The Daily Stoic - Real Power Can't Be Taken Away | Ask DS

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

They can hate you, they can send you away, they can mock you or even kill you, but no one can take away those principles.Ask DS:Is Stoicism considered "self-help"? How can Stoicism be incorporated in daily life? + More!✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow 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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audiobooks in the car. Instead of having that be dead time, we want to use it to have a live time. We really want to help their imagination soar. And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories,

self-development, fantasy, expert advice, really any genre that you love, maybe you're into stoicism. And there's some books there that I might recommend by this one guy named Ryan. Audible has the best selection of audio books without exception and exclusive Audible originals all in one easy app.

And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing right Now on Audible. You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You'll get Right Thing Right Now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. 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 and fellow Stoics who are 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 happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening and we hope this is of use to you. Real power can't be taken away. Twice Seneca was exiled.

Twice he basically lost everything. Money, access, influence, it all went away. Like that. How did he handle it? The first time, not so well. We can read the thou dost protest too much letter, he wrote to his mother, and we can see what he was willing to do in order to be recalled. By Stoic standards, it wasn't pretty.

The second time he did a little better. As long as he could be free from Nero, the exile was worth the loss. And when he was approached by Nero's executioner, he responded finally with courage and strength. Only then were the man and his philosophy aligned. It is a vast kingdom to be able to cope without a kingdom, Seneca wrote in his play, Theestes. This was no mere wordplay. This was hard-won wisdom. Seneca really did know of what he spoke. He really did learn how to break free of the hold that material things and status had over

him, and in it he found both great power and eventually immortality. Another fellow traveler in Stoicism was the slaved turned philosopher Publius Sirius. If you are to have a great kingdom, he wrote, rule over yourself. That's what we should think about today. Real power can't be taken away, not by the economy or by an election or by anything else. A populist surfs on the moods of the crowd, but a philosopher, a person worthy of our respect rests on principles. They can hate you, they can send you away, they can mock you or even kill you, but no

one can take away those principles. No one can stop you from ruling over yourself. It's the best and the biggest and the strongest kingdom there is. Hey, it's Ryan, welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. The folks at CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, reached out and wanted to interview me because I'm going to be in Vancouver. Anyways, they wanted to ask me some questions about Stoicism, how it fits in this crazy modern world, and how I was handling all the crazy things that were happening here. So this was a very fun little interview. I did it at the Daily Stoic studio. Just got my haircut and then rushed over and did the little interview. And anyways, be well.

Lisa Christensen sat down earlier with the man at the heart of the return of Stoicism. And here she is with more. If you're like a lot of people, at some point in your life, these questions will occur to you. What does a good life look like? What am I doing right or wrong? Does any of this even matter?

Well, Ryan Holiday has spent a lot of time considering these questions. He is an author, podcaster, and host of The Daily Stoic. He'll be in Vancouver on November 18th to discuss the Stoic life. He joins me now. Good morning. Yeah, thanks for having me.

So before we get to what a Stoic life is, for those who probably don't remember philosophy 101, what is Stoicism? Stoicism is a philosophy that comes to us from ancient Greece and then ancient Rome. And I could tell you about a bunch of old dead white guys whose names you may or may not be able to pronounce. But I see it as a philosophy built around this assumption that while we don't control the world around us, we control how we respond to the world around us. And the Stoics believed that everything was an opportunity to practice virtue.

And for the Stoics, those four key virtues are courage, self-discipline, justice, and wisdom. So when you came to it, was it kind of one of those, you know, looking for a life preserver? Was it helping you with something? You know, I was a 19-year-old kid in college. I don't know exactly what I was looking for, but I think I was looking for how a person was supposed to be, what a good life was, some of those questions you mentioned earlier. And these aren't the kinds of things that we teach

in school. Yeah, there is something about stoic philosophy that is undeniably well aged. Here you have these insights, these fragments in some cases or full books and others that have endured for between 20 and 24 centuries. That says something I think about their staying power and their timelessness. Now, when you check your Instagram account for the Daily Stoic. There are over 3 million followers. Do you think even Marcus Aurelius would be surprised at that? Aaron Ross Powell I mean, I'm surprised by it every single day. I seem to remember when I went to my publisher with the idea to write about an obscure school of ancient philosophy that everyone

thought I was committing career suicide. And I didn't have any idea that it could become what it's become. There are probably more stoics following the Daily Stoic on Instagram than ever existed cumulatively in all of history. It's pretty unreal to think about. Aaron Ross Powell For some people though, is it seen as a self-help, like maybe for business people or a way to sort of say, hey, accept your lot in life? David Kopelka There is a way to look down your nose at

Stoke philosophy, at people who are sort of earnestly trying to become what they're capable of becoming. But I think we are – particularly for young men, we do that at our peril. If you don't cultivate positive influences and you don't celebrate something like virtue, what happens is that other people step in and they fill that void. And we're certainly wrestling with that in America as far as, you know, sort of who are the primary influences on young men at very formative times in their lives. Now you're talking Vancouver, the Stoic life. Is there a way that you can incorporate it into your life?

Or is it like a plan? Is it a daily meditation? How does that work? It is important that we see Stoic philosophy as a practice. It's not a thing you have heard about or that you have studied. It has to be something that you are studying and something that you are applying. And I'm going to talk about my sort of journey through Stoic philosophy and how I've come to understand it and apply it now two decades in. But I think what draws someone to come to a philosophy lecture, they're trying to avail themselves of the wisdom from some of the wisest people that have ever lived.

We talk a lot about how much change we all see, which is so accelerated all the time, but that there is this, as you said, a way to go to a group of people or to someone who said, these are just universal truths. Yeah, the more things change, the more they stay the same. In meditations or Seneca, you have them complaining about annoying people. You have them wrestling with their temper, dealing with ambition, dealing with the fact that it's cold outside, dealing with the fact that the political situation is untenable. There is nothing new under the sun.

What you find in the Stoic texts is that they were struggling with shockingly modern problems or conversely that our problems are shockingly ancient. That's a good way to look at it. Now, you know, we have elections there all the time. Is there a way that stoicism can help us to confront when, say, we're disappointed by the outcome of an election? Well, waking up yesterday, I was reminded of a quote from Marcus Serrillo in Meditations. He says, basically, you know, how does this stop you? He was referring to something we don't know.

But his point was, how does whatever it is that you're experiencing or you've just been told or it's just happened, he says, how does it stop you from acting with courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. So I take that to mean that I think America could have made devastatingly dangerous choice. Things could get very, very bad, not just here, but around the world as a result of a leader that Stokes would have been very familiar with. I mean, Seneca lives in the time of Nero and he sees what an unstable head of state can do. But as far as us as individuals, it doesn't change what we are obligated to do. And I don't mean that in the course of our day-to-day obligations like I have to take my son to school today. I mean that in what is demanded of me as a human being, what virtue asks of us, that remains unchanged. In fact,

the only thing that has changed is the stakes or the consequences of sticking with that. Well, thank you, Ryan. I really appreciate your time today and look forward to your talk when you're here later in the month. So I really appreciate it. Thanks so much. I'm looking forward to stepping onto Canadian soil. It's going to be a nice feeling of relief for a few days. All right, well, thank you. And Ryan Holiday Live in Vancouver, The Stoic Life takes place on November 18th

at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to The Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor.

Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on wondery.com slash survey. This holiday season, give your loved ones only the best from L.L. Bean. Let them wrap themselves in L.L. Bean's wide variety of sweaters. Choose from L.L. Bean's classics like their rag wool

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