The Daily Stoic - Robert Greene on the Wisdom of the Stoics

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

Ryan talks to bestselling author Robert Greene about the importance of understanding, processing, and observing your emotions, our natural tendency as humans to take the path of least resistance, how to deal with anxiety by viewing situations objectively, working on his new book about the laws of the sublime, and more.Robert Greene is an American author known for his books on strategy, power, and seduction. He has written six international bestsellers: The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature. His new book The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature is a daily devotional designed to help you seize your destiny.Get signed copies of Robert Greene’s books at the Painted Porch Bookshop.For FOUR MORE DAYS, you can sign up and immediately begin the 2022 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge at your own pace. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Just go to https://dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up.Reframe is a neuroscience based smartphone app that helps users cut-back or quit drinking alcohol. Using evidence-based tools, techniques and content, To learn more go to JOINREFRAMEAPP.COM/stoic and use the code STOIC for 25% off your first month or annual subscription. Download Reframe on the App Store today.Trade Coffee will match you to coffees you’ll love from 400+ craft coffees, and will send you a freshly roasted bag as often as you’d like. Trade is offering your first bag free and $5 off your bundle at checkout. To get yours, go to drinktrade.com/DAILYSTOIC and use promo code DAILYSTOIC. Take the quiz to start your journey to the perfect cup.Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Robert Greene: Twitter, Instagram, Homepage, TikTok, YouTubeSee 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 Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wendy'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, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcasts. As you know, Robert Green is not just one of my writing heroes

and one of my mentors, but a guiding and shaping force in my life. And yet, for as long as I've known Robert, and as much as an influence that he's had in my life, I don't, I actually haven't spent that much time with him. as much as an influence that he's had in my life. I don't, I actually haven't spent that much time with him early on in our relationship. My job was to drop off a stack of papers or a book

at his house or to talk to him on the phone for 30 minutes while he gave me instructions. And of course, we've had dinner and lunches and stuff before, but he spends a lot of time doing what he does. And I've always felt weird imposing on that or interrupting it. And so today's episode is a result of actually, I think, the most time that I've ever spent with Robert Green. And certainly the most time my family has spent with Robert Green.

Robert Green came out at the end of December to see me and my kids and my wife. He stayed at my house here in Texas. And one of the reasons he came out is he was signing a bunch of copies of his books so we could sell them at the Painted Porch bookstore, which you can check out at thepaintedportch.com. And then he also came out. We were recording a podcast with a couple of different mutual friends, which you might have seen on my social media. And then he and I wanted to record an episode

of the podcast. So I got to sit down and interview Robert Green, which I had the privilege of doing, I think three times in the last year. And so I don't know, it was just a wonderful trip. I got to have meals with Robert, got to socialize with Robert, got to give him a tour of the farm.

He got to meet my donkeys. And we got to just talk a bunch. And he bought some wonderful dinosaurs for my boys. And some wonderful gluten-free breath that he brought with him. And it was just that it was, I don't know, I really, really had an amazing time. And I felt so grateful to be graced with his presence. And then I felt extra guilty on the way home

because he had a hellish return trip, not just because traveling during COVID is stressful, but then there was a delayed flight, and a delayed flight, and a delayed flight, and what should have been a three hour flight took him 12 or so hours. So just know that this interview came at an immense cost and sacrifice from Robert Green, and I hope you appreciate it accordingly. If you don't know who Robert is, I don't know what to tell you. He is, I think, one of the greatest

living non-fiction writers, not just of our time, but of all time. His books on power, strategy, and seduction and war have sold millions upon millions of copies all over the world. The 48 laws of power, the art of seduction, the 33 strategies of war, the 50th law of mastery, the laws of human nature, and now the daily laws, which I was lucky enough to work on him with, all of which we have signed at thepaintedportch.com.

You can follow Robert Green on Instagram, Robert Green at Robert Green official. You can follow him on Twitter, at Robert Green. You can follow him on TikTok. He's been doing awesome TikTok stuff and we filmed a bunch of that while you're here, at Robert Green. Of course, RobertGreen.co. Here's my interview with Robert Green. I don't need to tell you what it's about,

because you should just listen to it, because anytime you get an hour to listen to Robert Green, you should take that chance, which is what I did. Thanks to Robert for visiting. Check out his many, many books. And check out my past interviews with him as well, and enjoy this one. Talk to you soon.

So, I thought we'd start with your, I think it's your favorite quote from the Stoics. So when you've said to me the most, maybe you can- There's two, but I think you know it. This is the boxing one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, what is that quote and what does it mean to you?

Well, I'm gonna butcher it to hell. It's, you know, it's better if you tell it to me. I know it. I've been wondering about the boxers in the ring, right? Yeah, yeah. So I think Mark is saying, you're like a boxer in the ring. And when someone, he says when someone gouges you with your, their nails or butts you with their head, you have to, you can't just run away crying or even accuse them of being

a cheater. You have to adjust your fighting style accordingly. And you have to, he says, you can be wary of them, but you can't get out of the ring. Right, right. Yeah. So it's kind of a metaphor for life. And so the idea is that when you enter the world as an adult, the work world, it is like an arena. It is like a boxing match. Some people play by

different set of rules. I forget what the normal boxing rules are called. The, you know, if that guy has name, no, it doesn't matter. It's sort of a standard for behavior in a boxing ring. Some people are bi-bytes, some people don't. They hit below the belt. They hug you. They do all kinds of things that are not, you're not supposed to do. And, you know, this is like human nature. So, Shopenhauer has this quote that if you're walking down the street and you hit your foot against a rock, you don't go get angry at the rock, right? Well, people are rocks in your way sometimes. Right.

They're just, I don't mean that to depersonalize them. I mean, in the sense that they are who they are, they have their own nature, and that nature isn't yours, and it's going to clash with you sometimes. And that is just what it means to be a human being and adult in the world today and any world. So are you going to be like complaining and blaming the fact that it is a boxing ring? Are you going to complain that people have a nature

where they have an ego, where they're full of envy, where they're passive aggressive. And then in the process of complaining, you're putting yourself at a continual disadvantage because you're draining yourself with all these useless emotions, and you're not playing proper defense against them because you're all consumed with kind of personalizing the situation,

or are you gonna have some distance and be like a box in a ring and be smart and intelligent about it, you know? And I just think it's a brilliant metaphor for life. It's a brilliant metaphor for being in control and for accepting the fact that some people play a little bit dirty. Some people are going to hit you, it's going to hurt. But you don't whine and complain.

You just figure out how are you going to defend yourself better? I thought it was like a perfect metaphor for the 48 laws. He does seem to really like boxing metaphors. One passage he says, like, some people say life is a dance and it says, actually, it's more like wrestling because you have to be dug in and ready for sudden attacks. Right. Right. Do you agree is life a boxing match or wrestling match? Like is it, you know, because you say this in your books all the time, you go as in war, so in life. Right. Do you, is that the lens that you look at the world through?

