The Daily Stoic - Philosophy Is Not A Thought Experiment

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Ryan talks about what practicing Stoicism is actually all about.🎓 Sign up for Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy For Your Actual Life - https://dailystoic.com/101Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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 bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystowup.com.

Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music music or wherever you get your podcasts. Philosophy is not a thought experiment. If the word stoic has been totally misunderstood in the English language, as we just talked about the other day, then it must be said that as a concept, philosophy has also been perverted.

The mere mention of the word can make us border intimidated, because philosophy today is not thought of as something one can use, but it almost a purely academic pursuit and abstraction too big for mere mortals to even comprehend. It is not thought to be, as Epictetusetus said for lovers of wisdom, philosophy coming from that Greek word that literally means love of wisdom, but instead for smart people, for puzzling over paradoxes and riddles, for asking questions without answers. And our modern philosophers today debate whether we're living in a computer simulation, or if reality is anything but a hallucination, or they debate how to respond to the so-called

trolley problem, or whether the ship of Thessius, if every single plank was replaced, would or wouldn't be fundamentally different ship. And that's why too many philosophy books, as Nietzsche said, do little bit use words to argue without other words. And what a sad, ironic fate for something that traces its roots back to just about anywhere, but the classroom. As Plutarch observed, Socrates did not set up desks for his students, sit in a teacher's chair, and reserve a pre-arranged time for lecturing and walking with his pupils.

On the contrary, he practiced philosophy while joking around and drinking and serving on military campaigns and hanging around the marketplace with some of his students, and finally, even while under arrest and drinking the hemlock. He was the first to demonstrate that our lives are open to philosophy at all times and in every aspect, while experiencing every emotion and in each and every activity. That's just beautifully put. The truth is you will never have to pull a lever to stop a trolley from running over one person or five. You have no way of knowing whether this life is real or an illusion.

We do, however, have just as the citizens of the ancient world had real concerns and decisions to make on a daily basis. And that is what philosophy is. It's something that the doers of the world use and have used throughout history to solve their problems and live a good life. And that's what the Stoics were after. What we remain interested into this day lights to illuminate the path in life. They wanted to know, as we want to know, how to find tranquility and purpose and self-control

and happiness. Which is why instead of asking interesting questions like, is this just a hallucination? The Stoics asked practical questions like, who can help me? What is right? What should or shouldn't I do? And it's those kinds of questions that I'm interested in answering. And that's why I set up this new course I was telling you about Stoicism 101, Ancient Philosophy for your actual life. It's our most popular course here at Daily Stoicism 101 Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life.

It's our most popular course here at Daily Stoke, and that's why we're reopening it to a live cohort here in 2022 that starts on March 22nd. Stoicism 101 Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life is a 14-day course designed to show you, to show people how to integrate philosophy into their actual lives. It's empty of esoteric inquiry.

There's no mirror fencing, no perplexing paradoxes, no riddles to solve. It's real stuff for real people. And the people who took it, we have all this great feedback about what it did for them. They were saying, look, I'm new to stoicism and this was so immediately impactful. They were in the middle of changing careers

and we talked through that in the course. Someone else said that throughout the course, I've picked up ways of approaching everyday situations that have been massively beneficial. I still need to work on making them more automatic, rather than apply them when things go all right. Which is of course, what Stoicism is, it's not this magical epiphany,

it's a process that you work. Then someone else said, it's a gift to take this course of all the philosophies that have peaked my interest over the years, none have led to the tangible improvements in my life like Stoicism has. I love hearing that. And look, in three live video sessions, what we call office hours with me,

author of a book or two about Stoicism, we're gonna tackle stuff like that. It's gonna be a real back and forth between me and you and thousands of other Stoic's as part of the course. There's 14 custom emails delivered over the two weeks, 20,000 words of content basically almost a short book. And it's stuff about who the Stoic's were, things the Stoic does, things the Stoic shouldn't

do, what sets Stoicism apart from the other philosophies, key components to living a Stoic day, Stoic secret to success, Sto stoic secret to success, stoic secrets to resilience, stoic secrets to productivity, and not only do you get the office hour sessions, but you get the last go-around office sessions too. So that's hours and hours of deep dives into these topics. I've spoken about stoicism and everyone from the NBA to the NFL, sitting elected leaders

and special forces operators. So I'm really excited to talk to you all of you about stoicism and help you apply it to your actual life. This is a live course and it begins on Tuesday, March 22nd, so you've got to sign up now to be part of that cohort. Registration is now officially open, but it closes on Monday, March 21st at midnight.

So I want you to sign up, go to dailystowoc.com slash 101 to sign up, click the link in today's episode. And I'm really looking forward to having you join us as part of Stoicism 101. Also, if you sign up for Daily Stoke Life now, you get this course and all the other ones are free. So if you're looking to get serious about Stoicism, this is a great time to do that. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day, check it out at dailystoke.com slash email.

Hey Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. 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 world's biggest and most innovative companies,

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