The Daily Stoic - Seneca on Choosing Our Teachers

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

Today’s episode is an excerpt from The Tao Of Seneca produced by Tim Ferriss’ Audio. In this letter Seneca writes about the importance of having a model to measure yourself against, how to learn from the great men and women of history, learning not only from the strengths but also from the fault and weaknesses of others, and more. Go to tim.blog/seneca to get the PDF for free.Centered is a Mac and Windows app that helps you get into Flow and work faster...and healthier. Join thousands of users who have discovered their Flow States by running Centered in the background while they work. Download Centered today at centered.app/stoic and use the Promo Code “STOIC” by October 31st to get a free month of Premium, and also be entered to win a variety of prizes!We've joined Team Feed Corporate to help end hunger in America. No one should go without a meal, yet more than 38 million people in America still face hunger. We created this fundraiser to help provide these much needed meals to our neighbors through the Feeding America network of food banks and we're asking you to join us in our cause. Go to https://dailystoic.com/feeding to donate and let's end hunger together!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, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. 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 Wunder'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. Daily Stoke is raising money for feeding America. Last year, the Daily Stoke community came together and raised over $100,000 together, providing more than a million meals. And this year, we're trying to go twice as big.

We've donated the first $20,000 and we'd like your help getting to our goal, $200,000, which would provide more than two million meals for families across the country. You just have to head over to dailystowoc.com slash feeding. And together we can make a small dent and a big problem. We can't alleviate everyone's struggle or suffering, of course, but for the people we can't help, the difference is huge. So let's do it.

Let's be good at stoics today. Let's fulfill our obligation. Just go to dailystowic.com slash feeding. Even one dollar can provide as many as 10 meals. So head over to dailystiric.com slash feeding to help us reach our goal of providing two million meals for families across the country. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. People often ask me about audiobooks, about the Stoics, what's the best audiobook edition of

Marcus Relius or Epictetus. I don't really have a great answer for those two, but I do very much recommend this audiobook edition of Seneca, the Tim Ferriss put together a few years ago called The Doubt of Seneca. It is available actually as a PDF, totally for free. If you go to Tim.blog slash Seneca. And here we have one of the letters from this adaptation of Seneca's letters on choosing our teachers. Seneca in this letter is writing to Lucilius about the importance of learning from great men and women of history. The importance of learning to find the fault and the weaknesses as well as the virtues of both. We need a helping hand. He says,

someone to look to, to measure ourselves against, to study. In conclusion, he says that we must chew, this is one of my favorite passages in all of Sennaka's writings. The idea of picking a model, someone to measure ourselves against people whose lives tell us how we ought to be, who prove it then with their practice. Last week, we had this excerpt from Rome's last citizen on Kato. Well, Kato was that person for Senaqa, and you'll hear why in this wonderful essay. If you want the audio book, The Dow of Senica, produced by Tim Ferris, you can check that out on Audible. I suggest that you do so. I think it's a wonderful public service that Tim has done here. And the

fact that it gives the PDF of it away for free is also wonderful. And thank you to Tim and Fristo for allowing me to excerpt it in today's episode, I hope you enjoy. Letter 52 on Choosing Our Teachers. What is this force, Lukeelius, that drags us in one direction when we are aiming in another, urging us on to the exact place from which we longed with draw. What is it that wrestles with our spirit, and does not allow us to desire anything once for all?

We veer from plan to plan. None of our wishes is free, none is unqualified, none is lasting. But it is the fool, you say, who is inconsistent? Nothing suits him for long. But how or when can we tear ourselves away from this folly? No man by himself has sufficient strength to rise above it, he needs a helping hand, and someone to extricate him. Epicurus remarks that certain men have worked their way to the truth without anyone's assistance, carving out their own passage. And he gives special praise to these, for

their impulse has come from within, and they have forged to the front by themselves. Again, he says, there are others who need outside help, who will not proceed unless someone leads the way, but who will follow faithfully. Of these, he says, metradorus was one. This type of man is also excellent but belongs to the second grade. We ourselves are not of that first class either. We shall be well treated if we are admitted into the second. Nor need you despise a man who can gain salvation only with the assistance of another.

