The Daily Stoic - How Country Living Can Improve Your Life

Episode Date: January 8, 2023

Ryan celebrates country living with this presentation of the first in a four-part reading of MD Usher’s translation of Princeton University Press’s How to Be a Farmer: An Ancient Guide to Life on the Land. This excerpt examines the benefits of living with nature, dealing with good and bad days on the farm, being neighborly in the country and more.Ryan’s conversation with MD Usher can be heard here🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️ 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 weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, from the Stoic texts, audio books that you like here recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. of life. Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of The Daily Stoke Podcast. I'm here recording this in my office. I'm going to go for a run in a minute. And then I have to get home before it gets dark to hop in my ATV, hook up the trailer, and put out some hay for my cows. It's funny, I was just

at this thing for my son's school, and we knew a couple other people who live on ranges out here, and all we were talking about is the price of hay, and did they have a good hay guy, and how much were they paying per round bale? We put out these big round bails that weigh, you know, probably a thousand pounds. And, you know, they went from 50, 60 bucks a bail to like 120, 130 bucks a bail. I'm getting way in the weeds here literally, but a big part of this has to do with the war in Ukraine. Ukraine being a big exporter, not just of wheat, but of fertilizer. And that fertilizer is more expensive or harder to get. So the yields haven't been as good.

Hay is more expensive. Blah, blah, blah, blah. What is this have to do with stoicism? Well, I'm gonna tell you, in today's episode, I am excerpting from a wonderful little addition from Princeton University Presses, Ancient Wisdom for Modern Reader Series, translated by MD Usher, who I've had on the podcast. I'll link to that episode. wonderful little addition from Princeton University presses ancient wisdom for modern reader series, translated by MD Usher, who I've had on the podcast.

I'll link to that episode. But I'm gonna bring you some excerpts. One actually from Musoneus Rufus, he says, why farming is the profession best suited to philosophers? And a couple of other excerpts. Again, this probably doesn't seem like a book for you, but it really is. It was really interesting. We may even split this into two parts. And

anyways, I'll give you that right now. Here is some excerpts from how to be a farmer. Thank you to the Princeton University Press for allowing us to excerpt this audiobook. You can get that anywhere your audiobooks are sold. And you can check out the physical edition at the Painted Ports anytime you like. [♪esiod was shepherd poet from Cal country, the Oshia in Greece, who lived around 750 BCE. The works and days is a didactic miscellany in which Hesiod gives folksy and sometimes practical advice

about living in a small community organized around agricultural exchange. The passage here, addressed to his brother, Perseus, the historicity of whom has been doubted by some scholars, is Hisiad's opening salvo. In announcing his discovery of a second sort of strife, one that impels people towards self-improvement, Hisiad sets himself apart from Homeric poetry, which deals in the other destructive kind of strife that precipitated the Trojan War. Hesiod, in other words, a farmer, presents himself as a poet of peacetime, where the main adversaries one needs to counter our

impudence, laziness, wrongful living, and greed. Muses of Pairia, bestowers of glory and song, come to me now, singing hymns about Zeus, your father, at whose behest mortals have fame, or do not. They are spoken of, or not, with no clear distinction, but according to great Zeus's will, for Zeus easily gives strength. Easily, too, he crushes the strong. With ease, he cuts the prominent down to size and raises up the obscure. It is easy for him to straighten the bent and make a mighty man wither and fade. Zeus, roarer above, who dwells in the highest abodes. Hear me, watch and attend, and with justice keep my pronouncements straight while I attempt to speak the truth here to purses.

