The Daily Stoic - This Isn’t The Way To Practice Detachment | Ask Daily Stoic

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Seneca wasn’t fond of philosophers you could recognize. Not by their fame, but by their uniform. In his time, just as it is in ours, there was a type of person who, in reading about the Diogenes types or the tough Stoic types, thought that philosophy required that they give up their worldly possessions or start dressing like a bum.Today, these types try to signal their virtue by driving a beat up old car or by showing you how little they own. See, they say, I am practicing detachment. See, I don’t want like you want. But these appearances can be deceiving.And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan presents his part two of the Q&A from the Daily Stoic Stoicism 101 course in which he discusses the idea of being able to practice your philosophy wherever you are, the ins and out of the Stoic passions, how to go about reading ancient texts, and more.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonderree'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. 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 we're 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 happen to be someone there recording.

But thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you. Seneca wasn't fond of philosophers you could recognize, not by their fame or by their uniform. In his time, just as it is in hours, there was a type of person who, in reading about the diogenes types or the tough stoic type, thinks that philosophy required that they give up their worldly possessions, start dressing like a bum. These types try to signal their virtue by driving a beat up old car or showing you how little they own. See, they say, I am practicing detachment. See, I don't want life you want. But these appearances can be deceiving. As Sennaka reminds us, we should not

believe the lack of silver and gold to be proof of this simple life. This simple life is not a matter of externals. It's about what's going on inside. Someone can be a billionaire, flying on a private jet, totally at peace and indifferent to money, just as someone else, much less well off, might be grinding their teeth and envy and resentment.

You can swear off materialism, but if you trade it for demanding to be recognized for your superiority and purity, is that really an improvement? Or if you live frugally but obsessed, but obsessed over every dollar, miserably extracting as much savings from every situation and interaction, kind of pieces that. The simple life is defined by its simplicity, by its gratitude, by the ability to enjoy, by the ability to enjoy whatever is in front of you, whether that's millions of dollars or a nice chicken sandwich.

It's not the lack of money that we should be pursuing, but a lack of angst, a lack of resentment, a lack of insecurity, that's what wealth is. So, I guess I'm kind of working through some career stuff right now, but I think this kind of applies to anything, you know, and I like this idea of where you are is where you need to practice your philosophy, right? You can just do that anywhere, right? So how do you kind of keep that, hold that idea, and then hold the other end of the idea that now I'm looking for something else, or either aspiring or striving elsewhere?

Yeah, I was actually just writing a daily stokimo about this. There's this letter between Marcus Relius and his rhetoric teacher Cornelius Fronto. And Fronto says, look, against your will, you must put on the purple cloak of the emperor instead of the coarse cape of the philosopher, meaning like life chose you to do this. And that's where you're going to have to sort of shine. And I like the idea that for all of Marcus's sort of freedom and power, he's constrained by this, you know, opportunity, but also obligation that is sort of foiced upon him. Now, in the ancient world, obviously, there was a lot less mobility,

sort of socially, economically, culturally. There were literally ranks of classes and the idea of like, well, just because my dad was a blacksmith doesn't mean I want to be a blacksmith, right? That didn't exist. So it's not a perfect analog that because we do exist in a time with sort of mobility and some agency

that would have been incomprehensible to a markets are really. So I don't know if there's like a clear cut answer of when you should stick, when you should quit, but I think his idea that whatever it is that you're doing is a chance to be philosophical, is a chance to practice the philosophy. I think I was asking someone about this recently who'd like sort of transitioned jobs or careers or something

and I said, how do you know that you're not leaving because you're scared or intimidated. And he said, he said the test was, is the thing you're going to do harder or riskier than the thing you're leaving, right? So it's like, if Marcus Aurelius was turning down being the emperor, because he just wanted to study books and philosophy quietly alone in his room,

that's kind of a cop out. You know what I mean? Conversely, if he's studying books alone in his room and he gets this opportunity to be emperor, you know, that's a bigger opportunity, a better opportunity. It's a more challenging thing, and I think that's why he accepts it. So that might be a decent witness test to think about. Yeah, I guess just ultimately looking at using your philosophy to understand your own motivations. Sure. Got it. Cool. Thanks. Jerry.

Hi, thanks. And we're peeing other people saying thank you so much for hosting this course. I've been learning a lot about it. And I'm kind of new to Stoicism, so I don't know all the Latin phrases and all that, but I still kind of get stuck on the passions aspect. I'm wondering if it's close to the Greeks and the ancients, they define passions as different because I understand the lust and anger and desire, keeping them in the balance, but kind of finding your flow and what you're really engaged in wanting to do. I find that as a passion too. So where if you could talk about that or put something in the chat of where I can learn more about that.

Yeah, if you look at the Wikipedia page for the passions, let's pull it up here. In philosophy and religion, the passions are the instinctive, emotional, primitive drives in human beings, including, for example, lust, anger, aggression, and jealousy, which is human being, which restrain channel, develop, and sublimate in order to be possessed by wisdom. So, I think that's a good definition, because it's not just saying you are sublim- is that just saying

you suppress them? In some cases, it's about channeling them or developing them properly, right? So obviously, passion, as we speak about it in the modern world, is sort of the, you know, the idea of like loving what you do, being committed to it, having a calling or something. I don't think the Stoics would be instinctively, instinctively object to that, but there's a great chapter in Cal Newport's book, which I know we talked about in the last time, but I was just talking about this. And his book is so good, you can't ignore it. They can't ignore you.