Well, to some degree, I mean, conflict is kind of inherent in the human condition. So your path through life is never gonna be easy. There's always gonna be resistance. There's always gonna be people who oppose you. I got, when I wrote the war book, I also, the other metaphor was the samurai warrior that was a major theme in it. And Musashi talks about the stance of the warrior.

Yeah. And it's the stance that matters. It's how you meet the adversary, how you position yourself, how you're calm, how you position the sword, and how you're ready for the attack. The attack might not come, or the opponent might just give up and walk away, or there may be somebody who come from behind, but you're ready, you're prepared, you're in the proper stance. So I always think of it kind of in those terms. Are you prepared? So I don't want people to be paranoid. I don't want them to go around thinking everybody's evil and they're about to attack me.

I want you to be in life to have this kind of composure, this stance, like a warrior, you're prepared for the worst, you're not expecting the worst, but you're prepared for it if it happens. And if some kind of crap comes your way, you know how to fight, you know how to defend yourself and you know how to get out of bad situations. And I say that because I myself, before I wrote the book, I violated it a lot of times. The stance that I was in was all wobbly, I was too emotional, I wasn't strong, I wasn't like in a firm position, et cetera.

So. I was thinking, my other favorite Marcus sort of wrestling boxing one is he says, it's, and maybe, maybe Musashi would get mad at this, but he says it's better to be a boxer than a fencer, or a swordsman, because the boxerers weapon is a part of them. And the swordsman has to pick up their weapon. And I always took that when I read that passage the first time I thought of the final law of the law of power about formlessness becoming one with whatever it is that you do, and not needing any external

things you are fused with the defenses or the tools that is a part of what you do. Well, you know, Musashi would counter Marcus Rerelyus, would be a great discussion. I wish we could bring them back together. I know, incredible. But Musashi would counter it in that the great summer I wore it becomes one with his weapon. Yeah. Is simply an extension of his arm. And he had a famous sword fight. He had many very classic famous sword fights where he didn't have a sword. And he just like a stick or he was like an or. Yeah. Right. And he defeated his opponent. So it didn't have a sword and he just like a stick or a, an or. Yeah. Right. And he defeated his opponent.

So it didn't matter that it was necessarily this hard piece of steel. It was how he used it. And he thought of it as an extension of his arm. So, you know, it was literally not, not like a prosthesis. It was. No, that's right. I'm writing about Musashi a little bit in the temperance book. Oh, good. He's amazing.

And there's a story that I didn't get to use, but I I loved it so much. He was he was in this fight. And he, you know, he would always do these sort of destabilizing like he would always win the fight

before he got there. Yeah, he'd be late or you know, he'd be weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dress strangely. But in this one, he shows up and he's later something, the guy's really angry. And the guy takes out his sword and he throws his scabbard into the ocean. And Musashi says, ah, so you know you're going to lose because a winner would not have thrown

their scabbard away. And I just, and you could tell, like that would have just confused and broken the spirit of the purr. I love like his sort of quips and his ability to sort of think through what the other person is expecting, what they want. And he'll do anything, even potentially a dishonorable thing or thing that we viewed as dishonorable to destabilize that person. So even though they might have been equally matched or he might have been outmatched, Musashi would win.

He was the Bill Belichek of samurai warrior fight. Whatever your strength is, I'm going to undermine it. Yeah. So the other thing about Musashi that's brilliant, it's very applicable to life was it treated each opponent is different. He never repeated the same strategy twice. He surmised the opponent either before the fight or during the fight to see what their psychology was, see what their weaknesses were, what their strengths were so he could neutralize their strength. And he never repeated the same strategy twice.

He always looked at the is opponent as an individual. I have to adapt to their style. I have to mirror them sometimes. So he had this one quote about, if I yawn and I feel tired, I will induce that in my opponent because of motions or contagious. Sure. Although I'm not really yawning and feeling it, I'm going to make this person tired by my apparent laxodate as a claditude.

So I found that brilliant, you know, because so many people in life, they're bad strategists. Most people are awful strategists because they're locked in the past and they're constantly repeating what worked a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. They don't look at the individuals they're dealing with their employees and say, this person has a particular psychology. This one's very different. I have to approach each person differently. They take the path of least resistance and they do this kind of cookie cutter approach

where I'm just going to apply the same strategies to each person. And Musashi was the complete opposite of that. I almost, I was thinking about doing a chapter about that towards the end of the temperance book because people tend to think stoicism is having no emotions. But what I thought was so genius about Musashi and I'll give you another example of this,

but like he's not only not not emotional or he's so transcended his emotions that he's able to use emotion effectively, right? And like I think about this like, when a basketball coach will get a technical on purpose, or like how does one, if you think it's about stripping emotion out of things, maybe that is part of it,

but that's like beginner level, that's like basic. But the real thing is to be able to understand emotions, process them, and then use them, or at the very least understand other people's emotions, and be able to manipulate the wrong word, but use those emotions to help them or you accomplish what is supposed to be accomplished. Yeah, I mean, the proper idea to me is sort of a lot of what I meditate about and is in Buddhism, where you don't try to repress your emotions because first of all, you can't. We are emotional animals.

And if ever you have tried to repress your emotions, particularly in a state of meditation, you see you have zero control over them, right? They're popping up. You know, it's with a way we're wired. So the proper I stance is I'm not going to repress emotions, but I'm going to understand them. I'm going to see them as they occur with a degree of distance. I'm going to see that I'm angry in this moment. I'm going to almost like have a, I like to imagine it as if I'm like six inches away from

myself. I don't know why that metaphor come up. Only six inches. That doesn't seem that far. Well, it's out this side. It's like here. However, that's like a more like a foot. I guess. Right. And I'm looking at what I'm thinking or feeling from that distance, almost from the outside. And I'm still feeling it. but I'm seeing it as if I'm another person. I know this is a strange concept. Yeah, but you can observe your own emotions while you're feeling them. And then you, they don't have power over you. Then you can say, okay, I'm angry. Why am I angry?

So number one, I recognize the emotion. Number two, why am I angry? So number one, I recognize the emotion number two. Why am I angry? Is it stem from something weeks ago, months ago or earlier today? And then what do I do with my anger? Sometimes you want to use your anger, you want to channel your anger. So when you're in sports, if you don't have that kind of drive and that anger, when you're in a bet, you know, when you're down by 12 points. Like an extra gear. Yeah. You can pull. Yeah. There's a little bit of anger and even, I don't know, hatred or something, you just despise the enemy. You're going to crush them, right? You use that emotion. But as Phil Jackson said, if that emotion controls you throughout 48 minutes of a game, you're useless. You drain yourself. You can't control it. You also make mistakes. Make mistakes. So you need to be focused, but you also need to be able to

use those emotions. That's where I use that metaphor of the writer and the horse, which I've repeated many, many times. Maybe that's another medallion that we could. Yeah. Can many. No, no, that's a great idea. The, the, the, the other Bella check thing I was thinking is, you know, that's what everyone goes, Bill, Bill Bella check takes your best asset and he, he brings it to zero. He basically, if you're throwing team, he figures out how to stop the throw. If you're running team, he stops the run. But I think he also doesn't get enough credit. Like, did you watch the, the Patriots Buffalo game?