The will to be saved means a great deal too. You will find still another class of man, and a class not to be despised, who can be forced and driven into righteousness, who do not need a guide as much as they require someone to encourage, and, as it were, to force them along. This is the third variety. If you ask me for a man of this pattern also, Epicurus tells us that Hermacus was such, and of the two last named classes he is more ready to congratulate the one, but he feels more respect for the other, for although both reached the same goal, it is a greater credit to have brought about the same result with the more difficult material upon which to work. Suppose that two buildings have been erected, unlike as to their foundations but equal

in height and in grandeur. One is built on faultless ground and the process of erection goes right ahead. In the other case, the foundations have exhausted the building materials for they have been sunk into soft and shifting ground and much labor has been wasted in reaching the solid rock. As one looks at both of them, one sees clearly what progress the former has made, but the larger and more difficult part of the latter is hidden, so with men's dispositions. Some are pliable and easy to manage, but others have to be laboriously wrought out by hand, so to speak, and are wholly employed in the making of their own foundations. I should accordingly deem more fortunate the man who has never had any trouble with himself, but the other I feel has deserved

better of himself, who has won a victory over the meanness of his own nature, and has not gently led himself, but has wrestled his way to wisdom. You may be sure that this refractory nature, which demands much toil, has been implanted in us. There are obstacles in our path, so let us fight, and call to our assistance some helpers. Whom, you say, shall I call upon? Shall it be this man or that? There is another choice also open to you. You may go to the ancients, for they have the time to help you. We can get assistance not only from the living, but from those of the past. Let us choose, however, from among the living not men who pour forth their words with the

greatest glipness, turning out common places and holding as it were their own little private exhibitions. Not these, I say, but men who teach us by their lives, men who tell us what we ought to do, and then prove it by practice, who show us what we ought to do and then prove it by practice. Who show us what we should avoid and then are never caught doing that which they have ordered us to avoid. 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 people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings. But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses.

From Bloomberg and Wondering comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. 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. Choose as a guide one whom you will admire more when you see him act than when you hear him speak. Of course, I would not prevent you

from listening also to those philosophers who are want to hold public meetings and discussions, provided they appear before the people for the express purpose of improving themselves and others, and do not practice their profession for the sake of self-seeking. For what is Bacer, then philosophy, courting applause? Does the sick man praise the surgeon while he is operating? In silence and with reverent awe, submit to the cure. Even though you cry applause, I shall listen to your cries as if you were groaning when your sores were touched. Do you wish to bear witness that you are attentive, that you are stirred by the grandeur of the subject?

You may do this at the proper time. I shall, of course, allow you to pass judgment and cast a vote as to the better course. Pythagoras made his pupils keep silence for five years. Do you think that they had the right on that account to break out immediately into applause? How mad is he who leaves the lecture room in a happy frame of mind simply because of applause from the ignorant? Why do you take pleasure in being praised by men whom you yourself cannot praise? Fabianus used to give popular talks, but his audience listened with self-control. Occasionally a loud shout of praise would burst forth, but it was prompted by the greatness of his subject, and not by the sound of oratory that slipped forth pleasantly and softly. There should be a difference between the applause of the theater and the applause of the school,

and there is a certain decency even in bestowing praise. If you mark them carefully, all acts are always significant, and you can gauge character by even the most trifling signs. The lecherous man is revealed by his gate, by a movement of the hand, sometimes by a single answer, by his touching his head with a finger by the shifting of his eye. The scamp is shown up by his laugh. The madman, by his face and general appearance, these qualities become known by certain marks, but you can tell the character of every man, when you see how he gives and receives praise. The philosopher's audience, from this corner and that, stretch forth admiring hands, and sometimes the adoring crowd almost hang over the lecturer's head. But if you really

understand, that is not praise. It is merely applause. These outcry should be left for the arts which aim to please the crowd, let philosophy be worshipped in silence. Young men, indeed, must sometimes have free play to follow their impulses, but it should only be at times when they act from impulse, and when they cannot force themselves to be silent. Such praise as that gives a certain kind of encouragement to the heroes themselves, and acts as a spur to the youthful mind. But let them be roused to the matter and not to the style. Otherwise, eloquence does them harm, making them enamored of itself and not of the subject.

I shall postpone this topic for the present. It demands a long and special investigation to show how the public should be addressed, what indulgences should be allowed to a speaker on a public occasion, and what should be allowed to the crowd itself in the presence of the speaker. There can be no doubt that philosophy has suffered a loss, now that she has exposed her charms for sale. Philosophy has suffered a loss, now that she has exposed her charms for sale. But she can still be viewed in her sanctuary if her exhibitor is a priest and not a peddler. Farewell. My new book Courage is Calling is now officially a New York Times bestseller. Thank you so much to everyone who supported the book. It was literally and figuratively overwhelming. We signed

almost 10,000 copies of the book, which just you know it hit me right here and I appreciate it so much. If you haven't picked up a copy or you want to pick up a signed copy as a gift, please do. You can get your copy at dailystoic.com slash courage is calling or you can just go to store at dailystoic.com. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.