So all this time there's not been just one goddess strife engendered on earth. There are two. One you'd praise upon seeing her work, but the other is deserving of blame. Their hearts are completely opposed. For one foments evil war and conflicts, and she's savage. There's not a person alive that loves her. A necessity by the immortals decreased to people give that grievous strife her due. But the other strife, dark night birthed first, and the son of Kronos seated on high, dwelling in ether, lodged her in the roots of earth. She's far better for people, for she rouses even the useless man to work in spite of himself. For when an idle man looks at his neighbor, a rich man say, who is prompt to plow and sow and to put his house in order,

he envies him because that neighborys, take these matters to heart. Do not let the strife that the lights in evil keep your heart from work while you attend hearings and gawk at disputes at assembly. If a man does not have a good year's livelihood stored indoors, harvested in due season, demeters grain, what the earth brings forth, he has little concern for disputes and assemblies. Once you've sated yourself on that, go right ahead and advance your disputes and conflicts in your quest to acquire another man's goods. You won't get a second chance to do this.

So let's decide one dispute right here on the spot using straight judgments, the best kind that come from Zeus. For you and I have already divided our plot of land. Yet you keep snatching it up and carrying it off with much else besides gratifying the rulers, those gift eaters who stand ready to pass judgment on this question. Those fools, they have no idea how much more the half is than the whole, or what a banquet there is in Mallow and Asfidel, for the gods have kept livelihood hidden from humankind. If that were not so, it might be easy to work only a day and have enough for a year without even working.

You could store your steering or up in the smoke right now, and the oxen's work and that of toiling mules could go to hell. 2. The benefits of righteous living. He seared, works in days, 213 to 247. Perseise, as we learned in the previous selection, has been meddling in lawsuits and, perhaps, town politics, leaving his own affairs in disarray. He seed warns his brother in this passage of the consequences of any and all such insolence and of violations against Lady Justice, who is personified here as a goddess. There is a better path, he see adorges, that of straight judgments that lead to peace and prosperity in the land. The alternative? He sees description at the end of this passage recalls the fate of fallen Troy. As concerns you, Perseys, he, Justice, don't foment violence.

Violence is a bane to the low-born. Even a nobleman cannot easily endure it, but his brought low under its weight once he's met with ruin. The better road to just dealings passes by on the other side, and justice prevails over violence once it has reached its end. It is a fool who learns this only after suffering it. Oath-taking runs alongside bent judgments, post-haste and a ruckus arises of lady justice being hauled off.

Gift-eating men lead her on and issue verdicts, their judgments bent. She follows into the city and into people's abodes weeping, clothed and missed, carrying woe in her train for those who would drive her out and not ply her straight. But those who do render their judgments straight to foreigners and citizens alike, and do not veer from what is just. Their city blooms and people come to full flower in it. Peace, a nurse to youths, prevails in their land, and far-sighted Zeus never elots them grievous war. Nor is famine ever the companion of straight judging men, nor ruin, but in feasting they give and take a share of the fields they tend. For such people the earth produces life

aplenty. In the mountains the oak produces acorns on its branches and bees and its trunk. Their woolly sheep are weighed down, heavy with fleeces. Their wives, birth children, that resemble their parents, and they thrive with good things all of their days. They do not embark upon ships, rather the grain-giving land produces their crops. But for those who practice base violence and wicked deeds, far-sighted Zeus, son of Cronos, allots punishment Often, an entire city reaps the fruit of a bad man, the sort who commits an offense and contrives reckless plans. Upon men like these, the son of Cronos hurls calamity down from the sky,

famine, together with plague, and the people wither away. Wives do not give birth, homesteads dwindle by the designs of Olympian Zeus. Indeed, sometimes the son of Chronos destroys their broad army, or their wall, or he exacts his vengeance on their ships at sea. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the

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learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondering if... 3. On work and wealth. He see it, works and days, 286 to 319, and 381 to 382. He see it is, arguably, the first proponent of the dignity of labor. But he is also a fierce and first advocate for a kind of self-sufficiency tempered by prudent

openness to good advice. Both qualities are desirable attributes in a farmer. He said it has already told us in section number one that a livelihood is hard to come by. Here, he exhorts purses toward the only dignified means to securing that hand, work at work upon work. means to securing that hand, work at work upon work. Perseise, you great fool. I have something to say to you, and I thinking is sound.