I think it was last week. Painful, but I did. He, he also is aware of whatever his weakest thing is. And he makes that a non-entity in the game. What was that in this case? Well, it, so they were playing in Buffalo in, like, the strongest wins. Yes, snowing. And, and he, uh, they threw the ball three times. That's right. And it was the most boring, like, on the sexy game, but they gutted it out. But like, I was amazed at this, but the self control, but then you also have to have a certain amount of confidence and not giving the shit

what other people think because like, think about how many people he made unhappy by only throwing the ball three times. Quarterbacks, man, the offensive coordinators, man, the quarterbacks coaches, man, the announcer is mad, the fans are mad. And he's like, I don't care. Like he will win in the ugliest possible way. And he almost likes winning that way more.

I think. And he also adapts, as we were talking about adapts, the strategy. So he's very good at like figuring out the opposing quarterback and what they're way more I think. Yeah. And he also adapts, as we were talking about, adapts the strategy. So, he's very good at like figuring out the opposing quarterback and what their weaknesses are, the weather conditions, the conditions of the field, the psychology of the moment. He's very aware of all of the details, which is what made Napoleon such a great field general. Because Napoleon, people don't understand, he was not only brilliant at coming up with a plan, but he was brilliant in the moment, adapting his strategies to what the opponent showed him.

Because he created what's called maneuver warfare, which is probably similar to what a bellicic does. And maneuver warfare isn't about the position you occupy. It's about the options that you have. Right. So you put yourself in a position where you can go in five different directions, five different arrows. And if the moment comes, you can go here, here, here,

depending on what shows up, right? As opposed to the typical Prussian generalhood. I'm gonna go this way and attack, you know, I'm a worse in strength. Or even I'm gonna make a fl to go this way and attack, you know, I'm in a worse in strength or even I'm going to make a flanking attack this way. And they only had one gear and they only go one way. So in Belichick, he's always kind of adapting his strategy to each game, sort of like running the ball completely.

Sometimes when Brady was the quarterback, he would throw 54 times, et cetera. Yeah, he's amazing. Yeah. 54 times, et cetera. Yeah, he's amazing. Yeah, and they were, so he, he, the way he chose to, like after they won the coin toss or whatever, he chose it so they would, I know they'd be playing it. They'd be playing with the wind at the, he's like, I don't care how bad we are for the first three quarters. What matters is, is the wind at our backs when we need to make the final play. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

I love it. It was. That's like one of my second. I think obviously the Ram Super Bowl. It's another great example. Oh, I was so painful, but that was. But imagine how hard it would be to play a painful game in front of literally the entire world. Like you know, everyone's watching. Everyone's mad at you. And you just don't care. in front of literally the entire world. Like, you know everyone's watching,

everyone's mad at you, and you just don't care. Well, he's also a bit like the character I wrote about in the 48 laws of power, Chuko Liang. And Chuko Liang was in the Chinese, I think with the war of three romances, whatever it's called, was such a brilliant general. He was the one who sat on top of the gates, playing a guitar and humming, and he had no army.

And the opponent comes up with like, you know, 20,000 a minute, and they see him on the gates. I'll tranquil in monks' robes. He's like singing. This guy's up to some trick because he's never, he's always has tricks up his back. We're gonna turn around and leave. And he only had like 40 people defending this castle. It was his reputation.

And it's almost like people are defeated by Bill Belichick before they get in the stadium because they're in Antiseas building. He's playing with your mind before you even get there. And I know that's what happened to Jared Goff when he was the quarterback of the Rams. We chose to do something that we've never done here before at Daily Stone.

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and you missed it, well, you got a second chance. You've been given a do-over, a reprieve. You can sign up at dailystoke.com slash challenge. And as always, if you're a daily stoke life member, that's dailystokelife.com. You get this challenge and all the challenges that we have planned for the year for free. So check that out, dailystokelife.com and of course dailystoke.com slash challenge. Another Marcus quote that I think ties in really well with your books. He says, you can't go around expecting Plato's Republic.

And what I love about the Stoics, although Seneca is sort of an edge case in that, you know, he's not totally admirable, but like the Stoics weren't these sort of theoretical philosophers, but they had to be philosophers in the Emperor's Court or in the real world, in the army, in business, in the Roman Empire. Just what does it mean to you when you hear like you can't go around expecting Plato's Republic?

You know, Senica, first of all, you know, they're trying to like, that maybe Neuro wasn't so bad. He did kill his mom. Okay, but for the time that was pretty normal. He only tried to murder his mom several times and was successful. But his mom was for me. His mom was pretty evil too. No, I know what you mean. Some people are arguing that maybe Neuralism is bad as a thing. But you know, rehabilitate Seneca's reputation here a little bit because I feel bad for him.

But yeah, I mean Machiavelli has that quote so that if you expect everybody to be good in this world, you're in a lot of trouble. You know. What are you going to do when you deal with people who aren't good? But yeah, you have to be willing to get your hands dirty. So, let's say a classic example, like there's a cause that's very important to you, like the climate or justice in America, racial justice in America, all very important issues that we all, most of us believe in. You know, if you, you have to be willing to get down and dirty here because you're playing with politics, you're playing with people who are going to resist, you're playing with

major corporations who are going to bust your balls who are going to be incredibly manipulative and downright evil in co-opting your good idea and kind of, you idea and neutralizing it. So if you want to create something, if you want to actually have results, you have to be willing to get a little dirty and you have to get be willing to be strategic. You have to understand that the other side might not be playing by the same rules that you're playing with. A lot of warfare is with asymmetry, not just of weapons, but of also of ethics, you know, like the Democrats and the Republicans.

I know those people are going to rant about that. Or when we put, we're going against Vladimir Putin. These are people who have more options than we do because they're ethically not bound by the same norms that we have. There's self-imposed limitations. The self-imposed limitations are a one-way street. Yeah. Yeah. There's self-imposed limitations. The self-imposed limitations are a one-way street. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, and I talk in my books about two people, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and how at certain moments where they were so invested in the results of getting the English out of India, of bringing racial justice to America, that they were willing to do things that were actually a bit kind of manipulative, downright manipulative. So that's where it's, you know. But that's another point too. It's not just that it was manipulative like in that they would, you know, Martin Luther

King deciding like, hey, we're going to use children in some of these marches because even though we know they're likely going to be in danger because it will help. But I think it's also the key there to me is going just because your cause is right, and this ties in directly to the laws of power about never appeal to mercy, always appeal to self-interest. Just because your cause is correct or right or just, you can't just expect everyone else to be on board with that. So they also understood they had to convince people, they had to get them to see something. So they understood that it just wasn't theirs because they were on the right side of history.