It talks about, I think it's a woman who is really unhappy with her job and her passion was yoga. So she quits her job in a sort of a fit of inspiration and opens a yoga studio, which of course she has no experience or qualifications or money to do. So basically her passions, her passion,

which is a good thing, it's good to want to master something, blind her to the reality of the situation at hand. So I think Cal's point was like, don't do it. I would say maybe the middle ground is, sure, you can pursue this passion for yoga, but it has to be developed and sublimated and channeled so you can effectively exploit it and utilize it rather than be used by it in the way that, you know, you get some feeling of lust or anger and it carries you over

and it makes you do something that almost immediately after you have a lot of regret about. Gotcha. Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks for that clarification. I'll end that, appreciate it. Yeah, of course. Lance. Hey, Ryan.

My question is related to the, I guess more than mechanics of actually reading the source material. Okay. I've only started reading that I've got discourses that's my first foray into the actual material. I've only started reading that I've got the discourses that's my first foray into the actual material. And my impression is that it's not the same as reading fiction where you're not going to plow through 40 pages all at once.

How do you read it? How do you digest it like mechanically? Sure. So it's always important to, and this is why the intros of the books are really important, but whenever I read an ancient text of philosophy, I also go and I read the Wikipedia page, I try to read some articles about it, I try to read the Wikipedia page of the author, I try to get some understanding of the context in which this was creative,

but for Epic Teethis is a great example. So Epic Teethis did not write the book that you're holding, right? But you could tell this from the title because it's called Discourses. But it's not even his version of the Discourses. What happened is, you know, 2000 years ago, Epic Titus is giving some lectures and one of his students, Arian, is there writing it down. So, this is like, if you,

this would be like, if it turns out that one of your college professors is considered in retrospect one of the wisest people that ever lived, and I went through a box of stuff in your basement and I found your notes from that class, right? Like it would be kind of a snapshot of a snapshot of a snapshot. Like we don't know why Epictetus was talking about this.

We don't even know if these are exact quotes or not. So it's important that you understand the context in which Epictetus is talking about, which is really he's kind of lecturing to a group. And then that those notes are kind of being sort of transcribed back to us. So I think epitetus is good to read in chunks to really like you know to read a few paragraphs at a time. I like I've mentioned some of the Princeton University press editions of like specific collections where it's sort of organized by themes. There's also an even more accessible edition of Epictetus.

It's so accessible that some people sort of object to the translations, but Sharon Lebel did a book called The Art of Living. But you can read, it might be good to read these two side by side, the art of living and the discourses. But that would be a good way to think about epictetus, that you're kind of reading them in chunks, but that you're also reading the lecture notes of a student. And so it's not designed to be super readable.

Awesome, thank you. Yes. What else? Hi. Hi. Ryan, you inspired me to What else? Hi. Hi. Hey, Ryan, you inspired me to watch Gladiator. Oh. And so I'm watching it.

I'm going, well, shit. He got annihilated while he was practicing the virtues. So my question to you is how many times do you go down before you say fuck the virtues? I'm gonna annihilate someone back. I guess when I watch that movie, I don't see a commonist as winning.

You know what I mean? There's a really important stoke idea, which is that in the short term, there might be certain advantages. You may be giving up certain advantages by deciding to live by a code, but the alternative is far more terrifying and unimaginable.

And then, I mean, look in the end, comment does lose and Rome is sort of restored. It's a fictional movie, I mean, look in the end, Communist does lose and Rome is sort of restored. It's a fictional movie, of course, but does Communist sort of have more fun from time to time, does he get to indulge in sort of vices that Maximus would never allow himself? Of course, but I think Communist is a great example of the real cost of doing that, which

is it comes at the cost of your soul and your humanity. Let's do Wilmi, is that every pronounce that? Yes. Hi. Hi, Ryan. Well, thank you so much. It's an honor. It's an honor.

Thank you. I've been following you for a couple of years at least, and I admire a lot your work. I even, it's an inspiration for me. My question for you is something that, about Marcus Aurelius, that life isn't just about business. I am the kind of person that I'm an execution person. I like to be busy. I like to do a bunch of things. I like to plan a lot. And it's, it's almost like, like I slavery for me.

Yes, I know that. Feeling very well. Yeah, like I see you with your farm, with your journal. And I realize that I need to make time for meditating, for my journaling, for things like that. But in the end, I, well, I think you've got me, right? No, I totally do. So my wife catches me doing this pretty often,

and she goes like, this is not an item for your to-do list, right? You can't just put this on here and just go from thing to thing to thing. This is not how one lives life. And so I think that's what Marcus is saying to himself, so don't be all about business, don't turn everything into a job, don't make everything a process or a system to be optimized. That's just ultimately, not just a recipe for misery, but it strips out the meaning and the ability to experience the moment that you're in.

So, you mentioned my farm. I mean, I had to make some decisions a few years ago about how I wanted to set up my life to counterbalance those impulses or urges. So, like, if I'm living in New York City, I have more trouble controlling that impulse than I do out in rural Texas. So I'm not saying that everyone should or could do that. I'm just saying like you kind of got to figure out, you know, what makes you tick and what parts of those you want to encourage and then sort of how you counterbalance those things. So it might just be how you set up your life, how you set up your day, what sort of, you know, whether it's, hey, you know, if I have my phone in hand, I'm going to be working.

So when I come home, I put my phone in a drawer and I don't touch it for an hour, right? That sort of, like sort of, I might think about stuff like that. Thank you, thank you, Ryan. Yeah, that's great. I'm trying to figure out how to associate some of these things like the journaling, the meditations to some feel like executing something.

Yeah, and look, I think the morning before you get sucked into other stuff is the best time to do that. 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. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellissi. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of

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