Wickedness is easy to get hold of. It comes in bunches. Its road is smooth, and it lives close by. But in front of excellence, the immortal gods have placed the sweat of your brow. Its path is long and steep and rough at first, but when you reach the top, then it too becomes easy, though it is tough all the same. The best man of all thinks out everything for himself, mulling over what is better later on and in the end. And yet good too is he who heads words well

spoken by another. But whoever neither thinks for himself, nor listens to another when he takes something to heart, is a useless person. As for you, perseys, sprung from divine stock, always keep my command in mind and work so that famine will loath you, whereas August, fair crowned demeter will love you and fill your barn with the staff of life. For famine is the constant companion of an idle man. Gods and men both resent the man who lives idly. His attitude smacks of stingless drones who idly waste the bee's toil, gobbling it down. But as for you, be amenable to arranging your work and do measure, so that your barns

will be full with the staff of life in its season. Work is the source of men having many sheep and becoming wealthy. If you work your much dearer to immortals and mortals, for they despise idle men. Work is no reproach, but idleness is a reproach. If however you work, an idle man grows instantly jealous of you once you're rich, excellence and praise accompany wealth. Whatever sort of person you happen to be by lot, to work is better.

If that is, you turn your senseless heart away from other people's possessions toward work and take care for a livelihood as I bid you to do. Shame's no good at providing for a man in need. Shame, who both harms and helps men greatly, shame as everyone knows attends financial disgrace, whereas self-assuredness attends wealth. So, if the heart in your chest longs for wealth, do as follows, work at work upon work. 4. Cultivating Good Neighbors On Thrift, Hesiod works in days 342-369. The presence of Hesiod extends also to his insights into the importance of social capital.

Good fences might make good neighbors, but relationships like fences need to be built and maintained with craft and skill. He see it offers some time-proven advice on that topic here. Invite your friend to a feast, but leave your enemy be. Invite in particular whoever lives near you, for if a farm problem arises, neighbors will come in their bedclothes, whereas in laws would get dressed. A bad neighbor is as much a pain as a good one is a blessing. The man whose portion includes a good neighbor possesses something of value. Not even a cow would be lost, unless the neighbor is a bad one.

Measure things out properly from your neighbor and pay him back properly, too, with the exact measure, and even better if you can. That way you can find enough should you be in need later on. Don't seek ill-gotten gain. Ill-gotten gain is on par with ruin. Treat your friend like a friend and go visit your visitor. Give to him who gives. Don't give to him who doesn't give. Anyone would give to a giver. No one gives to a non-giver. Giving is good. Snatching is bad.

It's a giver of death. For the man who gives willingly, even if he gives much, rejoices in the gift and feels glad in his heart. The man who takes for himself observing no sense of shame, even if it involves a small amount, hardens the heart. For if you add a little to a little and do it often, even that amounts to much in no time. He who adds to what he has wards off burning hunger.

What's stored at home at least doesn't worry a man. At home is better. What's outside is apt to spoil. To take from what you have is fine, though it pains the heart to need what you don't have. I urge you to take note of these things. When a jar is at its beginning or near its end, take your fill. In the middle be sparing. To be sparing at the bottom though is stingy. 5. Procrastination Good and Bad Days He Seed Works in Days 410-413-825

and days 410 to 413 and 825. Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow? He see it tells us why not in brief compass and also scores a proverbial bon mull about the favorable and unfavorable character of certain days. Don't put things off till tomorrow, or the next day, for the dilly-dahlier doesn't fill his barn, nor does the procrastinator. Stewardship, by contrast, fosters work. The man who puts off work grapples constantly with ruin.

Concerning the character of days, sometimes a day is a mother, sometimes a stepmother. Sometimes a day is a mother, sometimes a stepmother. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. 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 on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music App today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.

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 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-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.