Right. And so he made an exchange where he was putting these children's in danger because it was bull Connor, whoever was the sheriff at the time. You had the wips out and everything. But he knew that it was going to play on television in white people's homes in Chicago, who had kind of, they didn't have an image of America being like this. They never saw the dogs being taken out in the whips

and the water cannons, and he was going to put it on your television set, right? Yeah. He was going to make them understand the lies they were telling themselves about segregation. Yeah. And Gandhi's strategy was exactly the same. They didn't have television back then, but in his salt march, he literally was inviting his followers to be beaten up clubbed by the English police or whoever it was. And that would be in the newspapers. And English people who were very liberal and thought their country was, you know, the

great hope of the world, be reading in this paper about defenseless people being clubbed and it would turn them against the empire, right? So yeah, that's exactly what your point is. Yeah, it's like a, might doesn't make right and right doesn't make might. You have to figure out how to sell whatever it is that you're selling and understanding that, yeah, most people are indifferent as best. Or they have some vested interest in not caring about what you're talking about. I think about that even as a writer. It's like, nope, not that many people like books.

You know, like you're, it's an uphill battle to get people to read a book. And so you can't just expect that because you care a lot about it, everyone else will care. Right. Well, it's hard. It's not natural for us to get outside of ourselves. Our natural position, which is sort of what I talked about in human nature, about our narcissism that we all have, is I have a great idea. Everybody must think it's a great idea. I think the world is this way and should be this way. Everybody should be feeling that way. It's just natural. But it takes effort to get outside of yourself and to imagine that people come from different cultural backgrounds. They didn't wear it raised like you. They're different gender. They're different race. They have different backgrounds and different belief systems.

They try to think about that. And to also think about the universal qualities that all people share, you know, and so The problem if you could if you could boil down the problem with humans into one line It's the fact that they're always taking the path of least resistance They don't want to put effort and then and it requires effort strategize, to think of your opponent, to think of what makes them different. It takes strategy, to think of what will persuade them, but will get people to join your cause. It takes effort to get outside of yourself to see how other people might view it.

But we don't want to do that. We want to just be lazy and just assume that everyone's on our side. Yeah, we just want it because because it is better for the world, of course, the world should do it. And that's people do the wrong thing or act in not their self-interest all the time. Yeah. But I love this quote. And I read it at the beginning of the pandemic and it's been helpful to me. I think kind of connects to what you're talking about on the sublime book.

Mark's real helpful to me. I think kind of connects what you're talking about on the sublime book. Mark's Reo's and Meditations, he's sissy learns from one of his mentors. That the key to happiness is to be free of passion, but full of love. What does that mean to you? I'm not quite sure. I don't know if I can you help me a little bit and then I'll riff. I was taking it as meaning like you're not angry, you're not jealous, you're not frustrated. Like the passions, the sort of negative emotions as the stuff is not. So love is a depression. But love is some sort of deeper emotion, some better way to go through the world, that of all the passions,

that was the one that was okay, long. Okay, so love is a passion. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, it's something that, you know, I believe very much so, and it is kind of touching upon the sublime, but all the other passions are very inward moving, right? They're about you, they're about your anger, they're about your frustration. All the other passions are very inward moving, right?

They're about you, they're about your anger, they're about your frustration. Yes, you could be angry because some people are doing some really hooked up things to you at some point, right? So it's not completely you, but the emotion is geared towards how you feel and you wanna get retribution if someone's hurt you, you want revenge, you know? So it's all very kind of self-centered.

But love is the one emotion that forces you outside of yourself, true love, because there can be fake love where you really it's just a form of narcissism where you want people to give you the attention, try and feed the image you have of yourself. But true love, the ability to get outside of yourself and to feel what other people are feeling, which is empathy. An empathy, which is a word I'm afraid it's overused and I'm getting a little tired of it, I wish we could find a better word, but it's a major theme in the sublime because the idea is the highest mental power that we humans have, the source really of our intelligence is what they call theory of mind, that we are able to place ourselves in the bodies and the

minds of other people. What's made us to supreme social animal, right? So we have to think about what someone else is thinking. Yeah. And it's not only just for love, it's also for fighting your opponent, it's setter and for dealing any kind of social situation. But it's the source of all of our intelligence, right? It's the source of our science.

A great scientist, like at Einstein, is thinking inside the very subjects he's trying to get into, right? And that's where his metaphors and analogies often come from, because he's able to think about it. Oh, this is like this. Right. Yeah. So, that's the source of our power. And so, high level empathy where you're able to think inside of other people to kind of

imagine what they are going through, what their feelings are, is to me the highest passion of all, which is a form of love and it is extremely sublime. Yeah, no, I think it's like so instead of being, like you look at what's happening in the world, you could be angry, someone's behaving this way or doing this selfish thing, and then it's like to me, the stoic exercise is like, why are they this way?

Well, it's because someone misled them. They're actually a victim of, although they're perpetrating something unethical or unfair, unjust, they're a victim because someone, they're a victim of a scam or a scheme or a bad actor. And then also they are suffering for that. It's not fun to be them.

Right. And that I'm lucky not to have experienced that. And that they're there. So if you can experience a sort of compassion, it's almost more than empathy, it's like a compassion and understanding for that person, then you can feel love towards them instead of anger or rage or despair about like, why are people that way? But can you do that with the anti-vaxxers? It's hard. On a good day, I can't. I was wondering if you're maybe reaching your limits of that there.

Well, I mean, it's a tricky thing, right? Because it is, you can understand where they're coming from, just in the same way that you could understand, let's say addiction is a disease, and that this being addicted to this or that has caused so much pain and suffering for that person, and it's part of some wound that they had as a child, and it's not fun to be them, and that life would be better for them if they were clean,

but they still broke into your house and stole a family heirloom to sell to buy drugs, where they still got high and crashed their car and they killed someone. So I think we're really struggling with that particularly is you can have empathy and understanding for the person, but that doesn't negate the fact that the thing they're doing has real consequences for other people. Definitely, but if you want to win this war, when it's called a war against this type of thinking, you can't just like get angry and close the door on them and just say, go away, you know, you're just, you're evil, you're bad. We have to live with them, right?

They're in our midst every day. And so, if our politicians and people in charge were smart, which they're not, they would have that mentality. They would have the idea that you can't just alienate people and antagonize them and push them further into their corner. But to go to say like the civil rights movement, obviously Martin Luther King talks a lot about justice and loving the enemy and even though they hurt him and there's a famous moment where Martin Luther King is on stage and a man just comes in and not see, just starts punching him in the face. Right, right. And Martin Luther King has this almost superhuman discipline.

