular Stoics in general. Was there a particular reason for that? And I'm not, since I was back back back still, I was just, I'm curious what the reasons were for that. Yes, so there's, I actually have a section on this in lives of the Stoics.

Let me find it because it's worth reading. There's actually a fascinating novel called Blood of the Martyrs, which is by Naomi Merchusen. It's a novel about Christians in Nero's Court, which she was trying to write. She was writing it as Nazi Germany is rising in Europe and beginning their persecution. is rising in Europe and sort of beginning their persecution. So it's a tricky thing. So obviously put it this way, Rome thought that the Christians were heretics and the Stoics at different junctures were in charge of Rome. And so I more think about it as the Stoics did nothing to stop So I more think about it as the Stoics did nothing to stop a persecution or a sort of a set of discriminatory practices that they could have done something about. But let me see here.

So Junius Rousticus is Marcus's philosophy teacher who Marcus puts in charge basically of Rome. He's the mayor of Rome. He's the mayor of Rome. And it's Junius Rousticus who adjudicates the trial of Justin Martyr, one of the most famous Christian martyrs. You can contrast this, Seneca's brother, Gio, who's mentioned in the Bible adjudicates a case involving St. Paul and let's him go free. So it's not as if the Stoics sort of are universally caught up in this, but there is some unpleasantness here. So this is what I say. Justin had in fact studied under a Stoic teacher in Samaria, but left the school in favor of

the version in Christian faith. Many of Justin's writings would evoke similarities between the stoics and the Christians, and he may have well been familiar with Julius Roustic as his own philosophical work. He quite reasonably expected a favorable ruling from his stoic judge. As a devout Christian, he knew that a century before Seneca's brother had fairly judged and freed St. Paul and Corinth. But this was Rome in a very different time and Rousticus was not simply a pen and ink philosopher.

His job was to protect the peace. These Christians refused to acknowledge the Roman gods, the supremacy of the Roman state. And this was to them crazy, disruptive, and dangerous. Was it Rousticus's job to enforce the laws to prevent these kinds of things from happening? And perhaps with Marcus away at the front

and no one to check him, Rousticus was a little lost in the sway of his own power. In her 1939 novel about Christianity and Ancient Rome, written as fascism was crushing religious minorities in Europe. Naomi Mitchelson has a stoic philosopher attempt to explain this collision course between the Stokes and the Christians. The Christians were being persecuted, he says, because they

were against the Roman state. No Roman ever really bothered about a difference of gods. In religious matters, they were profoundly tolerant because their own gods were not of the individual heart, but only a social invention, or had become so. And yet politically they did and must persecute equally and equally must be attacked by all who had the courage. So the point is there's this sort of Roman policy that the Stokes declined to question that puts them on a collision course with a faith or a religion that questions almost all the essential tenants of the Roman state. Does that make sense? No, that seems pretty fair as well, right? I understand why Rome persecuted the Christians is more of the stoic or Roman, more of that the Romans were still up. Is that fair to say? I think that's fair to say, but we also have this idea of learning from the past. I don't have any

problem saying, you know, Rousticus sits at the head of this trial of this guy who's basically being set up on bogus charges for being a heretic, and instead of letting him off or exiling him or coming up with some symbolic punishment, he orders him to be scourged and beheaded. There were options, and the Stoics don't take those options, and that's to their eternal shame. And then just a quick second part of the question. Do you know of any writers who have written on the relationship, like positively, between still assessment and Christianity?

I think you'd like this book, The Blood of the Martyrs. And then I do think there are some books out there. I've seen them. I just haven't, I just haven't read them. It was only sort of tangentially related to what I was talking about in Liza the Stokes. But if you find something good, let us know. Thanks. Appreciate it. Yeah. Let's do Shireen as the last question. No pressure. So I recently listened to your podcast with Shane Parish from Farnham Street blog.

Yes. So I started looking at his blog. And so he has all these mental models. And he has one article about how to make smart decisions without getting lucky And so I just wanted to know if you have various mental models about various decisions that you make various people that you reach out to Yeah, that's a great question Yeah, I don't know. I sort of go back and forth on the mental models things when I when I read them I find them very interesting

I just don't know if people actually explicitly use them. I don't know if Warren Buffett, when he's evaluating a stock, actually goes, let's divide by zero here, or whatever the mental model is. I, it's sort of one of these things that makes sense to me rationally. And then I wonder how they actually get applied. You know, someone's recommending that Shane has a good course on decision making.

I would probably agree with that. I did talk about decision making in my interview with Annie Duke. When I had her on the podcast, she's great. And she has a new book about this. So I might start by that. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. 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 Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, 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 Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears.

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