Right. He not only he, people said he dropped his hands. Like, he didn't even go like this. He was in this temperance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, to me, that's the heroic level of temperance. It's not just, oh, someone called you a bad name and you didn't react. Like, he, he conquered it to the level where he didn't go like this.

Yeah, I know. It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah, no, it's amazing. It's amazing. Um, he talked about all that. And yet, he also understood that segregation could only be destroyed through the force of law. But how do you get the force of law? I mean, you can't force the force of law.

I mean, those, those little girls and boys didn't go to school, little rock high school without the 101st Airborne. Yeah, but how did you get the 101st Airborne? How did you get Kennedy or Johnson to do that? How did you move public opinion to get to that point? I know, I'm just saying you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, compel people in any way. So even to get Congress or the president to mandate vaccinations, like they've done in other countries, you're going to get immense pushback, right? Right. So how are you going to deal with that?

Well, I think Martin Luther King said somewhere I'm paraphrasing that was like, you know, you can't make my neighbor like me, but you can't prevent him from killing me. Like so, so it's both. It needed sort of the force of law as well as sort of a public opinion campaign. We need both and we kind of have neither. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Senuka has this thing that it's really popular when we post it on Daily Stoic, but

I still struggle with what it means. He says we suffer more in imagination than reality. Mm-hmm. Now, I think he's saying, and I was talking to a friend who's sort of dreading this thing that's going to happen. He's worried about this negative news article that's going to come out. And I was talking to him about it. I was saying, look, like it's going to happen, and it's going to either be really negative

or not that negative. But you're borrowing the suffering in advance. You're feeling crappy about it before it's happened. It's like if they told you, Robert, you're gonna have to spend 10 years in prison, but you have six months to get your affairs in order. Those six months of your life should not be miserable, even though the 10 years probably aren't gonna be fun, because then you're actually serving a 10 and a half year sentence. life should not be miserable, even though the 10 years probably aren't going to be fun,

because then you're actually serving a 10 and a half year sentence. But I think Sena Kispoin is even a lot of the things we dread don't even happen. So it's even worse, we dread it in advance, and then it doesn't happen. Yeah. So what don't you understand? I'm just curious, what does that quote mean to you? Well, it makes me think of my meditation again. I hope I'm not sounding like a one trick pony here.

So when I'm meditating, I become extremely aware that thinking is almost a form of a disease. I get that idea constantly as I'm meditating. Like, thoughts are coming up and they're negative thoughts. 90% of the thoughts that come up uncontrollably are about anxiety. They're about people who've done things to you that you don't like. It's about problems with people, etc. So many of the thoughts are negative and you're anticipating, as you say, negative things

happening to you. And it's almost like thinking is the problem itself because it divorces you from the moment. So I often have the ideas I'm meditating. There's a world out there that has nothing to do with me. It's completely indifferent to Robert Green. The birds could care less about my faith. The trees don't know anything about my existence. The sky doesn't care at all about me, right? Okay, that's the reality, that's the world. But my thinking creates this thing as if I'm the most important thing in the universe.

But everything that happens is going to happen to me and is going to be bad, et cetera. So to be able to see that thinking traps you so many times into patterns that you've been programmed to respond to situations a lot of times by anxiety, you know, like thoughts pop up about, I've got to do this phone call or, oh, I forgot to email that person or dammit that this interview is coming up and I don't want to do it or blah blah blah blah. So much of the thoughts are anxieties that you're anticipating, right? What's going to happen, right? If you can just control that, if you can just see that that is the source of your problem and that the world is indifferent to you and that the circumstances are totally neutral

and that newspaper article that comes out, you can't control it and maybe the bad stuff will actually in the end rebound to you favor or it'll make you tougher, it'll make you realize certain things. If you can just see them as facts as opposed to like these horrible things inside your head, these fantausmos, whatever the Latin word is, you know, then you've got the power. 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's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other

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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. Well, and the irony, and I think this is very common, so I'm not singling with this person now, but like, so he's dreading the thing, he's worried about it, what's going to mean, what's going to happen, blah, blah, blah. And then I was like, so have you made, have you written your response? You know, we've talked about it like a dozen times. But the one thing he controls would be like, what's he going?

I was like, you should have written, this is your response if they say this. This is your response if they say this. This is your response if you say this. This is how you've already prepared all the people in your life that this thing might be happening. But of course, none of that was done because it was almost, even though it was, he's making himself miserable, it was more pleasure. It was more rewarding to just sit and stu and worry than to, like the Stoics say, you look, you don't control

what's in the, what's going to happen, but you control how you respond to what happens, and you also can control how you prepare for what happens. We don't do that. You know who one of the great stoics of the 20th century was? No. Alfred Hitchcock. He had a plan for everything. So directing a film, if you've known other people who've done it, is an extremely stressful

job. It's like directing an army into a campaign because problems are arising that you cannot anticipate. There's all this pressure, there's all this money. You've got insane egos of actors, producers, et cetera. And so it's like it's a constant adrenaline rush going through. You can't control your emotions. So Hitchcock, people would look at him on the set and he'd be falling asleep in the

director's chair. He'd look like Buddha, his eyes were closed. Why? Because he prepared for everything. He anticipated everything that was going to happen. Right? And so by the time the film came, he was completely bored because he knew he was able to control every aspect of the production.

So I know, for instance, if I have to go on live television, which is almost like having a sword fight with Musashi, right? For 10 minutes, everyone around the world is seeing you live. If you say something stupid or you blank out, you're humiliated. Or if you're boring, they can cut the interview short. Yeah, exactly. Okay. It's the worst thing.

I don't know if you can agree with me, but it's one of the worst things ever. So what I've learned is I'm going to prepare the hell out of it. I'm going to have everything nailed down, right? And then sometimes they don't ask you the questions you anticipate, goes off in other directions. But when you enter that green room, or were you ready to be interviewed, you have a calmness because you prepared, you know what your answers are going to be, you're able to, you're not sitting there in the moment trying to figure things out.

So I think that's kind of similar to what you're saying there. I heard a thing about Bill Wasch, the football coach. He would, he would script his first 15 plays of the game. So it was irrelevant what was happening in the world because he had his plan. Now that might have made him a little inflexible in some ways, but it also meant that if something went wrong, he wasn't scrambling running around with it. It wasn't looking for order and direction because like there was a plan and all he had to do was stick to the plan. Right. And those 15 plays were also geared towards the opponent. They weren't

just random plays that he devised, you know. Right. No, and it were also geared towards the opponent. They weren't just random plays that he devised, you know. Right. No, and it's about so much of life, I think, even like the interview you're talking about, it's about settling into a rhythm. It's about you go into it with nerves that are not beneficial. So it's really about just you have the initial rush. How do you prevent the crash after the rush? How do you just get into the groove that you need to do your thing the other thing i advise people a lot of stressful situation job interviews. And the best defense is to be so thoroughly prepared you study that company like the back of your hand you know the person is interviewing you've done massive amounts of research. done massive amounts of research, you've just done all the detail work and you've prepared what more or less you're going to say, then you go in, it's a completely different mindset than if you're just going to like wing it.

But I think some people think the anticipation thing can lead to anxiety or worry. But there's a Napoleon quote I like where he says, the general should ask themselves three times a day, what would I do if the enemy appears here, here, here? Yeah. I don't think he wanted the generals to be anxious. He just wanted them to be aware, like to have a plan. Well, preparation, that's why his cut could fall asleep when you're prepared, you're calm, right?

So when you've done your work, you know, and you get on the golf course, or you get in the boxing ring, or you get on the interview stage, you're gonna be nervous, and yeah, you know, and you get on the golf course or you get in the boxing ring or you get on the interview stage. You're going to be nervous, and yet you're going to have adrenaline because I've found if you don't have adrenaline, you're not focused enough. You need a little bit of nervous energy, but there's a difference between being nervous energy and it forecloses your ability to think in the moment.

But when you're prepared, you're able to be calmer. And then if people surprise you with a question, you're not suddenly flustered because you entered with it with a much higher degree of calmness. And then if you try to just completely fling it, I don't know if you've had that experience. No, I think you need a little bit of that. It's like it's just a heightened state of awareness. It's not sustainable. Like you can't do it every day of your life, but you need to go into an extra, inter-entrance, extra sphere or plane to do your best work. I feel like. Um, Santa could talk about, he has this Latin expression, which I won't say because I'll probably butcher it, but he says like, the whole world is a temple of the gods. And I

think one of the most, you know, people think of markets really as just a sort of dour, depressive, like guy. But like my favorite parts of meditations are his like observations about nature. Yeah. Talks about like wait, and we bending low under its own weight. He talks about the flecks of foam on a boris mouth.

He talks about olives falling from the tree. Yeah, yeah. Is clear that he would walk, he was a, he would go outside, yes, flex of foam on a board's mouth. He talks about olives falling from the tree. Yeah. It's clear that he would walk. He would go outside, yes, but he was also aware of what's happening outside. He was connected and present like Da Vinci, the way he would fall in love with the way a bird flew or even like what a body looked like when you cut it open. To me, that's part of How do you look like when you cut it open? To me, that's part of the sublime stuff too. It actual understanding and awe, like we use that word awesome,

but we don't really think about what it means, but just awe seems so important. And what about the etymology of awe? I should look that up. Yeah. Yeah, and the other thing that's similar to, and it's from Marcus Aurelius that's related is look at things as they are.

So you're drinking wine, think of the grapes being crushed. You're having olive oil, think of the olives being crushed. I don't remember what the other examples were. It's a little, and this is, I think, one of the reasons people think it's kind of depressing is like, this is a dead pig. This is a dead bird. Well, yeah, but that's what the food that you're eating, you know?

Sure. Yeah, and so, you know, that's a lot of the sublime because you're walking around in your world and you're kind of sleepwalking. Yeah. You're not paying attention to things and you're not really seeing things as they are. So you're drinking your orange juice

from some plastic bottle. You're not aware of the oranges or the process or what people went through. I mean, I know that if you were that may not be that exciting, so that's maybe not the best example. But being aware of where things come from, of what they are, of what their true nature is, that's sort of what children, how the children think because they're constantly curious. They just don't assume that something just came into the world the way it is. They want to know how and they want to know why. So, you live in a world where you're surrounded by things that exist, that kind of, you don't really know where they come from or what makes them so interesting, and you're not paying attention to it.

So some people have this idea of this sublime, like you have to do these incredible things. It has to be some amazing experience. You have to climb Mount Everest to have that rush and just look down on the world. And you have to be in a space, you have to be with Jeff Bezos on Blue Origin. It's pathetic, it's stupid, it's silly.

The sublime is around you. It's around just looking at your skin, realizing your own body, your own physiology. It's in everything around you is weird and sublime if you look at it a certain way. I think about that with... So it's easy to look at the Grand Canyon and be austroc. Yeah. It's easy to, yeah, like look at something amazing and be austroc. But the point is can you

find that in the ordinary or even in the ugly, right? Can you see the steam coming out of a sewer in New York City or like cat footprints on a car. I just wrote about that in the pagan chapter because in the Aztec cosmology, they have a word that I'm going to butcher, but it was called Tlazo Kyoto. And it meant literally means sacred excrement. And it means that there was a god of excrement and filth. And even the filth is beautiful and sacred.

And so I write about how you can look at things that are kind of decaying or that smell kind of funky. And you can find that kind of exciting and interesting in its own way. The decay has a certain kind of poignancy to it, right? And some decaying things have a sweet smell to them. Yeah, yeah. So, um, I forget what we were talking about. Well, no, I really got to gratitude, right? So people go, it's important to be grateful. So then like on Thanksgiving, they're like, I'm grateful for my family. I'm grateful for my health. I remember, right? And then, and that is important.

But I also think gratitude as a practice should be like, how do you find a way to be grateful for the shit that you don't like that you didn't want to happen? Right. Again, it's easy to be grateful that you're rich or that you're like free or that you're this or that, but can you be grateful for like your broken leg or can you be grateful for that terrible relationship that you are in?

Can you be grateful that all this, I was trying to think about this the other day, how can I be grateful for all the frustrating state of the world? Well, what's to be grateful there? Well, it's an opportunity, right, to be not those things, right? Right, right.

I was thinking about the town that I live in. If it was perfect, and the things that I didn't like about it were not there, almost certainly I would not be able to afford to live here. Those towns pretty perfect. No, but you get what I mean. Like if it, even writing a book, if writing the book was easy,

either everyone would do it, or you wouldn't be paid what you're paid to do it, right? You realize that the whole fact that it's hard or difficult or not perfect is what made it possible, accessible, or potentially rewarding. Yeah, it makes me think of two things. So I was reading recently a biography of William James, the great American philosopher psychologist. And he has this great essay, I forget, which one it's called, where he went to this like perfect utopia colony in New York called Chautauqua, where everything was easy and wonderful

and everybody was so polite, and they were all playing games outside, and it was nature, it was no conflict, and it was like this paradise. And he fell after he was there for two days, he wanted to throw up. He thought of the most repulsive thing he'd ever been to. He says, when you take conflict away from a human being, it's like castrating them. You remove something essential from our nature and he found it horrifying and nightmarish, which is kind of like what a utopia could be like. The other thing is, well, you know,

what about like, I'm not trying to be so self-centered here, but I guess I am, Having a stroke, you know? It's not fun, you know? You can't... I wouldn't wish it on someone. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, not even certain someone whose name I won't mention. So, you know, your active life is taken away from you

and you have to learn a patience that does never exist, it takes you five minutes to tie your shoelaces, et cetera. What could you learn a patience that does never exist. It takes you five minutes to tie your shoelaces, et cetera. What could you be grateful for that? Well, it's true. You can. It's taught me a lot of things. It's made me very kind of humble and appreciate what I had and also understand what it feels like for other people to be helpless physically, to have greater degrees of empathy, it has taught me to appreciate the smaller things in life. It's, for example, I could have had a stroke that damaged the left side of my brain, in

which case I wouldn't be able to write a book. So which would be worse? Having the right side of my brain damaged so I can't walk, or the left side of my brain where I can't write another book, I would take what happened to me over the other one. So even this kind of worse thing, the worst thing that's ever happened to me, but of course getting COVID could be theoretically a lot worse. And I have a friend who got COVID and then had a stroke. So yeah, there's always worse in this world. But, you know, there's even good to be extracted from the worst thing that happened in your life

without getting Haleana Shabbat because a lot of it's painful and frustrating, but you do have to look at it that way because you can't control it, you know, there's nothing you can do. That's one of my favorite Marcus quotes. I think it ties to what you're saying. He says, in Meditations, Marcus says,

a fire, he says a strong stomach digest what it eats, a fire turns everything you throw on top of it into flame and brightness. That's a great quote, I love that quote. It means you. It just means that everything that happens, you consume it in a particular way and you turn it into, you know, that fire inside of you just consumes all circumstances into something

positive, you just burn them up and you evaporate them and you make them part of your life and you incorporate them. And I don't know, I might be butchering it, but, uh, or I might be getting a context from it. No, no, I think you're totally right. The, as I thought about that quote more, the one thing that I've came to understand is like, you've ever started like a campfire or something.

And then you're like, it starts to get going and then you get excited and you throw too much on it. It puts the fire out. Right. So what he, I think he's really commenting on is like how strong, how robust is that fire inside of you? Yeah. If it's just a puny little spark or you know, that one of those fires, it's more smoke than heat. You can also putting stuff on top of it can also dampen it out or block it out. So it's really about how much you have going on in here. That's how you hear about somebody who goes through an incredible amount of adversity.

Marcus really has lost, I think, seven children. Like you think about, or you think about Admiral Stockdale and the Hannahweil Hill, just what kind of inner fortitude and strength and drive and inner power you would have to have for one of those things not to break you, not every single one right after another. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so this makes me think of two things. So I'm right now writing a chapter about childhood sublime and kind of the main story, the icon of it is the writer Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita among many other great novels and He had this kind of idyllic childhood in Russia a wealthy fat father and really kind of this the fat father and really kind of this doting mother and this country is state. It was kind of like here. He just was paradise. And then it's 1918 or 17 and he's 18 years old and the Russian Revolution breaks out. And his father's a marked man and they have to flee. They have to leave behind all of their possessions. They flee to Europe. They end up in Berlin. His father is assassinated by a fascist. His wife is Jewish and they're there when Hitler's comes to power and They have to flee Germany has to leave behind his mother and all his siblings. So a second time. Yes, second time and his brother dies in a concentration camp and

He flees to New York and here he is, he's in his 40s and he had the most happy childhood and yet he has no photographs, no souvenirs, no family members to share it with. He can never go back to Russia because of Stalin and the circumstances and what does he do, you know, that's like just horrifying. So his idea was he was going to recreate his childhood in his mind. He was going to make it come to life just by imagining it and feeling those emotions again. So that was kind of his far. I don't know if that's sort of like any one of those things could be if you're like, why is that person a drunk? It'd be like, because one of those things happened to them.

But the people that I think are so amazing, the people who sort of keep going, like it just published this new edition of some of the writings of Victor Frankel. Yeah. And it's called Yes to Life And the subtitle is in spite of everything. Well, who went through worse than Victor Frankel? But I love that phrase like in spite of everything. It's not life is not Plato's Republic. It's not your idyllic childhood. It's not how you want it. It's outchwitz. Yeah. It's it's it's it's it's you have to do these things. We're talking about in spite of so you think about Marx tolius, and what he's talking about, like how to be free of passion, full of love,

you can't expect Plato's Republic, this, that, he's not having a good time. Like, that even the ancient historians were like, this was this wonderful man who met with continual bad luck in life. But it never seemed to pierce that inner scent. Like you never became better, you never dispaired, you never abandoned, would have been so easy as you're burying your second child

to be like, you know what, it's all bullshit, like I quit, but you never, you never did that. Yeah, that's unbelievable. It would have been interesting to be inside of his mind at that time and to see like the struggles because you know there was a struggle. Of course. I know it wasn't like easy to do that and then it took a process and then it would be interesting because we only have his meditations basically.

But what if we had more of that, it would be so exciting to see, you have to kind of just completely read between the lines, so little is known of his life. Well, when I read between the lines, I see him talking about not losing your temper, not despairing. He talks, he's clearly, he says like, he talks about reaching for your child and they're not there. So clearly he was struggling with all these things, but he was journal was where he worked it out. Yeah, but so so people have this wrong impression about stosis and which came back to some of them

we were talking about yesterday, where they kind of accuse you sometimes of not being stoic, or it's a struggle. Yes, even for Marcus Aurelius, it was a continual struggle, even for epictetus, wherever you pronounce it. It was a continual struggle. It's not like you're suddenly a stoic, you've reached, you've got a diploma, and now you've you're cont continually struggling with your human nature.

And if it wasn't a struggle, would it be that admirable? Like, if you were just born that way, or if it was you read this book and then you magically become this way, how impressive would that be? It's like we love the Tom Brady's of the world or the whatever, because they shouldn't be able to do what they're doing,

because they were a six round draft pick, because they're not, Drew Breeze isn't tall enough, but Webb isn't tall enough. Tom Brady is too old. It's that they're doing it in spite of everything that makes it impressive or admirable. Right. So it's the resistance that kind of makes you stronger and the more, so sometimes like the times that you're born in, like sometimes I wish, like the times that you're born in. Like sometimes I wish, damn it, why couldn't I have been born in like the 19th century or an ancient Athens? You know, there's some things about the 2020,

the 2021 that I just don't like, you know? I would have been so much happier, but then I have so much to resist against. Yeah. That it almost is almost like a form of pleasure. That I have to like struggle even harder to focus on reading and reading a book now, reading Nietzsche or reading Marcus Aurelius, is triple the pleasure when you live in a world that's so antithetical to it, right? Not just antithetical, but like reading the Stoics during a pandemic, during a plank, you realize, oh, this is what's happening. Right. I, I, Stefan's Wig, who I know you love, wrote this amazing biography of Montenna.

Yeah, I told you about that. Yeah. And when you read it and you go, oh, this is a guy writing, is a refugee from Hitler writing about a guy who's a refugee from Europe, Civil War. And then you're, I was reading it in 2016. And you're just getting, you just sort of realize it's, and Mark's really just talks about this, I mentioned, it's always been this way. People are people. This is the rhythms of history.'s saying things happen, unjust things happen. And it comes back to the fundamental question

with what Zwag says in that book, and that I think he says was Montanje's primary question, which is, how do you find freedom despite the constraints or difficulties or chaos of the world around you? Montanje was a great lover of the Stoics and... He had a quote of Epictetus on his, on the ceiling in his, in his library. Yeah, he was amazing.

He was so far ahead of his time in so many ways, because he was appalled at the treatment of, of, of, in the colonization of Brazil, etc. of the treatment of slavery, etc. And he was kind of saying that the cannibals were more, were more ethical than the Europeans of his time, etc. He was amazing. People like that who were outside of their time. He loved cats. He loved cats. Well, there you go. What's up? What's wrong with you? Yeah, that's true. No, that maybe that's a good place to stop because you were describing your near death experience earlier. And I was thinking of Montenna's near death experience. He falls off this horse. Yeah. By the way, his brother died. He was hit with a tennis ball. I don't remember that. His brother died

in a tragic tennis accident, which doesn't seem possible for the 15-hundreds. Maybe they're covering it up with something. But it was. But so he's, he's falls off a horse and he dies. And he, as they carry him into the house, he said he could feel death dancing on the tip of his lit, or life dancing on the tip of his lips, realizing that it was this force inside you that can go away.

Yeah. And basically all of his work comes after this your death experience. Yeah. Yeah. And how, so how has your brush with mortality changed you? Well, it's very true that life is like, so we so intellectualize and verbalize things,

but life is a feeling inside your body. It's an energy, it's a force. How could you ever put the words that would describe what it's like? It's inevitable. It's inevitable, but you know it when it's like leaving you, but that feeling is like. So there was another woman who I've... She wrote a great book about her stroke called Stroke of Inside Jill Bolte. She became a neuroscientist. She had a much worse stroke and she literally felt all of the life draining out of her body, inch by inch by inch, as like as death was passing through her.

I had a little bit of that and I also felt that this kind of force that is being alive is like being drained out of me. It wasn't as strong as that because my stroke wasn't as bad. But I did connect to the feeling of life and the feeling of death because I had the feeling of death in my body. As I described earlier, the sense of my bones kind of shriveling and melting and getting soft and kind of everything that makes you alive, kind of leaving your body. getting soft and kind of everything that makes you alive, kind of leaving your body. So it makes you aware that there's a physical, a physicality to being alive, to being conscious,

and to that you carry your death within you. And sort of, so, you know, I'm writing a little bit now about, I'm writing about childhood, and what's interesting is children are actually very, much closer to that than we are as adults. Because they were just born. They were just born. Two years ago, three years ago, they came out of the one they came out of the darkness.

They did not exist. They did not exist. So they have a feeling of what it means to like not exist and to have that sudden burst of light and to scream in your alive. It's kind of a mix of horror and something pleasurable, I suppose. I don't know. But it is true that children have a much more visceral

connection to life and death as we do as adults. We lose it because as we get older, we just, we take that force for granted. Completely for granted. Completely for granted. Or however many years you've been alive. Yeah.

So that sense of like dancing on your tongue, that's brilliant, you know, that's, it's just like, it's like, pervading your whole body, it's a feeling that you're being alive, and consciousness itself is a weird sensation. So sometimes when I'm meditating, I almost have this idea that the world itself is conscious,

that it exists outside of my brain, that everything in the world has a kind of consciousness to it. But we don't think about these things. We take it for granted that we're this one animal that's able to think that has a consciousness. So many of the things that we take for granted, it goes back to that Marcus Arraileus thing about the dead pig or the, or the wine that you drink. What does it goes back to that Marcus Arraileus thing about the dead pig or the wine that you drink. What does it actually mean to have thoughts, etc.? And so, nearly dying kind of brings that stuff home to you.

So, understanding that life is a force and that you've watched it almost leave, how do you protect it now that you got it back, however briefly? How do you think about that force as you go through your life day to day? Well, I'm very aware of it. I'm very aware of the precariousness of it. I'm very aware of the fact that it could leave me at any moment.

So just the awareness is kind of something that makes you feel a little bit more alive. So the other thing is in writing this book on the sublime and kind of studying the history of evolution and how we certain things evolve like the eye and emotions and and skeleton, etc. It makes you look at your own body in a completely different way. It's like this insane miracle. So life almost seems like it shouldn't be there. It's uncanny. It's absurd. It's absurd, you know? and so I have a lot of kind of surreal moments where I almost feel like I'm taken out of my body a little bit

As I was saying earlier it was just for a flash But I was watching a squirrel climb up the telephone pole And I was kind of feeling what it was like to be a squirrel. I do that often in my backyard I watch squirrels. I'm kind of fascinated by them. And I think they seem like they're having a good time. Oh, they seem like they're in paradise. Continue pairs. They're trees everywhere. They're nuts everywhere. They're fruit plants in my backyard that they're decimating. The thing I heard about squirrels is they lose like 40 or 50% of the nuts that they hide. But the accident, but, but in so doing create the forest that we then love, right? So it's like the accidental absurdity of their, like the byproduct

of their stupidity is could be that tree. Well, I would, hey, wait a minute, I wouldn't call squirrel stupid because they have, they've shouldn't they have incredible memory. But clearly not that great if they lose 50% of the nuts that they have. How it's going up to 50%. I heard that they, they have these certain kind of things in their brain where they can remember exactly where they buried that nut in the pot in your backyard, but I could be wrong. You get my, but, but yes, they seem like they're having a good time. They're always having a good time. Yeah.

So sometimes I just have flashes of how weird life is. They're only like for a second or two, but they're. That's a kids thing too, I think. Yeah. They just, they love, they love that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully you'll have many, many more of them.

Kids? No, of those moments. Of those moments. If life is fleeting, I think that's also one reason to soak in whatever the moment is, even if it's been all a strange or, you know, we want to see the Grand Canyon go or talking about, but then we ignore the slightly harder beauty of the squirrel, which is a lot more prevalent and accessible. But just take five minutes to watch a spider on a web. Did that in my backyard the other day?

I mean, it was, it's like the better than any movie you could watch, streaming on Netflix. Just sit there and watch a spider on a web. It's created. Just waiting there is the wind kind of, and how it feels every single vibration. I mean, it's just everywhere around you, little weird things like that. I hope I don't sound like, like, like, polyannas, or like, some of you right in St. Petersburg's digest or something.

I don't think anyone has ever accused Robert Green of sounding polyannas. Now, this is amazing. Thank you, Robert. Thank you very much, Ryan. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you Robert. Thank you very much. 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 Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily stoic early and add free on Amazon music 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.